With the war in Ukraine almost entering its second year, much more is at stake now, as both parties have invested immensely and the outcome might decide their fate, so what will happen in 2023?
Ukraine 2022, a Recap
The war in Ukraine could be the most significant geopolitical event in this century, as it represents an embodiment of the shift in the global balance of power. Such an action made by Russia, intervening to protect what it describes as its non-negotiables, and the actions of many countries taking the decision not to side with the collective West, could not have even been imagined two decades ago. It is safe to assume that the undeniable shifts in the global political and economic epicenter to the East permitted states seeking a more independent approach and autonomy from western hegemony to undertake risky political actions. Clausewitz had announced centuries ago that war is a mere continuation of political action with other means.
Plowing through the narratives of both sides regarding the factors that drove the event the way they went would take much more than this article can discuss, so we will try to stick to concrete events and numerical data in analyzing this conflict, its aspects, and the possible outcomes that the coming year might hold.
A hotter-than-usual February
Despite Russia revealing the goals behind the actions it took, which are the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, it did not provide a timeframe nor the extent to which the situation might escalate. NATO, on the other hand, started ramping up its arms shipments to Kiev on the eve of the conflict, a trend that would continue throughout the war and would consume a hefty chunk of the alliance’s military equipment stockpiles. In addition, an assumption was spread by Western media that the war would only take three days, despite the lack of any Russian official statement backing such a claim. Consequently, when the war entered its 10th month, the assumption was used to bash Russia’s military capabilities.
Utilizing several axes of attack, the Russian forces and their allies in the Donbass advanced. A few months into the conflict, the initial advances seemed to be aimed at having a shock effect on the Ukrainian political and military leadership, consequently leading to their sudden collapse, rather than being a part of a military plan that involved the surrounding and destruction of enemy forces. The initial Kiev push failed to break the will of the Kiev authorities to continue the fight, and the lack of an initial Russian Western-style Shock & Awe strategy contributed to inflating Kiev’s hopes of victory, leading to a prolonged grinding conflict.
In pursuing an initial strategy that intended to limit the damage to Ukraine’s civilian and military infrastructure and seeking a short conflict, Russia led to the exact opposite. When the initial offensive failed to collapse the Kiev authorities, the most logical decision at this point was to attempt a withdrawal and stabilize the frontlines while regrouping the retreating forces that sustained combat losses and damages. A static situation had developed during the months between Russia’s withdrawal from the Kiev district and the North of Ukraine, and the subsequent Ukrainian summer offensive that managed to push the Russians out of the Kherson and Kharkov districts. This period was characterized by an artillery duel, in which Russia had the upper hand, and a Ukrainian build-up that led to their consequent victory.
The Ukraine build-up was fueled by nine waves of mobilization and an endless train of Western military equipment that Russia had little success in derailing. Despite Kiev’s heavy losses in manpower and equipment, it was still capable of conducting cohesive military actions that were sustained by NATO’s whole massive intelligence-gathering apparatus. Russia, on the other hand, was stuck with what it had at the beginning of the war; around 150-200 thousand regulars plus its Donbass allies defending a frontline stretching thousands of kilometers. The juridical limits of the use of force imposed by the nature of “the special military operation” hindered Russia’s efforts in increasing pressure on Kiev and slowing down its buildup. What happened next was Russia withdrawing from some areas it took at the beginning of the war in an attempt to avoid huge losses that could result in its units being cut off or surrounded.
Shifting winds
Following the Ukrainian attack on the Crimean bridge and the appointment of a new commander to the Russian forces in the operations zone, Sergey Surovikin, Russia seemed as if it was starting to take the glove off. The start of this new phase of military operations was signaled by a mass strike against Ukraine’s dual-use infrastructure, such as various components of the electrical grid system using its arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles that Western media and experts had claimed had been exhausted several times during the conflict. A newcomer also took its toll on Ukraine’s military and dual-use infrastructure, highlighting an important aspect of modern warfare: suicide drones, the Geran-2 or the Shahed-136. Western countries and Kiev have accused Iran of supplying Russia with an arsenal of such drones, a claim that both Russia and Iran have refuted. We won’t delve into the details of both statements, yet we must state that it highlights growing military cooperation between parties opposed to the unipolar global system, an occurrence that causes great concern to the collective West.
Russia also undertook a partial mobilization that involved calling around 300,000 of its reserves. Arming and retraining such numbers is not a simple task, and in fact, it is still taking place today, according to Russian sources. Scores of these soldiers started arriving at the frontlines and taking part in the ongoing combat, but turning the balance of numbers around is going to take a while. Russia also is mainly targeting anti-air defense systems and munitions now by making use of a dual-strategy: destroying them using anti-radiation missiles and miniature suicide drones such as the Zala drone on one hand, and depleting their costly ammunition using cheap but effective drones, such as the Geran-2, on the other. The cost ratio between an interception and that of the intercepted can be as big as ten-fold, since the drone costs around $20,000 and an AD missile could reach half a million USD easily, starting from around $150,000. A losing bargain in the long term to say the least.
The same artillery grind is also ongoing and taking a toll on Ukrainian losses, but this time Russia is making use of the shorter contact lines to fill the defenses with an inferior number of troops in comparison with their adversaries until it finishes training its reserves. Despite the arrival of troops to the frontline, Russia will still not have the numerical superiority, but such numbers will serve primarily to consolidate the current lines of contact, and to give the Russians more options if they want to utilize their fire superiority to level the playing field around the Donbass and in the held part Zaporozhye regions east the Dnieper River.
Difficult situation, tough decisions
The political and military leaderships in the West and Kiev on one hand, and Moscow on the other, are faced with tough decisions with a tight timeline before them. These decisions will draw the outcomes of the conflict in the short and long term. The scale of the conflict is global, as the West sees Russia as a rogue state trying to undermine the Western-dominated so-called rules-based order, and it seems like it is willing to go above and beyond to guarantee another century of dominion over the planet. Russia has many reasons to fight in Ukraine that go beyond NATO expanding east and protecting the lives and rights of the Russian people in Ukraine. Russia is genuinely worried that the direction that Kiev was heading revealed a long-term plan to transform Ukraine into another “big Israel”, which the Ukrainian President hinted at in one of his speeches. A highly militarized society built around a fascist ideology that its raison d’etre is being anti-something, as in “Israel” being a “shield protecting the West from Eastern barbarism,” hinted by “Israel’s” fathers. Ukrainian leaders and media don’t waste an opportunity to remind the West that they are fighting the battle of the collective West, and thus they earned a blank check in exchange for providing the meat for the carnage.
If what some commentators say about Russia overestimating its military capabilities is true, then the West for sure overestimated its political and economic capabilities. Faced with an internal crisis and trapped in the loop of financing a state living off external aid, the West is facing the threat of a wedge forming between its components on both sides of the Atlantic as Europe, which is hit more by the effects of the crisis, sees that the US is trying to bail itself at its expense. This view has been expressed by various Western leaders.
Russia, faced with a nuclear bomb of Western sanctions, managed to surpass the worst, according to the head of its central bank. With hundreds of billions of dollars frozen abroad, the Russian economy is still holding. The Ruble has long stabilized, and alternative market opportunities have revealed themselves to the Western market. But will this be enough? Many countries across the globe refused to side with the West in its campaign, namely the Arab, African, and Latin countries, as well as India, China, Iran, and Turkey. Despite these countries not forming a cohesive block, their decisions gave Russia breathing space in this lengthy battle nevertheless.
A protracted conflict?
Both the West and Russia have invested so much in this conflict but still have not fully committed, as both parties still have many cards up their sleeve. For instance, even if NATO faces severe military equipment shortages, it can still provide Ukraine with new types of arms at the expense of its combat readiness, like tanks, warplanes, or maybe long-range precision munitions. Russia, on the other hand, has not undergone a full mobilization yet, both in the military and economic sense of the word, as it still spends only a small fraction of its GDP on the war, and its biggest “ally”, namely China, did not even start providing it with a significant amount of military hardware. China ramping up its aid to Russia is not so far-fetched since it benefits from a change in a global shift from the Western-dominated global system into a multipolar international system.
We are not dealing with isolated opposing parties, as any actions by one of them can trigger an escalation from the other as if we are witnessing the checkerboard of a chess game. Such security dilemmas imposed by the nature of the conflict taking place in Ukraine draw a gloomy scene of a protracted and bloody conflict that decides the outcome of the world. If Russia wins, we might actually witness the birth of a new multi-polar world where formerly dominated and exploited countries can have more options and thus a brighter future. If the West wins, however, it might add a century to the life of this global system that grants only a small portion of humanity, namely the collective West, the ability to impose the way of thinking, living, and governing on the rest of the world. A thermonuclear annihilation war is always a possibility too, but hopefully not.
Russia’s foreign minister highlighted that Ukraine is fully aware of Russia’s demands and could simply meet them.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Source: AP.
The US and NATO are attempting to defeat Russia on the battlefield in order to destroy the country, Russia’s Foreign Minister said.
Sergei Lavrov made the remark late Monday, according to the ITAR-TASS news agency, adding that Ukraine is fully aware of Russia’s demands and could simply meet them to end the war.
“Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the [Kiev] regime, [and] the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well-known to the enemy,” Lavrov said, adding, “The point is simple: Fulfill them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army.”
According to him, the main party that benefited from this conflict is the US, which has been seeking to make the most out of the war in Ukraine.
“Washington has also been solving a key geopolitical goal of breaking the traditional bonds between Russia and Europe and making their European satellites even more dependent on them,” Lavrov emphasized, further adding that the US is currently planning orders for its defense sector for years to come.
“The Kiev regime is being pumped up with the latest weapons, receiving samples that have yet to enter into service with Western armies, seemingly in order to see how they will perform in combat,” he concluded.
Moscow said it started the war to protect the pro-Russian population in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk from Kiev’s persecution, as well as to “de-Nazify” its neighbor.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently warned in an article that Moscow would continue the war until Kiev’s “disgusting, almost fascist regime” was removed and the country was completely demilitarized.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Moscow was open to talks and blamed the lack of talks on Kiev and its Western backers.
Lavrov likewise affirmed in his remarks that when it comes to how long the conflict would last, “the ball is in the regime’s court and Washington behind it.”
Last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has stated that he is not optimistic about the possibility of “effective” peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in the near future.
”I do believe that the military confrontation will go on,” said Guterres at the UN Headquarters in New York. Adding that they will have to wait for serious peace negotiations, Guterres said “We have no illusions that true peace negotiations will be possible in the immediate future.”
The UN, according to its SG, said that it is concentrating its efforts on Russian ammonia exports through a pipeline to a Black Sea port in Ukraine and accelerating exchanging prisoners of war.
Turkish media outlet Anadolu Agency asked Guterres whether he would support an Erdogan-proposed trilateral mechanism between Ankara, Moscow, and Damascus in efforts to resolve the war. In response, Guterres said that the UN was not consulted and it is “premature” to make any comments on the proposal.
The UN’s main concern, for the time being, was Syria, particularly renewing its cross-border humanitarian aid mechanism. ”Now that we have made progress (on) indeed, and Turkey has played a positive role on that in increasing the cross-line support,” he said.
Seems like a simple question, but in reality it is immensely complex. I will try to outline a few of the issues, assumptions and implications this question involves.
Well, for starters, we might want to ask “what is a Ukrainian?” After all, no such nation or country can be found in history books. But we should not stop here, and we also need to ask “what is a Russian?”. Yes, there was a Russian nation and a Russian country recorded in history books, but does that really help us?
French history books used to begin with the sentence “our ancestors the Gauls” which even kids on the French colonies had to learn. Some ridiculed the fact that sub-Saharan Africans or the children of Guadeloupe had to learn that and that was self-evidently ridiculous.
But what about metropolis French, those who lived in France proper?
Where their ancestors really Gauls and, if so, how much continuity, if any, is there between Vercingetorix and Macron or the people from ancient Gallic tribes to the modern French?
What we often overlook is that nationality is a very modern concept born out of the post 1789 ideology of nationalism. In the more distant past, people built their identity around 1) their place of birth/residence 2) their religion and 3) their ruler. Keeping all that in mind, let’s begin by asking the question “what is a Russian?”. But before we go there, I need to mention another pesky issue: the English word “Russian” can mean one of two things: a member of the Russian ethnic/cultural group, in which case the Russian term is русский (roosskii) or a citizen of the Russian Federation, in which case the Russian term would be россиянин (rossiianin).
[Sidebar: before 1917 you could be a “Russian Chechen” or “Russian German” because the distinction between rossiianin and roosskii did not exist then or, should we say, it was less common and used differently. Russia being the cultural, political and spiritial heir to the East Roman Empire, it had multi-ethnicity built into her from the moment Russia appeared]
For the time being, let’s ignore the second meaning and focus on the ethnic/cultural русский (roosskii). What is a русский (roosskii)?
To try to find a good definition, let’s being by spelling out what a Russian is not.
This is not somebody who speaks Russian. There are plenty of folks out there who speak Russian and who are not Russian.
This is not somebody born in Russia, because there are plenty of non-Russians born in Russia.
How about somebody born from Russian parents?
Here we run into a logical problem: if we define as Russian somebody born of Russian parents without defining what Russian means in the first place, this is a completely circular definition.
Also, is Shoigu Russian? This father is an ethnic Tuvan. So 50% Russian max?
How about Czar Nicholas II? His ancestry was mostly German and Danish.
How about Lenin? He had only 1/4 “Russian” blood (whatever that means)
Here we need to keep three crucial elements in mind:
Russia was always multi ethnic, even in the 10th century!
Russia has no natural borders
Russia was invaded by innumerable ethnic and religions groups and many of these groups acculturated into the Russian society adding their heritage to the common Russian one
Thus the “ethnic definition” does not work at all.
For countries like Japan or native people like the Mapuche ethnic categories might make sense, but for a country with a history and geography like Russia it is utterly meaningless (hence the reason why patriotism is a very positive force in Russia and nationalism a very toxic one).
But it only get even more complicated.
Just like, say, France or Italy, Russia went through very different moments in history and the Russia or, say, the 15th century and the Russia or the 19th century had very little in common.
Now this is highly subjective, but I would submit that at the very least, we can roughly break up the historical Russia into the following periods:
Russia before Peter I
Russia between Peter I and 1917
Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1991
US colonized Russia between 1991 and 2000
Putin’s Russia 2000-2021
Russia after 2022
And even this is a much simplified categorization, each period should also be further subdivided, but that would take too much space here.
Next I would also argue that how Russians defined themselves over these periods also changed, and this why pre-1917 Dostoevsky thought that one cannot be Russian unless one is Orthodox first (which might have make sense before 1917, but sure makes no sense at all in 2022). My point here is not to discuss the best possible definition of “who/what is a Russian” but to show that this apparently simple question is also very complex and, at best, a moving target!
Now in the case of the Ukraine, it gets even more complex than that.
When I wrote above that there was no “Ukrainian nation” or “Ukrainian state” in history I did not mean to say that BECAUSE there were no such phenomena in history there is no such thing as a Ukrainian today.
To be clear, I do NOT believe that in order to consider yourself as belonging to an ethnic or cultural group you MUST have a historical basis for your claim. Nations can be created, in fact, I would argue that all of them are created at some point in time. Ethnogenesis is something we can observe on all continents, nations and ethnic groups: this is the emergence of a NEW and DISTINCT identity, usually followed by the creation of “founding myths” which might or might not have any real basis in history.
In the case of the Ukraine (I mean this term geographically here, the southwestern frontier/border lands of Russia), it is simply undeniable that these lands lived under Polish/Latin yoke for many centuries and that this occupation had two direct results:
The people of the Ukraine had experiences with the rest of the Russian nation did not (such as being under Latin occupation or having Orthodox communities submitted the Greek and not the Russian Orthodox Church)
The people of the Ukraine did not experience some of the most crucial events in Russian history (such as the Old Rite vs New Rite crisis which deeply shattered Russian society in the 17th century and after).
Such differences in experience left deep marks on the identity of the people it affected. It would be foolish to deny this and it would be dangerous to deliberately ignore it!
So, to sum up what I have tried to show so far we could say that:
History is not a useful tool to measure some supposed “legitimacy” of any one group’s claim of identity.
Ethnic/cultural identities can arise both spontaneously and even artificially.
In the case of the Ukraine, it is a mix of both. Primarily, the “Ukraine” is a creation of the Latin Papacy (see here for a discussion). But, like it or not, the Latins did eventually trigger a Ukrainian ethnogenesis, albeit with varying degrees of success (roughly the further West, the longer the Polish yoke, the stronger that Ukrainian identity).
