Democracy, Russian Style. Scott Ritter

March 21, 2024

Global Research,

By Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter Extra

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Russia just wrapped up three days of electoral processes which will define the internal direction of that nation for the next six years and, in doing so, serve as the driving force of global transformation for decades to come. Russia has some 112.3 million registered voters. From March 15 through March 17, a little more than 77% of them came out and cast their vote for who would be their president for the next six years. An overwhelming percentage—over 88%—cast their vote for the incumbent, Vladimir Putin.

Let there be no doubt—there was no question as to what the outcome would be in this election: Vladimir Putin was always going to win reelection.

Let there also be no doubt—the 2024 presidential election in Russia is the most important political event of the post-Cold War era, the byproduct of one of the greatest expressions of democratic will that the world will see in modern times.

The election was far more than a vote of confidence in an individual—Vladimir Putin has been the dominant political force in Russia since the turn of the century, a man who has, through sheer force of will, led Russia out of the dark catastrophe of the 1990’s, positioning Russia as one of the most powerful and influential nations of the modern era.

The election was not a mandate on the war in Ukraine—that issue had been decided in the fall of 2022, when Russia was compelled to mobilize its manpower and military industrial capacity as what had been envisioned as a short military campaign against Ukraine transformed into a larger, longer military struggle against the collective West.

Simply put, the Ukraine conflict was not on the ballot in 2024.

What was on the ballot was the future of Russia.

Vladimir Putin is 71 years old. His victory secures him another six-year term in office. When this term ends, in 2030, Putin will be 77 years old.

Russians are students of history, and they know too well the sad legacy of the period of Soviet stagnation, which began in the mid-1960’s under the leadership of Leonid collective West. Brezhnev was 75 years old when he died in office, a mentally and physically feeble man. He was replaced by Yuri Andropov, who died two years later at the age of 69, only to be replaced by Konstantin Chernenko, who died in 1985 at the age of 73.

There is no reason to believe that Vladimir Putin will not maintain his current level of physical health and mental acuity for the remainder of his new term in office. But all men are, in the end, created equal, and the ravages of time weigh heavily on everyone, even someone as exceptional as Vladimir Putin.

March 2024 Russia Presidential Election: Russia and “Putin 3.0”

For the past quarter of a century, Vladimir Putin has relied upon a core team of advisors and officials to help him lead Russia on its path of recovery. While this team has proven to be very capable, it, too, is subject to the same laws of nature that govern human existence as everyone else—ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

No man can live forever.

Russia, however, is in the minds of the people who constitute the Russian nation, eternal.

Having saved Russia from the deprivations of the 1990’s, when the collective West, led by the United States, conspired to keep Russia down by tearing it apart, Vladimir Putin is cognizant of the lessons of history which saw what happens when a ruling elite holds on to power for too long without any thought as to who will take their place.

Mikhail Gorbachev tried to lead Russia (the Soviet Union) out of the period of Soviet stagnation. He did so in a reactive fashion, without a well-thought-out plan, and the result was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the horrible decade of the 1990’s.

If Vladimir Putin were to approach the next six years as merely a continuation of his impressive tenure in office, he would be leading Russia down a path where it would collide with the harsh mistress that is historical precedent—an aging man, at the head of an aging system of government, with no clear plan on how to proceed when the inevitable appointment with destiny arrives.

In short, should the situation arise where Vladimir Putin feels compelled to seek an additional six-year term as Russia’s president in 2030, then Russia would more than likely find itself in danger of sinking into a new period of stagnation where the gains that have been made over the course of three decades of Putin rule will be squandered, and the potential of a societal collapse on par with the 1990’s a distinct reality.

This is why the important statistic to emerge from the 2024 Russian presidential election is not the 88% of the voters who marked their ballots in support of Vladimir Putin, but instead the 77% of the eligible voters who came out to express their support for the Russian state. Voter participation levels have always been seen as a reflection of the confidence a particular electorate had that the system of government they were sustaining through their vote best reflected the vision they themselves had of the nation they lived in.

By way of comparison, the 2020 presidential election in the United States saw a record-level 66% participation rate by eligible voters.

The 2024 presidential election in Russia beat that mark by 11 percentage points.

This means that the Russian people are confident that the 71-year-old Vladimir Putin will not be leading them down a path of historical inevitability where they are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Rather, the Russian people, confident in where Vladimir Putin has taken them to date, believe that he is the man who will best position Russia to be able to sustain these gains, and continue to prosper, in an eventual post-Putin Russia.

The 2024 Russian presidential election was a not a vote to maintain the status quo.

It was a vote for change.

The man that will oversee this change is Vladimir Putin.

Post-election rally in Red Square following Vladimir Putin’s victory in the 2024 presidential election

In the coming months, one can expect to see the beginning of a changing of the guard. The Russian leaders who helped Putin get Russia to where it is today will be set aside, to be replaced by a younger generation of Russian leaders who will, under the guidance and leadership of Vladmir Putin, prepare Russia for whatever challenges that await it once Vladimir Putin is no longer president.

How this change will manifest itself—perhaps a transition from a Moscow-centric political elite to one derived from the various regions of Russia—is as yet unknown. But there will be change, because there must be change.

And this change was on the ballot.

The West derided the 2024 Russian presidential election as a sham.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The 2024 Russian presidential election was the manifestation of a thriving democracy, but a democracy defined by Russians.

The West focuses on the 88% of the Russians who voted for Vladimir Putin and derides the result as little more than a foregone conclusion in a system that offered the people only one real choice.

Russian democracy, however, is defined by the 77% level of electoral participation, and reflects the confidence of the people in the Russian state’s ability to take them from the strong position that Vladimir Putin has brought them and sustain this strength in a post-Putin era.

It was not a vote defined by recertifying the past, but rather a vote which empowered the government to undertake the critical changes needed for the future of the Russian nation.

It was the perfect expression of democracy, Russian style.

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ملحمة غزّة في سياق الحرب العالمية

 وليد شرارة

 السبت 2 آذار 2024

«عَراضة» المساعدات: «مجزرة الطحين» تُحرج الغرب

لن تعفي المناورات اللفظية الجوفاء، ومقولات من نوع «ضرورة حماية المدنيين» و«احترام القانون الدولي الإنساني»، قادة «الغرب الجماعي» من أميركيين وأوروبيين، من مسؤوليتهم، عن رعاية المذبحة المتواصلة التي يرتكبها ربيبهم الصهيوني بحق أهل غزة، والتي تمثل «أكبر عملية عقاب جماعي بحق المدنيين في التاريخ المعاصر»، وفقاً لروبرت بايب، عالم السياسة الأميركي المتخصّص في النزاعات والأمن الدولي. هؤلاء شركاء مباشرون، عبر الدعم العسكري والسياسي والإعلامي الذي قدّموه للكيان المؤقت، في قتل 30035 فلسطينياً في غزة، قسم عظيم منهم من الأطفال، بحسب آخر أرقام وزارة الصحة في غزة، والآلاف الآخرين الذين ما زالوا تحت الأنقاض، وفي جرح أكثر من 70000 منهم. عوامل عدة تفسّر قرارهم الانغماس في حرب الإبادة الجارية، في مقدّمتها انحيازهم العقائدي و/أو الفكري – السياسي إلى الصهيونية و«معجزتها المتحقّقة على الأرض»، أي الكيان الاستيطاني الإحلالي، أمام ما اعتبروه تهديداً وجودياً لها، ومسعاهم للدفاع عن منظومة هيمنتهم على الإقليم الذي يحتل فيها الكيان موقع حجر الزاوية، إضافة إلى اعتبارات سياسية وانتخابية داخلية للنخب والأحزاب الحاكمة في دول الغرب. غير أن عاملاً آخر يلقي الضوء على خلفيات الجموح الغربي الراهن لم يتم التطرق إليه بشكل كاف، وهو ذلك المتمثل بسياق الحرب العالمية الراهنة، الدائرة حتى اللحظة على الساحة الأوكرانية بين حلف الأطلسي وروسيا، والمواجهة القابلة لتدحرج خطر بين الصين من جهة والولايات المتحدة وحلفائها في شرق آسيا من جهة أخرى.الحرب والمواجهة المشار إليهما، مع مفاعيلهما، تسهم كلّها في إنتاج سياق حرب عالمية يحفّز دول الغرب على إدخال تغييرات حاسمة على سياساتها وأولوياتها، من نوع إعادة بناء قاعدة صناعية عسكرية مثلاً، مع ما يقتضيه ذلك من إنفاق باهظ، وتغيير لجدول أعمال حكوماتها. أما على مستوى سياساتها الخارجية، فهي أصبحت محكومة بمركزية هذا السياق، وتنظر من خلاله إلى الكثير من الأحداث والتطورات، وبينها معركة غزة. بكلام آخر، عملية «طوفان الأقصى»، من منظور واشنطن وأتباعها من الغربيين، عن قصد أو غير قصد، أفادت روسيا والصين، وهذا سبب إضافي لمساهمتهم في حرب الإبادة الصهيونية ضد أهل غزة ومقاومتهم. وبعد مرور أكثر من 4 أشهر عليها، والفشل في تحقيق هدفها الأساسي المتمثل في القضاء على المقاومة، بات بعضهم يدعو إلى وقف العمليات العسكرية، لأن استمرارها والمفاعيل الناجمة عنها قد يكون كلّ ذلك لصالح المنافسين الاستراتيجيين في موسكو وبكين!

