How the Russian cook chickened out: Mutiny and bureaucracy

July 2, 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

While the conflict was evaded by the joint efforts of Putin and Lukashenko, the contradiction which preconditioned the mutiny remains unresolved.

A review of Alexander Dugin’s “After the Movement: A Point of Bifurcation” (2023).

By Sammy Ismail

The slow summer routine of Russian everyday life was resumed after a very wild weekend that threatened to reshape the Russian nation-state. On Monday midday, the Mayor of Moscow announced the termination of the counter-terrorism regime of mobilization against the armed mutiny organized by the Chief of the Wagner Private Military Company: Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

Timeline of the Armed Mutiny

On Friday, June 23rd, Prighozin posted a video on his telegram channel showing what he claimed to be footage of the destruction of a Wagner rear military camp, allegedly from the Russian side. The video was coupled with an audio message by Prioghozin in which he accused the Russian Defense Ministry of commanding airstrikes on a Wagner military camp and warned that he will be retaliating to this alleged strike. 

“We will make a decision on how to respond to this evildoing. the next step is ours,” Prighozin warned in the audio message. 

BREAKING: Evgeny Prigozhin accused the Ministry of Defense of launching a missile strike on Wagner PMC's rear camps. He promised to respond to this and restore justice in the army and Russia. pic.twitter.com/qRRiwPVFD7

— 301 Military (@301military) June 23, 2023

The Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu quickly denied the circulating video of the alleged airstrike describing it as a “media provocation”. Additionally, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) opened a criminal case against Prighozin for the threats he had leveled against the Russian state.

On Saturday, Prioghozin delivered on his threats. He took over the southwestern city of Rostov and started marching towards Moscow. Prioghozin called on Russian soldiers to defect and Russian citizens to bear arms to join his movement against the Russian military establishment (namely the minister of defense Sergei Shoigu and the chief of staff Valery Gerasimov) who he has recurrently accused of bureaucratic lavishness and ineptitude in managing the war in Ukraine. The Wagner chief conditioned his withdrawal from Rostov, on Shoigu’s resignation as minister of defense. 

A Wagner PMC t-80 BV tank in the streets of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, June 24, 2023 (Social Media)

In a speech on the same day, Putin then slammed Prighozin’s adventurism as treason that was driven by “personal interests and excessive ambition”, and warned that all the parties involved would face severe punishment for undermining the unity and stability of Russia. 

On Saturday evening, Lukashenko, President of Belarus, offered to mediate. Lukashneko’s efforts proved to be effective: convincing Priogozhin to de-escalate. Shortly afterward, Prioghozin announced that his troops were withdrawing from Rostov to retreat back to their field camps. 

On Sunday the constituents of the Minsk-brokered agreement were revealed. 

• the criminal investigation against Prigozhin will be dropped
• Prighozin will be exiled to Belarus 
• Wagner fighters who did not participate in the mutiny will sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense to start acting on its orders. 
•  Wagner fighters who did participate in the mutiny will be spared punishment in recognition of their duties. 

On Monday, it was reported by Layout, that the Belarusian authorities will start constructing a Wagner military camp in Savichi which is 200 m away from the border with Ukraine. The camp will reportedly hold up to 8000 fighters. More Wagner camps will reportedly follow in Belarus.

Read more: Wagner to hand military hardware to Russian army, Belarus raises alert

Populism v Bureaucracy  

The armed mutiny organized over the weekend constituted a grave watershed event for Russia. It was unlike any of the subversive movements which have struck the post-soviet space before; as opposed to the color revolutions and coups, supported and/or engineered by Western intelligence agencies, like Euromaidan and the Rose revolution, the Wagner armed mutiny reflects a real “indigenous” contradiction within the modern Russian state.   

Read more: US ambassador told Russia US ‘not involved’ in unrest

The burgeoning and dissipation of the armed mutiny can be roughly explained in reference to Prighozin’s opportunism, as Putin had assessed in his Sunday speech. However, it would be reductionist to assess the events strictly through the prism of opportunism; such would disregard the preconditions which set the stage for Prigozhin’s bold stunt. 

Prighozin populistically capitalized on a pre-existing contradiction in the Russian state: that of elitism. While this contradiction manifested as a conflict between Wagner PMC and the Russian MoD it extends beyond to constitute a problem in the Russian social contract between the Russian bureaucracy and the Russian nation.

The mutiny was foreshadowed by a set of disputes between Wagner and the MoD. 

Wagner PMC members driving a BTR-82A photographed while leaving the Russian city of Rostov-On-Don, Russia, June 25, 2023 (Social Media)

Back in April, during the Battle of Bakhmut Prighozin explicitly accused the chief of staff and minister of defense of incompetence in a graphic video showing tens of piled Wagner soldiers’ corpses whom he claimed could have been spared had Shoigu and Gerasimov met the group’s logistical needs of food and ammo. This threat, publicly announced by Prigozhin on social media, signaled that a real crisis already existed. 

Furthermore, a report published by the Washington Post, released on Saturday shortly after Prioghozin took over Rostov, revealed that the US intelligence knew about Prighozin’s planned mutiny back in mid-June. Citing anonymous US officials, the newspaper reports that a key trigger for Prigozhin was the Russian Defense Ministry’s directive back in early June ordering all volunteer detachments to sign contracts with the government. The directive, despite not explicitly referring to Wagner, had clear implications for the PMC’s mode of operation: subjecting it to direct bureaucratic authority.  

Wagner had long operated in Ukraine with a sense of relative autonomy and arguably secured tactical victories because of the leeway which they enjoyed far from bureaucratic complications. For the Wagner fighters, the order to enforce contracts was effectively an attempt to discredit them and appropriate their victories.

The contradiction of elitism was not fabricated by the Wagner mutiny; it pre-dates June 24th and extends beyond the military permeating into all other spheres of Russian society. The contradiction simply manifested in the military sphere between Wagner fighters and the MoD bureaucrats due to the burgeoning war in Ukraine which caused the contradiction to spike militarily. Prighozin then populistically capitalized on this contradiction for his opportunistic ends.  

Read more: US found out about Prigozhin planned mutiny in mid-June: WashPo  

A dodged bullet or a chink in the armor?

Prighozin’s populism was swiftly contained after Putin’s speech. Prighozin who had overestimated support for his mutiny found himself sized down and buffered from influence over the Russian public. Despite being in close proximity to the capital, Prighozin recognized that his mutiny was doomed to failure. Lukashenko’s initiative, on Saturday evening, served more as a lifeline for Prighozin to honorably tap out rather than an attempt at convincing him to compromise. 

Russia is a hyper-centralized state with Moscow as its focal point, Al Mayadeen’s Security Consultant explains. Prighozin’s endeavor to coup out Shaigo and Gerasimov would have been futile without conquering Moscow, and despite sparing Putin from his rhetorical attacks his endeavor brought him to direct confrontation with the head of state. 200 km away from Moscow was the threshold of Prighozin’s subversive momentum as it faced Putin’s bulwark.

Prighozin had probably wishfully estimated that his mutiny would gain further momentum as he inched closer to Moscow, but on Saturday evening, he came to recognize that his calculations proved to be faulty. 