But even if none of that had happened, it would make no difference.
Even if we assume that there was absolutely NOTHING on our planet which could be called “Ukraine” or “Ukrainian”, and even if the people of the post-1991 Ukraine had ZERO historical basis for their claims, it is still a fundamental human right to choose your identity (or, more accurately, identities, plural).
If tomorrow the people of Japan decide that from now on their identity will not be Japanese but, say, Martian, we could laugh all we want, but we could not deny them that right or force them to give up their newly adopted “Martian” identity.
Furthermore, is it not silly to tell a person who absolutely hates Russia and all things Russian and who sincerely believes that he is from a totally different ethnic and cultural group, that this person has no right to his opinion that this person must accept that he is Russian?
That would create a “Russian russophobe”.
Actually, there are PLENTY of Russians russophobes out there. Even if by any imaginable definition you are Russian (or any other nationality), you still have the free will to reject that heritage and choose another one (even a fictional one).
There is even a special term for these folks: вырусь (vyroos‘). In my experience, most (but not all!) folks who voluntarily emigrated from Russia fall into this category.
This is why my first thesis here is this: those Ukrainians who chose to identify as Ukrainians and who reject any Russian heritage (whatever we may mean by that) have the moral right to do so and nobody has the moral right to deny them this choice. And while historical arguments can be used to debunk the founding myths of the Ukronazi ideology, they still cannot be used to deny anybody what is a deeply personal choice.
[Sidebar: it is my personal belief that identities can be cumulative and that they don’t have to exclude each other. While I personally consider myself culturally a “pre-1917 Russian”, I am 50% Dutch by DNA, I was born in German speaking Switzerland and lived most of my life in French speaking Geneva, and I also feel even more cultural identities inside me, including an Argentinian one. I speak 5 languages well (albeit with many typos when I write, as you all know!) and another 2 reasonably. I currently live in the USA (click here for an explanation why) And just to add yet another element, I am a member of a Greek Orthodox Church, not a Russian one. I also think of myself as a Jazz guitarist and freediver. So even my hobbies form part of my identity. Why should I have to limit myself to only one, “pure”, identity when I am so clearly a mongrel? In fact, I embrace and enjoy all this diversity of influences which all have contributed to shape the person I am today. And if I claim that right to cumulative identities, how could I deny it to anybody else?]
And then there is this undeniable fact: while about 80% of россиянин (rossiianin) are русский (roosskii), 20% are not. In fact there are 193 ethnic groups in Russia and 35 languages which are considered official languages in various regions of Russia, along with Russian, plus are over 100 minority languages. And while Chechens are not русский (roosskii) they are most definitely россиянин (rossiianin), that is to say that while Chechens are a distinct ethnic group, they are also part of what I call the “Russian civilizational realm”. One could reasonably argue that the Chechens of 2022 are the most patriotic of all Russians!
This makes a lot more sense to me that to dig into past clades, tribes or local native groups and seek some “biological identity”.
This is, by the way, one of the most striking and profound differences between the Russian and Ukronazi cultural models: Russians want and enjoy the immense diversity of their nations. Ukronazi want a racially pure, russenrein, Ukraine (hence their constant talk about “subhumans”, “cockroaches” and “biomass”).
Let’s leave the idiotic concept of “pure race” to the Nazis, Zionists and their likes.
The first thing which I would immediately point out if that historically the lands which we now call the Ukraine were very much exposed to, or even part of, the Russian civilizational realm. But that is absolutely NOT true of the current, Ukronazi/Banderista cultural identity which, in fact, was created as an anti-Orthodoxy and which nowadays sees itself as an anti-Russia. I personally know that identity very, very well: not only have I met plenty of Ukronazis in my life, I also monitored the Ukronazi propaganda on VOA and RFE/RL for years and I know that Ukronazi nationalism has no positive content whatsoever, it is only a pure and total negation of everything Russian with a few truly ridiculous (and comical) claims about some “Ukrainian antiquity”.
In other words, even if you live in Odessa or Kharkov and you are (let’s simply assume that) from 100% pure ethnic Russian stock (no such thing, but bear with me), you STILL get to reject that identity and adopt any identity you want, including the Ukronazi/Banderistsa one.
At this point, I want to list all the criteria which are plainly not helpful to discuss identities:
Genetic makeup
Place of birth
Mother-tongue (or languages)
Religion
History in general and historical borders (which constantly shifted) specifically
Whether we personally approve of an ideology or cultural claim or not
Political ideologies
Identities embraced in the past
The difference between a language and a dialect
Similarities and differences with other identities
And yet, every time I hear people discuss whether the Russian are liberators or occupiers of the Ukraine, I see these criteria used, and by both sides!
This makes absolutely no sense to me.
In fact, I strongly believe that the choice of being Ukrainian, Russian or both (yes, that is a choice!) depends on each individual person. Period.
But here I want to add something crucial: having to make such a personal choice is not specific or unique to the Ukrainians, all Russians also face the same question too!
I submit that, objectively, the “Russian” 5th column and the Atlantic Integrationists are, de facto, not Russians. Why do I say that? Because 1) they serve foreign masters and 2) they seek to harm Russia. And I don’t care how their actions are packaged (heck, Navalnyi tried really hard to impersonate a nationalist!).
Thus, to “be Russian” means, in my opinion, that you have made a deliberate choice by identify with, and become part of, the Russian civilizational realm.
Put simply: you cannot be Russia and hate Russia.
How many people in what is left of the Ukraine today consider themselves Russian?
I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody else knows either.
But I think that it is fair to say that most people in Russia were shocked by the number of Ukrainians who chose to not only adopt a Ukrainian identity, but even fight and die for it! Many did, sincerely, think of Ukrainians are “brothers”.
Today this “brotherhood” looks increasingly like the “brotherhood” of Cain…
Even more amazingly, most of these Ukronazis don’t even speak Ukrainian properly and mostly speak to each other in Russian. Some even consider themselves as Orthodox Christians. Yup, these Russian speakers, many from the central and eastern Ukraine still sing “Батько наш — Бандера, Україна — мати, ми за Україну будем воювати!” (Our Father is Bandera, our mother the Ukraine, we are ready to wage war for the Ukraine).
I would note with some glee that if Bandera is their father, then the Ukraine was born no earlier than the mid-1920s (since Bandera was born in 1909!). And I won’t even go into the Ukie hallucinations about being “pure Aryans” (as opposed to the Moskals whom they see as Finno-Ugric-Mongols), which is an ideology developed even later 🙂
So, 2163 words later, did we even being to answer the question of whether the Ukrainians are Russians?
No, not really. And here is why:
Taken by themselves, the terms “Ukrainian” and “Russian” are highly ambiguous.
We know that in the past, many of those whom we call “Ukrainians” today had ancestors who lived and were part of the Russian civilizational realm. But that does not AT ALL mean that modern Ukrainians want (or even could!) join the Russian civilizational realm, especially since what this realm was, is and will become is also highly complex and even controversial.
Furthermore, I think that we need to pay special attention to what is happening in Russia today: the SMO has had a HUGE impact on the Russian society and that society is quickly and profoundly changing.
That by itself begs the question of what kind of civilizational realm Russia is offering to the peoples of the Ukraine today?
One thing is certain, the Russia of, say 2023-2025 will be profoundly different from the Russia of 2000-2022. First, the Russian ultimatum to the West of 2021 then the 2022 SMO have truly revolutionized (in a literal sense) Russia: 5th columnists and assorted liberals have fled by the thousands (mostly to Poland, Israel and the three Baltic statelets), the Atlantic Integrationist have either given up or are keeping a very low profile. Foreign agents (folks paid by foreign interest) must now register, are listed as such, and can be fined or even imprisoned for breaking Russian laws (finally!).
Russia has also completely and categorically rejected the entire Woke ideology promoted by the Hegemony worldwide.
Most importantly, the reality of a AngloZionist Empire which wants to subjugate, colonize, enslave and break-up Russia has now become pretty hard to ignore. In fact, this war (against the collective West, not just a few Ukronazis!) is as much an existential war for Russia as WWII, so those Russians who complain about the lack of Spanish jamon serrano in Russia stores need to wake up and compare their current “hardships” with what their parents and grandparents suffered during WWII (besides, you can still find Spanish jamon serrano in Russia, just at a higher price than before; there are also superb local substitutes!).
Here I want to express my deepest thanks to the US Neocons, EU lemmings, NATO Nazis, the Latin Papists and all the other Russia-haters who have generated one of the biggest hate-wave in human history and who have now FORCED all Russians into a basic, yet vital, choice: resist or perish.
Unlike the folks in the West (until recently) and unlike the folks in the Ukraine (again, until recently), many Russian people have gradually switched their mode thinking from “peacetime” to “wartime”. In fact, I would even argue that the so-called “Russian defeats” in Bucha, Kharkov or Kherson have only poured more fuel onto the raging fire of Russian anger: in February of this year very few Russians would have supported to switch off the lights in the entire Ukraine. But by late summer, they were DEMANDING it!
So, the next time you hear about “Russian defeats” consider the following:
the massive wake-up effect these “defeats” have had on a (rather spoiled) Russian society
the comparatively minuscule price paid by Russia for these tactical retreats (economy of force maneuvers really) and
the huge costs of these “victories” for the NATO side
and decide for yourself if Putin is weak and indecisive or very smart and cunning 🙂
Nobody really knows what Russia will look like in 2023-2024-2025 etc. So nobody really know what kind of “Russian civilizational realm” the SMO is “offering” to the people of the Ukraine. It is therefore impossible to ascertain whether Ukrainians (which Ukrainians anyway, they are still a diverse group!) will ever become Russians again or not. Some probably will. Many will probably won’t.
One thing for me is axiomatic: Russia should not occupy even a single square meter of “Ukrainian” land if that land is mostly populated by Ukronazis. In fact, I see no need to “go to the Polish border” or any other such grand plans. Yes, NATO might well not give Russia any choice (just as NATO forced the SMO upon Russia!), but then I hope for a swift “in and out”. Russia should only free those who want to be freed. Period. The rest she can either ignore (if they leave Russia alone), or kill (if they threaten Russia).
Does Russia want/need millions of Ukronazis inside her borders? Nope!
Can Russia afford to pay for the destruction of country 404? Nope!
Do Russian authorities really want to be in charge of not only pensions and social programs, but also law and order in a land populated by (armed!) people who hate Russia with a passion? Nope!
But I do agree, fully, that Banderastan needs to be fully demilitarized and denazified.
The former can be achieved without having to put forces on every square meter of the Ukraine while the latter will happen as a natural consequence of the former: if all you got if police and SWAT forces, what is the point of playing Nazi or talking about “liberating Crimea next year”? And if some residual Ukronazis want to read Mein Kampf, and can stay awake while reading it, then let them. Who cares?
And then there are population movements. MILLIONS have left for the EU and MILLIONS have left for Russia. MILLIONS have also “left” when Crimea and the LDNR joined Russia. And now that the lights are out, MILLIONS more are leaving (and only 20% plan to return according to Ukrainian estimates). Add to this the 100’000 KIA of Ursula von der Lugen, multiply it by a safe factor 2 and we probably already have 200’000 KIA and, therefore, about 300’000-400’000 wounded in action. True, “Ze” & Co. can continue to mobilize wave after wave after wave of civilians, and NATO can even get most of them through some sort of basic training (including advanced training for some), but that is not a sustainable strategy: Russia has many more artillery shells than bodies the Ukrainians, Poles, Brits and all the other crazies can throw into the Russian meat grinder.
[Sidebar: you might wonder what the current US Neocon plan is. Simple: to get as many Ukrainians killed as possible and then accused Russia of genocide and to ruin the EU economies to remove a competitor. BTW – Plan A was to attack the LDNR, trigger an overthrow of Putin, place a puppet in power and dismember Russia. That plan failed. So what we see today is the USA’s Plan B, executed by NATO and a few megalomaniacal idiots with imperial phantom pains (UK+PL not to mention them).]
One more point: this all also applies to Belarus, Kazakhstan and all the other Russian limitrophes. So far, not single one of them has shown the capability of being a viable, stable state. ALL of them have chosen what some call “multi-vectorness”, that is: you beg Russia for protection and the USA for money.
Does Russia needs such “friends” or “allies”?
Are Iran, China or even Algeria not infinitely better friends and allies by any measure?
I say that they all these limitrophes get their act together and make a basic choice because if there is one thing which the Euromaidan has proven beyond reasonable doubt that is that the West will never allow any country to be a good neighbor or partner to both the West and Russia.
Now, especially following the wave of total hatred against all things Russian in the West, this obligation to chose one side or another has become a fact of life for at least as long as the (already dead) AngloZionist Empire maintains its (still very real) momentum and its ability to suborn the comprador elites ruling over countries with no sovereignty or agency (the entire EU for starters). This is why both Russia and China seek a multi-polar world in which all countries are truly sovereign and the relations between these countries determined by the rule of international law.
Conclusion:
This is not about the Ukraine and Russia. This is about a full reorganization of our entire planet, including the international trade and finance, political alliances and cultural/spiritual values.
The following two images sum it all up nicely I think.
Right now, both Russia and the Ukraine are moving targets undergoing tremendous changes. And I am not saying that Russians and Ukrainians cannot be brothers or even be one nation again. All I am saying is that making such an assumptions would be extremely dangerous and costly.
Somewhere, further down the road, there could be a Ukraine and a Russia living in a not too comfy relationship like, say, Pakistan and India today, but with a fully demilitarized Ukraine (nevermind one threatening Russia with nukes, which both Pakistan and India have, so that parallel only goes so far). I am pretty sure that the Poles will bite off a chunk of the rump-Banderastan, and maybe the Hungarians too. Finally, I consider it very likely that by one way or another, Russia will liberate the Ukrainian coast and lift the current blockade of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) were about half a million Russian citizens live. So you can pretty much visualize what the Ukraine will look like when then Russian decide to stop.
But, when all is said and done, it will be for the people of the Ukraine to decide which civilizational realm they want to embrace. Russia should not liberate those who embrace their slavery.
Are you happy with the way the war in the former Ukraine is going? Most people aren’t—for one reason or another. Some people hate the fact that there is a war there at all, while others love it but hate the fact that it hasn’t been won yet, by one side or the other. Bounteous quantities of both of these kinds of haters are found on both sides of the new Iron Curtain that is hastily being built across Eurasia between the collective West and the collective East. This seems reasonable; after all, hating war is standard procedure for most people (war is hell, don’t you know!) and by extension a small war is better than a big one and a short war is better than a long one. And also such reasoning is banal, trite, platitudinous, vapid, predictable, unimaginative and… bromidic (according to the English Thesaurus).
Seldom is to be found a war-watcher who is happy with the progress and the duration of the war. Luckily, Russian state television shows a very significant one these almost daily. It is Russia’s president, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Having paid attention to him for over twenty years now, I can confidently state that never has he been so imbued with calm, self-assured serenity leavened with droll humor. This is not the demeanor of someone who feels at any risk of losing a war. The brass at the Ministry of Defense appear dour and glum on camera—a demeanor befitting men who send other men to fight and possibly to be wounded or to die; but off-camera they flash each other quick Mona Lisa smiles. (Russian men don’t give stupid American-style fish-eyed toothy grins, rarely show their teeth when smiling, and never in the presence of wolves or bears).
Given that Putin’s approval rating stands firm at around 80% (a number beyond reach of any Western politician), it is reasonable to assume that he is just the visible tip of a gigantic, 100-million-strong iceberg of Russians who calmly await the successful conclusion of the special military operation to demilitarize and denazify the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (so please don’t even call it a war). These 100 million Russians are seldom heard from, and when they do make noise, it is to protest against bureaucratic dawdling and foot-dragging or to raise private funds with which to remedy a shortage of some specialty equipment requested by the troops: night vision goggles, quadrocopters, optical sights, and all sorts of fancy tactical gear.
A great deal more noise is being made by the one or two percent whose entire business plan has been wrecked by the sudden appearance of the New Iron Curtain. The silliest of these thought that fleeing west, or south (to Turkey, Kazakhstan or Georgia) would somehow magically fix their problem; it hasn’t, and it won’t. The people we would expect to scream the loudest are the LGBTQ+ activists, who thought that they were going to use Western grant money to build East Sodom and East Gomorrah. They’ve been hobbled and muzzled by new Russian laws that label them as foreign agents and prohibit their sort of propaganda. In fact, the very term LGBTQ+ is now illegal, and so, I suppose, they will have to use PPPPP+ instead (“P” is for “pídor”, which is the generic Russian term for any sort of sexual pervert, degenerate or deviant). But I digress.