تُنسب «نظريات المؤامرة» عادة إلى خصوم الولايات المتحدة، ويقتنع بهكذا زعم من تنقصه المعلومات والمعطيات عن تاريخ السياسة الخارجية الأميركية بشكل خاص والغربية بشكل عام. لم تتردّد واشنطن وغالبية حلفائها في تقديم حركات التحرر الوطني في بلدان ما سُمي بالعالم الثالث، على أنها مجرد أدوات للاتحاد السوفياتي، وجرى التعامل معها على ذلك الأساس، رغم أن بعضها حاول محاورة الولايات المتحدة لبناء علاقات ندّية معها وفشل في ذلك. الأمثلة كثيرة، من مصر جمال عبد الناصر و«تيار القومية العربية»، والثورة الجزائرية وحكومة محمد مصدق في إيران، وحتى كوبا بعد انتصار الثورة على نظام باتيستا. سعى جميع هؤلاء إلى التوصل على الأقل إلى تفاهمات مع واشنطن تحول دون الصراع المفتوح معها، لكنّ رفضهم الانصياع لأجندتها الاستراتيجية أدّى إلى مثل هذا الصراع.

المزاعم حول دور روسي مباشر أو غير مباشر في مساعدة المقاومين الفلسطينيين لا تستند إلى أدنى دليل

بعد عملية «طوفان الأقصى»، بدأت تتبلور في أوساط الأجهزة الأمنية والعسكرية الأميركية والأوروبية «نظرية مؤامرة» جديدة حيالها، مفادها أن روسيا في الحد الأدنى ساعدت المقاومة الفلسطينية على تنفيذها، إن لم تكن تقف خلفها تماماً، لأنها، وفقاً للتهويمات المشار إليها، المستفيد الأول من فتح جبهة جديدة في شرق المتوسط ضد الولايات المتحدة وحلفائها، بعد تلك المفتوحة في أوكرانيا. وقد سمعنا أصداءً لهذه «النظرية» في بعض وسائل الإعلام اللبنانية ولدى عدد من المحلّلين. في الحقيقة، وبعد عقدين من الاستخفاف بروسيا، فوجئ «الغرب الجماعي» بقدرتها على خوض مجابهة ناجحة على الصعد العسكرية والسياسية والاقتصادية، فانقلب الاستخفاف إلى تهويل بالخطر الروسي الداهم على الغرب ومناطق نفوذه ومصالحه. ووفقاً لنظرية المؤامرة الجديدة، فإن موسكو أحسنت استغلال الكثير من الأزمات التي عصفت ببلدان في المنطقة لـ«تتسلل» إليها وتتحوّل إلى لاعب وازن فيها. المثل الأول الذي يُقدّم هو سوريا، حيث شكّل تدخل روسيا العسكري في أواخر 2015، رافعة لدور سياسي محوري لها في البلد المذكور وعلى مستوى الإقليم. الكلام نفسه يُقال حول التدخل العسكري الروسي في ليبيا وتوظيفه لصالح زيادة النفوذ في المتوسط والسعي لتحويل ذلك البلد إلى منصة لتدخلات جديدة في أفريقيا جنوب الصحراء. أما بالنسبة إلى التطورات التي شهدتها بلدان منطقة الساحل، أي الانقلابات التي وقعت في بوركينا فاسو ومالي والنيجر، فإن «يد موسكو» هي من يقف خلفها برأي أصحاب هذه النظرية الفذّة.

المنطق نفسه ينسحب على معركة «طوفان الأقصى»، التي اكتسبت منذ ساعاتها الأولى أبعاداً إقليمية ودولية، لأن الغرب الجماعي هرع بحاملات طائراته وغواصاته لنجدة إسرائيل! ما يتناساه هؤلاء هو أن «التورط» في هذه المعركة، ومن ثم في غيرها في اليمن وفي سوريا والعراق، بدلاً من التركيز الحصري على الحرب في أوكرانيا، هو قرار قيادات الغرب. ليست روسيا من يُلام على التبعات والأكلاف المترتّبة على مثل هذا الأمر. إضافة إلى ذلك، فإن المزاعم حول دور روسي مباشر أو غير مباشر في مساعدة المقاومين الفلسطينيين لا تستند إلى أدنى دليل أو قرينة. من البديهي أن روسيا، وجميع خصوم وأعداء الولايات المتحدة، يستفيدون من تورطها في حروب ومواجهات تستنزفها عسكرياً واقتصادياً وتزيد من إضعاف صدقية مزاعمها عن «القيم» و«الحرية» وغيرها من فقاعات الصابون الأيديولوجية. روسيا والصين، على المستوى الإستراتيجي، كانتا في مقدّمة المستفيدين من عمليات 11 أيلول عام 2001 وما تلاها من غرق أميركي في وحول الحروب على «الإرهاب». هذه الحروب كانت بمثابة الكارثة الإستراتيجية بالنسبة إلى واشنطن، لكن هل يتجرّأ أحد على اتهام من خطّط لخوضها وأدارها، أي المحافظين الجدد وأقطاب إدارة بوش الابن، من مثل ديك تشيني ودونالد رامسفيلد، بالعمالة لموسكو وبكين؟

الثابت حتى الآن أنه كلما ازداد تورّط الإمبراطورية الهرمة في حروب ونزاعات جديدة، في سياق الحرب العالمية المذكور سابقاً، فإن هذا الأمر يخدم مصالح أعدائها ويثلج صدورهم. ذلك ينطبق على تورّطها في منطقتنا، وربما في مناطق أخرى من المعمورة مستقبلاً.

من ملف : «عَراضة» المساعدات: «مجزرة الطحين» تُحرج الغرب

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مجزرة الطحين – الخبز الأحمر

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• واشنطن تعرقل إصدار بيان إدانة: الغرب يبحث في «جنس» مجزرة الطحين!
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• «موسكو 4» الفرصة الأخيرة؟
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• إدارة ميلان تكشف عن خطتها: ملعب حديث «متعدد الاستعمالات»

US sees Ukrainian army demoralized, no chance to win: Seymour Hersh

21 Sep 2023

Source: Agencies

Ukrainian soldiers ride an APC on the front line near Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, on June 5, 2023. (

By Al Mayadeen English

Hersh also notes there is no interest in peace talks Ukraine’s claims of incremental progress in the offensive constitute of “all lies”.

Citing a US official familiar with current intelligence, US journalist Seymour Hersh said that the US intelligence believes that the Ukrainian forces have become demoralized and have no chance of winning, adding that there currently exists no discussion in Kiev or the White House regarding a ceasefire.

In a new post on his Substack account, Hersh said, “There are significant elements in the American intelligence community, relying on field reports and technical intelligence, who believe that the demoralized Ukraine army has given up on the possibility of overcoming the heavily mined three-tier Russian defense lines and taking the war to Crimea and the four oblasts seized and annexed by Russia. The reality is that Volodymyr Zelensky’s battered army no longer has any chance of a victory”. 

Hersh also noted there is no interest in peace talks. Quoting the official, Hersh continued that Ukraine’s claims of incremental progress in the offensive constitute of “all lies”.

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Read more: Hersh: Majority of the world supports Russia in war in Ukraine

The renowned investigative journalist reported last month that the CIA informed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would not likely yield results.