Point of Bifurcation

Russian soldiers wait to listen to the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin with the Ivan the Great Bell-Tower in the background in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 27, 2023 as he addresses the units of the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya), the Russian Interior Ministry, the Russian Federal Security Service and the Russian Federal Guard Service, who ensured order and legality during the mutiny. (Sergei Guneyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

While the conflict was evaded by the joint efforts of Putin and Lukashenko, the contradiction which preconditioned the mutiny remains unresolved. This is best explained by Dr. Alexander Dugin’s recent piece on the armed mutiny “After the Movement: Point of Bifurcation”.

“The acute phase of the events of 24 June has been resolved, but nothing is quite over yet: some concrete action on the part of the authorities to clarify the picture must follow,” the Russian philosopher explains.

“The rebels have radicalized the problem, but they have only raised it, it has not been definitively resolved, but now it is here with us and cannot be escaped.” 

Dugin interestingly frames the contradiction which precluded the mutiny in reference to Vilfredo Pareto’s theory of the elites; elites in power lacking power qualities are subject to being usurped by counter-elites who enjoy power qualities. 

The elites being the military establishment, the counter-elites being Wagner, and the power qualities enjoyed by the latter and lacking by the former are that of “passionately”, Dugin explains. 

Beyond Prighozin’s opportunism, lies the conflict between valiant soldiers and lavish bureaucrats. It was the valor of Wagner fighters that gave momentum to Prighozin against the military establishment. And correspondingly, it was the bureaucrats’ lack of valor, lavishness, and ineptitude which made them vulnerable to Wagner. 

Thus, Dugin concludes that the only way for the Russian state to survive this attempted mutiny by Wagner is through “becoming Wagner”. By developing the power qualities of valor and patriotism and casting out lavishness and ineptitude. 

“Attention must now be paid to the generalized program that Prigozhin has hastily promulgated: society sorely lacks justice, honor, courage, and intelligence on the part of the elites. Such a lack is already causing an explosion. So why should this idea not be adopted by the authorities themselves? Putin is now (and always has been) in a position where he can do it and will surely succeed,” Dugin writes. 

Related Stories

• Russia to deal with Prigozhin’s mutiny on its own: Lavrov
• Prigozhin now in Belarus: Lukashenko
• US found out about Prigozhin planned mutiny in mid-June: WashPo

The Empire’s Revenge: Set Fire to Southern Eurasia

24.04.2023

Source

By Pepe Escobar

Hegemon hacks are spinning that the North Atlantic has relocated to South China. Goodnight, and good luck.

The collective cognitive dissonance displayed by the pack of hyenas with polished faces driving U.S. foreign policy should never be underestimated.

And yet those Straussian neo-con psychos have been able to pull off a tactical success. Europe is a ship of fools heading for Scylla and Charybdis – with quislings such as France’s Le Petit Roi and Germany’s Liver Sausage Chancellor cooperating in the debacle, complete with the galleries drowning in a maelstrom of  hysterical moralism.

It’s those driving the Hegemon that are destroying Europe. Not Russia.

But then there’s The Big Picture of The New Great Game 2.0.

Two Russian analysts, by different means, have come up with an astonishing, quite complementary, and quite realistic road map.

General Andrei Gurulyov, retired, is now a member of the Duma. He considers that the NATO vs. Russia war on Ukrainian soil will end only by 2030 – when Ukraine would basically have ceased to exist.

His deadline is 2027-2030 – something that no one so far has dared to predict. And “ceasing to exist”, per Gurulyov, means actually disappearing from any map. Implied is the logical conclusion of the Special Military Operation – reiterated over and over again by the Kremlin and the Security Council: the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine; neutral status; no NATO membership; and “indivisibility of security”, equally, for Europe and the post-Soviet space.

So until we have these facts on the ground, Gurulyov is essentially saying that the Kremlin and the Russian General Staff will make no concessions. No Beltway-imposed “frozen conflict” or fake ceasefire, which everyone knows will not be respected, just like the Minsk agreements were never respected.

And yet Moscow, we got a problem. As much as the Kremlin may always insist this is not a war against the Slavic Ukrainian brothers and cousins – which translates into no American-style Shock’n Awe pulverizing everything in sight – Gurulyov’s verdict implies the destruction of the current, cancerous, corrupt Ukrainian state is a must.

A comprehensive sitrep of the crucial crossroads, as it stands, correctly argues that if Russia was in Afghanistan for 10 years, and in Chechnya, all periods combined, for another 10 years, the current SMO – otherwise described by some very powerful people in Moscow as an “almost war” – and on top of it against the full force of NATO, could well last another 7 years.

The sitrep also correctly argues that for Russia the kinetic aspect of the “almost war” is not even the most relevant.

In what for all practical purposes is a war to the death against Western neoliberalism, what really matters is a Russian Great Awakening – already in effect: “Russia’s goal is to emerge in 2027-2030 not as a mere ‘victor’ standing over the ruins of some already-forgotten country, but as a state that has re-connected with its historic arc, has found itself, re-established its principles, its courage in defending its vision of the world.”

Yes, this is a civilizational war, as Alexander Dugin has masterfully argued. And this is about a civilizational rebirth. And yet, for the Straussian neo-con psychos, that’s just another racket towards plunging Russia into chaos, installing a puppet and stealing its natural resources.

Fire in the hole

The analysis by Andrei Bezrukov neatly complements Gurulyov’s (here, in Russian). Bezrukov is a former colonel in the SVR (Russian foreign intel) and now a Professor of the Chair of Applied Analysis of International Problems at MGIMO and the chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy think tank.

Bezrukov knows that the Empire will not take the incoming, massive NATO humiliation in Ukraine lying down. And even before the possible 2027-2030 timeline proposed by Gurulyov, he argues, it is bound to set fire to southern Eurasia – from Turkey to China.

President Xi Jinping, in his memorable visit to the Kremlin last month, told President Putin the world is now undergoing changes “not seen in 100 years”.

Bezrukov, appropriately, reminds us of the state of things then: “In the years from 1914 to 1945, the world was in the same intermediate state that it is in now. Those thirty years changed the world completely: from empires and horses to the emergence of two nuclear powers, the UN, and transatlantic flight. We are entering a similar period, which this time will last about twenty years.”

Europe, predictably, will “whither away”, as “it is no longer the absolute center of the universe.” Amidst this redistribution of power, Bezrukov goes back to one of the key points of a seminal analysis developed in the recent past by Andre Gunder Frank: “200-250 years ago, 70 percent of manufacturing was in China and India. We are going back to about there, which will also correspond to population size.”

So it’s no wonder that the fastest-developing region – which Bezrukov characterizes as “southern Eurasia” – may become a “risk zone”, potentially converted by the Hegemon into a massive power keg.

He outlines how southern Eurasia is peppered by conflicting borders – as in Kashmir, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan. The Hegemon is bound to invest in a flare-up of military conflicts over disputed borders as well as separatist tendencies (for instance in Balochistan). CIA black ops galore.

Still Russia will be able to get by, according to Bezrukov: “Russia has very big advantages, because we are the biggest producer of food and supplier of energy. And without cheap energy there will be no progress and digitalization. Also, we are the link between East and West, without which the continent cannot live, because the continent has to trade. And if the South burns, the main routes will not be through the oceans in the South, but in the North, mainly overland.”