It can be observed rather readily that those who are the least happy with the course of the Russian campaign are also the least likely to be Russian. Least happy of all are the good folks at the Center for Informational and Political Operations of the Ukrainian Security Service who are charged with creating and maintaining the Phantom of Ukrainian Victory. These are followed by people in and around Washington, who are quite infuriated by Russian dawdling and foot-dragging. They have also been hard-pressed to show that the Ukrainians are winning while the Russians are losing; to this end, they have portrayed every Russian tactical repositioning or tactical withdrawal as a huge, humiliating defeat personally for Putin and every relentless, suicidal Ukrainian attack on Russian positions as a great heroic victory. But this PR tactic has lost effectiveness over time and now the Ukraine has become a toxic topic in the US that most American politicians would prefer to forget about, or at least keep out of the news.
To be fair, the Russian tactical cat-and-mouse games in this conflict has been nothing short of infuriating. The Russians spent some time rolling around Kiev to draw Ukrainian troops away from the Donbass and prevent a Ukrainian attack on it; once that was done, they withdrew. Great Ukrainian victory! They also spent some time tooling around the Black Sea coastline near Odessa, threatening a sea invasion, to draw off Ukrainian forces in that direction, but never invaded. Another Ukrainian victory! The Russians occupied a large chunk of Kharkov region that the Ukrainians left largely undefended, then, when the Ukrainians finally paid attention to it, partially withdrew behind a river to conserve resources. Yet another Ukrainian victory! The Russians occupied/liberated the regional capital of Kherson, evacuated all the people who wanted to be evacuated, then withdrew to a defensible position behind a river. Victory again! With all these Ukrainian victories, it is truly a wonder that the Russians have managed to gain around 100km2 of the former Ukraine’s most valuable real estate, over 6 million in population, secured a land route to Crimea and opened up a vital canal that supplies irrigation water to it and which the Ukrainians had blocked some years ago. That doesn’t seem like s defeat at all; that looks like an excellent result from a single, limited summer campaign.
Russia has achieved several of its strategic objectives already; the rest can wait. How long should they wait? To answer this question, we need to look outside the limited scope of Russia’s special operation in the Ukraine. Russia has bigger fish to fry, and frying fish takes time because eating undercooked fish can give you nasty parasites such as tapeworm and liver fluke. And so, I would like to invite you to Mother Russia’s secret kitchen, to see what’s on the cutting board and to estimate how much thermal processing will be required to turn it all into a safe and nutritious meal.
Mixing our food metaphors, allow me to introduce Goldilocks with her three bears and her porridge not to hot and not too cold. What Russia seems to be doing is keeping their special military operation moving along at a steady pace—not to fast and not too slow. Going too fast would not allow enough time to cook the various fish; going too fast would also increase the cost of the campaign in casualties and resources. Going too slow would give the Ukrainians and NATO time to regroup and rearm and prevent the proper thermal processing of the various fish.
In an effort to find the optimal pace for the conflict, Russia initially committed only a tenth of its professional active-duty soldiers, then worked hard to minimize the casualty rate. It opted to start turning off the lights all over the former Ukraine only after the Kiev regime tried to blow up the Kerch Strait bridge that linked Crimea with the Russian mainland. Finally, it called up just 1% of reservists to relieve the pressure from the frontline troops and potentially prepare for the next stage, which is a winter campaign—for which the Russians are famous.
With this background information laid out, we can now enumerate and describe the various ancillary objectives which Russia plans to achieve over the course of this Goldilocks War. The first and perhaps most important set of problems that Russia has to solve in the course of the Goldilocks War is internal. The goal is to rearrange Russian society, economy and financial system so as to prepare it for a de-Westernized future. Since the collapse of the USSR, various Western agents, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the US State Department, various Soros-owned foundations and a wide assortment of Western grants and exchange programs have made serious inroads into Russia. The overall goal was to weaken and eventually dismember and destroy Russia, turning it into a compliant servant of Western governments and transnational corporations that would supply them with cheap labor and raw materials. To help this process along, these Western organizations did whatever they could to drive the Russian people toward eventual biological extinction and replace them with a more docile and less adventurous race.
Starting well over 30 years ago, Western NGOs set to corrupting the minds of Russia’s young. No effort was spared to denigrate the value of Russian culture, to falsify Russian history and to replace them both with Western pop culture and propaganda narratives. These initiatives achieved limited success, and the USSR, and Soviet-era culture, has remained ever-popular even among those who were too young to have experienced life in the USSR firsthand. Where the damage has been most severe is in education. Excellent Soviet-era textbooks that taught students how to think independently were destroyed and replaced with imports. These were at best useful for training experts in narrowly defined fields who can follow previously defined procedures and recipes but can’t explain how these procedures and recipes were arrived at or to create new ones. Russian teachers, who saw their job not just in educating but in bringing up their students to be good Russians who love and cherish their country, were replaced by Western-trained educationalists who saw their mission as providing a competitive, market-based service in bringing up qualified, competent… consumers! Who are these people? Well, luckily, the Internet remembers everything, and there are plenty of other jobs for these people such as shoveling snow and stoking furnaces. But identifying and replacing them takes time, as does finding, updating and reproducing the older, excellent textbooks.
But what of the young people left behind by this wave of destruction? Luckily, not all is lost. The special military operation is providing them with some very valuable lessons that their ignorant educationalists left out: that Russia—a unique, miraculous agglomeration of many different nations, languages and religions—has been preserved and expanded over the centuries through the efforts of heroes whose names are not just remembered but venerated. What’s more, some of them are alive today, fighting and working in the Donbass. It is one thing to visit museums, read old books and hear stories about the great deeds of one’s grandfathers and great-grandfathers during the Great Patriotic War; it is quite another to watch history unfold through the eyes of your own father or brother. Give it another year or two, and Russia’s young people will learn to look with disdain on the products of Russia’s Western-oriented culture-mongers. Their elders do already: opinion polls show that a large majority of Russians see Western cultural influence as a negative.
And what of these Russian culture-mongers who have been worshiping all things Western for as long as they can remember? Here, a most curious thing happened. When the special military operation was first announced, they spoke out against it and in favor of the Ukrainian Nazis—a stupid thing to do, but they thought it good and proper to keep their political opinions harmonized with those of their Western patrons and idols so as to stay in their good graces. Some of them protested against the war (ignoring the fact that it had been going on for eight long years already). And then quite a few of them fled the country in unseemly haste.
Keep in mind that these are neither brain surgeons nor rocket scientists: these are people who prance around on stage while making noises with their hands and mouths; or they are people who sit there while makeup artists do things to their faces and hair, then endlessly repeat lines written for them by someone else. These are not people who have the capacity to analyze a tricky political situation and make the right choice. In an earlier, saner age their opinions would be steadfastly ignored, but such is the effect of the Internet, social media and all the rest, that any hysterical nincompoop can shoot a little video and millions of people, having nothing better to do with their time, will watch it on their phones and make comments.
The fact that these people are voluntarily cleansing the Russian media space of their presence is a positive development, but it takes time. If the special military operation were to end tomorrow, there is no doubt that they would attempt to come back and pretend that none of this ever happened. And then Russian popular culture would remain a Western-styled cesspool full of vacuous personae who seek to glorify every single deadly sin for the sake of personal notoriety and gain. Russia has plenty of talented people eager to take their place—if only they would keep out long enough for everyone to forget about them!
Particularly damaging to Russia’s future has been the emergence and preeminence of pro-Western economic and financial elites. Ever since the haphazard and in many cases criminal privatization of state resources in the 1990s, there was brought up an entire cohort of powerful economic agents who does not have Russia’s interests in mind. Instead, these are purely selfish economic actors who until quite recently thought that their ill-gotten gains would allow them to enter into posh Western society. These people usually have more than one passport, they try to keep their families in some wealthy enclave outside of Russia, they send their children to schools and universities in the West, and their only use for Russia is as a territory they can exploit in creating their wealth extraction schemes.
When in response to the start of Russia’s special military operation the West mounted a speculative attack on the ruble, forcing Russia’s central bank to impose strict currency controls, these members of the Russian elite were forced to start thinking about making a momentous choice. They could stay in Russia, but then they would have to cut their ties to the West; or they could move to the West and live off their savings, but then they would be cut off from the source of their wealth. Their choice was made easier by Western governments which worked hard to confiscate the property of rich Russian nationals, freeze their bank accounts and subject them to various other indignities and inconveniences.
Still, it’s a hard choice for them to make—realizing that, in spite of their sometimes fabulous wealth, for the collective West they are just some Russians that can be robbed. Many of them are mentally unprepared to throw in their lot with their own people, whom they have been taught to despise and to exploit for personal gain. A quick victory in Russia’s special military operation would allow them to think that their troubles were temporary in nature. Given enough time some of them will run away for good while others will decide to stay and work for the common good in Russia.
Next in line are various members of the Russian government who, having been schooled in Western economics, are incapable of understanding the economic transformation that is occurring in Russia, never mind helping it along. Most of what passes for economic thought in the West is just an elaborate smokescreen over this fundamental dictum: “The rich must be allowed to get richer, the poor must be kept poor and the government shouldn’t try to help them (much).” This worked while the West had colonies to exploit, be it through good old-fashioned imperial conquest, plunder and rapine, or through financial neocolonialism of Perkins’s “economic hit men,” or, as has recently been grudgingly admitted by several top EU officials, by taking advantage of cheap Russian energy.
That doesn’t work any more—not in the West, not in Russia or any place else, and mindsets have to adjust. There is a great deal of inertia in appointments to government positions, where there are many vested interests vying for power and influence. It takes time for such basic ideas to percolate through the system as the fact that the US Federal Reserve no longer has a planet-wide monopoly on printing money. Therefore, it is no longer necessary for Russia’s central bank to have dollars in reserve to cover their ruble emissions to defend it against speculative attack since it is no longer necessary for Russia’s central bank to allow foreign currency speculators to run rampant and stage speculative attacks.
But some results have already been achieved, and they are nothing short of spectacular: over the past few months, just a few well-chosen departures from Western economic orthodoxy have made the ruble the world’s strongest currency, have allowed Russia to earn more export revenue by exporting less oil, gas and coal, and have allowed it to drive inflation down to almost zero. Since the start of the special military operation, Russia has been able to reduce its national debt by a large amount and increase government revenues. A swift end to Russia’s special military operation may spell the end of such miracles and a most unwelcome return to the untenable status quo ante.
Beyond the intangible world of finance, equally significant changes have been occurring throughout the physical Russian economy. Previously, many economic sectors, including car sales, construction and home improvement, software development and many others, were foreign-owned and the profits from these activities left the country. And then a decision was made to block the expatriation of dividends. In response, foreign companies sold off their Russian assets, taking a huge loss and depriving themselves of access to the Russian market. The change has been quite stunning. For example, at the beginning of 2022, Western car companies owned a large share of the Russian auto market. Many of the cars that were sold had been assembled within Russia at foreign-owned plants and the profits from these sales were expatriated. Now, less than a year later, European and American automakers are pretty much gone from Russia, replaced by a swiftly reborn domestic auto industry. Chinese automakers have immediately grabbed a large market share for themselves, while South Korea continued to trade with Russia and has held on to its market share.
Equally stunning have been changes in the aircraft industry. Previously, Russian airlines were flying Airbuses and Boeings, most of them leased. After the start of the special operation Western politicians demanded that these leases be rescinded and the aircraft returned to their owners, neglecting to take into account the fact that this would be ruinous financially (glutting the market for used aircraft for years to come and destroying demand for new aircraft) and, furthermore, physically impossible, given that there was no way to effect the transfer of the aircraft. In response, the Russian airlines nationalized the aircraft registry, stopped flying to hostile destinations where their aircraft might be arrested, and started making lease payments in rubles to special accounts at the Russian central bank.
Then came the news that Aeroflot is panning to buy over 300 new passenger jets, all Russian МС-21s, SSJ-100s and Tu-214s, all before 2030, with the first deliveries slated for 2023. There has been a scramble to replace almost all Western-sourced components, such as composites for the carbon fiber wing of the MC-21 and jet engines, avionics and much else for all of the above. Over this period many of the previously leased Boeings and Airbuses will be phased out, but these companies’ market share in the largest country on Earth will be gone forever. Damage to Western aircraft manufacturers will be matched by the damage to Western airlines. At the outset of hostilities, the collective West closed its airspace to Russia, and Russia reciprocated. The problem is that Europe is small and easy to fly around while Russia is huge and flying around it takes a whole day. European airlines suddenly found that theу can’t compete on routes to Japan, China or Korea.
Following the closing of the airspace came other sanctions, from both the European Union and from the United States, all of them illegal, since the UN Security Council is the only body empowered to impose sanctions. Right now the European Union is working on the ninth packet of sanctions, all of which have been dubbed “sanctions from hell”. Speaking of hell, Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” there are nine circles of hell, so perhaps the sanctions juggernaut is about to run its course.
These sanctions were supposed to have swiftly destroyed the Russian economy and have caused so much social upheaval and suffering that the people would gather on Red Square and overthrow the dread dictator Putin (or so thought Western foreign policy experts). Clearly, nothing of the sort has happened and Putin’s approval rating is as high as ever. On the other hand, the good people of the European Union are indeed starting to suffer. They can no longer afford to heat their homes or to take regular hot showers, food has become outrageously expensive for them, and so much else is going wrong that huge crowds of protestors have been gathering all across Europe and demanding, among other things, an end to anti-Russian sanctions, normalization of relations with Russia and a return to business as usual. Their demands are unlikely to be met, since this would mean a major loss of face for the European leaders.
But there is a more important reason why the sanctions will stay: a return to business as usual would mean that Russia would once again provide energy and raw materials to Europe cheaply while allowing European companies to profit from the labor of Russians. This is quite unappealing and is therefore unlikely to happen. Russia is using the sanctions as an opportunity to rebuild its domestic industry and reorient its trade away from hostile nations and toward friendly nations that are fair and sympathetic in their dealings with Russia. It is also working hard to phase out the use of currencies that Dmitry Medvedev called “toxic”; namely, the US dollar and the euro.
Add to this list a wonderful new Russian innovation called “parallel import.” If some company, in complying with anti-Russian sanctions, refuses to sell its products to Russia or to service or upgrade its products in Russia, then Russia will buy these products and upgrades from a third or fourth or fifth party without permission from the US, the EU or the manufacturer. If a certain brand-name product becomes unavailable, the Russians simply rename the brand and make the same product themselves, or have the Chinese or another trade partner do it for them. And if the West refuses to license its intellectual property to Russia, then that intellectual property becomes free in Russia.
This works particularly well with software: free copies of brand-name software are just as good as the paid-for copies, and if tech support, training or other associated services become unavailable from the West, the Russians simply organize their own. Intellectual property of various sorts makes up a large portion Western notional wealth, and Western sanctions are having the effect of letting Russia make use of it free of charge. Thanks to modern digital technology, it works rather well with hardware too. Instead of painstakingly reverse-engineering products, now the same effect can be achieved by buying the 3D models on a thumb drive and 3D-printing them or automatically generating the mill and drill paths to create them on an NC mill. Putin likes to use the expression “tsap-tsarap” to describe this process. It is hard to translate directly but pertains to the act of a cat snatching its prey with its claws. The short of it is, what Russia previously had to pay for is now, thanks to sanctions, free to it.
Since the Goldilocks War is, after all, a sort of war, we need to briefly discuss its military aspects. Here, too, a steady-as-she-goes approach seems to be the most copacetic. The stated goal is to demilitarize and denazify the former Ukraine, and to some extent this has already been achieved: most of the armor and artillery that the Ukraine had inherited from the USSR has already been destroyed; most of the diehard Nazi battalions are either dead or a shadow of their former selves. Gone too are most of the volunteers that once fought on the Ukrainian side. After over 100000 Ukrainian soldiers “have been killed” since February 2022 (as forthrightly stated, then sheepishly denied, by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen), and after perhaps as many as half a million casualties, scores of service-age men bribing their way out of the country and several rounds of the draft, it is slim pickings. With well over a hundred Ukrainian casualties a day the pickings are bound to get even slimmer over time. Foreign mercenaries have been used to fill the gap—Anglos, Poles, Romanians—but there is a major problem with them: as Julius Caesar pointed out, lots of people are willing to kill for money but nobody wants to die for money—except an idiot, I would add. And on NATO’s Russian front an idiot and his life are soon parted. Up-to-date information on Russian casualties is a state secret and the only number divulged by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in late September 2022 was 5937 killed since the start of the campaign. Casualty rates are said to have been significantly lower since then.