This information, said Hersh, came from a US intelligence official, who stated more specifically, that “the word was getting to him [Blinken] through the Agency [CIA] that the Ukrainian offense was not going to work. It was a show by Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bullshit.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been calling on his Western allies for months to provide his military with long-range missiles, arguing that this could drastically improve the outcome of the counteroffensive. But before that, it was the anti-air missiles, the advanced offense tanks, heavily armored troop carriers, and the HIMARS system.

Ukraine is depleting resources at an unsustainable rate, firing 90,000 artillery rounds per month when the Pentagon is only capable of producing a third of that number, while also losing around 20 percent of NATO-provided weapons – that were either destroyed or damaged – within the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, which saw very limited ground gains since it was launched almost three months ago.

Russia & NATO

As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?

Here’s why Ukraine’s defeat could mean the end of NATO in its current form

10 Sep, 2023 11:28

The bloc has too much riding on Kiev’s highly-unlikely success, and that’s why it’s doing all it can to prolong the conflict

(From L) US President Joe Biden, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky at the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 12, 2023 ©  Ludovic MARIN / AFP

By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT correspondent

As the West’s proxy war in Ukraine slips inexorably towards utter failure, the neocons behind the debacle are faced with dwindling avenues of retreat.

Early confidence that Russia, in its current form, would collapse under the pressure of the harshest sanctions regime in history failed to materialize. Early Russian miscalculations on the battlefield were not followed by a military meltdown, but by a pragmatic display of strategic adaptability, which is begrudgingly admired in the military war rooms of the West. The Russian army, far from falling apart, has steeled itself into making bold decisions to retreat when prudent and advance when required, both of which have proven devastating for their Ukrainian opponents. It follows that, as the Western political elites that cultivated this conflict peer into another winter of political, military, and potentially economic discontent, it is now that we potentially face the most dangerous period in Europe since the outbreak of WWII.

The catalyst for a wider war in Europe isn’t, in fact, a limited conflict in Ukraine in itself, one that started in 2014 and, notably, had been largely ignored by Western powers for almost a decade. The real issue is that NATO, which is currently engaged in a proxy War with Russia, is facing a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ scenario regarding its growing military involvement in Ukraine. If the US-led bloc escalates further as defeat looms, it could likely lead to direct confrontation with Russia. If it doesn’t, its proxy will collapse and leave Russia victorious, a fate once utterly unthinkable in Brussels, Washington, and London, but now becoming a nightmarish reality.

Such a defeat would be devastating and potentially terminal for the prestige and reputation of the whole NATO brand. After all, despite the Soviet Union having long ceased to exist, the bloc still markets itself as an indispensable bulwark against  imagined Russian expansionism. In the event of an increasingly likely Ukrainian defeat, that ‘essential partner’ in ‘countering Russia’ will have been proven utterly impotent and largely irrelevant. More cynically, the vast US arms industry would also be denied a huge and lucrative market. So, how does a multi billion-dollar machine that has prophesied absolute victory against Russia even begin to contemplate defeat? And how do senior EU bureaucrats like Ursula Von der Leyen climb down from their quasi-religious devotion to the ‘cause’ of utterly defeating Russia, which she has shamelessly evangelized for over a year and a half? Lastly, how does the American administration, which has gone politically, morally, and economically ‘all in’ against Russia in Ukraine, contemplate what amounts to an increasingly inevitable European version of Afghanistan 2.0?

Read more
 The Wunderwaffe delusion: Why Ukraine’s Western backers are happy to feed Zelensky’s fantasies about American F-16s

They will need to do two things: Firstly, find someone to blame for their defeat and secondly, find a new enemy to deflect public opinion onto. The ‘someone to blame’ will be quite easy to identify – the narrative will be flush with attacks on states like Hungary, China, and to some extent India, who will be accused of “undermining the unified effort needed to isolate and defeat Russia.”

Blaming Ukraine itself will also be central to this narrative. Western media will insure it’s singled out as incapable of ‘taking the medicine’ proffered by NATO and therefore suffering the consequences, not listening to Western military advice, failing to utilize Western aid correctly and, of course – given that little has been done by Zelensky to tackle the endemic corruption in Ukraine – this fact will be easily weaponized against him and used to lubricate a slick narrative of ‘we tried to help them, but they simply couldn’t be saved from themselves’.

The ‘shift focus to another enemy’ narrative is the simplest and most obvious – that will be China. NATO is already trying to expand its influence in Asia, including via a planned ‘liaison office’ in Japan. The ‘China is the real threat’ narrative is bubbling steadily to the surface in Western media.

And, most worryingly, should Western powers fail to make their case for ‘plausible deniability’ around the culpability for this war, there is always the option of further escalating it. Such an escalation could rapidly lead to direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, an outcome no lucid observer on either side of the debate could or should be contemplating. The problem is, rational assessment and negotiation seem to have become so rare in Washington and Kiev that a devastating escalation could, quite remarkably, be considered an option by the deluded neocon think-tank advisers wielding disproportionate influence over an increasingly desperate political class in Washington and Brussels. In the event that NATO does indeed sanction a direct intervention into Ukraine, it will, of course, be justified as a ‘peacekeeping’ or humanitarian intervention by Polish or Romanian troops, but the categorization of the ‘mission’ will become gloriously irrelevant when the first clashes with Russian forces occur, followed by a potentially rapid spiral into all-out war between Russia and NATO.

It could be argued that the process to disassociate from Ukraine has already started, beginning with the embarrassment Zelensky faced at the recent NATO summit and progressing with the open spats between Western ‘partners’ over whether to give Ukraine ever deadlier weapons to essentially insure its self-destruction. 

From here on out one thing is abundantly clear, nothing will happen by accident when it comes to the EU and NATO’s interaction with the Zelensky regime. Whatever comes next may need to be spun both ways, to either pull out or to escalate. A case in point is the blame game being openly acted out around the obvious failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, with open finger-pointing in the Western media by Ukrainian officials like the ambassador to Germany, Aleksey Makeev. Kiev’s top man in Germany recently blamed the West for the bloody failure of the ill-fated project, suggesting it was solely due to European and American delays in shipping weapons and cash to Kiev. According to the ambassador, it was this Western failure that apparently allowed the Russians to build their defenses in eastern Ukraine, where tens of thousands of unfortunate Ukrainian conscripts have met their fate in the past three months.

Read more
 Ilya Kramnik: Here’s why NATO isn’t able to help Ukraine win

In the real world, the counteroffensive, which has now become a slow-motion calamity, had been telegraphed to the Russians and the wider world for almost a year and will surely be recalled as one of the greatest military misadventures in history. The fact that the Ukrainian regime openly advertised its intentions, even loudly pointing out the avenue of assault and strategic goals, is conveniently ignored by the likes of Makeev. It now seems apparent that Kiev believed that its overt saber-rattling would stimulate faster and larger weapons shipments from its increasingly concerned partners – it didn’t, and by the time those very same sponsors’ patience ran out with Kiev’s lack of progress on the battlefield, it was glaringly obvious any offensive against long-prepared Russian defenses was doomed to fail. Yet, because of Kiev’s PR need and demands from Western political elites, the counteroffensive began, wiping out entire battalions of Ukrainian troops and burning through a huge portion of the Western heavy weapons previously provided.

The situation evokes a kind of tragic romantic folly, with Ukraine desperate to woo NATO and the EU to the point of suicide, NATO and the EU playing the aloof lover; never having really considered marriage but willing to allow its admirer to throw itself onto the spears of the real object of their attention – Russia. Of course, the real concern now preoccupying the EU-NATO cabal is how to survive this tawdry affair and move on. While the hapless Jens Stoltenberg would have us believe NATO has never been stronger, the reality is far less rosy for the ‘defensive alliance’ that has bombed its way across Europe and the Middle East, and now seeks to expand to the Pacific. The reality is that the Ukraine conflict could destroy NATO. It has become something of a modern day League of Nations, adept at admonishing small fish, but utterly incapable of standing toe to toe with any peer adversary, a failed political institution, posing as a military alliance, that in reality would collapse in the face of a direct challenge from either Russia or China. Of course, it seems that NATO has also willfully fallen under the spell of its own propaganda.

The big question now is whether the bloc would in reality contemplate a direct confrontation with Russia in Ukraine? Or will the Western political elites who built the scaffold the Ukrainian conflict is now blazing on choose to reverse through blame or escalate through desperation?