The biggest challenge for Russia will be to keep internal stability: “All states will divide into two groups at this historic turning point: those that can maintain internal stability and move reasonably, bloodlessly into the next technological cycle – and then those that are unable to do so, that slip off the path, that bloom a bloody internal showdown like we had a hundred years ago. The latter will be set back ten to twenty years, will subsequently lick their wounds and try to catch up with everyone else. So our job is to maintain internal stability.”

And that’s where the Great Awakening hinted at by Gurulyov, or Russia reconnecting with its true civilizational ethos, as Dugin would argue, will play its unifying role.

There’s still a long way to go – and a war against NATO to win. Meanwhile, in other news, Hegemon hacks are spinning that the North Atlantic has relocated to South China. Goodnight, and good luck.

Putin-Xi Geopolitical Game-changing Summit at the Kremlin

April 03, 2023

Global Research,

In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation.

By Pepe Escobar

Region: Russia and FSU

Theme: History

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***

How sharp was good ol’ Lenin, prime modernist, when he mused, “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. This global nomad now addressing you has enjoyed the privilege of spending four astonishing weeks in Moscow at the heart of an historical crossroads – culminating with the Putin-Xi geopolitical game-changing summit at the Kremlin.

To quote Xi, “changes that haven’t been seen in 100 years” do have a knack of affecting us all in more ways than one.

James Joyce, another modernity icon, wrote that we spend our lives meeting average and/or extraordinary people, on and on and on, but in the end we’re always meeting ourselves. I have had the privilege of meeting an array of extraordinary people in Moscow, guided by trusted friends or by auspicious coincidence: in the end your soul tells you they enrich you and the overarching historical moment in ways you can’t even begin to fathom.

Here are some of them. The grandson of Boris Pasternak, a gifted young man who teaches Ancient Greek at Moscow State University. A historian with unmatched knowledge of Russian history and culture. The Tajik working class huddling together in a chaikhana with the proper ambience of Dushanbe.

Chechens and Tuvans in awe doing the loop in the Big Central Line. A lovely messenger sent by friends extremely careful about security matters to discuss issues of common interest. Exceptionally accomplished musicians performing underground in Mayakovskaya. A stunning Siberian princess vibrant with unbounded energy, taking that motto previously applied to the energy industry – Power of Siberia – to a whole new level.

A dear friend took me to Sunday service at the Devyati Muchenikov Kizicheskikh church, the favorite of Peter the Great: the quintessential purity of Eastern Orthodoxy. Afterwards the priests invited us for lunch in their communal table, displaying not only their natural wisdom but also an uproarious sense of humor.

At a classic Russian apartment crammed with 10,000 books and with a view to the Ministry of Defense – plenty of jokes included – Father Michael, in charge if Orthodox Christianity relations with the Kremlin, sang the Russian imperial anthem after an indelible night of religious and cultural discussions.

I had the honor to meet some of those who were particularly targeted by the imperial machine of lies. Maria Butina – vilified by the proverbial “spy who came in from the cold” shtick – now a deputy at the Duma. Viktor Bout – which pop culture metastasized into the “Lord of War”, complete with Nic Cage movie: I was speechless when he told me he was reading me in maximum security prison in the USA, via pen drives sent by his friends (he had no internet access). The indefatigable, iron-willed Mira Terada – tortured when she was in a U.S. prison, now heading a foundation protecting children caught in hard times.

I spent much treasured quality time and engaged in invaluable discussions with Alexander Dugin – the crucial Russian of these post-everything times, a man of pure inner beauty, exposed to unimaginable suffering after the terrorist assassination of Darya Dugina, and still able to muster a depth and reach when it comes to drawing connections across the philosophy, history and history of civilizations spectrum that is virtually unmatched in the West.

Zelensky’s Proposal to Ban Russians From Visiting the West

On the offensive against Russophobia

And then there were the diplomatic, academic and business meetings. From the head of international investor relations of Norilsk Nickel to Rosneft executives, not to mention the EAEU’s Sergey Glazyev himself, side by side with his top economic adviser Dmitry Mityaev, I was given a crash course on the current A to Z of Russian economy – including serious problems to be addressed.

At the Valdai Club, what really mattered were the meetings on the sidelines, much more than the actual panels: that’s when Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks, Syrians, Kurds, Palestinians, Chinese tell you what is really in their hearts and minds.

The official launch of the International Movement of Russophiles was a special highlight of these four weeks. A special message written by President Putin was read by Foreign Minister Lavrov, who then delivered his own speech. Later, at the House of Receptions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, four of us were received by Lavrov at a private audience. Future cultural projects were discussed. Lavrov was extremely relaxed, displaying his matchless sense of humor.

This is a cultural as much as a political movement, designed to fight Russophobia and to tell the Russian story, in all its immensely rich aspects, especially to the Global South.

I am a founding member and my name is on the charter. In my nearly four decades as a foreign correspondent, I have never been part of any political/cultural movement anywhere in the world; nomad independents are a fierce breed. But this is extremely serious: the current, irredeemably mediocre self-described “elites” of the collective West want no less than cancel Russia all across the spectrum. No pasarán.

Spirituality, compassion, mercy

Decades happening in only four weeks imply precious time needed to put it all in perspective.

The initial gut feeling the day I arrived, after a seven-hour walk under snow flurries, was confirmed: this is the capital of the multipolar world. I saw it among the West Asians at the Valdai. I saw it talking to visiting Iranians, Turks and Chinese. I saw it when over 40 African delegations took over the whole area around the Duma – the day Xi arrived in town. I saw it throughout the reception across the Global South to what Xi and Putin are proposing to the overwhelming majority of the planet.

In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation. Import substitution in all areas, especially agriculture, has been a resounding success. Supermarkets have everything – and more – compared to the West. There’s an abundance of first-rate restaurants. You can buy a Bentley or a Loro Pianna cashmere coat you can’t even find in Italy. We laughed about it chatting with managers at the TSUM department store. At the BiblioGlobus bookstore, one of them told me, “We are the Resistance.”

By the way, I had the honor to deliver a talk on the war in Ukraine at the coolest bookshop in town, Bunker, mediated by my dear friend, immensely knowledgeable Dima Babich. A huge responsibility. Especially because Vladimir L. was in the audience. He’s Ukrainian, and spent 8 years, up to 2022, telling it like it really was to Russian radio, until he managed to leave – after being held at gunpoint – using an internal Ukrainian passport. Later we went to a Czech beer hall where he detailed his extraordinary story.

In Moscow, their toxic ghosts are always lurking in the background. Yet one cannot but feel sorry for the psycho Straussian neocons and neoliberal-cons who now barely qualify as Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s puny orphans.

In the late 1990s, Brzezinski pontificated that, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical center because its very existence as an independent state helps transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

With or without a demilitarized and denazified Ukraine, Russia has already changed the narrative. This is not about becoming a Eurasian empire again. This is about leading the long, complex process of Eurasia integration – already in effect – in parallel to supporting true, sovereign independence across the Global South.

I left Moscow – the Third Rome – towards Constantinople – the Second Rome – one day before Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev gave a devastating interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta once again outlining all the essentialities inherent to the NATO vs. Russia war.