At present, there is still no shortage of idiots on the Ukrainian side—yet—and neither is there a shortage of donated Western weaponry. First came used Soviet-era tanks and other weapons systems donated from all over Eastern Europe; then came actual Western weapons systems. And now throughout NATO one hears plaintive cries that they have nothing left that they can give to the Ukrainians: the cupboard is empty. Nor can they manufacture more weapons in a hurry. To start churning out weapons at the same rate as Russia is doing, these NATO members would first need to reindustrialize, and there are neither the human resources, nor the money to do so. And so the Russian army grinds away, demilitarizing the Ukraine, and the rest of NATO with it. In the process, it is perfecting the art of fighting a land war against NATO—not that a single NATO country would even entertain such an idea.
Perhaps this is mission creep, or perhaps this has been the plan all along, but what Russia is doing at this point is destroying NATO. You may recall that a year ago Russia demanded that the US honor certain security guarantees it made as a condition for allowing the peaceful reunification of Germany; namely, that NATO would not expand eastward. “Not an inch to the east” was how the official record of the meeting reads. Gorbachev and Shevardnadze failed to get this deal on paper and signed, but a verbal deal is a deal. A year ago Russia’s offer was quite moderate: that NATO withdraw to its pre-1997 borders, when it expanded to Eastern Europe.
But, as usually happens when negotiating with the Russians, their initial offer is usually the best. For all we know, based on how things are going in the Ukraine, Russia’s best and final offer may require NATO to disband altogether. After all, the Warsaw Pact disbanded 31 years ago but NATO is still around and bigger than ever; what for? To fight Russia? Well, then, what are they waiting for? Come and get it! This may not even take the form of a negotiation. For example, Russia could say, take a quick whack at Latvia (it richly deserves a whack or two for abusing its large native Russian population Nazi-style) and then stand back and say, “Come on, NATO, come and die heroically on our doorstep for poor little Latvia!” At this, NATO officials will stand united but very quiet, thoughtfully examining their own and each others’ shoes. Once it becomes clear that there will be no offers to launch World War III to avenge Latvia, NATO will quietly dry up and blow away.
Finally, we come to what is perhaps the least important reason for the Goldilocks War: the former Ukraine itself. In view of Russia’s other strategic goals, it seems more of the nature of a sacrificial piece in a chess gambit. Given what Russia has already achieved over the past nine months—four new Russian regions, six million new Russian citizens, a land bridge to Crimea, irrigation water supply to Crimea—there isn’t much left for Russia to achieve militarily before its military campaign reaches the stage of diminishing returns. The addition of Nikolaev and Odessa regions and full control of the Black Sea coastline would, of course, be most valuable; control of Kharkov and Kiev somewhat less so. Control of the entire Dniepr hydroelectric cascade is a definite nice-to-have. As for the rest, it could be left to languish for ages as a deindustrialized, depopulated wasteland, labeled “Mostly harmless.”
Let me divulge a personal detail or two. Two of my grandparents were from Zhitomir, my father was born in Kiev, my first romantic interest was a girl from Odessa, and over the years I’ve had as many friends from Odessa, Kharkov, Lvov, Kiev, Donetsk, Vinnitsa and elsewhere as anywhere else in Russia. Russia? You read that right: there is no way to convince me that so-called “Ukrainian territory” somehow isn’t Russia or that the people who live there somehow aren’t Russian—regardless of what some of them have been recently brainwashed to think. What’s more, none of these people I have known over the years ever thought of themselves as the least bit Ukrainian and they would probably view the very idea of a Ukrainian nationalist identity as symptomatic of a mental condition. The label “Ukrainian” was to them some Bolshevik nonse; since then, Ukrainianness has been turned into a Western method for exploiting minor ethnic variations in order to make one group of Russians fight another group of Russians.
In case you are doubtful, let’s apply the good old duck test: Do the people there walk, quack and look like Russians? All of that territory, with one minor exception in the far west, was part of Russia for anywhere between ten and three centuries; most of the people there, and virtually the entire urban population, speaks Russian as their native language; their religion is predominantly Russian Orthodox; they are genetically indistinguishable from the rest of the Russian population. So, what happened to them?
Unfortunately, a small piece of this Russian land spent three centuries in captivity to the Austro-Hungarian Empire or as part of Greater Poland, and this poisoned their minds with foreign ideas such as Catholicism and ethnic nationalism. Unlike Russia, which is a multinational, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse monolith, the West is a mosaic of ethnic nationalisms, and where there are nationalists there may be Nazis, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
As one drop of poison infects the whole tun of wine, these Western Ukrainians, with lots of help and funds from the German Nazis, then the Americans and the Canadians, managed to infect a large part of the formerly Ukrainian territory with a fake nationalism based on a forged history and a haphazardly concocted culture. Official bans on the teaching and, eventually, the use of Russian have brought up a generation of young people who are essentially illiterate in their native Russian. They are taught in Ukrainian, but Ukrainian literacy is close to an oxymoron, since nothing of any great consequence has ever been written or published in that language and the vast majority of Ukrainian literary works are, you guessed it, in Russian.
The Russian special military operation that’s been ongoing since February 2022 has polarized the entire population. Those who had decided to be with Russia back in 2014 were, obviously, overjoyed to finally get some help from Russia. The now Russian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson gladly voted to join Russia. But as far as the rest of the former Ukrainian territory, the polarization is mostly in the opposite direction. Those who wanted to be with Russia mostly voted with their feet and are now living somewhere in Russia.
This is something that time alone can fix. Eventually the population of the former Ukraine will be forced to make a choice: they can be Russian, or they can be refugees somewhere in Europe, or they can die fighting Russians at the front. Note that even Donetsk and Lugansk didn’t make this choice right away, the way Crimea did. At that time, only some 70% of their population was in favor of leaving the Ukraine and rejoining Russia. It took eight years of relentless Ukrainian bombing to convince them to make this choice.
Over these intervening years, the diehard “Ukrainians” filtered out, leaving behind a population that was close to 100% pro-Russian. It was only then that the Kremlin granted them official recognition, sent in troops to defend them from imminent invasion and, soon after, accepted them into the Russian Federation. And now the same sort of sorting operation has to take place throughout the rest of the former Ukraine. How long will it take? Only time will tell, but it is already clear that, as far as Russia is concerned, there is no compelling reason to rush.
Yesterday I received an email from a Ukrainian friend of mine. By “Ukrainian” I mean that his culture and self-identity is Ukrainian, he loves his heritage, speaks the language and loves his country. In fact, he is what I would call a “real Ukrainian” as opposed to the Ukronazis in power in Kiev. We correspond regularly and exchange opinions on what is taking place. Here is and excerpt of what I wrote to him yesterday:
“I am also heartbroken with the evolution of the war to liberate the Ukraine from NATO: while I have no doubts about the outcome, I am horrified at the thought of what this does to the civilian population. My sadness is even made deeper by the realization that to a large degree the people of the Ukraine did it to themselves. Russia tried REALLY HARD to not have a war, then she tried REALLY HARD to save the civilians and the civilian infrastructure. But the people under Nazi occupation believed all the propaganda coming out of the regime in Kiev and the West and now there will be hell to pay. For 6 months these naive people thought the Ukraine was winning because they could not even fathom that Russia was only using about 10% of her forces and trying really hard to save as many Ukrainians. But no, they were celebrating the murder of Dugina, the attack on the Crimean Bridge, the attacks on the ZNPP and now they are going to pay a horrible price for these delusions and, frankly, lack of decency/morality. As Douglas MacGregor said “the Russians are about to bring a sledge-hammer” to vaporize the NATO forces in the Ukraine. We did not want that. It was imposed on us. What else can I say? The Nazis will be crushed, but the costs of doing so will be needlessly high. Millions of refugees will be added to the millions who already fled. I feel utterly disgusted, sad and angry about this outcome As one Rock song I know (“Gates of Babylon” by Rainbow – see below) says: “sleep with the devil, and then you must pay, sleep with the devil and the devil will take you away“. I am sad to say that I believe that the people of the Ukraine did “sleep with the devil” (the West) and now comes the inevitable.
After sending my email, I kept thinking about utter insanity of the Ukrainian actions. An outside observer could be forgiven for thinking that the Ukrainian people have some kind of death wish, and if maybe not most people, then at least the leaders of the Ukraine. And then it hit me.
The Ukraine is doing what is known in the USA as “suicide by cop” which Wikipedia defines as “Suicide by cop or suicide by police is a suicide method in which a suicidal individual deliberately behaves in a threatening manner, with intent to provoke a lethal response from a public safety or law enforcement officer“.
This is what the FBI’s Law Enforcement Bulletin has to say about such a situation: (emphasis added)
Suicide by cop situations are more intense than other suicide calls. All parties are armed, or the victim appears to be armed. The individual is active, rather than passive, and aggressive toward police or others. Despite its unique features, SBC fits the template of suicidal behavior as a planned outcome to an unfolding psychological process. Prevention and intervention are possible at the same points as in suicide by other means. Theoretically, suicides are preventable; however, realistically they may not be avoidable because of the nature of the plan or the point where first responders encounter the suicidal individual. SBC often is unpreventable. This must be considered in the aftermath regarding the officers who were coerced to be the unwilling means.
And, just to clarify, I do NOT consider that Russia is some kind of “cop” who has to enforce the law on anybody else. Not at all. But I do see a moral parallel between the cop who does not want to kill the suicidal person with a gun, but might have no choice, and the fact that Russia simply had no other choice other than to take action when the Donbass was threatened with imminent invasion and Russia was threatened by Ukronazi plans to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Sometimes the only way to disarm a person is to use your own gun. That is exactly what happened here.
What makes this all even worse is that the dark forces in the West which created the Ukraine in the first place joined with the Nazis and Neocons (the two ugly twins who fight each other but look so much alike!) to push the Ukrainian people into a war which they never had any chance to win. The Ukrainian military was defeated by mid-March but that was not enough for the Hegemony, so they ordered waves of mobilizations and sent in THOUSANDS of “advisors” and “volunteers”. By mid-summer what had been a Ukronazi military was basically replaced by a de facto NATO force which is now also being “demilitarized”.
The AngloZionist Empire promised the Ukrainian people peace, prosperity and all the riches of the western propaganda (which is quite different from the West’s reality) and the ignorant people of the Ukraine (brainwashed first by Soviet, then Western propaganda) bought it all, “hook, line and sinker”. This is similar to two vicious adults promising a 5 year old some super tasty candy and telling that 5 year old that “all he has to do” in exchange for the candy was to throw a few stones at a sleeping bear and “don’t worry, if the bear wakes up we will protect you!“.
Now that bear is awake, and mighty angry at that: the 5 year old is getting eviscerated while the vicious adults who promised him “a land flowing with milk and honey” are watching (from what they – mistakenly – believe is safe distance) and laughing at it all.
This is truly demonic evil.
There are still those out there who cannot, or don’t want, to understand what is taking place.
So here I will share a video with you which has been circulating on the Internet which shows you exactly what this all looks like in reality.
See for yourself: (no need for translation other than “ВСУ” meaning “armed forces of the Ukraine”).
What this video shows are two attempts by the Ukrainian forces to attack: first LDNR forces and then the Wagner PMCs. What happens next is predictable: first, you see a small-arms exchange of fire, then the Russians use mortars. Russian very precise artillery strikes come next. Then full-scale MLRS attacks followed by even more strikes by a pair of Su-25 and one single Su-34. According to Russian sources, in this (very small) attack, all (most?) Ukrainians were killed while the Russians did not suffer any casualties. Notice that the Ukrainian soldiers, while definitely brave, have absolutely no support. Notice also the tiny size of the attacking force: the Ukrainians used to attack with several “brigades” (well, kind of), now they are down to squad/platoon level engagements!
And that kind of needless butchery happens every day, day after day after day after day.
My Ukrainian friend also asked me why Russia does not take out “Ze” and his gang.
I think that this is the crux of the problem: I believe that it should be the Ukrainian people themselves who should overthrow “Ze”, not the Russians. Just as it was infantile to believe that the EU would turn the Ukraine into a new Germany overnight, it is equally infantile to believe that “Putin will come and restore order”. Putin is the President of Russia, not the Ukraine, and it is not his job to rescue the Ukraine from the pit it fell into.
There are also three practical for not decapitating the Kiev regime (yet):
The regime has no agency anyway, do all which such a decapitating strike would achieve is cutting off an already quite dead head.
The Hegemony could quickly replace the old gang with a new one.
“Ze” & Co. are so fantastically incompetent that Russia could not hope to have a weaker, dumber and more incompetent adversary anyway.
It is, however, Putin’s job to protect Russia and the people of Russia. By pushing the Ukrainians towards more and more dangerous provocations the Neocons were fully aware that they were pushing the Ukrainians into a type of “suicide by bear” folly.
The sad truth is that Russia was given no other option than to do that which the Ukrainian people could not (or would not) do: denazify the Ukraine. And since the Ukraine could not be denazified, it had to be disarmed.
[Sidebar: oh and please don’t give me “but the Ukrainians could not do anything to resist” argument. Resistance is always possible, even under the harshest and most evil regimes. And when that resistance appears to be futile, then it remains a question of honor, of personal choice, of a moral obligation to resist as best one can. Resistance to evil is what defines our humanity. And if one really cannot, then, at the very least, every person has the option to “live not by lies“! Again, resistance, however humble and small, is always possible, and the people of the Donbass have proven it!]
This latest Neocon-originated bloodbath is already well into the hundred of thousands of people needlessly killed, maimed or displaced. This winter it will only get worse.
And what do you think the Ukronazis do to somehow mitigate this catastrophe?
This would all be quite hilarious if this was not also so horrible and if millions did not have to suffer from the actions of the shaitans ruling the West!
The FBI is quite correct. Suicide by cop is mostly unpreventable.
Was it right for Russia to try so hard to avoid a fullscale war? Yes.
Was it right for Russian to try to minimize the damage to the civilians and the Ukraine’s infrastructure? Yes again, absolutely!
Think about it: if Russia had attacked the Ukraine à la “shock and awe” from Day 1 and turned Kiev, Kharkov or Lvov into “Ukrainian Fallujahs” then it would have been much more credible to blame Russia for the massive “collateral damage” such an attack would inevitably entail.
Does anybody blame the cop for a “suicide by cop” death?
Of course not!
Yes, that policy of trying to spare the Ukraine did cost Russia a lot, not only in political terms but also in lost Russia lives.
But, at least, we tried.
Maybe that is the biggest difference between Russians and Ukrainians?
Andrei
***
The week-end is coming up and I normally share a few musical videos with you. Today I am going to post only one: the video of Rainbow I mentioned above. I would just note that according to the guitarist, Richie Blackmore, his solo on “Gates of Babylon” is his best solo ever. I very much agree. In terms of structure, the beginning of the song is based on a double harmonic major scale/mode, but then the solo switches to a sequence of chords/harmonies which are much more reminiscent of baroque music, specifically J.S. Bach (something which Richie Blackmore had already explored with Deep Purple, but which he truly mastered with this superb song). The singer is the late Ronnie James Dio, the best voice in all of Rock music in my humble opinion. Enjoy!
Judging by its name, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was only ever about the USA and the UK, an agreement between Americans and the half-American Churchill. After all, what relevance does the ‘North Atlantic’ have to Baltic Germany or Mediterranean Italy, let alone to Aegean Greece and Black Sea Turkey? Even Spain and Portugal look towards the Caribbean and the South Atlantic, not to the North Atlantic. NATO is clearly an organisation that descended directly from the Atlantic Charter, made up by Roosevelt and Churchill in a bay off Newfoundland in 1941 (not even in the Atlantic), and then imposed on all the others.
The End of NATO
So, whatever was the North Atlantic doing in the foothills of the Himalayas, in Afghanistan? Apart from the fact that that was its greatest defeat (so far), just what was it doing there? And what is the North Atlantic, or at least parts of it, doing in the South China Sea? Surely there is a clue in the name – China? It belongs to China. Whatever are the US Navy and others doing there?