One thing is indisputable: The fate of NATO and its credibility as a ‘defensive alliance’ is irrevocably intertwined with the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict, yet because NATO is, in reality, a political rather than military institution, these crucial issues will never be debated openly, as the answers would be akin to a priest announcing the nonexistence of God from the pulpit.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The war for Christmas: Using the Church to fight Russia

AUGUST 19, 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Amidst the ongoing military war in Ukraine, there is a war of narrative and identity as the West, once again, aims to rewrite history to fit its foreign policies.

By Myriam Charabaty

In Ukraine, the war of churches has gone to a new level as the NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine seeks to establish a new narrative for a Western-aligned Ukraine at the cost of identity, history, and faith.

Over the past months, one thing has become clear: the war in Ukraine will determine the future of the world order. In the event of a military win for NATO and its allies, which appears highly unlikely, Russia would be “contained”, once again, as the Minsk Agreement confessions revealed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel aimed to achieve, through the expansion of NATO’s eastern flank.

In my previous article titled How the war on the Moscow Patriarchate is a war on collective identity, I underscored how the West had employed multiple soft power strategies to create a false narratove for Ukrainian national identity, which would allegedly be framed as independent from Russia and the Orthodox Church of the Moscow and Kiev Patriarchates [which play a significant role in the collective identity of Eurasia and former USSR countries]. In this article, I will continue to highlight the unfolding of events within this content and show the significance of the battle of churches taking place in Eastern Europe.

As explained in the previous article, the US, alongside its collective West allies, utilizing the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) strategy, have found religion to be the most efficient component of collective identity that they can exploit to their advantage. The idea was to create an allegedly national-religious divide that would create the following equation: A patriotic Ukrainian will reject any Russian-affiliated form of Christian Orthodoxy, such as that of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), and adopt the new, only partially-recognized, Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). 

This equation would entail that anyone who does not accept that illusive division as an “objective fact” would be considered a ‘traitor’ and dubbed a ‘Russian propagandist.’

Subsequently, this dresses Russia up as an enemy, despite the fact that an honest objective analysis of reality, grounded in the study of histography, shows that Ukraine is an extension of Russia. This is true to the extent that previously, Ukraine was known regionally as Kyivan Rus, even by the admission of notorious US foreign policy strategist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The plan in motion

In 2008, a cable titled “Interfaith Dialogue” revealed that discussions regarding how to approach the strategy for religious exploitation of the targeted collective identity started as early as 2004 [at least to our knowledge and based on tracking the history of communications thanks to Wikileaks].

The Wikileaks-released cable written by the then US embassy in Kiev read: “The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, arrived in Ukraine on July 24 for a five-day visit to celebrate the 1,020th anniversary of the Christianization of the Kyivan Rus.”

Once again, this is significant, as the terminologies reaffirm the historical identity of Ukraine through its original name of Kyivan Rus, whose Christian identity dates back to 1,020 AD.

The US ambassador then made an unfounded claim and outlined the then-potential soft power strategy: “Although he [Bortholemew] has no jurisdiction over other Orthodox patriarchs, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople is viewed as the spiritual leader and primary spokesman for Eastern Orthodoxy, and many anticipated his visit might help begin to resolve the long-running split within Ukraine’s Orthodox community and lend support for President Yushchenko’s push to establish a unified Orthodox church free from Russian influence.”

Ten years later, in 2018, the fears of Moscow became a reality after the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate canceled the Synodal Letter of 1686 granting the right to ordinate the Metropolitan of Kiev to the Moscow Patriarch. Soon after, in 2019, the NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine was granted a tomos of autocephaly (decree of ecclesial independence), by Bartholomew I of Constantinople, but remained only canonically partially-recognized. However, according to the Russian Orthodox Church, it was considered, as it continues to be, uncanonical.

[Note: The previous article highlights the relationship between Bortholemew I of Constantinople with the West and what the two would gain from such an endeavor, and how it would be translated in Western foreign policy applications.]

In 2022, the former president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, who served as President following the Maidan coup in 2014 until 2019, described this as “a great victory for the devout Ukrainian nation over the Moscow demons, a victory of good over evil, light over darkness.”

Significantly, in an interview with Lally Weymouth, Poroshenko said, “From the beginning, I was one of the organizers of the Maidan,” highlighting his work in service of the NATO-backed color revolution in Ukraine aimed at containing Russia while expanding NATO’s eastern flank and ending Ukraine’s neutrality between Eastern and Western alliance.

In March of 2022, Ukraine’s National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve announced that it had ordered monks of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate to leave the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one of the most important Orthodox Christian monasteries by March 29, claiming a breach of contract.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow slammed, in the same month, Ukraine’s National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve’s order to expel the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) clergy from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery.

At a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine, in January of 2023, the Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of the Moscow Metropolitan in Volokolamsk, Anthony, told UN delegates of the political repression exercised against the Orthodox Church clergy of Ukraine and called on the UN to intervene.

One example he evoked at the meeting was the revocation of Ukrainian citizenship of the Orthodox Church clergy of Ukraine.

“Depriving the citizenship of Ukrainian religious figures is undoubtedly a form of mass political repressions, which contradict the Constitution of Ukraine and international agreements that have been signed by that state,” Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Anthony said via videoconference.

He added that “In 2022 alone, 129 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were seized. At the same time, the legal registration of its new communities was completely blocked.”

It was also witnessed that Ukrainian army members threatened people and religious figures of the UOC-MP.

A Chronology of events

At the beginning of 2023, the main Assumption Cathedral of the historical and UNESCO-marked site, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, was officially transferred to the allegedly independent but realistically NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine after multiple searches and violations of the sanctity of the church under the pretense that it propagated pro-Russia propaganda.

On January 7, OCU priests, for the first time in the history of the historical monastery, held a service in the cathedral, and Ukrainian President Zelensky shortly after stated that “there will never be anything non-Ukrainian here again.”

In April, Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, was sentenced to 60 days of house arrest, and the clergy of the Cathedral of Khmelnytskyi were charged with “hooliganism” after they refused to join the OCU or desert the Lavra.

After the refusal of the monks of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), who have resided in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra for centuries, to desert their church and join the partially-recognized Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the Ukrainian Culture Ministry also created a commission to seal the Lavra’s premises, forcing the monks to evacuate before July 4.

At the time, Nikita Chekman, the clerics’ legal advisor, posted part of the decree on Telegram. The decree read: “A commission has been created for sealing the buildings, which begins its work on July 4, 2023. In this regard, we ask you to vacate the premises and give the keys from them to the reserve. If the monastery refuses to give the keys from the buildings … the locks will be replaced and the buildings will be sealed.”

At that point, the Bishops of the UOC expressed that they felt threatened by the supporters of the NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

Bishop Gedeon, also given the name Yuriy Kharon, of Makarov, told Sputnik, “all my friends and acquaintances that I talk to feel threatened because the churches are being taken away from them. And what could be more threatening than them coming to you and taking away what belongs to the Church of Christ? And they don’t take it away for anyone, they take it away for nothing. No one goes there, they don’t even have parishioners.”

Moreover, Kharon explained that “their [Ukrainian authorities’] very task is to transfer [the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra] to the OCU. After all, they do need some kind of Church. They cannot position themselves as theomachists or atheists, although they are, but they cannot say so openly, they do it through the OCU,” he said.

To further reaffirm that the war against the Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Orthodox Church is grounded in politics, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada adopted on July 14, 2023, No. 9431, which denotes that the parliament changed the dates of three holidays, among which is Christmas.

People’s Deputy of Ukraine, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, reported that the law changing the date of Christmas from December 25 to January 7, Ukrainian Statehood Day from July 28 to July 15, and the Day of Defenders of Ukraine and the Day of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos from October 14 to October 1, will go into effect starting September 1st.

It is worth noting that the date changes follow the Georgian calendar as opposed to the Julian Calendar, which Russian Orthodox churches and many Eastern Christian denominations continue to follow.

Only to further politicize and push forward the soft power strategy of NATO in the face of history itself, Ukrainian MP Irina Gerashchenko, via Telegram, slammed Russia, Eastern Orthodox, and non-Western denominations as uncivilized in a move that cannot but remind us of the dark history of Western Christianity, which gave birth to the era of the crusades and the racist ideology it propagated. Gerashchenko said: “Now Ukrainians – Orthodox and Catholics – will celebrate holidays with the whole civilized world, but not with Moscow.”

On August 11, the Ukrainian security forces actively blocked non-OCU followers from entering one of the most sacred places for Eastern Orthodox Christians, as the Christians of Ukraine have not yet abandoned the Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches in favor of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, unlike what was planned by NATO and the Ukrainian government serving as a proxy tool in the war against Russia.