This is what particularly struck me: “Our centuries-old culture is based on spirituality, compassion and mercy. Russia is a historical defender of sovereignty and statehood of any peoples who turned to it for help. She saved the U.S. itself at least twice, during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. But I believe that this time it is impractical to help the United States maintain its integrity.”

In my last night, before hitting a Georgian restaurant, I was guided by the perfect companion off Pyatnitskaya to a promenade along the Moscow River, beautiful rococo buildings gloriously lighted, the scent of Spring – finally – in the air. It’s one of those “Wild Strawberry” moments out of Bergman’s masterpiece that hits the bottom of our soul. Like mastering the Tao in practice. Or the perfect meditative insight at the top of the Himalayas, the Pamirs or the Hindu Kush.

So the conclusion is inevitable. I’ll be back. Soon.

*

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Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Initially published by Strategic Culture Foundation

Featured image is licensed under the Public Domain

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Pepe Escobar, Global Research, 2023

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Pepe Escobar – Archive

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US believes Ukrainians were behind Darya Dugina’s assassination: NYT

5 Oct 2022 23:19

Source: The New York Times

By Al Mayadeen English 

US officials spoke to the New York Times about the assassination of political philosopher Alexander Dugin’s daughter, Darya Dugina.

A grieving Alexander Dugin, by his slain daughter’s image (AFP)

The United States intelligence agencies believe that bodies pertaining to the Ukrainian government have authorized the car bomb attack which killed political philosopher Alexander Dugin’s daughter, Darya Dugina. The US officials providing the information in question divulged it to The New York Times. 

Read more: Russian FSB: Ukraine’s special services behind Darya Dugina’s murder

US officials fear that this part of Washington’s covert campaign could widen the scope and severity of the conflict. 

The officials noted that the US may have provided intelligence or other forms of assistance, while officials at home say they were not aware of the operation beforehand, and had they been consulted, they would have opposed the assassination.

Evidence of Ukrainian complicity was shared with US governmental officials last week, against a background of Kiev denying involvement in killing Dugina. Top Ukrainian officials kept repeating those denials, particularly when asked about Washington’s intelligence involvement. 

According to the NYT, US officials have been dissatisfied with Kiev’s lack of transparency about its military and covert schemes on Russian soil in particular.

As for the real target of the assassination, some US officials speculate that Dugina’s father, a Russian intellectual, was the actual target and not his daughter.

The bodies in the Ukrainian government that may have planned out the assassination were not disclosed. Whether the Ukrainian president authorized the assassination or not was also in question, and was not disclosed. 

The officials who spoke to the NYT spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In late August, The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) revealed that Ukrainian citizen Vovk Natalya, part of the Ukrainian special services, was behind the murder. 

“The crime was prepared and committed by the Ukrainian special services. The performer is a citizen of Ukraine Vovk Natalya … born in 1979, who arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter … In order to organize the murder of D. Dugina and obtain information about her lifestyle, they rented an apartment in Moscow in the house where the deceased lived,” the FSB said.  

The assassination was carried out at 21:35 Moscow time. Witnesses divulged that the explosion happened in the middle of the road, where debris and metal wreckage scattered in the air right before the car crashed into a fence, as seen in photos and videos.

Which crime syndicate murdered Darya Dugina?

September 01, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

The vile assassination of Darya Dugina, or terror at the gates of Moscow, is not really solved – as much as the FSB seems to have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours.

It’s now established that the main perpetrator, Azov batallion asset Natalia Vovk, did not act alone but had an Ukrainian sidekick, one Bogdan Tsyganenko, who provided false license plates for the Mini Cooper she was driving and helped to assemble a crude car bomb inside a rented garage in the southwest of Moscow.

According to the FSB, Vovk followed the Dugin family to the Tradition festival, and detonated the car bomb by remote control. The only missing pieces seem to be when the bomb was placed under Dugin’s SUV, and by whom; and whether such a sophisticated cross-border targeted assassination was aimed at both father and daughter.

As recalled by geopolitical analyst Manlio Dinucci, even the Los Angeles Times had made it public that “since 2015, the CIA has been training Ukrainian intelligence agents in a secret facility in the United States”.

Russian intel was more than aware of it. In fact, in an interview to Italian media in December 2021, Darya Dugina herself, based on FSB information, revealed, “they had identified 106 Ukrainian agents who were preparing attacks and massacres in 37 regions of Russia.”

Yet now a high-ranking member of Russian intel – who for obvious reasons must remain anonymous – has shed some information that, in his words, “will add the whole picture to this incident.”

It goes without saying that this is as much as he’s been allowed to reveal by his superiors. According to his analysis, “the tragedy was in the evening. In the next two days the FSB shared the whole data about SBU people who were involved with the incident. The majority of people think that it was a political kill. There are a lot of political kills in Ukraine but this tragedy has no political root. It is actually connected to organized crime money flow.”

The source asserts, “Darya was inside the patriotic movement and had connections in Moscow and Donetsk area. As you know there is a large money flow to the Donbas to restore the economy. This huge money flow provides an extreme incentive for criminal activity. Donetsk crime organizations are more dangerous than others because they operate in the war territory. Thus, someone was afraid that Darya was going to compromise money flow schemes by making this public.”

The source makes the important point that “Boris Nemtsov [a key actor in the liberal reforms imposed on post-Soviet Russia] was also killed by an organized crime group who was afraid that he might compromise some money flow schemes by making them public despite the fact that he was a quite powerful politician. Also [journalist] Anna Politkovkaya. She was given $900,000.00 in cash at Chubais election office during the election days for a political purpose. But some other guys knew it and grabbed the bag. She was slain.”

Cui bono?

Disclosure: I prize my friendship with Alexander Dugin – we met in person in Iran, Lebanon and Russia: a towering intellectual and extremely sensitive spirit, eons away from the crude stereotype of “Putin’s brain” or worse, “Putin’s Rasputin” slapped on him by Western media sub-zoology specimens. His vision of Eurasianism should be granted the merit of an ample intellectual discussion, a real dialogue of civilizations. But obviously the current woke incarnation of the collective West lacks the sophistication to engage in real debate. So he’s been demonized to Kingdom Come.

Darya, who I had the honor to meet in Moscow, was a young, shining star with an ebullient personality who graduated in History of Philosophy at Moscow University: her main research was on the political philosophy of late Neoplatonism. Obviously that had nothing to do with the profile of a ruthless operative capable of “compromising” money flows. She did not seem to understand finance, much less “dark” financial ops.  What she did understand is how the Ukrainian battlefield mirrored a larger than life clash of civilizations: globalism against Eurasianism.