Surely, even the geographically-challenged Liz Truss, who wanted the whole world to be ruled by NATO, must have been thinking that it was time to rename NATO? Perhaps the Nazi American Tyranny Organisation? Like that you could keep the same initials. As the Saker has pointed out, the first NATO Secretary-General, the Indian-born colonial, General Hastings (1) Ismay, bluntly admitted that the purpose of NATO was ‘to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’ (2).
And as the Saker has explained: ‘Keep the Germans down’ means crush all Europeans who might be rivals to the Anglosphere’s control of Western Europe, and now control all of Europe, apart from the free Russian Lands. ‘Keep the Americans in’ means crush all European liberation movements, De Gaulle’s or any others. ‘Keep the Soviet Union out’ means destroy Russia, so that it does not liberate Europe from the tyranny of the Anglosphere. The latter is symbolised by the US and British flags that have been omnipresent, even on fashion items, T-shirts and jeans, ever since the 1960s. That is why true Europeans refuse to wear such items.
In reality, it is obvious that NATO should have been packed away on 1 July 1991, the day the Warsaw Pact was packed away. If it had been packed away in 1991, the NATO rout would have been avoided thirty years later in Afghanistan. Indeed, the fact that it was not packed away then is a tragedy which has cost millions of lives, especially all over the tragic Middle East, and today all over the tragic Ukraine.
Interestingly, the answer to the aggression and bullying of NATO (the American elite always bullies), the Warsaw Pact was named after the Capital of Poland. Ironically – and there is nothing so ironic as history – today it is in the Warsaws of the ‘New Europe’, far from the North Atlantic, that you will find the most fanatical latecomer-devotees of NATO. What is the significance of NATO?
The American Republic of Poland
The name ‘Poland’ is cognate with the English word ‘plain’, so ‘Poland’ literally means ‘fields’. In other words, there is no geographical barrier between the German Lands and the Russian Lands, which begin with today’s Belarus and the Ukraine. In other words, there is no geographical barrier between Berlin and Moscow. There is only a purely artificial political barrier. The two peoples, Poles and Russians, are genetic brothers and sisters. Theirs, like the confrontation between the genetic brothers, the Croats and Serbs, is a purely manmade one.
It is part of the Poles’ gigantic inferiority complex (imagine living among a lot of fields between Germany and Russia) to imagine that Russia is interested in conquering Poland. Russia is really not interested in Poland. So, I hear you say, why did Imperial Russia participate in the three late 18th century Prussian and Austrian partitions of Poland? Why did Molotov and Ribbentrop partition it? Why did Stalin occupy it?
The answer is always the same. When you have been invaded by Western Europe as often as Russia has, you need to create a buffer-zone to protect yourself. As geography does not change, the Tsars and the Bolsheviks were forced by the same Western aggression and jealousy into doing the same thing – protecting themselves and that meant Eastern or all of Poland. In this, Tsar Nicholas II was a lot more successful than the Bolsheviks. Thus, in World War I, the Germans and Austrians never got into Russia at all, getting stuck mainly in eastern Poland and Lithuania and causing fewer than 670,000 Russian victims in two and a half years of war. It was a different story in World War II, with the Germans reaching the Volga and forty times more victims, 27 million of them.
This is an explanation, not a justification. Some of my best friends are Polish: though they belong to the small minority of Poles who know all the above and know that Poland today is merely an American vassal. I think they probably also know that if ever a Pole were to win the Nobel Peace Prize, it would be for one who had led Poland into making peace with Russia, rather than making war. That would be a Pole who pulled the plug on the Americans, chased them out of Poland and declared independence. And he would do the same with the US-run EU, the United States of Europe. Now that is the sort of Polish patriotism (utterly different from Polish nationalism), of which I approve, as it is concerned with asserting Polish national identity, not destroying it.
Sadly, there are those in today’s Polish political elite and military who dream of wiping Russia off the map, like medieval Catholic crusaders. They are just as delusional as those crusaders were. The Poles do not realise that the Americans (and the British) will drop them (and the Ukrainians) like hot bricks, when it comes to crunch. Just as they did in 1945, even though the British claimed that they had gone to war in 1939 only for the sake of defending Poland. That too had been a lie. When will the Poles ever learn who their real friends are? As the Saker has said: ‘The US/NATO do not have the manpower or firepower needed to take on Russia in a conventional combined arms war. Any use of nuclear weapons will result in immediate retaliation’. Today at least 1 in 33 people in Poland are Ukrainian ‘refugees’. A lot of Poles are fed up with that invasion. It is putting a great strain on the country.
The Future
At this very moment NATO is being demilitarised in the Ukraine. Ironically, the Ukraine is officially a Non-NATO country and one that contains some of the most Polish-hating people in the world. The Ukrainians who live on the Polish border (Galicians) even invented a new religion so that they would not be Catholics like the Poles (or Orthodox like the Russians). It is called ‘Greek Catholicism’. A weirder and more artificial mixture than that you will not find. As the Russians say: ‘Neither fish, nor meat’. So what happens when NATO collapses? Let us go back into the history of the last century, so much of which involved Poland, from Nazi-devastated Warsaw to Soviet-liberated Auschwitz, from Wroclaw (Breslau) to Gdansk (Danzig).
By the start of 1917, World War I had lasted for two and a half years and Russia was only a few months away from total victory and liberating Vienna, Berlin and Istanbul. However, the British-organised February Revolution (the then British ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, was the Victoria Nuland of a century later) put paid to it. And the utterly incompetent but Anglophile aristocrats the British had chosen to run Russia opened the floodgates to the October Revolution. Without British meddling, there would have been no Poland which between 1919 and 1920 occupied most of Belarus and Western Ukraine and stayed there until 1939. And if Russian troops had entered Vienna, Berlin and Istanbul, there would have been no Austrian corporal who in 1939 created the second part of World War I. And so no US invasion of Western Europe in 1944. And so no Soviet troops entering Vienna and Berlin in 1945 with violence. And so no war for the liberation of the Ukraine today.
The Austrian intrigues which helped lead to World War I played into the hands of the French and the British and destroyed the Saint Petersburg-Berlin axis. This was tragic because Berlin is the real centre of Western and Central Europe and everything else falls into place behind it, including Paris. (All Germans have to do to ensure their de facto leadership is to flatter the vanity of the French elite and tell them how important they are, that is enough). For harmony between Berlin and Saint Petersburg means harmony all over Western, Central and the northern part of Eastern Europe. Leaving aside Western Europe, there are also whole parts of Eastern and Central Europe which Russia is not interested in, because those Eastern and Central European cultures are alien to the Russian mentality and closer to German history and culture. These include, obviously, ex-Protestant Eastern Germany, as well as ex-Catholic Poland (including a slither of what is for the moment the far western Ukraine), Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as atheist Czechia.
Once you remove those countries from the equation, you come to those parts of Eastern Europe which Russia is interested in and feels closer to. These are: Belarus, the (Russian) Ukraine, the Baltics, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, southern Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Cyprus. You will be able to see why they belong to the Russian cultural world if you have a look at Samuel Huntingdon’s map of ‘The Eastern Boundary of Western Civilization’ (sic) (3). As the ethnocentric Professor says: ‘Europe ends where Western Christianity ends’. Here Russia will not need to build a wall, put up barbed wire and cement tank traps. It has friends on the other side of the border.
This was Stalin’s mistake – to create a Russian buffer zone which included countries whose majority culture was alien to the Russian, as listed above, instead of only those countries towards the south and east, as listed above. As an atheist Stalin had no more time or understanding for religious and cultural distinctions than modern Americans. A pity. South-eastern Europe, the above list of countries, will once more enter into the Russian sphere of influence, but those to the north and west belong elsewhere, the German and so Western European sphere.
Conclusion: After NATO
As NATO continues its collapse, which began in Kabul in August 2021, it will be clear that the US cannot hold on to Europe, just as it cannot hold on to Asia. The NATO wars will soon be over. NATO is being demilitarised and denazified now. In fact, it is being abolished now. Once the Berlin-Moscow axis has been re-established, the rest of Europe will follow, not into a Russian sphere of influence, but into an area which will want to form good relations with Russia, even the ex-American Republics of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and American Britain. This is because behind Moscow, lies Beijing and indeed the whole of Eurasia. And all of Europe needs both Beijing and Moscow, Beijing for manufactured goods, Moscow for energy. Europe is to return to its roots, turning its back on transatlantic irrelevance and meddling. That is soon to be its past. As the good Colonel said: ‘To hell with Washington’.
24 November 2022
Notes:
1. Naturally, Ismay was named after the greatest defeat in the history of the English people, Hastings. That is, after the greatest victory in the history of the Norman/British Establishment. And naturally, in 1947, General Ismay was given the Norman title of Baron for his service to the same Norman Establishment.
During this current relative reduction of hostilities in Ukraine, the calm before the storm so to speak, it may be useful to reflect upon the goals of the various geopolitical players, whether stated overtly or intended covertly. This may enable us to make educated guesses as to how events may ultimately unfold.
WHAT DOES RUSSIA WANT?
The party whose openly stated goals appear to align most closely with their defacto goals seems to be Russia, who at the start of the special military operation stated that they wanted the denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, the cessation of hostilities against and the autonomy of Donbass (respecting the rights of Russian speakers) and the long term neutrality of Ukraine with no possibility of it being part of NATO, whether defacto (as it currently is) or dejure. Implicit in the latter is the indivisibility of security, the guarantee that US/NATO intermediate range missiles or so-called anti-ballistic missiles (which in reality can be fitted with nuclear warheads and function as INF) will never be stationed in Ukrainian territory. The Russian status of Crimea was never negotiable.
Current situation: having attempted peace negotiations many times but being repeatedly rebuffed by the Oligarchic States of America / Ukraine / NATO (henceforth termed OUN) regarding all the concerns above, and facing ongoing genocidal aggression by the OUN against Donbass, Russia was forced to occupy and denazify much of Eastern/Southeastern Ukraine to protect Russian speaking civilians and Russia’s own security, discovering along the way more than 30 bio-pathogen labs near the border of Russia which had been funded by the USA (as admitted by droolin’ Nuland herself):
Subsequent referenda conducted in the the four liberated oblasts (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson) all overwhelmingly voted to join Russia. Hence ensuring the security of these territories in perpetuity is now a priority. It seems likely that the majority population in Russia will also demand the liberation of Odessa (which has a huge number of Russian speakers, constantly under violent threat by the UkroNazis. Please recall that 48 Russian speakers were killed by the firebombing of the trade union building in Odessa in 2014 by Ukronazis). Odessa was historically a Russian city. The return of Odessa to Russia will shrink the remaining territory of Ukraine to an impoverished land-bound “rump” state, if it continues to exist at all.
There was a time Ukraine had one of the greatest prospects of any European state, with large, fertile steppes producing massive quantities of grain for export, with the lucrative status as an energy hub to distribute Russian gas to Western Europe and a base for heavy industry in Donbass. All of this is now lost (as will likely be Ukraine’s remaining access to the Black Sea) because of a violent corrupt fascist puppet regime that was installed by the USA. The former bread basket of Europe is now the basket case of Europe.
Presently Russia is hammering the crap out of Ukraine, lobbing 3 times more missiles into Ukraine daily than Ukraine can muster (20,000 vs 7,000 according to Colonel Doug MacGregor). “Most missiles launched by Ukraine are ground to air anti-missile missiles” (many are outdated S-300s, one which supposedly went “astray” into Poland, killing two civilians). The OUN also continue to shell the Russian occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, even while insisting that the Russians are shelling themselves.
As far as the previous Russian “retreats” from Kharkov and Kherson were concerned, please see my footnote, to place these events in proper historical perspective.
Where to from here? The Russians only began to seriously target Ukrainian infrastructure (electricity, water etc) eight months into the SMO, after the OUN terrorist attacks against the Nordstream pipelines and Kerch bridge. When the OUN sent drones through the maritime corridor previously designated for peaceful grain export, in order to attack the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, the Russians then proceeded to demolish even more Ukrainian infrastructure. The big question is this: why has Russia not yet destroyed 100% of Ukrainian infrastructure, which it could easily have done months ago? To US analysts, this was a puzzle, because standard practice of the USA has always been to completely destroy vital civilian infrastructure from day one, as in the case of Yugoslavia or Iraq or Libya. Possible explanations for Russian reticence are:
Russia has far greater concern and respect for civilian lives than the USA has ever had, certainly much more so than the terrorist Ukronazis – who were deliberately bombing civilian areas in Donbass for the eight years prior.
Complete interruption of electrical and water supplies in Ukraine will inevitably lead to the abandonment of all western Ukrainian cities and a massive exodus of at least 8 million Ukrainians to the countries West. This, along with the economic and energy hardships now afflicting Western Europe (as a result of their sanctions against Russia backfiring), will lead to massive social unrest, possibly even the collapse of some Western European countries. This horrific prospect is a massive bargaining chip that Russia holds over the West and is a huge incentive for the OUN to sue for peace now, before the worst effects of Winter set in.
As shown above, it will be exceedingly easy for Russia to depopulate all of Ukraine all the way to Lviv, which will achieve the goal of the demilitarisation of Ukraine. This can be achieved right now, even without a single Russian soldier crossing West of the Dnieper river. However it appears that Russia’s preferred option is to achieve demilitarisation of Ukraine without depopulation, so as not to inflict excessive hardship on their cultural kin.
WHAT DO EUROPEANS WANT?
By “Europeans” we must distinguish between the so-called “leaders” of Europe and the ordinary people of Europe. The former are totally corrupt, bought-and-paid-for and in the pockets of the US neocons. The latter are largely clueless and brainwashed by their Mainstream media to adopt mindless anti-Russian hatred and bigotry. As far as can be seen right now, even if the European people could cobble together a vaguely coherent idea of what they may or may not want, their wishes are utterly irrelevant. They have no agency in how events are going to unfold, unless they can overthrow their US controlled puppet governments and install leaders who truly work in their interests. The solutions to the European problems are simple: reverse all sanctions against Russia, request that gas is delivered to them through Nordstream 2B and that the other 3 pipelines are repaired, and agree to total demilitarisation of Ukraine with removal of all Nazis and all NATO “advisers”. These are the best ways to prevent Russia from opening a floodgate of Ukro refugees into the West. Sanity is unlikely to prevail because the Germs in particular seem to be terminally stupid and spineless. So my advice to the Germs is this: get ready for a shitstorm of events: industrial and economic collapse and a massive influx of refugees who you will have to support with your dwindling tax base and rising inflation.
WHAT DO UKRAINIANS WANT?
This is no more relevant than the wishes of flotsam tossed about by a stormy sea .
WHAT DOES THE USA WANT?
There is a huge disconnect between the officially stated goals and covertly pursued goals of the USA, as befits a two faced “non agreement capable” imperialist oligarchy. The official line from the US is that they are engaging in a noble struggle to “free” Europe from being held to ransom by an “unreliable” energy provider, Russia, and that this is a global confrontation between Western “Democratic” and Eastern “Authoritarian” regimes for the future of the world. That is of course total bullshit. In reality, the exact opposites apply. All actions by the US with regard to Russia and Ukraine, dating back not just to 2014 but to 1991, were deceitfully ignoble, the US is utterly focused on the enslavement, not the liberation of Europe (to be permanently kept under the jackboot of US hegemony), Russia has always been a completely reliable provider of cheap energy to Europe and the Oligarchic States of America are completely undemocratic: they neglect the well being of their own citizens while donating hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars to the US MIC. “Authoritarian” Putin has always been careful to address the wishes of the Russian public (via the Duma) and the wishes of the majority populations of Crimea and Donbass (via referenda, which were much better conducted and more legitimate than the recent suspect and dodgy US mid-term elections https://podbay.fm/p/the-duran-podcast/e/1668956802 ).
Some short term goals of the US neocons, as far as sabotaging the sale of Russian energy to Europe and railroading the Europeans into buying very expensive fracked US LNG, seem to have been successful. However this will not work in the medium to long term because expensive fracked LNG can never generate industrial products economically competitive with products manufactured using much cheaper energy eg by China using piped Russian gas. Hence the medium and long term collapse of the German industrial economy is certain (hence they will eventually be unable to buy expensive US LNG) if the Germs continue down this foolish path. I previously devoted an article to the real motivations of the US neocons and oligarchs who have hijacked US policy.
