Russia is 'Like a Predator', Col. Reisner Analyses™

Another day, more evidence--as if we needed that--of the mental illness masquerading as expert-dom™ emerges, this time from Austrian state broadcaster ORF

Today, we’ll look, once more, at the virtual-signalling bravery of agit-prop gunners who serve somebody else from the perceived safe space (pun intended, gotta pull your punches consciously) of an ostensibly neutral™ country, like Austria.

As such, we’re following up on some of the more egregious lunacy that continues to firmly hold Western body politics in their iron grip:

Footnote 22: the (virtue-signalling) bravery of being out of range

Behold, the spectacle of Col Markus Reisner, a general staff-level military officer of the Austrian Federal Armed Forces (Bundesheer) whose almost daily commentary on Youtube in the channel Ukraine aktuell, or ‘Current Events in Ukraine’ has become something of a mini sensation of expert-dom™ esp. among German-speaking countries.

As per his Wikipedia entry, we learn the following about this fine gentleman:

Markus Reisner (born March 10, 1978, in Bucklige Welt, Lower Austria) is an Austrian historian, military expert,^[1][2] and officer of the Austrian Armed Forces serving as superintendent of the institute for officer's training at Theresian Military Academy.^[3] He became known to a wider international audience through his analyses on YouTube and elsewhere of the military developments during the Russian invasion of Ukraine from February 2022.^[4]…

Studies and doctorate

Reisner studied law and history at the University of Vienna.^[1] From 2010 to 2013, he completed doctoral studies in history at the University of Vienna (dissertation on the aerial warfare over Austria from 1943 to 1945, supervisor Lothar Höbelt).^[6] In 2017, he completed his Ph.D. studies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna.^[6][7]

Service as a staff officer

From 2014 to 2016, he completed the 20th General Staff Course at the National Defense Academy in Vienna.^[6] In June 2020, he was appointed head of the Development Department of the Theresian Military Academy, and led it with the rank of Colonel of the General Staff.^[6] From September 1, 2022, to February 29, 2024, Reisner was commander of the Gardebataillon, one of the most elite and traditional units of the Austrian Armed Forces, in Vienna^[6]…

Academic career

Markus Reisner currently is a member of the Military History Advisory Board of the Scientific Commission at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Defense (since 2017),^[8] and holds a position as lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt (since 2011). Before, he advised the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2017–2018), as well as the Austrian ministry of defense (2018).

And just the other day, Col. Reisner went on state broadcaster ORF’s nightly newscast (Zeit im Bild 2) and said a lot on inane, if politically über-correct things, it both boggles the mind and reveals, once more, the pervasive insanity among those in our juste milieux who serve different masters.

As always, non-English content comes to you in my translation, with emphases and [snark] added.

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Colonel Reisner on [TV]: Russia Acts like a ‘Predator’

Military analyst Markus Reisner categorised what the patriot systems announced by Trump could bring to Ukraine with "Time and Trust"

By Oliver Mark, Der Standard, 17 July 2025 [source; archived]

‘Thank you very much for your time and trust’, said Markus Reisner of the Austrian Armed Forces at the end of the interview on the ‘Zeit im Bild 2’. Time and trust are two different things. Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the military analyst has invested a lot of time analysing the situation in various German-language media [you would think that Col. Reisner commented on the conflict since 2014, which is the starting point according to NATO’s former Sec.-Gen. Stoltenberg, but, alas, Col. Reisner began his work in 2022…]

He also receives a lot of trust, but not from everyone. For example, Reisner was recently defamed by Heinz Sichrovsky in his column in the Kronen Zeitung as a ‘practising skinhead’ because he is travelling topless [Col. Reisner shaves his head]. The Army refrained from taking legal action after both the Krone publisher and the editor-in-chief of the medium apologised to him—including journalistic compensation.

Be that as it may. Reisner, a profound military analyst and colonel from the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt, was a guest of Armin Wolf on ZiB 2 on Wednesday evening to talk about the announced arms deliveries for Ukraine and to analyse the status quo of the war that has been raging for an incredible three and a half years [another of these inane inaccuracies, for the trajectory, or background, of this conflict originates in the first Clinton administration when the decision was made to enlarge, rather than disband, NATO].