Back to the assertions by the Russian intel agent, they cannot be simply dismissed. For instance, at the time he came up with the definitive version of the hit on the Moskva – the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

As he emailed to a select audience, “the destruction of the flagship of the fleet was planned as a strategic task. Therefore, the operation of delivering the PKR [anti-ship missile] to Odessa took place in strict secrecy and under the cover of electronic warfare. As the ‘killer’ of the cruiser, they chose the PKR, but not the Neptune, as spread by Ukrainian propaganda, but the fifth-generation NSM PKR (Naval Strike Missile, range of destruction 185 km, developed by Norway-USA). The NSM is able to reach the target along a programmed route thanks to the GPS-adjusted INS, independently find the target by flying up to it at an altitude of 3-5 meters. When reaching the target, the NSM maneuvers and puts electronic interference. A highly sensitive thermal imager is used as a homing system, which independently determines the most vulnerable places of the target ship. A stationary container installation secretly delivered to Ukraine was used as a launcher. Thus, after the damage to the cruiser Moskva, which led to its flooding (…) the Black Sea Fleet, unfortunately, no longer has a single ship with a long-range anti-aircraft missile system. But not everything is so bad. A three-band radar ‘Sky-M’ is located in Crimea, which is capable of tracking all air targets at a range of up to 600 km.”

So there you go. The hit on the Moskva was a NATO operation, ordered by the US. The Russian Ministry of Defense knows – and the Americans know they know. Retaliation will come – in the time and place of Moscow’s choosing.

The same will apply to the response for Darya Dugina’s assassination. As it stands, we may have 3 hypotheses.

1. The FSB official story, pointing to the SBU in Kiev. The FSB is obviously revealing only a fraction of what they know.

2. The high-level Russian intel agent pointing towards organized crime.

3. The usual Zionist suspects – who loathe Dugin for his fierce anti-globalism: and that would point to a Mossad operation, who in many aspects enjoys way more qualified local intel in Russia than the CIA and MI6.

A fourth hypothesis would point to a perfect storm: a confluence of interests of all the above organized crime syndicates. Once again, resorting to hegemonic American pop culture, and to borrow from Twin Peaks; “The owls are not what they seem”. Black ops can also reveal themselves as much darker than what they seem.

Six months into Ukraine’s collapse, the world has changed forever

The inevitable transfer of power away from the west is leading to a surge in state-sponsored terrorism, but this will do little to reverse the trend

August 24 2022

By Pepe Escobar

Six months after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia in Ukraine, the geopolitical tectonic plates of the 21^st century have been dislocated at astonishing speed and depth – with immense historical repercussions already at hand.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the (new) world begins, not with a whimper but a bang.

The cold-blooded assassination of Darya Dugina – terrorism at the gates of Moscow – may have fatefully coincided with the six-month intersection point, but will do nothing to change the dynamics of the current, work-in-progress, historical shift.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) appeared to have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours, designating the perpetrator as a neo-Nazi Azov operative instrumentalized by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – itself a mere tool of the CIA/MI6 combo that de facto rules Kiev.

The Azov operative is just a patsy. The FSB will never reveal in public the intel it has amassed on those that issued the orders, and how they will be dealt with.

One Ilya Ponomaryov, an anti-Kremlin minor character granted Ukrainian citizenship, boasted he was in contact with the outfit that prepared the hit on the Dugin family. No one took him seriously.

What is manifestly serious, however, is how oligarchy-connected organized crime factions in Russia would have a motive to eliminate Alexander Dugin, the Christian Orthodox nationalist philosopher who, according to them, may have influenced the Kremlin’s pivot to Asia (he didn’t).

These organized crime factions blamed Dugin for a concerted Kremlin offensive against the disproportional power of Jewish oligarchs in Russia. So these actors would have both the motive and the local know-how to mount such a coup.

If that’s the case, it potentially spells out a Mossad-linked operation – especially given the serious schism in Moscow’s recent relations with Tel Aviv. What’s certain is that the FSB will keep their cards very close to their chest – and retribution will be swift, precise and invisible.

The straw that broke the camel’s back

Instead of delivering a serious blow to Russia’s psyche that could impact the dynamics of its operations in Ukraine, the assassination of Darya Dugina only exposed the perpetrators as tawdry killers who have exhausted their options.

An IED cannot kill a philosopher – or his daughter. In an essential essay, Dugin himself explained how the real war – Russia against the US-led collective west – is a war of ideas. An existential war.

Dugin correctly defines the US as a “thalassocracy,” heir to “Britannia rules the waves.” Yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin himself first spelled it out at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. China’s Xi Jinping put it into action by launching the New Silk Roads in 2013. The Empire struck back with Maidan in 2014. Russia counter-attacked by coming to the aid of Syria in 2015.

The Empire doubled down on Ukraine, with NATO weaponizing it non-stop for eight years. At the end of 2021, Moscow invited Washington for a serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security” in Europe. That was dismissed with a non-response response.

Moscow took no time to assess that a dangerous US-led trifecta was instead in the works: an imminent Kiev blitzkrieg against Donbass; Ukraine flirting with acquiring nuclear weapons; and the work of US bioweapon labs. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

A consistent analysis of Putin’s public interventions these past few months reveals that the Kremlin – as well as Security Council Yoda Nikolai Patrushev – fully realize how the politico/media talking heads and shock troops of the collective west are directed by the rulers of Finance Capitalism.

As a direct consequence, they also realize how western public opinion is absolutely clueless, Plato cave-style, totally captive to the ruling financial class, who cannot tolerate any alternative narrative.

So Putin, Patrushev, and their peers will never presume that a senile teleprompter reader in the White House or a cokehead comedian in Kiev “rule” anything.

As the US rules global pop culture, it is fitting to borrow from what Walter White/Heisenberg, an average American channeling his inner bad, states in Breaking Bad: “I’m in the Empire business.” And the Empire business is to exercise raw power, maintained with ruthlessness, by all means necessary.

Russia broke that spell. But Moscow’s strategy is way more sophisticated than leveling Kiev with hypersonic weapons, something that could have been done at any moment, starting six months ago.

Instead, what Moscow is doing is talking to virtually the entire Global South, bilaterally or to groups of actors, explaining how the world-system is changing right before our eyes, with the key actors of the future configured as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

And what we see is vast swathes of the Global South – or 85 percent of the world’s population – slowly but surely becoming ready to engage in expelling the finance capitalists from their national horizons, and ultimately taking them down: a long, tortuous battle that will imply multiple setbacks.

The facts on the ground

On the ground in soon-to-be rump Ukraine, Khinzal hypersonic weapons launched from Tu-22M3 bombers or Mig-31 interceptors  will continue to be employed.

Piles of HIMARS will continue to be captured. TOS 1A Heavy Flamethrowers will keep sending invitations to the gates of hell. Crimean Air Defense will continue to intercept all sorts of small drones with IEDs attached. Terrorism by local SBU cells will eventually be smashed.

Using essentially a phenomenal artillery barrage – cheap and mass-produced – Russia will annex Donbass, very valuable in terms of land, natural resources and industrial power. And then on to Nikolaev, Odessa, and Kharkov.

Geoeconomically, Russia can afford to sell its oil with fat discounts to any Global South customer, not to mention strategic partners China and India. Cost of extraction reaches a maximum of $15 per barrel, with a national budget based on $40-45 for a barrel of Urals, whose market value today is almost double that.

A new Russian benchmark is imminent, as well as oil in rubles following the wildly successful gas for rubles scheme.

The assassination of Darya Dugina provoked endless speculation about the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense finally breaking their discipline. That’s not going to happen. Russian advances along the enormous 1,800-mile battle front are relentless, highly systematic, and deeply invested in a Greater Strategic Picture.