The medium term US tactics and goals were these: to confiscate more than $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves and to impose economic sanctions (more than 10 thousand so far) which would turn the “Ruble to rubble” (as stated by sleepy Joe) and trigger Russian economic collapse. This would create public unrest in Russia which would enable a US sponsored colour revolution to depose Putin in favour of a US designated puppet (echoes of “Yats is our guy, fuck the EU” droolin’ Nuland). Astroturf revolutions are an old tactic taken directly from the CIA playbook, dating back to the antics of Kermit Roosevelt in Tehran. Embroiling Russia in a lengthy resource-sapping war in Ukraine, perpetrated by US terrorist proxies, was designed to weaken Russia as Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin so transparently admitted. Stinkin’ Blinken also admitted the Ukraine situation was a US/NATO proxy war with Russia, just as he had crowed about how the bombing of Nordstream represented a “tremendous opportunity” for the US to sell LNG to Europe.
The US long term goal would eventually be to fragment Russia into smaller states (just as the USSR had previously been broken up, following its embroilment in a lengthy resource-sapping war in Afghanistan, perpetrated by US terrorist proxies). Those smaller post Russian banana republics would each have puppet leaders appointed by the USA, who would then foil the “belt and road” initiative of China, the next target of the US neocons. All of this devious skulduggery has been outlined in many a Beltway think-tank document, especially that from the Rand corporation.
Not only have every single one of those US goals failed, they have backfired spectacularly. Especially laughable is smellin’ Yellin’s “oil price cap” policy, which is being ignored by everybody. The only sane strategy is to negotiate peace with Russia. Nevertheless the position of the US at present remains unchanged: any peaceful economic links between Germany and Russia must be sabotaged at all costs, because it would create an economic-industrial behemoth that, along with China, would sideline the USA into irrelevance on the world stage. The only excuse Germany has for “sanctioning” Russian gas today is the so-called “aggression” of Russia in Ukraine. If a peaceful outcome in Ukraine is achieved, there will no longer be any excuse for Germany to deny itself Russian gas. Hence, from the POV of the USA, peace in Ukraine must be avoided at all costs. The consequence of refusing to achieve a peaceful settlement, of obstinately continuing to lob missiles against the Russians, will be this: the complete and utter destruction of Ukraine by Russia, with massive out-flux of refugees into Western Europe. Does the US care if there are economic and humanitarian catastrophes in the making (and of their making) in Western Europe? Absolutely not. Not only is the USA happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, the USA is happy to fight Russia to the last European.
THE SPECIAL CASE OF TURKEY:
Turkey has been a long standing NATO member. Readers will remember from history that the stationing of US nuclear capable missiles in Turkey was the catalyst for the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Today, Turkey and the OUN are best described as “frenemies”, now leaning towards being enemies. The USA sees Turkey as an unreliable ally and was particularly miffed by the Turkish insistence on buying Russian energy in Rubles, of continuing to honour Mir transactions and its intention to become a Russian natural gas hub, supplying south eastern Europe via the Turkstream pipeline. Erdogan firmly believes that the attempted coup against him in 2016 was perpetrated by Gulenists sponsored by the USA. The recent terrorist bombing in Istanbul which killed 6 and injured 81 was traced to an individual that the Turks claimed was a Kurd from northern Syria who was a proxy of the AngloZionists. We do not know if this is true, but what matters is that the Turks believe this to be true and it is certainly consistent with the history of the US using terrorist proxies. Accordingly, when the US ambassador to Turkey offered his condolences for the bombing, the Turkish interior minister flatly rejected it, saying that Turkey knew who did it, expressing disgust for such US hypocrisy. All US interactions with Turkey in recent years have counter productively served to push it closer towards Russia and the BRICS+ countries.
CONCLUSION: The USA is the worst terrorist state in the world, they represent the greatest threat of global nuclear war to every one of us (USAnians included) – which could cause human extinction. Being an enemy of the USA is dangerous, but being an ally (especially if you are a Germ or a Ukie) is fatal. The Turks are discovering this to their chagrin and are wising up.
Footnote: The AngloEuroZionist mainstream media and their stooge pundits always crow loudly over every transient Pyrrhic victory “won” by the Ukie proxies, while demonstrating a profound ignorance of history and strategy and reality. General Surovikin is nothing if not rational. Given a choice between precariously holding on to Kherson city located on the “wrong” side of the river (which can and will later be recaptured) and preserving the lives of Russian soldiers, he chose his soldiers. All civilians who appreciated the protection of Russia were evacuated. Die hard Ukie ideologues who prefer to freeze and starve this winter in an eviscerated city were allowed to stay.
This echoes the much higher stakes situation of 1812 when General Kutuzov had to choose between Moscow and his army and he chose his army. He allowed Napoleon to march into Moscow which had been stripped of any and all resources that could support the French, who eventually had to withdraw, enabling Russian forces to recapture Moscow. The Russians slaughtered the French as they withdrew. Today’s Ukie/NATO forces are tactically and strategically far more stupid than Napoleon.
Remember the “massive victory” of Ukies advancing into Kharkov oblast empty cow paddocks not long ago? The Russians had staged a tactical withdrawal* and suffered almost no casualties, but enticed the Ukies into open territory where the Ukies were sitting ducks to Russian artillery and rockets. The Ukies lost around 8000 dead. With such a great “success”, it is just a matter of time before the Ukies suicide their way to moribund victory.
(*this was a classic Mongol tactical “withdrawal” which the Kievan Rus had learned from history to their great cost, and now inflicted upon the stupid Ukies to their great cost.)
BTW, Kiev was founded by the primordial Rus, it was the first capital city of the Russian people who were then known as the Kievan Rus. That is historical fact.
EAB is not Russian, knows no Russians and has never been to Russia. Inspired by Tolstoy, he is learning more about Russian history day by day.
Decolonisation: The Western Withdrawal from Asia, Africa and Europe
The Western European Empires have gone. The bankrupt Spanish Empire went first, in the century before last, the Germans lost their colonies in 1919 (at the same time as the Austro-Hungarians lost their European colonies), then the Italians lost their fantasies in Africa during the Second World War, the Germans got kicked out of their colonies in Eastern Europe in 1945, but the Portuguese much later, only getting kicked out of Africa in the 1970s. By that time the Dutch, the British, the Belgians and the French had also been kicked out of their colonies. Only the NATO Danes still hold on to Greenland, which is a lot of ice and snow and all of 56,000 people, though both Eisenhower and Trump wanted to buy it. However, since the US has its base at Thule, it effectively controls the country anyhow.
Since 1947 the UK has been kicked out of almost everywhere, infamously from the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, from Palestine in 1948 and humiliatingly, by their Americans ‘allies’, from Suez in 1956. All that remains is, for the moment, a small group of tiny enclaves and islands like Bermuda, the Caymans, Gibraltar, St Helena, the Falklands etc, about 18,000 square kilometres and fewer than 300,000 people in all, plus a lot of ice in the ‘British Antarctic Territory’.
As for France, after its humiliation in South-East Asia in 1954, it has gradually been kicked out of Africa (1946-2022) (Suez in 1956, Algeria in 1962 etc) and soon, even after its decades of assassinating independentist African politicians and military interventions, it will have nothing left there, though it still has a few islands in various oceans here and there.
As for the short-lived US Empire, over the last fifty years it has largely been kicked out of several Asian countries (Vietnam (1975), Iran (1979), Iraq (2011-2021) Afghanistan (2021), now out of Russia (2022), and soon out of China, India and Saudi Arabia. True, it still hangs on in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel, but not for much longer. Eurasia is to be US-free.
As regards the Western withdrawal from Europe, the UK left Europe in 2020. It still hangs on to Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and above all to England, but it will not last. Now it is the turn of the US to be kicked out of Europe. It is happening in the Ukraine at this very moment, but this rejection will later spread to Western Europe. Then it will be the turn of the EU to be kicked out of Europe and ultimately the US will be kicked out of the Americas, especially out of the US.
Do not be surprised by the words ‘the Western withdrawal from Europe’ or ‘the UK being kicked out of the UK, the EU out of the EU and the US out of the US’. This is not gibberish. I am talking about the removal of the three parasitic Establishment elites in all those three manmade unions. Once those elites have gone, those purely manmade unions will fall and the newly sovereign peoples of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the peoples of Continental Western Europe and all those in Northern America can be liberated from their zombification and so will be able to retrieve their roots, their identity, their sovereignty and their selves again.
Desperation
When the USA gets desperate, it always turns to terrorism, much as gunboat Britain did and still, very weakly, attempts to do. Without mentioning the CIA-created quagmires in Latin America or in Asia or mentioning the details of the Gulf of Tonkin (1), we recall its quagmires just in Europe: the installation of the Greek junta in 1967, the CIA overthrow of De Gaulle in France in 1968, the assassination of Aldo Moro in Italy in 1978, the assassination of Olof Palme in 1986, and much more recently MH17, its terrorist attacks on the Nordstream pipelines and the Crimea Bridge, and now its attempt to force Russia to use nuclear weapons, so that the Zionist neocons in Washington can at last find an excuse to use their nuclear toys.
Those who want modern Russia to behave like Stalin’s Soviet Union and blast their brother-people of the Ukraine off the map, as the USSR did in Berlin in 1945 (though in truth most of the damage had already been done by Anglo-American terrorist bombing) need a gentle reminder. Despite US fantasies and intimidation, I have news – the Soviet Union is dead and President Putin definitely does not want it back. He, after all, lived through its end when he was in East Germany and remembers just how awful it was. Russia’s aim has never been either the occupation of the Ukraine (unlike the Soviet aim in Eastern Europe in 1945, which was to create a buffer zone for self-protection from the aggressive West), or the destruction of the Ukraine, or the massacre of its Ukrainian brothers. Let us remind ourselves yet again of Russia’s three aims in this conflict against the US puppet regime in Kiev, that is, of the aims of the Russian campaign for the liberation of Russia’s brothers and sisters in the Ukraine from the Fascist junta. These three aims were, and are, and will be:
1. The Liberation of the Donbass
This has been 75% achieved, indeed, since the liberation has turned out to be not just that of Lugansk (99% achieved) and Donetsk (75% achieved), but also of 99% of Kherson and 75% of Zaporozhie, we could say that it has been 85% achieved. Why has the liberation turned into Donbass x 2, of four provinces instead of two? Simply because the Kiev junta continually threatened the Crimea and the Donbass and they had to be protected. And if Kiev continues to shell Donbass x 2 and occupy its empty fields, the Russian campaign will have to be the liberation of Donbass x 3 or even Donbass x 4.
2. The Demilitarisation of the Ukraine
This is well on its way, at least 50% completed already. In fact, it was completed as regards the NATO-fortified Kiev military by 25 March. However, since, as Russia expected, NATO decided to resupply Kiev with their own military stocks, now already much depleted, demilitarisation is still under way. But it is only a question of time.
3. Denazification
There is some confusion here. What does this term mean? Does it mean Russia sending out teachers to instruct Ukrainians in the difference between Nazi racism and the normal human acceptance of people from other countries and their cultures? No, it does not. Denazification in today’s Western context is different from that. It is the process by which the infantile Westernised child learns to stop putting its fingers into the flame. In other words, the West has to teach itself and learn from bitter experience. This is how Denazification (and from there regime-change) will be implemented throughout today’s Western world.
For example, over the last three months the yen, the euro and the pound sterling have all been reaching historic lows against the US dollar. This is because US interest rates are higher than elsewhere and so its financial markets are attracting international investment capital. After all, why invest in European countries, which are energy-dependent but forced to boycott their main source of energy? You do not want to invest in self-bankrupting countries, which are set on a suicidal course. The USA is not as yet perceived to be self-bankrupting (though its turn will come). What is the denazifying result of all this? Let us look at the ‘case’ – and it is a ‘case’, in the medical and pathological sense – of the UK.
Hopelessness
Having ditched its drunken loser Johnson, over the summer the UK Establishment wasted two months in the middle of a huge political and economic crisis allowing 80,000 mainly elderly and wealthy people to select an incompetent Prime Minister for 68.7 million people – such is UK democracy, which apparently the rest of the world, especially ‘autocrats’ in Russia and China, urgently need to learn from. Thus, as soon as Truss, the worst possible candidate for Prime Minister, had been carefully selected over the two summer months, many commentators, including myself, doubted that she could last until Christmas. It now seems that that pessimism may have been very optimistic. Some latest estimates reckon that at best she may not last until 1 November.
Truss’ decision to increase government spending – not least to double the UK ‘Defence’ (who is attacking the UK anyway?) budget to £50 billion by 2030 – to send over £3 billion of military supplies to Kiev so far this year, to subsidise 100,000 Ukrainian ‘refugees’, and at the same time to make tax cuts for the rich (what else would you expect the Conservative Party to do?) has not been accepted by Biden, the IMF and, above all, by the markets.
Therefore, on 14 October Truss ditched her own Minister of Finance of 38 days for his decision to carry out her own illiterate economic policy – illiterate, as precisely and prophetically described last July by Truss’ rival as Conservative Prime Minister, the former Finance Minister, Sunak. So, on 14 October, Truss appointed a new British Finance Minister, the fourth in four months, a man notorious for contributing to the destruction the UK’s abysmal Health ‘Service’ (2). He will now do exactly the opposite of everything she had promised just three weeks before and on which impossible promises the intellectually challenged elected her.
Naturally, the hopeless Truss blames all her problems on ‘global factors’ and especially on ‘Putin’s appalling invasion of the Ukraine’. No mention of voluntary and suicidal Western sanctions at all. After all, would she want to admit to her own colossal stupidity? Here we see how Denazification and, as a result regime change, are already happening in the UK, all by themselves, just as they will in the EU and in the USA. All Russia has to do is to sit back and watch Western leaders destroying themselves and dragging down their countries with them, until their peoples rise up in revolt, as is beginning to happen all over Western Europe, and as will happen in the US (we had a presage of this at the Capitol last year) and in its other colonies. This is Denazification, though perhaps more precisely it should be called ‘Auto-Denazification’. Or perhaps it could just be called ‘Hopelessness’? Or maybe just ‘Trussification’?
16 October 2022
Note:
1. A quick read of William Blum’s Killing Hope,US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II or Stephen Kinzler’s Overthrow,America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq should be enlightening here.
2. A young friend in the UK phoned me on 14 October. He told me how after weeks and weeks of chronic pain, he was eventually diagnosed by a UK hospital doctor as having cancer. He was then told that he had six months to live, but that surgeons would not have enough time to operate, as ‘the waiting list is too long’, and was then given ‘pain-killers’ that did not work as consolation for his death-sentence. The next day, through a friend, he booked a flight to Romania. There, arriving from the airport, he was seen in a clinic at once and given an MRI scan. He was immediately informed that he had a hernia. The surgeon apologised to him that he could not operate on him the next day, but that he would have to wait until the day after. Just another example of the UK’s ‘world class’ health system….Trussification indeed.
Damascus had rejected the – American – plan for a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline, to the benefit of Iran-Iraq-Syria (for which a memorandum of understanding was signed).
What followed was a vicious, concerted “Assad must go” campaign: proxy war as the road to regime change. The toxic dial went exponentially up with the instrumentalization of ISIS – yet another chapter of the war of terror (italics mine). Russia blocked ISIS, thus preventing regime change in Damascus. The Empire of Chaos-favored pipeline bit the dust.
Now the Empire finally exacted payback, blowing up existing pipelines – Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Steam 2 (NS2) – carrying or about to carry Russian gas to a key imperial economic competitor: the EU.
We all know by now that Line B of NS2 has not been bombed, or even punctured, and it’s ready to go. Repairing the other three – punctured – lines would not be a problem: a matter of two months, according to naval engineers. Steel on the Nord Streams is thicker than on modern ships. Gazprom has offered to repair them – as long as Europeans behave like grown-ups and accept strict security conditions.
We all know that’s not going to happen. None of the above is discussed across NATOsan media. That means that Plan A by the usual suspects remains in place: creating a contrived natural gas shortage, leading to the de-industrialization of Europe, all part of the Great Reset, rebranded “The Great Narrative”.
Meanwhile, the EU Muppet Show is discussing the ninth sanction package against Russia. Sweden refuses to share with Russia the results of the dodgy intra-NATO “investigation” of itself on who blew up the Nord Streams.
At Russian Energy Week, President Putin summarized the stark facts.
Europe blames Russia for the reliability of its energy supplies even though it was receiving the entire volume it bought under fixed contracts.
The “orchestrators of the Nord Stream terrorist attacks are those who profit from them”.
Repairing Nord Stream strings “would only make sense in the event of continued operation and security”.