Will religion be allowed to be a tool of imperialism once again?

Many might now ask what the purpose of this chronological analysis of events offers. Indeed, it would be, at the very least, a call to return to the root problem and assess reality through a decolonized lens. Western imperialism and hegemony are shrinking, while their divisionary policies continue to flourish. The cost of playing into the Western-propagated narrative would be the destruction of society and collective identity while simultaneously tarnishing history. There is no country or minority that ever benefited from such narratives, and the examples from Africa, Latin America, and Western Asia are endless.

At a time when the church must be working toward unity, the collective West continues to manipulate and pull strings to achieve nothing but US and NATO goals, which could not be more contradictory to the collective good of Ukraine, Eastern Europe, or any other region seeking to liberate itself from destructive hegemony and regain its sovereignty and dignity. That applies to Christian denominations worldwide hoping to be liberated from Crusader ideology that has been forcefully imposed through multiple means.

Read more: The Future of Arab Christians: One path, one destiny

Russia & NATO

As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?

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Neocon Loon John Bolton Blames Biden for Ukraine War Failure

August 14, 2023

By infostormer

The neocon loon John Bolton is saying that Joe Biden didn’t do enough to help the Ukraine and that this is why the war has failed.

RT:

Failures in Ukraine’s much-touted counteroffensive against Russia stem from the West’s inability to provide Kiev with the necessary military equipment within a reasonable timeframe, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton has said.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal published on Sunday, Bolton lamented that Kiev’s long-anticipated push, which started in early June, “isn’t making the headway some proponents had forecast,” adding that the disappointing results must become a “wake-up” call for Washington.

The former White House official – widely regarded as a foreign-policy hawk and who has advocated regime changes in Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cuba – insisted in his article that Kiev’s “inability to achieve major advances is the natural result of a US strategy aimed only at staving off Russian conquest,” while he also urged US President Joe Biden to start “vigorously working toward Ukrainian victory.”

“Ukraine’s offensive failures and Russia’s defensive successes share a common cause: the slow, faltering, non-strategic supply of military assistance by the West,” Bolton claimed, adding that the US-led support for Kiev has been hampered further by speculation that Moscow might escalate the conflict.

This is just a ridiculous position. The Ukraine never had any chance against Russia. Anybody with even just a minimal amount of knowledge about the situation knew this to be the case. It didn’t matter how much equipment Biden or anybody else gave the Kiev regime. It defies comprehension that Bolton doesn’t understand this.

Bolton by making these statements is simply pushing for a full NATO intervention in the war. All Bolton has done throughout his sorry career is push for Jewish wars. It is not surprising at all for him to say that Biden and his Jew handlers weren’t hardcore enough and that we now have to commit NATO to the fight.

The thing is NATO is not equipped or prepared to defeat Russia in a war. They’ve spent the past two decades shaping their forces to occupy third world countries opposed to Jews and Israel.

Any sort of NATO intervention will turn into another disaster and may even spark a nuclear exchange.

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CIA Running Ukraine Blows Biden’s Bluster About No U.S. Boots on the Ground

July 7, 2023

Source

Jessica Buxbaum

Ukraine is ground zero for the CIA’s fascist origins

The American magazine Newsweek published a big “exclusive” report this week purporting to reveal the extent of CIA involvement in the Ukraine proxy war against Russia. It hardly merits the billing of “exclusive” since it is well known that the U.S. spy agency is up to its neck in orchestrating the conflict.

In truth, the CIA’s nefarious role in Ukraine goes back decades to the end of World War Two. More on that further down.

Nevertheless, the Newsweek article provides a useful admission that Washington is recklessly – and criminally – fueling hostilities towards Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power in terms of its arsenal. The Biden administration and its military-intelligence apparatus are risking an escalation of the proxy war to an all-out nuclear conflagration.

The Newsweek report remarks on the “contradiction” between President Joe Biden’s public vow to not put American boots on the ground and the undeniable heavy presence of U.S. clandestine forces in Ukraine helping (more precisely, directing) the war effort. Instead of “contradiction”, a plainer, more fitting word is “lie”.

Recall, too, Biden previously said he doesn’t want to “start World War Three” with Russia. That’s about as believable as an alcoholic saying he doesn’t want another drink.

The Biden administration is engaged in gross deception of the American public by absurdly pretending that U.S. military personnel are not in Ukraine and that Washington is not directing a war against Russia. Biden’s policy of pumping weapons into Ukraine ($40 billion so far) is inexorably leading the United States and its NATO allies deeper into an all-out war against Russia. Yet this mentally challenged president somehow maintains “there are no U.S. boots on the ground” and that the U.S.-led NATO alliance is not at war with Russia. Such blatant lies should be grounds for his impeachment.

Apart from the admission that the Newsweek article provides, the otherwise banal reporting is a whitewash of the CIA’s pivotal and pernicious role in the Ukraine conflict.

Laughably, the article portrays the CIA as “trying to ensure the war does not spin out of control”. Thus, the agency is presented as a moderating, restraining influence on the Kiev regime and its military conduct. The reader is led to believe that Washington is endeavoring to prevent the Ukrainian military from launching direct attacks on Russia. It is claimed that the CIA is “struggling” to control the operations of the Kiev regime which has at times gone rogue against Biden’s “rules of engagement”. Examples of rogue conduct, it is claimed, are the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, the bombing of the Kerch Bridge to Crimea, drone attacks on Moscow and several “mysterious assassinations” of Russian public figures.

This is risible disinformation from the CIA courtesy of Newsweek. Alternative, reliable investigative reporting by Seymour Hersh and others has exposed the Biden administration’s direct responsibility for the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea last September.

It is also credibly asserted by Moscow that none of the other deep attacks on Russia could have been carried out by Ukrainian forces without the logistical involvement of the CIA and other NATO covert military agencies, primarily Britain’s MI6.

Since the conflict erupted in February last year, the Biden administration and its NATO partners have stoked the war with stepwise increases in ever-more lethal weaponry, from long-range missiles to battlefield tanks to promised delivery of F-16 fighter jets. This week Biden has reportedly green-lighted the supply of banned cluster munitions, which the Kiev regime will doubtless use against civilians in Russia’s Donbass region – under instruction from CIA advisors.

A crucial historical background for understanding the conflict in Ukraine is the involvement of the CIA in orchestrating the coup d’état in Kiev in 2014. That coup ousted a democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, and ushered in the Neo-Nazi junta that persists today – headed by the nominally Jewish comedian figure Vladimir Zelensky.

Zelensky and his inveterate corrupt cabal are nothing more than puppets and playthings for the CIA and MI6. Their useful-idiot function is to front a colossal arms racket and a U.S.-led proxy war to undermine Russia geopolitically, with regime change in Moscow as the ultimate objective, as well as to facilitate Washington’s agenda of subjugating Europe as a vassal colony for American capital for the purpose of propelling the next American war against China.

The CIA and its British counterparts are running the Neo-Nazi cesspit that Ukraine has been turned into. Even while trying to whitewash the CIA’s criminal role in Ukraine, the Newsweek article cited above admits that the agency has multiple bases located across that pathetic country and that CIA operatives are overseeing “massive networks” of arms running.

But what is particularly disturbing about the disinformation is the attempt to hoodwink the American public and others into thinking that the CIA and the Biden administration are somehow bystanders to the war. A war that is escalating despite their supposed noble efforts at “restraining”.

The American public is being drugged with lies and blandishments, misled as if sleepwalking towards a catastrophic world war with nuclear-armed Russia.

The conflict in Ukraine could be stopped immediately, as Russian national security advisor and former president Dmitry Medvedev pointed out again this week, if the United States simply stopped supplying weapons to Ukraine. However, the Biden administration has spurned all diplomatic efforts to negotiate a political-security settlement. U.S. media reports this week of “back channel” communications with Russia are not credible when Washington is giving full throttle to the war effort with the sinister hand of the CIA.

It should be remembered, too, that the CIA was borne out of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War Two. One of its first postwar tasks was recruiting Ukrainian fascists and mass killers who had collaborated with the Nazi Reich in its genocidal Final Solution against Slavs, Jews, Poles and others. (These fascists like Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed are held up as national heroes by today’s Kiev regime, including Jewish Mr Zelensky.) Washington deliberately recruited and deployed those terrorists to attack the Soviet Union in order to advance U.S. imperialist hegemonic ambitions in Europe.