A key vector is whether Russia stands a chance of winning the information war with the west. That will never happen inside NATO’s realm – even as success after success is unfolding across the Global South.

As Glenn Diesen has masterfully demonstrated in his latest book, Russophobia, the collective west is viscerally impervious to admitting any social, cultural, historical merits by Russia.

They have already catapulted themselves into the irrationality stratosphere: the grinding down and de facto demilitarization of the imperial proxy army in Ukraine is driving the Empire’s handlers and its vassals literally nuts.

But the Global South should never lose sight of the ‘Empire business.’ That industry excels in producing chaos and plunder, always supported by extortion, bribery of local elites, and assassinations on the cheap. Every trick in the Divide and Rule book should be expected at any moment. Never underestimate a bitter, wounded, deeply humiliated, declining Empire.

Fasten your seat belts for more of this tense dynamic for the remainder of the decade.

But before that, all along the watchtower, get ready for the arrival of General Winter, whose riders are fast approaching. When the winds begin to howl, Europe will be freezing in the dead of dark nights, lit up occasionally by its finance capitalists puffing on fat cigars.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Geopolitical tectonic plates shifting, six months on

August 24, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Six months after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia in Ukraine, the geopolitical tectonic plates of the 21^st century have been dislocated at astonishing speed and depth – with immense historical repercussions already at hand. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the (new) world begins, not with a whimper but a bang.

The vile assassination of Darya Dugina – de facto terrorism at the gates of Moscow – may have fatefully coincided with the six-month intersection point, but that won’t change the dynamics of the current, work-in-progress historical drive.

The FSB may have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours, designating the perpetrator as a neo-Nazi Azov operative instrumentalized by the SBU, itself a mere tool of the CIA/MI6 combo de facto ruling Kiev.

The Azov operative is just a patsy. The FSB will never reveal in public the intel it has amassed on those that issued the orders – and how they will be dealt with.

One Ilya Ponomaryov, an anti-Kremlin minor character granted Ukrainian citizenship, boasted he was in contact with the outfit that prepared the hit on the Dugin family. No one took him seriously.

What’s manifestly serious is how oligarchy-connected organized crime factions in Russia would have a motive to eliminate Dugin as a Christian Orthodox nationalist philosopher who, according to them, may have influenced the Kremlin’s pivot to Asia (he didn’t).

But most of all, these organized crime factions blamed Dugin for a concerted Kremlin offensive against the disproportional power of Jewish oligarchs in Russia. So these actors would have the motive and the local base/intel to mount such a coup.

If that’s the case that spells out a Mossad operation – in many aspects a more solid proposition than CIA/MI6. What’s certain is that the FSB will keep their cards very close to their chest – and retribution will be swift, precise and invisible.

The straw that broke the camel’s back

Instead of delivering a serious blow to Russia in relation to the dynamics of the SMO, the assassination of Darya Dugina only exposed the perpetrators as tawdry operatives of a Moronic Murder Inc.

An IED cannot kill a philosopher – or his daughter. In an essential essay Dugin himself explained how the real war – Russia against the collective West led by the United States – is a war of ideas. And an existential war.

Dugin – correctly – defines the US as a “thalassocracy”, heir to “Britannia rules the waves”; yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland.

Putin himself first spelled it out at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Xi Jinping started to make it happen when he launched the New Silk Roads in 2013. The Empire struck back with Maidan in 2014. Russia counter-attacked coming to the aid of Syria in 2015.

The Empire doubled down on Ukraine, with NATO weaponizing it non-stop for eight years. At the end of 2021, Moscow invited Washington for a serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security” in Europe. That was dismissed with a non-response response.

Moscow took no time to confirm a trifecta was in the works: an imminent Kiev blitzkrieg against Donbass; Ukraine flirting with acquiring nuclear weapons; and the work of US bioweapon labs. That was the straw that broke the New Silk Road camel’s back.

A consistent analysis of Putin’s public interventions these past few months reveals that the Kremlin – as well as Security Council Yoda Nikolai Patrushev – fully realize how the politico/media goons and shock troops of the collective West are dictated by the rulers of what Michael Hudson defines as the FIRE system (financialization, insurance, real estate), a de facto banking Mafia.

As a direct consequence, they also realize how collective West public opinion is absolutely clueless, Plato cave-style, of their total captivity by the FIRE rulers, who cannot possibly tolerate any alternative narrative.

So Putin, Patrushev, Medvedev will never presume that a senile teleprompter reader in the White House or a cokehead comedian in Kiev “rule” anything. The sinister Great Reset impersonator of a Bond villain, Klaus “Davos” Schwab, and his psychotic historian sidekick Yuval Harari at least spell out their “program”: global depopulation, with those that remain drugged to oblivion.

As the US rules global pop culture, it’s fitting to borrow from what Walter White/Heisenberg, an average American channeling his inner Scarface, states in Breaking Bad: “I’m in the Empire business”. And the Empire business is to exercise raw power – then maintained with ruthlessness by all means necessary.

Russia broke the spell. But Moscow’s strategy is way more sophisticated than leveling Kiev with hypersonic business cards, something that could have been done at any moment starting six months ago, in a flash.

What Moscow is doing is talking to virtually the whole Global South, bilaterally or to groups of actors, explaining how the world-system is changing right before our eyes, with the key actors of the future configured as BRI, SCO, EAEU, BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

And what we see is vast swathes of the Global South – or 85% of the world’s population – slowly but surely becoming ready to engage in expelling the FIRE Mafia from their national horizons, and ultimately taking them down: a long, tortuous battle that will imply multiple setbacks.

The facts on the ground

On the ground in soon-to-be rump Ukraine, Khinzal hypersonic business cards – launched from Tu-22M3 bombers or Mig-31 interceptors – will continue to be distributed.

Piles of HIMARS will continue to be captured. TOS 1A Heavy Flamethrowers will keep sending invitations to the Gates of Hell. Crimean Air Defense will continue to intercept all sorts of small drones with IEDs attached: terrorism by local SBU cells, which will be eventually smashed.

Using essentially a phenomenal artillery barrage – cheap and mass-produced – Russia will annex the full, very valuable Donbass, in terms of land, natural resources and industrial power. And then on to Nikolaev, Odessa, and Kharkov.

Geoeconomically, Russia can afford to sell its oil with fat discounts to any Global South customer, not to mention strategic partners China and India. Cost of extraction reaches a maximum of $15 per barrel, with a national budget based on $40-45 for a barrel of Urals.

A new Russian benchmark is imminent, as well as oil in rubles following the wildly successful gas for rubles.

The assassination of Darya Dugina provoked endless speculation on the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense finally breaking their discipline. That’s not going to happen. The advances along the enormous 1,800-mile front are relentless, highly systematic and inserted in a Greater Strategic Picture.

A key vector is whether Russia stands a chance of winning the information war with the collective West. That will never happen inside NATOstan – even as success after success is ramping up across the Global South.

As Glenn Diesen has masterfully demonstrated, in detail, in his latest book, Russophobia , the collective West is viscerally, almost genetically impervious to admitting any social, cultural, historical merits by Russia.