Buying gas on the spot market will cause a €300 billion loss for Europe.
The rise in energy prices is not due to the Special Military Operation (SMO), but to the West’s own policies.
Yet the Dead Can Dance show must go on. As the EU forbids itself to buy Russian energy, the Brussels Eurocracy skyrockets their debt to the financial casino. The imperial masters laugh all the way to the bank with this form of collectivism – as they continue to profit from using financial markets to pillage and plunder whole nations.
Which bring us to the clincher: the Straussian/neo-con psychos controlling Washington’s foreign policy eventually might – and the operative word is “might” – stop weaponizing Kiev and start negotiations with Moscow only after their main industrial competitors in Europe go bankrupt.
But even that would not be enough – because one of NATO’s key “invisible” mandates is to capitalize, whatever means necessary, on food resources across the Pontic-Caspian steppe: we’re talking about 1 million km2 of food production from Bulgaria all the way to Russia.
Judo in Kharkov
The SMO has swiftly transitioned into a “soft” CTO (Counter-Terrorist Operation) even without an official announcement. The no-nonsense approach of the new overall commander with full carte blanche from the Kremlin, General Surovikin, a.k.a. “Armageddon”, speaks for itself.
There are absolutely no indicators whatsoever pointing to a Russian defeat anywhere along the over 1,000 km-long frontline. The spun-to-death withdrawal from Kharkov may have been a masterstroke: the first stage of a judo move that, cloaked in legality, fully developed after the terrorist bombing of Krymskiy Most – the Crimea Bridge.
Let’s look at the retreat from Kharkov as a trap – as in Moscow graphically demonstrating “weakness”. That led the Kiev forces – actually their NATO handlers – to gloat about Russia “fleeing”, abandon all caution, and go for broke, even embarking on a terror spiral, from the assassination of Darya Dugina to the attempted destruction of Krymskiy Most.
In terms of Global South public opinion, it’s already established that General Armageddon’s Daily Morning Missile Show is a legal (italics mine) response to a terrorist state. Putin may have sacrificed, for a while, a piece on the chessboard – Kharkov: after all, the SMO mandate is not to hold terrain, but to demilitarize Ukraine.
Moscow even won post-Kharkov: all the Ukrainian military equipment accumulated in the area was thrown into offensives, just for the Russian Army to merrily engage in non-stop target practice.
And then there’s the real clincher: Kharkov set in motion a series of moves that allowed Putin to eventually go for checkmate, via the missile-heavy “soft” CTO, reducing the collective West to a bunch of headless chickens.
In parallel, the usual suspects continue to relentlessly spin their new nuclear “narrative”. Foreign Minister Lavrov has been forced to repeat ad nauseam that according to Russian nuclear doctrine, a strike may only happen in response to an attack “which endangers the entire existence of the Russian Federation.”
The aim of the D.C. psycho killers – in their wild wet dreams – is to provoke Moscow into using tactical nuclear weapons in the battlefield. That was another vector in rushing the timing of the Crimea Bridge terror attack: after all British intel plans had been swirling for months. That all came to nought.
The hysterical Straussian/neocon propaganda machine is frantically, pre-emptively, blaming Putin: he’s “cornered”, he’s “losing”, he’s “getting desperate” so he’ll launch a nuclear strike.
It’s no wonder the Doomsday Clock set up by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 is now placed at only 100 seconds from midnight. Right on “Doom’s doorstep”.
This is where a bunch of American psychos is leading us.
Life at Doom’s doorstep
As the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder is petrified by the startling Double Fail of a massive economic/military attack, Moscow is systematically preparing for the next military offensive. As it stands, it’s clear that the Anglo-American axis will not negotiate. It has not even tried for the past 8 years, and it’s not about to change course, even incited by an angelic chorus ranging from Elon Musk to Pope Francis.
Instead of going Full Timur, accumulating a pyramid of Ukrainian skulls, Putin has summoned eons of Taoist patience to avoid military solutions. Terror on the Crimea Bridge may have been a game-changer. But the velvet gloves are not totally off: General Armageddon’s daily aerial routine may still be seen as a – relatively polite – warning. Even in his latest landmark speech, which contained a savage indictment of the West, Putin made clear he’s always open for negotiations.
Yet by now, Putin and the Security Council know why the Americans simply can’t negotiate. Ukraine may be just a pawn in their game, but it’s still one of Eurasia’s key geopolitical nodes: whoever controls it, enjoys extra strategic depth.
The Russians are very much aware that the usual suspects are obsessed with blowing up the complex process of Eurasia integration – starting with China’s BRI. No wonder important instances of power in Beijing are “uneasy” with the war. Because that’s very bad for business between China and Europe via several trans-Eurasian corridors.
Putin and the Russian Security Council also know that NATO abandoned Afghanistan – an absolutely miserable failure – to place all their chips on Ukraine. So losing both Kabul and Kiev will be the ultimate mortal blow: that means abandoning the 21st Eurasian Century to the Russia-China-Iran strategic partnership.
Sabotage – from the Nord Streams to Krymskiy Most – gives away the desperation game. NATO’s arsenals are virtually empty. What’s left is a war of terror: the Syrianization, actually ISIS-zation of the battlefield. Managed by braindead NATO, acted on the terrain by a cannon fodder horde sprinkled with mercenaries from at least 34 nations.
So Moscow may be forced to go all the way – as the Totally Unplugged Dmitry Medvedev revealed: now this is about eliminating a terrorist regime, totally dismantle its politico-security apparatus and then facilitate the emergence of a different entity. And if NATO still blocks it, direct clash will be inevitable.
NATO’s thin red line is they can’t afford to lose both Kabul and Kiev. Yet it took two acts of terror – on Pipelineistan and on Crimea – to imprint a much starker, burning red line: Russia will not allow the Empire to control Ukraine, whatever it takes. That’s intrinsically linked to the future of the Greater Eurasia Partnership. Welcome to life at Doom’s doorstep.
The only force that has a vital interest in doing so is the US / NATO conglomerate – to make sure, there is no way Germany could change their mind and go back on their decision to let their people freeze to death this winter, and to economically destroy Germany, THE economic force and leader of Europe.
You, and your analysts know that.
Unfortunately, there is no common people’s influence on our reporting. There are stronger forces that have bought into your mind-bending journalism.
Still, once a supporter of the NYT, I feel I want to tell you.
Here too, these are not “proxy” Russians who signed a sham petition to be annexed to Russia. You know it very well.
These are real Russians, living in the far Eastern part of Ukraine, the Donbas area mostly, who have been discriminated ever since the US instigated the Maidan coup on 22 February 2014 – when a neo-Nazi government was installed that let the Nazi Asov Battalions literally slaughter Ukraine’s own people in Donbas — at least 14,000 were reported killed – about half of them children – in the eight years since the “Victoria Nuland” (“Fuck Europe”) coup. See this.
We are talking about the same Asov Battalions, that helped Hitler during WWII fight against Russia.
Already in 2014 / 2015 the Donbas districts wanted to join Russia. President Putin did not allow it, because at that time he still believed in the “Minsk” Agreements, sponsored by France and Germany.
These agreements were principally meant to protect the Donbas people, as well as to demilitarize – de-Nazify – Ukraine, and to keep NATO out of Ukraine. None of the conditions of the Minsk Agreements (September 2014 and April 2015) were ever adhered to.
If truth-seeking geopolitical analysts around the globe know the real background, you, Editor-in-chief of the NYT, and your journalists, know the real story too. Still, you report lies and half-truths to further influence and promote people’s opinion against Russia.
The New York Times has become weaponized against Russia and China, by your mere reporting.
Don’t you think that this will eventually backfire?
*
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Featured image is from FAIR
The original source of this article is Global Research
Today I will keep it very short using my favorite bullet-style points:
By most credible accounts, the recent Ukronazi+NATO attack in the Kharkov area was even more costly in KIA/MIA, wounded and lost hardware than the attack towards Kherson. The combined losses from these attacks are staggering.
Yet there are all the signs that the Ukronazi+NATO forces are preparing for even more such attacks.
The Ukronazi+NATO seem happy to trade human lives for territorial gains, no matter how small or how irrelevant that territory is.
The Russians seem happy to trade space and time to protect the lives of their soldiers and equipment.
We could say that the Ukronazi+NATO are trading bodies for shells.
Let’s remember the two goals set by Putin for the SMO: denazify and demilitarize. Both of these goals are human-focused, not terrain-focused. In other words, if a tactical-level withdrawal allows the Russian to kill scores of Ukronazi+NATO personnel and destroy their equipment, they will gladly accept the trade.
The other goal was to protect the LDNR. Kherson is not part of the LDNR.
Territory can be reconquered, equipment is hard to replace, especially complex weapon-systems.
And soldiers cannot be resurrected.
It is absolutely clear that Ukronazi+NATO are “betting the farm” into these offensives. Not only is the coming winter a major threat for them, but the political chaos in the EU and the US this fall and winter means that now is the time to try has hard as possible to conceal the magnitude of the disaster for the Ukronazi+NATO.
So, most of what is taking place now can be summed up in this simple question: who will run out of resources first: the Ukronazi+NATO in terms of manpower and equipment or the Russians in terms of firepower (mostly artillery, missiles and airpower)?
Well, aggressive Ukrainian efforts to the tunes of the Western customers seem to have borne their first fruits – Russia’s extremely careful attitude to infrastructure on the territory of the Former Ukraine is now in the past and a wild field and new dark era are peeking around the corner.
The Unian (Ukromedia) on line – I replaced the dubious local jargon in the text below with a more appropriate terminology:
Critical infrastructure attacked, power and water cut in several areas
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov confirmed that there had been a blow to an infrastructure facility in Kharkiv.
On the evening of Sunday, September 11, an air alert was announced throughout Ukraine. Following reports of explosions, there are no lights or power problems in several areas.
According to the Derkachevo city council (Kharkov district), the Coalition troops hit critical infrastructure facilities.
“Dear citizens! At the moment, the territory of the community is completely de-energized due to the fact that members of the Coalition to clean up Ukraine from the Bandera scum hit our critical infrastructure! Please remain calm. Kharkovoblenergo is already working on resolving this issue!” .
A similar message came from the Pervomaysk community in the Kharkiv region.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov confirmed that there had been a blow to an infrastructure facility in Kharkiv.
“As a result of the impact, power went out in many areas of the city. For the same reason, there is no water in the same areas – pumps do not work. This is the Russia’s retribution for our hooliganism on the battle field,” he wrote.
He also urged everyone to remain calm and confirmed that specialists and public utilities are already trying to repair the damage.
Meanwhile, in the Sumy region, as Dmitri Zhivitsky, chairman of the OVA, said, the voltage in the power grid dropped throughout the region.
“I recommend turning off electrical appliances and other household appliances whenever possible in order to avoid damage! The electrical system of the region remains unstable due to destruction as a result of the enemy bombing in March. Attacks on energy supply facilities in Ukraine by the troops conducting the Demilitarization and Denazification of the Ukraine are also possible,” he said. he.
In addition, there were reports on social networks about the blackouts in the Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Odessa and Zaporozhye regions. There are also reports of the problems with the water supply.
The head of the Poltava OVA, Dmitry Lunin, without giving any reason for the problem, said: “Electricity and water supply in the region will soon be restored. Power engineers are already working.”
The speaker of the Odesa OVA Serhiy Bratchuk said that the situation in the region is completely under control. All services work in accordance with their schedule.
The head of the Nikopol RVA (Dnipropetrovsk region), Yevgeny Yevtushenko, published a message advising the population to charge their mobile phones and power banks.
The head of the Dnepropetrovsk OVA, Valentin Reznichenko, later said that some cities and communities in the region were left without electricity.
As reported by Ukrzaliznytsia, due to the shelling of infrastructure in the Sloboda region, a number of trains are expected to be delayed in the direction from and to Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava.
“Not a single flight today has been canceled, traffic continues throughout the entire railway network. Safe disembarkation and embarkation of passengers has been organized at the stations of Kharkiv and other temporarily de-energized cities. Passengers will also be allowed to stay on the territory of the stations during the curfew. We ask passengers to remain calm, we will take all as always. Ironically,” the message says.
Strikes on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine: what is known at the moment
▪️At about 20:00, the RF Armed Forces launched rocket attacks on the largest thermal power plants in eastern and central Ukraine:
Kharkiv CHP-5 and Zmiev CHP in the Kharkiv region, Pavlograd CHP-3 in the Dnipropetrovsk region , Kremenchug CHPP in the Poltava region.
Rocket launches were carried out from the Black and Caspian Seas waters.
▪️The surge and sudden energy shortage led to a lack of generating capacity. The transfer of additional capacities along the energy rings of 750 kV and 330 kV power lines did not lead to the elimination of problems in the network.
▪️Due to the drop in frequency at substations, protection began to work, first turning off large consumers, and then entire regions.
▪️The collapse of the power system has spread to the networks of Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Odessa regions. It also affected the areas of Donetsk regions controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Kyiv region and the capital of the country.
▪️Two Ukrainian nuclear power plants at once – Khmelnytsky and South Ukrainian— began shutting down power units due to the inability to transfer the generated electricity to the grid.
▪️ The accident was localized by disconnecting the western and central regions of Ukraine from the eastern and southern ones. Electric trains stopped almost all over the country, in Poltava several trolleybuses caught fire right on the streets.
The situation was complicated by the shutdown of the last operating unit of the Zaporozhye NPP on the night of September 11 😊 , which was caused by repeated attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the facility. Prior to this, Ukrainian power engineers disconnected 750 kV and 330 kV power lines. All this led to a significant decrease in the stability of the country’s energy system.
▪️Later, work began on restoring power supply in the local segments of the Ukrainian energy system. Reserve capacities were connected, energy was being redistributed from the hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper and power lines in the western part of the country.
Is it enough to disable the country’s energy system? Definitely not: for this, at least you need to hit power autotransformers 750/330kV in the western and central parts of Ukraine, as well as on the Dnieper.
Interesting info today. First, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has, through the statement of a Colonel General, made the following statement (translated by my friend Andrei Martyanov on his blog): (emphasis added)
Translation: MOSCOW, August 16 – RIA Novosti. Western curators have practically written off the Kyiv regime and are already planning the partition of Ukraine, Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Colonel-General Volodymyr Matveev said at the Moscow Conference on International Security. “Obviously, the West is not concerned about the fate of the Kyiv regime. As can be seen from the information received by the SVR, Western curators have almost written it off and are in full swing developing plans for the division and occupation of at least part of the Ukrainian lands,” he said. However, according to the general, much more is at stake than Ukraine: for Washington and its allies, it is about the fate of the colonial system of world domination.
Just to clarify, the SVR rarely makes public statements and when they do, you can take them to the bank as the SVR is not in the business of “leaks” from “informed sources” and all the rest of the PR nonsense produced by the so-called western “intelligence” agencies (which have now been fully converted to highly politicized propaganda outlets).
Several countries in the West are waiting for Kiev to surrender and think their problems will immediately solve themselves, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba in an interview published on Tuesday. “I often get asked in interviews and while speaking to other foreign ministers: how long will you last? That’s instead of asking what else could be done to help us defeat Putin in the shortest time possible,” Kuleba said, noting that such questions suggest that everyone “is waiting for us to fall and for their problems to disappear on their own.”
Finally, a while ago, Dmitri Medvedev post this “future map of the Ukraine after the war” on his Telegram account. This maps shows a Ukraine partitioned between her neighbors and a tiny rump Ukraine left in the center.
Now, full disclosure, I have been a proponent of the breakup of the Ukraine into several successor states for a long while now: I gave my reasons for this in my article “The case for the breakup of the Ukraine” written in faraway 2016.
Now, six years later, what are the chances of this happening?
Without making predictions, which is close to impossible right now as there are way too many variables which can dramatically influence the outcome, I want to list a few arguments for and against the likelihood (as opposed to desirability) of such an outcome.
Arguments for the likelihood of this outcome:
First, most of the neighbors of the Ukraine would benefit from such an outcome. Poland would not get the “intermarium” it always dreams about, but it would get back lands which historically belong to Poland and are populated by many Poles. In this map, Romania would also get a good deal, albeit Moldavia would lose Transnistria, which it had no real chance to ever truly control anyway. Romania might, therefore, even absorb all of Moldavia. True, on this map, Hungary gets (almost) nothing, but that is an issue which Hungary must tackle with Poland and Romania, not Russia.