Not much has changed. Ukraine is ground zero for the CIA’s fascist origins. Not only are American boots on the ground in Ukraine in large numbers. They have been there for decades – paired with jackboots – for the very objective of fomenting the present dangerous crisis that has now culminated.

Newsweek and other U.S. mainstream media are a profanity to public service and truth. One can discern between the lines, if sufficiently aware, but generally, those media outlets are tantamount to acting like soporific drugs. They should be obliged to carry a doctor’s warning on their frontage banners: consuming this product can induce stupidity resulting in disaster.

A Matryoshka of Psyops: And Why General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere

June 30, 2023

Source

Pepe Escobar

The main problem faced by Russia is not the Hegemon and NATO: it’s domestic, Pepe Escobar writes.

The secret of a perfect psyop is that no one really understands it.

A perfect psyop accomplishes two tasks: it renders the enemy dazed and confused while achieving a set of very important goals.

It goes without saying that sooner rather than later we should see the real goals emerging out of the strategic play in Russia I described as The Longest Day.

The Longest Day may or may not have been a larger than life psyop.

To clear the fog, let’s start with a roundup of the usual “winner” suspects.

First one is undoubtedly Belarus. Due to the priceless mediation of Old Man Luka, Minsk is now gifted with the most experienced army in the world: the Wagner musicians, masters of conventional (Libya, Ukraine) and non-conventional (Syria, Central African Republic) war.

That is already inflicting the Fear of Hell in NATO, which is suddenly facing in its eastern flank a super pro army, very well equipped, and de facto uncontrollable, and on top of it hosted by a nation now equipped with nuclear weapons.

Simultaneously, Russia props up dissuasion on its western front. Like clockwork that is leading NATOstan to invest in ballooning military budgets (with funds it doesn’t have). That process happens to be a key plank of Russian strategy since at least March 2018.

And as an extra bonus Russia creates a 24/7 threat to the whole of Kiev’s northern front.

Not bad for a “mutiny”.

The Dance of the Oligarchs

Way more complex is Russia’s internal dynamics. Putin’s current and subsequent difficult decisions may entail loss of popularity coupled with loss of internal stability -depending on the manner Kremlin-defined strategic victories are presented to Russian public opinion.

Whatever 24/7 NATOstan mainstream media spin may come up with, the Kremlin’s official explanation for June 24 boils down to a Prighozin demonstration: he was just trying to shake things up.

It’s way more complicated than that. There were strategic gains, of course, and Prighozin seems to have followed a very risky script that in the end favors Moscow. But it’s still too early to tell.

A key sub-plot is how the Dance of the Oligarchs will proceed. Independent Russian media was already expecting some – treasonous – players, including state functionaries, to buy their one-way ticket when the going got tough (or to say they were “ill”, or refuse to answer important calls). The Duma – fed by Bortnikov’s FSB – is already working on a hefty list.

The Russian system – and Russian society as well – see people like these as supremely toxic: in fact much more dangerous than the demshiza (a term that mixes “democracy” and “schizophrenia”, applied to globalist neoliberals).

On the military front, it gets even more complicated. Putin has charged Defense Minister Shoigu to compile the list of Generals to be promoted after The Longest Day. To put it mildly, for quite a few people, from many different persuasions, Shoigu has become a toxic element in Russian politics.

Wagner – rebranded, and under new management – will continue to serve Russia’s interests via Minsk, including in Africa.

Old Man Luka, wily as ever, has already firmly stated there won’t be any provocations against NATO via Wagner. Wagner recruiting bureaus will not be opened in Belarus. Belarussians may join Wagner directly. As it stands, most of Wagner fighters are still in Lugansk.

For all practical purposes, from now on the Russian government won’t have anything to do, militarily and financially, with Wagner.

Additionally, there are no heavy weapons to be confiscated. Already on Monday, June 26, Wagner had moved their heavy weapons to Belarus. What remains – and had not been moved during The Longest Day – was returned to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

The Dance of the Generals

A clear winner in the whole process is Russian public opinion: they made that graphically clear in Rostov. Everyone was supporting Putin, Russian soldiers, Wagner and Prighozin – at the same time. The overall objective was to improve the Russian army to win the war. It’s as straightforward as that.

The purge inside the MoD will be tough. Under the pretext of repression or “rebellion”, operetta Generals” (as defined by Putin himself) that did not train their soldiers properly, did not organize the mobilization properly, or were incompetent in battle, will definitely be axed.

The problem is that they’re all part of Gerasimov’s circle. To put it diplomatically, he needs to answer a lot of serious questions.

And that’s what brings us to the “General Armageddon has been arrested” monster fake news gleefully parroted by the whole of the NATOstan info universe.

General Surovikin did receive Prighozin in Rostov – but he was never an accomplice to the “rebellion”. Vice-Minister of Defense Yevkurov was also at the HQ in Rostov, and received Prighozin alongside Surovikin. Yevkurov may have played the role of strategically-placed observer.

The Prighozin rebellion soap opera de facto started back in February – and nothing was done to stop it. Regardless whether one shares the official narrative – or not.

What this implies is that the Russian state saw it coming. Does that make The Longest Day the Mother of All Maskirovskas?

Once again: it’s complicated. Unlike the collective West, Russia does not practice or enforce cancel culture. Wagner was protected via martial law. Any insult against a “musician” fighting neo-nazi Banderistan would be met by as much as a 15-year jail term. Each Wagner fighter is officially a Hero of Russia – something Putin himself always stressed.

On the maskirovka front, there’s no question the simmering tensions in Russian military circles before The Longest Day were manipulated, fog of war-style, to disorient the enemy. It worked like a charm. On the fateful June 24 itself, Surovikin was running a war, and not spending the day drinking brandy with Prighozin.

The NATOstan axis is really clutching at straws. It took just a Surovikin-related rumor to send them into rapture – proving once again how deeply they fear General Armageddon.

A key vector is how Surovikin is regarded by public opinion compared to the surviving “operetta Generals”.

He built the now legendary three-layered defense which is already burying the “counter-offensive”. He introduced the wildly successful Shahed-136 Iranian drones in the battlefield. And he organized the meat grinder devastation in Bakhmut/Artemyovsk – which has already entered the military annals.

Way back in the Autumn of 2022, it was General Armageddon who told Putin that Russian forces were not ready for a large-scale offensive.

So whatever the 5^th columnists fabricate, General Armadeggon is not going anywhere – except to win a war. And Russia is not “leaving” Africa. On the contrary: a rebranded Wagner is there to stay, and remains on speed dial in several latitudes.

The trend, short term, seems to point to a – convoluted – draining of the Russian military swamp. The Longest Day seems to have galvanized Russians of all stripes into identifying who the real enemy is – and how to defeat it, whatever it takes.

“Nothing happens by chance”

Historian Andrei Fursov, reviving Roosevelt, observed that “in politics, nothing happens by chance. If it happens, you bet it was foreseen.”

Well, maskirovska rides again.

Yet the main problem faced by Russia is not the Hegemon and NATO: it’s domestic.

Based on conversations with Russian analysts, and their impressions from very sharp people who lived in Russia, Ukraine and in the West, it would be possible to identify basically four main groups trying to impose their idea of Russia.

1. The “Back to the USSR” gang. Includes, of course, some former KGB. Have some kind of support from the general population. A lot of educated specialists (old school pros, mostly pension age). This project suggests a revolution – a 1917 on steroids. But where is Lenin?
2. The “Back to the Tsar” people. That would imply Russia as the “Third Rome” and a prominent role for the Orthodox Church. Hefty funds behind it. A big question mark is how much popular support, especially in “deep” Russia, they really have. This group has nothing to do with the Vatican – which is sold to The Great Reset.
3. The Plunderers – as in robbing Russia blind in favor of the Hegemon. Congregates 5^th columnists, and all manner of “totalitarian neoliberals” worshipping the “values” of the collective West. The remaining ones will soon get a knock on the door by the FSB. Their money is already blocked.
4. The Eurasianists. This is the most feasible project – in close collaboration with China, and aiming towards a multipolar world. There’s no place for Russian oligarchs here. Yet the degree of collaboration with China is still highly debatable. The real burning question: how to really integrate, in practice, the Belt and Road Initiative with the Greater Eurasia Partnership?

This is just a sketch – open for discussion. The first three projects may hardly work – for a series of complex reasons. And the fourth still has not gathered enough steam in Russia.