And that will extrapolate to the irrationality stratosphere, as the grinding down and de facto demilitarization of the imperial proxy army in Ukraine is driving the Empire’s handlers and its vassals literally nuts.

The Global South though should never lose sight of the “Empire business”. The Empire of Lies excels in producing chaos and plunder, always supported by extortion, bribery of comprador elites, assassinations, and all that supervised by the humongous FIRE financial might. Every trick in the Divide and Rule book – and especially outside of the book – should be expected, at any moment. Never underestimate a bitter, wounded, deeply humiliated Declining Empire.

So fasten your seat belts: that will be the tense dynamic all the way to the 2030s. But before that, all along the watchtower, get ready for the arrival of General Winter, as his riders are fast approaching, the wind will begin to howl, and Europe will be freezing in the dead of a dark night as the FIRE Mafia puff their cigars.

• Map of the current frontlines 6 months into the SMO

Alexander Dugin: His Theories and How He Thinks

August 24, 2022 

By Al-Ahed News

An infographic detailing the some of the most significant details in the life of Russian political researcher Alexander Dugin.

• Russia Opens Murder Probe After Daughter of Political Commentator Assassinated in Car Blast
• Putin: Murder of Alexander Dugin’s daughter ‘vile crime’
• Alexander Dugin hospitalized over shock of losing his daughter
• Russian political thinker Alexander Dugin’s daughter assassinated
• ALEXANDER DUGIN ON EURASIANISM, MULTIPOLARITY AND THE 1984-LIKE DANGER OF GEORGE SOROS
• Fly like an eagle, Darya Dugina
• Ukraine in the Great Game

Assisted Suicide of Europe (MUST SEE)

August 23, 2022

Fly like an eagle, Darya Dugina

August 22, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Darya Dugina, 30, daughter of Alexander Dugin, a smart, strong, ebullient, enterprising young woman, whom I met in Moscow and had the honor to cherish as a friend, has been brutally murdered.

As a young journalist and analyst, one could see she would carve for herself a glowing path towards wide recognition and respect (here she is on feminism).

Not so long ago, the FSB was directly engaged in smashing assassination attempts, organized by the SBU, against Russian journalists, as in the case of Olga Skabaeyeva and Vladimir Soloviev. It’s mind-boggling that Dugin and his family were not protected by the Russian intelligence/security apparatus.

The key facts of the tragedy have already been established. A Land Cruiser Prado SUV, owned by Dugin and with Darya at the wheel, exploded in a highway near the village of Bolchie Vyazemy, a little over 20km away from Moscow.

They were both coming from a family festival, where Dugin had delivered a talk. At the last minute, Darya took the SUV and Dugin followed her in another car. According to eyewitnesses, there was an explosion under the SUV, which was immediately engulfed in flames and hit a roadside building. Darya’s body was burned beyond recognition.

The Russian Investigative Committee soon established that the IED – approximately 400g of TNT, unencapsulated – was planted under the bottom of the SUV, on the driver’s side.

The investigators consider that was a premeditated car bombing.

What is not already known is whether the IED was on a timer or if some goon nearby pressed the button.

What is already known is that Alexander Dugin was a target on the Myrotvorets list. Myrotvorets stands for a Center for Research of Signs of Crimes against the National Security of Ukraine. It works side by side with NATO collecting info on “pro-Russian terrorists and separatists”.

Denis Pushilin, the head of the DPR, took no time to accuse “the terrorists of the Ukrainian regime” for Darya’s assassination. The inestimable Maria Zakharova was more, well, diplomatic: she said that if the Ukrainian lead is confirmed, that will configure a policy of state terrorism deployed by Kiev.

An existential war

In several essays – this one being arguably the most essential – Dugin had made extensively clear the enormity of the stakes. This is a war of ideas. And an existential war: Russia against the collective West led by the United States.

The SBU, NATO, or quite probably the combo – considering the SBU is ordered by the CIA and MI6 – did not choose to attack Putin, Lavrov, Patrushev or Shoigu. They targeted a philosopher and ended up murdering his daughter – making it even more painful. They attacked an intellectual who formulates ideas. Proving once again that Western Cancel Culture seamlessly metastasizes into Cancel Person.

It’s fine and dandy that the Russian Ministry of Defense is about to start the production of the hypersonic Mr. Zircon as it continues to churn out plenty of Mr. Khinzals. Or that three Mig-31 supersonic interceptors have been deployed to Kaliningrad equipped with Khinzals and placed on combat duty 24/7.

The problem is the rules have changed – and the SBU/NATO combo, facing an indescribable debacle in Donbass, is upping the sabotage, counter-intel and counter-diversionary dial.

They started by shelling Russian territory; spread out around Donbass – as in the attempt to kill the mayor of Mariupol, Konstantin Ivachtchenko; even launched drones against the HQ of the Black Sea Fleet in Sebastopol; and now – with the Darya Dugina tragedy – are on the gates of Moscow.

The point is not that all of the above is irrelevant in terms of changing the facts on the ground imposed by the Special Military Operation. The point is that an upcoming series of bloody psyops designed for pure PR effect can become extremely painful for Russian public opinion – which will demand devastating punishment.

It’s clear that Moscow and St. Petersburg are now prime targets. The Ukrainian ISIS is a go. Of course, their handlers have vast experience on the matter, across the Global North/South. All red lines are gone.

The coming of the Ukrainian ISIS

The cokehead comedian has duly pre-empted any Russian reaction, according to the NATO script he’s fed on a daily basis: Russia may try to do something “particularly disgusting” this coming week.

That’s irrelevant. The real – burning – question is to what extent the Kremlin and Russian intel will react when it’s fully established SBU/NATO concocted the Dugin plot. That’s Kiev terrorism at the gates of Moscow. That screams “red line” in bloody red, and a response tied to the reiterated promise, by Putin himself, of hitting “decision centers”.

It will be a fateful decision. Moscow is not at war with the Kiev puppets, essentially – but with NATO. And vice-versa. All bets are off on how the tragedy of Darya Dugina may eventually accelerate the Russian timetable, in terms of a radical revision of their so far long-term strategy.

Moscow can decapitate the Kiev racket with a few hypersonic business cards. Yet that’s too easy; afterwards, who to negotiate the future of rump Ukraine with?

In contrast, doing essentially nothing means accepting an imminent, de facto terrorist invasion of the Russian Federation: the Darya Dugina tragedy on steroids.

In his next before last post on Telegram, Dugin once again framed the stakes. These are the key takeaways.

He calls for “structural, ideological, personnel, institutional, strategic” transformations by the Russian leadership.

Drawing from the evidence – from the increased attacks on Crimea to the attempts to provoke a nuclear catastrophe in Zaporozhye – he correctly concludes that the NATO sphere has “decided to stand on the other end to the end. They can be understood: Russia actually (and this is not propaganda) challenged the West as a civilization.”

The conclusion is stark: “So we have to go all the way”. That ties in with what Putin himself asserted: “We haven’t really started anything yet.” Dugin: “Now we have to start.”

Dugin proposes that the current status quo around Operation Z cannot last for more than six months. There’s no question “the tectonic plates have shifted”. Darya Dugina will be flying like an eagle in an otherworldly sky. The question is whether her tragedy will become the catalyst to propel Putin’s strategic ambiguity to a whole new level.