[here’s the German-language segment of the newscast: having watched it twice, I can assure you (in case you don’t understand German) it’s certifiably insane: both the news anchor Armin Wolf and his interlocutor are giddy with excitement about the prospect of more arms to fuel the conflict]

Sense of PATRIOT™ Systems

‘Hardly anyone knows as much about this war as you do’, Wolf introduced his first question very appreciatively [in the most journalistically objective-neutral way possible, of course]. And Reisner delivered. He explained with linguistic precision how the PATRIOT™ system works. US President Donald Trump only recently signalled his support for Ukraine with this defence system. As ‘erratic’ as Trump’s announcement may seem, it will help Ukraine to defend itself against Russian air strikes [one such battery holds 16 missiles, two batteries are talked about to be delivered at some point in the future, and they are pretty useless against the hundreds of drones Russia uses these days].

It is still unclear exactly how many systems there will be and when they will arrive [perhaps they need to build™ them first]. Reisner estimates that it will take weeks or possibly months before the PATRIOT™ systems are ready for use. What’s more, they will not help in the fight against the flood of drones that Russia is currently deploying in Ukraine [told you so]. After all, a drone used by Russia costs 20,000 euros, while a PATRIOT™ missile costs four million euros [get that: according to this piece in Defense Express (27 March 2025), ‘In 2024, (Lockheed Martin) produced 500 MSE missiles, a 30% increase from the previous year. Plans for 2025 include a further 20% boost, bringing annual production to 600 units.’—None of this will make a meaningful difference in this or any future conflict, that is, with the exception of lining the pockets of Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors: these 32 extra (?) PATRIOT™ missiles cost approx. US$ 130m by the way]

More Weapons

Can the PATRIOTs™ turn the tide of the war? Reisner is sceptical, as the system is a defensive system and not an offensive weapon system to recapture territories occupied by Russia. If Ukraine wants to go on the offensive, it needs considerably more weapons, says Reisner [that’s kinda irrelevant: Ukraine is neither sovereign nor do they suffer from a lack of will: the most relevant problems at the moment are its dwindling manpower and the long-standing insufficiency of basic arms, such as artillery shells, a problem literally since the begin of Russia’s ‘special military operation’; from my own archive here, I recommend the below piece from ‘the Eastern Front’:

NRK Went to the 'Eastern Front' in Ukraine

And now back to Col. Reisner’s absurd finale.]

Russia as a Predator [not the absence of scare quotes]

Russia’s attacks on civilian targets follow the strategy of wearing down the population, said Reisner [I would recommend to the good colonel to compare the (esp. civilian) casualty figures from, say, Israeli air attacks vs. those suffered by Ukrainians: the former are way higher in a shorter period of time, yet that thought never occurred to either the journo™ nor the expert™; see below for some official data]. Events and developments are more and more in Ukraine’s disfavour. Russia’s armed forces are acting ‘like a predator’ [orig. wie ein Raubtier] along the frontlines:

With one claw they have the north of Ukraine in their grip, with the other claw the south and with their mouth they have bitten into the Donbass. [Col. Reisner is, as can clearly seen from this masterful analysis, also a master of metaphor]

Whether the USA will succeed in exerting enough pressure to bring Putin to his senses ‘will be explained by historians in retrospect’. As long as there are historians like Reisner, it is worth listening to them now [more journo™ objectivity on display].

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Bottom Lines

As insane as it may sound, this is what passes for high-level expertise™ and counts among the high points of journalistic integrity, if you can believe it.

Here’s the tentative body count from both Gaza/West Bank vs. Ukraine, according to my prompt of Grok:

prowl the internet, use only mainstream media, official government data, and reports from international organisations such as the UN, and provide best estimates of civilian casualties in Ukraine (at the hands of Russian military forces since 24 Feb. 2022) as well as civilian casualties in Gaza and the West Bank (at the hands of Israeli military forces since 7 Oct. 2022): numbers and sources only, no commentary or disclaimers are required

And here’s Grok’s answer (don’t shoot the messenger, the point of this exercise is neither whatever one wishes to infer but to highlight the egregious double-standards of experts™ like Col. Reisner and journos™ like Armin Wolf; every single life lost in conflict is a tragedy, and no opinion on my part about the relative value of one or the other dead shall be inferred):

Ukraine Civilian Casualties (Russian Military, since 24 Feb 2022):

• 13,341 killed, 32,744 injured (as of 31 May 2025, OHCHR)

• 12,162 killed, 26,919 injured (as of 31 Oct 2024, OHCHR)

• 10,582 killed (as of 15 Feb 2024, OHCHR)

• 10,378 killed, including 579 children and 2,992 women, 19,632 injured (as of early 2024, UN HRMMU)

• 10,065 killed (as of early 2024, posts on X)