What is certain is that all of them are fighting each other. May the current draining of the military swamp also serve to clear the political skies.

by this author

• O que acontece na Rússia depois do Dia Mais Longo?
• Putin Wins – on All CountsPutin and What Really Matters in the Chessboard
• O Hegemon entrara em guerra hibrida total contra os BRICS
• The Hegemon Will Go Full Hybrid War Against BRICS+

Douglas Macgregor: “Russia IS WIPING THEM OUT, THIS IS IT” in Exclusive Interview

Mar 29, 2023

Red Pilled TV

Premiered Mar 29, 2023 #douglasmacgregor#interview

“Russia IS WIPING THEM OUT, THIS IS IT” in Exclusive Interview Douglas Macgregor is back on the show to talk about the war in Ukraine. Macgregor gives his assessment of where things stand on the ground. They talk about the astounding casualty numbers and the horrifying nature of the battle over Bakhmut. Macgregor then gives some predictions for the next stages of the war. They talk about the rising tension with China. They agree there is no need to go to war with China but discuss what may explain the sudden attention shift towards Beijing. Lastly, they talk about the effects of cronyism in the weapons industry and the probability of a nuclear war.

Douglas Macgregor: “Ukraine IS LOSING, THIS IS IT” in Exclusive Interview

Douglas Macgregor: “Ukraine IS LOSING, THIS IS IT” in Exclusive Interview Douglas Macgregor is back on the show to talk about the war in Ukraine. Macgregor gives his assessment of where things stand on the ground. They talk about the astounding casualty numbers and the horrifying nature of the battle over Bakhmut. Macgregor then gives some predictions for the next stages of the war. They talk about the rising tension with China. They agree there is no need to go to war with China but discuss what may explain the sudden attention shift towards Beijing. Lastly, they talk about the effects of cronyism in the weapons industry and the probability of a nuclear war.

Premiered 13 hours ago

Discussed on the show: “This Time It’s Different” (The American Conservative) “Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’” (Kyiv Independent) Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.

Xi’s ‘Chilling’ Remarks: A Multipolar World Offers Challenges and Opportunities to the Middle East and Africa

March 28, 2023

Chinese President Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Presidential Executive Office of Russia, via Wikimedia Commons)

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

By Ramzy Baroud

The final exchange, caught on camera between visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian host and counterpart, Vladimir Putin, sums up the current geopolitical conflict, still in its nascent stages, between the United States and its Western allies on the one hand, and Russia, China and their allies, on the other.

Xi was leaving the Kremlin following a three-day visit that can only be described as historic. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years and we are driving this change together,” Xi said while clasping Putin’s hand.

“I agree,” Putin replied while holding Xi’s arm. ‘Please take care, dear friend,” he added.

In no time, social media exploded by sharing that scene repeatedly. Corporate western media analysts went into overdrive, trying to understand what these few words meant.

“Is that part of the change that is coming, that they will drive together?” Ian Williamson raised the question in the Spectator. Though he did not offer a straight answer, he alluded to one: “It is a chilling prospect, for which the west needs to be prepared.”

Xi’s statement was, of course, uttered by design. It means that the Chinese-Russian strong ties, and possible future unity, are not an outcome of immediate geopolitical interests resulting from the Ukraine war, or a response to US provocations in Taiwan. Even before the Ukraine war commenced in February 2022, much evidence pointed to the fact that Russia and China’s goal was hardly temporary or impulsive. Indeed, it runs deep.

The very language of multipolarity has defined both countries’ discourse for years, a discourse that was mostly inspired by the two countries’ displeasure with US militarism from the Middle East to Southeast Asia; their frustration with Washington’s bullying tactics whenever a disagreement arises, be it in trade or border demarcations; the punitive language; the constant threats; the military expansion of NATO and much more.

One month before the war, I argued with my co-writer, Romana Rubeo, that both Russia and China might be at the cusp of some kind of unity. That conclusion was drawn based on a simple discourse analysis of the official language emanating from both capitals and the actual deepening of relations.

At the time, we wrote,

“Some kind of an alliance is already forming between China and Russia. The fact that the Chinese people are taking note of this and are supporting their government’s drive towards greater integration – political, economic and geostrategic – between Beijing and Moscow, indicates that the informal and potentially formal alliance is a long-term strategy for both nations”.

Even then, like other analysts, we did not expect that such a possibility could be realized so quickly. The Ukraine war, in itself, was not indicative that Moscow and Beijing will grow closer. Instead, it was Washington’s response, threatening and humiliating China, that did most of the work. The visit by then-US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan in August 2022 was a diplomatic disaster. It left Beijing with no alternative but to escalate and strengthen its ties with Russia, with the hope that the latter would fortify its naval presence in the Sea of Japan. In fact, this was the case.

But the “100 years” reference by Xi tells of a much bigger geopolitical story than any of us had expected. As Washington continues to pursue aggressive policies – with US President Joe Biden prioritizing Russia and his Republican foes prioritizing China as the main enemy of the US – the two Asian giants are now forced to merge into one unified political unit, with a common political discourse.

“We signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era,” Xi said in his final statement.

This ‘no-limits friendship’ is more possible now than ever before, as neither country is constrained by ideological confines or competition. Moreover, they are both keen on ending the US global hegemony, not only in the Asia and Pacific region, but in Africa, the Middle East and, eventually, worldwide as well.

On the first day of Xi’s visit to Moscow, Russia’s President Putin issued a decree in which he has written off debts of African countries worth more than $20 billion. Moreover, he promised that Russia is “ready to supply the whole volume sent during the past time to African countries particularly requiring it, from Russia free of charge ..,” should Moscow decide “not to extend the (grain) deal in sixty days”.

For both countries, Africa is a major ally in the upcoming global conflict. The Middle East, too, is vital. The latest agreement, which normalized ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia is earth-shattering, not only because it ends seven years of animosity and conflict, but because the arbitrator was no other than China itself. Beijing is now a peace broker in the very Middle East which was dominated by failed US diplomacy for decades.

What this means for the Palestinians remains to be seen, as too many variables are still at work. But for these global shifts to serve Palestinian interests in any way, the current leadership, or a new leadership, would have to slowly break away from its reliance on western handouts and validation, and, with the support of Arab and African allies, adopt a different political strategy.

The US government, however, continues to read the situation entirely within the Russia-Ukraine war context. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded to Xi’s trip to Moscow by saying that “the world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war (in Ukraine) on its own terms.” It is rather strange, but also telling that the outright rejection of the potential call for a ceasefire was made by Washington, not Kyiv.

Xi’s visit, however, is truly historic from a geopolitical sense. It is comparable in scope and possible consequences to former US President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing, which contributed to the deterioration of ties between the Soviet Union and China under Chairman Mao Zedong.

The improved relationship between China and the US back then helped Washington further extend its global dominance, while putting the USSR on the defensive. The rest is history, one that was rife with geostrategic rivalry and divisions in Asia, thus, ultimately, the rise of the US as the uncontested power in that region.

Nixon’s visit to Beijing was described by then-Ambassador Nicholas Platt as “the week that changed the world”. Judging that statement from an American-centric view of the world, Platt was, in fact, correct in his assessment. The world, however, seems to be changing back. Though it took 51 years for that reversal to take place, the consequences are likely to be earth-shattering, to say the least.

Regions that have long been dominated by the US and its western allies, like the Middle East and Africa, are processing all of these changes and potential opportunities. If this geopolitical shift continues, the world will, once again, find itself divided into camps. While it is too early to determine, with any degree of certainty, the winners and losers of this new configuration, it is most certain that a US-western-dominated world is no longer possible.

WWIII Already Unleashed by West, Being Waged in Format of Proxy War – Assad

March 16, 2023 

By Sputnik

The West has unleashed World War III, which is being waged by the Nazis in Ukraine in the format of a proxy war and by the hands of terrorists in Syria, but modern weapons, especially nuclear weapons, do not allow the confrontation to escalate into the traditional format of world war, Syrian President Bashar Assad told Sputnik.

“I believe that World War III is underway, but it differs in its form,” the Syrian president said. “What I mean is that world wars used to be conventional in the past. Armies of several states were fighting against each other.”

“This is also true when it comes to the current situation, but because of modern weaponry, especially nuclear, it is different from conventional war. That is why wars are now moving toward proxy wars,” he added.

Assad noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is now waging a war on behalf of the West, using “its army of Nazis.”