Faina Savenkova: It is impossible for such a site to exist

August 22, 2022

by Faina Savenkova

It is impossible for such a site to exist, and its owners are not responsible for their actions.
Journalist Daria Dugina was killed in Russia on Saturday night. I would hardly have known who she was if my friends hadn’t told me that she and her father, Alexander Dugin, were included on the Mirotvorets website, and everyone knew their details. Of course, you don’t have to listen to me, because I’m a child. But for the third year I have been trying to reach out to all world leaders and organizations. All this time I hear jokes that it’s honorable and great to be in the database of this site. But yesterday there was another murder. It’s not for me to figure out who is to blame for this and how it happened. Now I’m just really sorry for Daria’s parents.

But I will say something else: even if we accept the version that the Mirotvorets is fighting the enemies of Ukraine in this way, the main thing remains – they can no longer control the use of information and guarantee that not only nationalists, but also murderers and other criminals will not use the data they post. Tomorrow, someone will not like Roger Waters or Hungarian President Orban, and criminals can fulfill their plans, in which the owners of the Mirotvorets are always happy to help them. I’ve always said that the Mirotvorets are scoundrels and scammers, but now they just kill people with their help. And if such famous people are killed without fear of punishment, then what about me, an ordinary child from Lugansk? About other children whose data is on the site?

You are allowed not to love Russia – this is a personal matter for everyone – but you can not break the laws. You can’t just sentence those you don’t like to death. The Mirotvorets website has not been responsible for what it puts out for a long time. No one knows who will be next. And it doesn’t matter who will kill – Ukrainian nationalists, ISIS or just crazy. I would really like everyone who is on the Mirotvorets to finally start talking and start doing something. It is impossible for such a site to exist, and its owners are not responsible for their actions.

Short message from Andrei

August 21, 2022

Dear friends,

Two quick messages:

First, by now most of you have heard that Alexander Dugin’s daughter has been murdered in a car bomb.  The target was clearly Dugin himself.  All I want to say at this point is that Dugin never was the “‘Russian world’ ideologue“ as RT so stupidly wrote.  (The same goes for another supposed “ideologue of the Russian world” German Sterligov).

How many times did you hear Putin quoting Dugin? If anything, Putin’s ideological influences would be Ivan I’in (also spelled Ilyin) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, not Dugin.

Dugin was much more of a big thing in the West, not in Russia where most key players never took him seriously or, even less so, where influenced by him.  None of that makes a difference to the abject act of cowardice and pure terrorism which the murder of his daughter is.  And it does not take a genius to guess who was behind this attack – the same folks who have been terrorizing and murdering civilians en masse every since the Euromaidan.

Unlike Russian officials, Dugin was not under the protection of the FSO and was an easy, if symbolic, target.  Just a civilian with no special protective security detail.  The ugly and cowardly nature of this murder has, once again, shown to those with eyes to see and ears to hear the true nature of the US backed Nazi regime in Kiev.

May God rest the soul of this latest victim of Nazi terror and all those who were also murdered before her!

Second, the blog was down for a few hours, but this was not an attack, just an internal issue which has now been solved.

I wish you all a great Sunday!

Kind regards

Andrei

Alexander Dugin hospitalized over shock of losing his daughter

21 Aug 2022

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

After watching in shock as emergency services arrive at the scene of his daughter’s assassination, Russian political thinker and bereaved father, Alexander Dugin, is rushed to the hospital following a nervous breakdown.

Russian political thinker, bereaved father Alexander Dugin is in the hospital after the assassination of his beloved daughter, political commentator Darya Dugin, according to political analyst Sergei Markov. 

“Poor Alexander Dugin. He is in the hospital now. Our huge condolences,” he posted on his Telegram channel.

In an exclusive interview for Al Mayadeen, the expert in Russian affairs Bassam Al-Bunni confirmed that there are reports that Alexander Dugin was rushed to the hospital after suffering from a nervous breakdown following the assassination of his daughter.

صدمة المفكر الروسي #ألكسندر_دوغين بعد رؤيته سيارة ابنته التي انفجرت بالقرب من قرية بولشي فيازيوما.#روسيا pic.twitter.com/sT0tDG0poh

— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) August 21, 2022

On her account, a spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova posted via Telegram that “if any Ukrainian link was found, it would amount to state terrorism.”

Earlier, a large explosion tore into an SUV on a highway 20 km away west of Moscow, instantly killing its driver, who was identified as political commentator Darya Dugina, Russian political analyst and thinker Alexander Dugin’s daughter. Dugin the father is an influential veteran political commentator, also known as one of the Kremlin’s “ideological masterminds” and an occasional contributor to Al Mayadeen English.

The assassination was carried out at 21:35 Moscow time. Witnesses divulged that the explosion happened in the middle of the road, where debris and metal wreckage scattered in the air right before the car crashed into a fence, according to photos and videos.

According to emergency services, there was only one person inside the car, and it was a female body burned beyond recognition. 

Multiple Russian media sources and Telegram channels have reported that the victim was Darya Dugina, 30. According to videos circulating social media, her father arrived at the scene just after the explosion, devastated.

On Saturday evening, Dugin was giving a lecture in Moscow on “Tradition and History” at a traditional family festival in Moscow; Dugina attended the event as a guest. Reports are claiming that Dugin planned to leave the festival with his daughter, but instead took a separate car. Darya took her father’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado.

On its account, the investigative committee of the Russian Federation reported that an explosive device that was planted under the car went off and the vehicle caught fire. It is worth noting that Forensic and explosive experts are still investigating the incident.

Darya, in July 2022, was placed on the UK sanctions list. Her father in 2014 and 2015 was sanctioned by the EU, US, and Canada.

Anti-Russian hate speech 

Anti-Russian hate speech has gone viral on social media with no restrictions and amid multiple incidents of violence in this context reported.

In one instance, Meta said in a statement in March that it has decided to allow the publication of calls for violence against Russians.

The attempt to kill Dugin, Russia’s philosopher, resulted in the death of his daughter, that is cheered in the Ukrainian and western segments of social media does nothing but two things:
• raises the level of hatred to extreme among the Russians
and
• leaves no illusions

— Maria Dubovikova (@politblogme) August 21, 2022

Russia’s Embassy in the United States responded to Meta’s change of policy, which was namely reflected on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, slamming it as “aggressive and criminal” and “outrageous”, because it allows for the “incitement of hatred and hostility towards Russians.” Furthermore, the Embassy said the company’s actions present more evidence “of the information war without rules declared on our country.”

Read more: Russia prosecutes Google over not removing banned content

“Media corporations have become soldiers of the propaganda machine of the Western establishment,” the Embassy’s statement read.

Facebook removed a post from the Russian Embassy to the UK’s Facebook page, in which it called into question the Western narrative of the attack on Mariupol hospital.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN yesterday said the hospital had been in fact transformed into a base for Ukrainian nationalists targeting Russian troops.

Facebook removed the post under the pretense of it breaking the platform’s rules on “posting content about a violent tragedy, or victims of violent tragedies that include claims that a violent tragedy did not occur.”

Read next: You’re doing yourself a “disservice” following only Western media

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