Gaza Civilian Casualties (Israeli Military, since 7 Oct 2023):

• 58,313 killed, including 217 journalists, 120 academics, 224 humanitarian aid workers (179 UNRWA) (as of 9 Jul 2025, Gaza Health Ministry)

• 50,021 killed, nearly a third under 18 (as of 22 Mar 2025, Palestinian Ministry of Health)

• 42,718 killed, 100,282 injured (as of 22 Oct 2024, Gaza MoH via OCHA)

• 37,396 killed (as of 19 Jun 2024, Gaza Health Ministry via UN OCHA)

• 64,260 estimated deaths (95% CI 55,298–78,525) due to traumatic injury, under-reported by 41% (7 Oct 2023–30 Jun 2024, The Lancet)

• 29,410 killed, including 12,660 children and 8,570 women, 69,465 injured (as of early 2024, Palestinian sources)

• 21,978 killed (as of early 2024, posts on X)

West Bank Civilian Casualties (Israeli Military, since 7 Oct 2023):

• 680 killed (as of early 2025, Oxfam)

• 155 killed (7 Oct–7 Nov 2023, Gaza Ministry of Health)

This is merely for the sake of my argument about hypocrisy and blinders: the data are quite clear here—there are way more Palestinian casualties in about half the time of the Ukraine conflict since Feb. 2022, yet nothing about this will be talked about among the juste milieu.

The point being here isn’t what I think or feel about it, my point is that this juxtaposition merely shows the enduring logic (sic) of what the British historian and independent journalist Mark Curtis referred to as Unpeople (subtitled Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, Vintage, 2004), thus re-affirming Stalin’s long-standing truism:

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

Moving on, let’s note some of Col. Reisner’s ‘other’ influences: his German Wikipedia profile also notes a seemingly funny™ affiliation with the ‘Clausewitz Netzwerk für strategische Studien’, or ‘Clausewitz Network for Strategic Studies’. What, then, is that thing? As per its Wikipedia entry:

The Clausewitz Network for Strategic Studies (CNSS) is a German think tank on strategic issues. The aim of the organisation is to provide strategy training for those in positions of responsibility. The CNSS is based at the Bundeswehr Führungsakademie [Command and Staff College] in Hamburg, from where it promotes interdepartmental exchange between civilian and military personalities.

Oh, look, Col. Reisner is a member of the Bundeswehr’s thoroughly NATO-fied leadership circles; here’s what the CNSS does (references omitted):

The network provides strategy training and development, cultivates the intellectual legacy of Carl von Clausewitz and conducts basic research into his theories. In seminars, the CNSS contrasts Clausewitz's teachings with current events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

According to the think tank, its most important task is to promote dialogue between civilian and military decision-makers. This is organised in symposia, workshops, lectures, and discussions, with a focus on the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College in Hamburg and Berlin. With these formats, the association explicitly aims to involve a non-military audience.

Members of the CNSS regularly publish academic papers on strategy topics (see Publications section). Since 2017, the network has been publishing interviews and contributions to the Vienna Strategy Conference.

And here you see how the integration of various militaries™, and here’s from the horse’s mouth itself (the CNSS’s website):

We are a network organized as a non-profit association based at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College Hamburg [a GONGO, a gov’t organised NGO].

Through fireside chats, conferences, and scientific symposia, we bring together strategic thinkers, discuss new ideas and theories in a confidential setting, and develop them further together.

From their ‘strategy’ section, we learn what the CNSS does:

We maintain the discourse on the interaction of politics, war and strategy in the present. The values an open and free discourse without hierarchical biases and looks to connect with top minds from a wide variety of social organizations…

We pursue a double purpose: On the one hand basic research for strategic thinking. On the other hand, we develop strategies and analyzes in the CNSS, identify options for action and name their respective prerequisites and implications.

So, they offer guidance for politicos™ and journos™ alike, all the while being run out of the Bundeswehr’s Command and Staff College. Nothing says, ‘we’re an independent™ think (sic) tank offering objective™ analyses like being BFFs with the NATO-fied Bundeswehr. None of this was mentioned in the ORF interview or the like.

By the way, Col. Reisner is a board member of the CNSS, too, another one of these factoids that remained unmentioned.

It’s a very small world in these security™ circles, isn’t it.

Finally, let’s not forget that even big predators, such as tigers or jaguars, are both very elegant when on the prowl (would that be the idea of labelling Russia such?)—and threatened with extinction.

In that regard, the metaphor is quite apt.