“The same goes for terrorists, they are the armies operating on behalf of the West in Syria and other regions,” the president continued.

Switching gears to the matter of the 2022 referendums held in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, the Syrian president told Sputnik that Damascus fully recognizes the new borders of Russia.

“Of course. I am saying that these are Russian territories,” Assad said when asked whether Damascus recognizes Russia’s new borders. “And even if the war had not happened, this is historically Russian land.”

The president recalled that Syria recognized the regions before they officially became part of Russia.

“This issue has been clear to us from the very beginning, and we will not hesitate in our position. Syria’s position is clear and firm, at the same time. We are convinced regarding this matter not only for the sake of friendship with Russia but also because these territories are Russia’s territories,” Assad said.

He added that Syria’s position is based on historical facts.

“They [the regions] were handed over to Ukraine probably around 100 years ago, I believe, [it happened] under Lenin. But Russian people live there, and facts on the ground show that this is Russia’s land. We are convinced in this position,” the president said.

The people of Syria support Russia in conducting the special military operation in Ukraine, Assad emphasized.

“Certainly, the Syrian people are very enthusiastic about supporting Russia for a number of reasons. On the one hand, it is solidarity since the Russian Federation has supported the Syrians in the fight against terrorism; on the other hand, there is a more global view of this war … When the Russian Federation wins this war, as most Syrians wish, a new world, a safer and more peaceful world will emerge. This is the real perception of the Syrians of this war,” Assad said.

On Russian Military Bases in Syria

Russian military bases in Syria should have the most advanced weapons to ensure effective deterrence of threats, President Assad also said.

“The difference is in the quality of weapons, but the principle is the same. Of course, if you are to build [military] bases, the goal is not to make these bases weak militarily. The bases are supposed to be capable of having a deterrent or counterbalancing effect, these must be armed with the best weapons, it is natural and logical. Whether it would be hypersonic missiles or any other more advanced weapons now and, in the future, the principle is, of course, the same as I said,” Assad said when asked about the possible deployment of hypersonic missiles in Syria.

The Syrian President believes that Russia’s military presence in Syria should not be temporary or be related to fighting terrorism only.

“As for the political aspect, the issue of military bases should not be linked to the issue of combating terrorism. The fight against terrorism is today’s topic, but it is temporary. The Russian military presence in any country should not be based on anything temporary. We are talking about international balance, and the presence of Russia in Syria has a meaning related to the balance of power in the world as a country located on the Mediterranean Sea,” the president said.

“Superpowers today cannot defend themselves or play their role by staying within their own borders,” Assad said, adding that “they must go beyond them through regional allies around the world or through bases.”

On Economic Cooperation With Russia

Russia and Syria will sign an agreement on economic cooperation, which will cover several projects that will be evaluated and approved individually, in the coming weeks, the Syrian president added.

“Projects are being considered now, and the agreement will be signed later, in a few weeks, but this item [on the agenda] was left for consideration by each company and each project. Each project will be evaluated individually later. This is a part of the mechanism to monitor the projects and their success,” Assad said.

The president added that a joint Syrian-Russian commission has been discussing a number of projects during talks in Moscow over the past several days.

“Once the agreement is signed, these projects will be announced, after which all interested companies will be able to apply to participate in these projects,” the president said, adding that the actual cost of the projects will be known at that time.

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Russia Finally Admits to Destroying NATO’s Deep Underground Command Bunker in Kiev

According to Pronews , “dozens of NATO officers” were killed in a “terrifying strike” by a Mach 12 missile.

March 14, 2023

By  Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

As reported on March 12 by the Greek portal of political and military information Pronews, citing American sources, in the course of an operation to retaliate for a provocation in the Bryansk region, a Russian hypersonic missile “Dagger” struck at a joint Ukrainian-NATO command and communications center.

According to Pronews , “dozens of NATO officers” were killed in a “terrifying strike” by a Mach 12 missile. In all likelihood, we are talking about the defeat of the “shadow General Staff” of NATO in Ukraine. The secret underground bunker, built at a depth of 400 feet (120 meters), housed several NATO officers (retired) and advisers. In total, more than 300 people. To date, according to the portal, 40 people have been pulled out from under the rubble of the underground headquarters, but most of those who died under the rubble have not yet been found.

It is not known, the portal continues, exactly how many Western citizens and how many Ukrainians were killed as a result of the “Dagger” strike. “Most of them, ”  according to Pronews, “are British and Poles, but there were also Americans and representatives of private companies that support communication and data transmission. In the coming days, it will be seen to what extent this will affect the conduct of Ukrainian and Western operations and attempts to stop the final phase of the Russian offensive on Bakhmut.

“This, ” says Pronews, “is the first such large-scale strike against the military personnel of NATO countries, and it is not known how the Western capitals will react to this, although in the event of a reaction, it would be like recognizing the active participation of military personnel in the war against Russia.”

According to the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov, the bases of attack drones have been destroyed, the transfer of reserves and rail transportation of foreign weapons have been disrupted, and production facilities for the repair of military equipment and the production of ammunition have been disabled.

According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Zaluzhny, on the consequences of the Russian strike on Ukrainian targets on the night of March 8-9, the Russian side fired 81 missiles, including Kh-47 Kinzhal, X-22, Kh-101 / Kh-555, as well as 8 Geranium UAVs. According to Zelensky, “it was a hard night”; as observers noted, while the president of Ukraine looked like a beaten dog.

The statements of Ukrainian officials say nothing about the defeat of the NATO bunker and the death of Western military personnel. However, information is circulating in Ukrainian publics that on March 9, a delegation of the General Staff of Ukraine visited the American embassy in Kiev, as it is supposed, in order to transfer the lists of the Americans who died during the strike.

“The use of hypersonic missiles has heightened U.S. anxiety and demonstrated that Russia has a hard-to-intercept nuclear-capable weapon,” the Washington Post said . The United States has not yet been able to develop its own missiles with similar characteristics, which makes Western countries even more vulnerable, the authors of the material concluded.

Kinzhal is the latest Russian system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles carried by specially equipped MiG-31K interceptors. The missile has low radar visibility and high maneuverability and is designed to destroy land and sea targets. The Kinzhal complexes have been on experimental combat duty in the RF Armed Forces since December 2017. Officially, the first combat use of these missiles took place on March 18, 2022 during the SVO.

As Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force command, said, “we cannot yet counteract these missiles, they fly along a ballistic trajectory. We have no means against them . “

Tests last year of an American hypersonic missile in Hawaii ended in failure due to launch problems, Bloomberg reported , citing a statement by the US Department of Defense.

The Russian military launched a missile strike against Ukrainian infrastructure facilities with a wide variety of missiles and aerial drones, destroying NATO’s secret headquarters in Ukraine, WarFiles reports.
According to Ukraine, the attacks were carried out with thousands:

• X-47 Kinzhal (“Dagger”),
• X-22,
• X-101 / X-555,
• UAV “Geran”.

In Ukraine, they immediately reported that 34 missiles were allegedly shot down, and eight “as a result of an organized response did not hit their targets.”

This is doubtful even for the Ukrainians themselves, who see the thousands flying through the windows. Citizens believe that the air defense “if they were able to shoot down something in the attempt, at most a couple of them.”

Russia uses Kinzhals hypersonic missiles in massive attacks on Ukraine in retaliation for Ukrainian terror in Bryansk

Ukrainian (and even American) air defense cannot shoot down the “Dagger” at an altitude of 20 km, and after the missile gains altitude, it falls at high speed on the target and nothing can be done about it.

“In fact, the attack hit control and planning centers in bunkers, as well as air defense/radar stations. Heavy losses of officers, including Americans, were recorded. It seems that NATO’s proxy “Shadow Staff” got quite a bit,” the authors of “Military Materials” write.

After that, according to the publication, representatives of the Ukrainian General Staff came to the US Embassy, ​​most likely to transfer the lists of the dead.

It is also known about the hits on the IRIS and NASAMS air defense systems, which were powered by dummy missiles and were destroyed by the X-men flying after them. Almost immediately, public sites that posted this information were blocked.

The head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy, German Galushchenko, separately admitted that the missile attack damaged at least three thermal power plants. In fact, energy and military installations in up to 12 regions came under heavy fire.

https://www.fondsk.ru/news/2023/03/12/udar-po-centru-svjazi-i-upravlenija-nato-na-ukraine-58730.html

Ukraine Russia War – What’s Next with Scott Ritter

Feb 25, 2023