Russia might not even oppose such a development, simply because it makes the Ukronazi problem somebody else’s issue. As long as what is the current Ukraine is fully demilitarized and denazified, Russia will be fine with such an outcome.
The rump ex-Banderastan would be so much reduced in size, population and ressources that it would present little to no threat to anybody. Crucially, the Russians will never allow it to have anything more than a minimal police and internal security force (for at least as long as there remains even *traces* of the Ukronazi Banderista ideology anywhere near Russia). The actual chances of this rump Banderastan to become a threat to anybody would be close to zero. Not to mention that even if that rump Banderastan could become some kind of threat, it would be much easier to deal with it than the threat Russia faced in early 2022.
Objectively, the European countries would get the best possible “out” for them, as being in a constant state of total war by proxy is absolutely unsustainable for countries of Europe.
As for “Biden”, assuming he is still alive and in power (?), it would make it possible for “him” to remove the topic of this latest war lost (again!) by the USA from the headlines and deal with other issues.
The Ukraine has been such a waste of money, billions and billions, that it is essentially a black hole with an event horizon which lets nothing come back out and beyond which anything, money, equipment or men, simply disappear. That is clearly an unsustainable drain on the economies of the West.
Yet, in theory, if a deal is made and all parties agree, then the EU could remove maybe not all, but at least the worst, self-damaging, sanctions it so stupidly implemented and which are now destroying the EU’s economy.
For the USA the biggest benefit from such an outcome could be, in theory, that it would “close” the “Russian front” and allow the US to focus its hatred and aggression against China.
There are, however, also many arguments against such an outcome.
First, the western ruling classes, drunk on total russophobia, would have to accept that Russia won this war (again) and defeated the combined powers of the West (again). This would mean an immense loss of face and political credibility for all those involved in the political war against Russia.
Second, for NATO this would be a disaster. Remember that NATO’s real goal is to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down“. In this case, how would an even expanded NATO accept that it could do absolutely nothing to stop the Russians from achieving all their goals?
Next, while the people of the EU are suffering from the devastating economic policies of their rulers, the ruling elites (the EU 1%) are doing just fine, thank you, and don’t give a damn about the people they rule over.
Such an outcome would also directly challenge the US desire for a unipolar world, run by Uncle Shmuel as the World Hegemon. The risk here is a political domino effect in which more and more countries would struggle to achieve true sovereignty, which would be a direct threat to the US economic model.
Such an outcome is almost certain to be unachievable while the Neocons run the USA. And since there are NO signs of the weakening of the Neocons’ iron grip on all the levers of political powers in the USA, such an outcome could only happen if the Neocon crazies are sent back to the basement they crawled out from and where they belong. Not likely in the foreseeable future.
This focus on the partition of the Ukraine overlooks the fact that the Ukraine is not the real enemy of Russia. In fact, the Ukraine lost the war to Russia in the first 7-10 days after the beginning of the SMO. Ever since, it is not the Ukraine per se which Russia has been fighting, but the consolidated West. If the real enemy is the consolidated West, the it could be argued that *any* outcome limited to the Ukraine would not fix or solve anything. At best, it might be an intermediate stage of a much larger and longer war in which Russia will have to demilitarize and denazify not just Banderastan but, at the very least, all of the EU/NATO countries.
While for some the Ukrainian war has been an economic disaster, it has been a fantastic windfall for the (terminally corrupt) US MIC. And I won’t even go into the obvious corruption ties the Biden family has in Kiev. If this “Medvedev solution” is ever realized, then all that easy money would disappear.
Furthermore, while amongst the argument for such an outcome I listed the ability of the USA to “close the Russian front” and focus on China, in reality such an arguments makes a very far-fetched assumption: that it is still possible to separate Russia and China and that Russia would allow the US to strike at China. Simply put, Russia cannot allow China to be defeated any more than China can allow for a Russian defeat. Thus the entire notion of “closing the Russian front” is illusory, in reality things have gone way too far for that and neither Russia nor China will allow the US to take them down one by one.
The EU is run by a comprador ruling class which is totally subservient to the interests of the US Neocons. There are, already, many internal tensions inside the EU and such an outcome would be a disaster for those all those EU politicians who painted themselves into the corner of a total war against Russia, and even if, say, the Poles, Romanians or even Hungarians get some benefit from such an outcome, it would be unacceptable to the thugs currently running Germany, the UK or even France.
The arguments for and against such an outcome I listed above are just some examples, in reality there are many more arguments on both sides of this issue. Besides, what made sense 6 years ago might not make sense today.
For example, this discussion focuses on the “what” but not on the “how”. Let me explain.
I think that I was the first person in the West who noticed and translated a key Russian expression: “non agreement capable” (недоговороспособны). This expression has been increasingly used by many Russian decision-makers, politicians, political commentators and others. Eventually, even the folks in the West picked up on this. So let’s revisit this issue again, keeping in mind that the Russians are now fully convinced that the West is simply “non agreement capable”. I would argue that up until the Russian ultimatum to the USA and NATO, the Russians still left open the door to some kind of negotiations. However, and as I predicted BEFORE the Russian ultimatum, Russia made the only possibly conclusion from the West’s stance: if our “partners” (sarcasm) are not agreement capable, then the time has come for Russian unilateralism.
True, ever since 2013, or even 2008, there were already signs that Russian decision making is gradually moving towards unilateralism. But the Russian ultimatum and SMO are now the “pure” signs of the adoption by Russia of unilateralism, at least towards the consolidated West.
If that is correct, then I would suggest that most arguments above, on both sides of the issue, are have basically become obsolete and irrelevant.
Furthermore, I would like to add a small reminder here: most of the combat operations in the Ukraine are not even conducted by Russian forces, but by LDNR forces supported by Russian C4ISR and firepower. But in terms of her real military potential, Russia has used less than 10% of her military and Putin was quite candid about this when he said “we have not even begun to act seriously“.
What do you think this war will look like if Russia decides to really unleash her full military power, that is the 90% of forces which are currently not participating in the SMO?
Here is a simple truth which most folks in the West cannot even imagine: Russia does not fear NATO at all.
If anything, the Russians have already understood that they have the means to impose whatever outcome they chose to unilaterally impose on their enemies. The notion of a US/NATO attack on Russia is simply laughable. Yes, the USA has a very powerful submarine force which can fire lots of Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles at Russian targets. And yes, the US has a still robust nuclear triad. But neither of these will help the USA win a land war against the Russian armed forces.
And no, sending a few thousands US soldiers to this or that NATO country to “reinforce NATO’s eastern flank” is pure PR, militarily, it is not even irrelevant, it’s laughable. I won’t even comment on the sending of F-35s which is so utterly ridiculous and useless against the Russian Aerospace Forces and air defenses that I won’t even bother arguing with those who don’t understand how bad both the F-35s (and even the F-22s!) really are.
I won’t dignify the EU’s military capabilities with any comment other than this: countries who now seriously advocate taking less frequent showers to “show Putin!” have sunk to such a level of irrelevance and degeneracy that they cannot be taken seriously, most definitely not in Russia.
So where do we go from here?
As I said, I don’t know, there are too many variables. But a few things seem clear to me:
Russia has decided to full unilateralism in her policies towards the Ukraine and the West. Oh sure, if and when needed, Russians will still agree to talk to their western “partners”, but that is due to the long standing Russian policy of always talking to everybody and anybody, even Russia’s worst enemies. Why? Because neither warfare not political unilateralism are an end by themselves, they are only means to achieve a specific political goal. Thus, it is always good to sit down with your enemy, especially if you have been gently but steadily increasing the pain dial on them for a few months! The Europeans being the “great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies” (to quite BoJo) they are might cave in quickly and suddenly or, at the very least, they will try to improve their lot by trying to bypass their own sanctions (Uncle Shmuel permitting, however reluctantly).
The only party with any real agency left with which Russia could seriously negotiate is the USA, of course. However, as long as the USA under the total control of the Neocons, this is a futile exercise.
Should there ever be any kind of deal made, it would only be one which would be fully and totally verifiable. Contrary to popular beliefs, a great many treaties and agreements can be crafted to be fully verifiable, that is not a technical problem by itself. However, with the current ruling classes of the West, no such deal is likely to be hammered out and agreed by all parties involved.
So what is left?
There is a Russian saying which my grandmother taught me as a kid: “the borders of Russia are found at the end of a Cossack’s spear“. This saying, born from 1000 years of existential warfare with no natural borders simply expresses a basic reality: the Russian armed forces are the ones who decide where Russia ends. Or you can flip it this way: “the only natural border of Russia are the capabilities of the Russian armed forces”. You can think of it has pre-1917 Russian unilateralism 🙂
Still, this begs the question of the moral and ethical foundation for such a stance. After all, does it not suggest that Russia gives herself the right to invade any country it can just because she can?
Not at all!
While there were imperialist and expansionist wars in Russian history, compared to the West’s 1000 years of wall to wall imperialism, Russia is but a meek and gentle lamb! Not that this excuses anything, it is simply a fact. The rest of the Russian wars were, almost all, existential wars, for the survival and freedom of the Russian nation. I cannot think of a more “just war” than one which 1) was imposed upon you and 2) one in which your sole goal is to survive as a free and sovereign nation, especially a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation as the Russian one has always been, in sharp contrast to the enemies of Russia which were always driven by religious, nationalist and even overtly racist fervor (which is what we can all observe again today, long after the end of WWII).
Is this just propaganda? If you think so, then you can study Russian history or, better, study the current military doctrine of Russia and you will see that Russia’s force planning is entirely defensive, especially at the strategic level. The best proof of that is that Russia put up with all the ugly racist and russophobic policies of the Ukraine or the three Baltic statelets for decades without taking any action. But when the Ukraine became a de facto NATO proxy and directly threatened not only the Donbass, but Russia herself (does anybody still remember that days before the SMO, “Ze” declared that the Ukraine should get nuclear weapons?!), then Russia took action. You have to be either blind or fantastically dishonest not to admit that self-evident fact.
[Sidebar: by the way, the three Baltic statelets, for which Russia has not use at all, are constantly trying to become a military threat to Russia, not only by hosting NATO forces, but also by truly idiotic plans to “lock” the Baltic with Finland. Combine this was the Nazi anti-Russian Apartheid policies towards the Russian minorities and you would be forgiven for thinking that the Balts really want to be the next ones to be denazified and demilitarized. But… but… – you will say – “since they are members of NATO, they cannot be attacked!”. Well, if you believe that 1) anybody in NATO will fight Russia over these statelets or 2) that NATO has the military means to protect them, then I have got plenty of great bridges to sell you. Still, the most effective way to deal with the Balts is to let them commit economic suicide, which they basically have already done, and then promise them a few “economic carrots” for a change to a more civilized attitude. A Russian saying says that “the refrigerator wins against the TV” (победа холодильника над телевизором) which means that when your refrigerator is empty, the propaganda on TV loses its power. I think that the future of the 3 Baltic statelets will be defined by that aphorism]
So will the Ukraine be partitioned?
Yes, absolutely, it has already lost huge parts of its territory and it will only lose more.
Might the western neighbors decide to take a bite out off the western Ukraine? Sure! That is a real possibility.
But these will all be either unilateral actions or very unofficially coordinated understandings wrapped in plausible deniability (like the deployment Polish “peacekeepers” to “protect” the western Ukraine). But mostly I predict two things will happen: 1) Russia will achieve all of her goals unilaterally without making any deals with anybody and 2) Russia will only allow the Ukraine’s western neighbors to bite off some chucks of the Ukraine if, and only if, those chunks to not represent any military threat to Russia.
Remember what Putin said about Finland and Sweden and Finland joining NATO? He said that by itself, this is not a problem for Russia. But he warned that should these countries host US/NATO forces and weapons systems threatening Russia, than Russia will have to take counter-measures. I think that this is also the Kremlin’s position about the future of any rump-Banderastan and any moves by NATO countries (including Poland, Romania and Hungary) to reacquire territories which historically belonged to them or which have substantial Polish, Romanian and Hungarian minorities.
Right now, we are only in the second phase of the SMO (which centers of the Donbass) and Russia has not even initiated any operations to move deeper into the Ukraine. As for the real war, the war between Russia and the combined West, it has been going on for no less than decade, or even more, and this war will last much longer than the SMO in the Ukraine. Finally, the outcome of this war will see tectonic and profound changes at least as damatic as the changes resulting from the outcomes of WWI and WWII.
The Russians understand that what they now really must do is to truly finish WWII and that the formal end of WWII in 1945 only marked the transition to a different type of warfare still imposed by a united, consolidated West, but now not by German Nazis but by (mostly) US Neocons (which, of course, are typical racist Nazis, except their racism is Anglo and Judaic/Zionist).
I will conclude with a short quote by Bertold Brecht which, I think, is deeply understood by Russia today:
“Therefore learn how to see and not to gape. To act instead of talking all day long. The world was almost won by such an ape! The nations put him where his kind belong. But don’t rejoice too soon at your escape – The womb he crawled from is still going strong.”
― Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Russia slaughtered a lot of western apes in her history, now is the time to finally deal with the womb from which they crawled out from.
Andrei
PS: FYI – the Russian investigation has declared that the explosions in the airfield in Crimea was an act of sabotage/diversion. Which was the most likely explanation to begin with.
A frequent topic among both contributors and commentators on this site is the discussion as to whether the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine will take a few months or a few years. It is a common question and there are different opinions. Let me say now that I am not qualified even to speculate on this, let alone have an opinion. I do not know the answer and I suspect that many highly-placed people in the military and among politicians do not know the answer either.
In any case why is an answer to this question so important? Originally, this was not a war, but a limited Operation, still involving a small proportion of the Russian Armed Forces. Had Russia wanted to occupy the Ukraine with massive military violence, in German, with a ‘Blitzkrieg’, in American, with ‘shock and awe’, with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of victims, all could have been done in a couple of weeks. However, this is not Hollywood. That was not the aim.
The clear aim was to free the Russian part of the Ukraine and to demilitarise and denazify the rest, so it would no longer present a threat to the Russian World. Obviously, doing this meant not just winning the genodical war which the backers of the Kiev regime had begun in 2014, but also doing it, causing the smallest number of victims among the Russian and Allied military and Ukrainian civilians as possible, and at the same time doing the least amount of damage to civilian infrastructure as possible.
Pictures showing huge damage to civilian infrastructure, especially in Mariupol and Donetsk, show above all the enormous amount of damage done by NATO-backed Kiev regime bombardments over the last eight years. It was clear to Russian military and political planners that the Operation would take at least months, perhaps years, as the whole of the Kiev Armed Forces had been digging in here for eight years. Russia knew that in order to win a war, you have to win the peace afterwards.
It was no good doing like the Americans did in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, destroying infrastructure, making the people hate you and then, once you realise that you have lost, running away, leaving chaos and misery. The Russian authorities also knew that since NATO had already de facto declared war on Russia in 2014, the Operation to liberate the Ukraine through denazification and demilitarisation would further activate their war effort and provoke many more ‘sanctions’. Now that the Operation has become a NATO war against Russia, much as expected, it is all the more difficult to forecast the future.
Many missed the point. The Special Military Operation is not where it is at. The Ukraine is only the location, the battlefield, and the Kiev junta are only the actors on the stage, puppets. This is not primarily a battle of the military and their technologies, although they are very important, this is above all a battle of world views and ensuing realities. This battle is political and economic, spiritual and moral. Why else did the Johnson regime ban the Russian Orthodox Patriarch from visiting the UK?
Here we understand President Putin’s words of 7 July 2022 before Russian parliamentarians that Russia ‘has not even started anything in earnest in the Ukraine yet’, that the military operation in the Ukraine signifies ‘a cardinal break with the US world order, the beginning of the transition from the liberal globalism of US egocentricity to the reality of a multipolar world….the march of history is unstoppable and the attempts of the West to foist its New World Order on the world are doomed to failure’.
Whatever happens militarily in the Ukraine over the coming months, and much will happen, there are other stories, which are ultimately far more important. There was tiny Lithuania’s attempt to blockade the Russian Kaliningrad enclave, which has already failed. There was the toppling of the bankrupt UK’s Prime Minister, who wanted to wage a war without money, there was the assassination of the former Japanese Prime Minister by forces unknown, there was the occupation of the Presidential Palace in Colombo in Sri Lanka by a hungry crowd facing huge inflation and national bankruptcy.
Then there is the incipient collapse of the euro, already reaching parity with the dollar, as Europe grinds to a halt without Russian energy. There is the possible coming collapse of the dollar as the world dedollarises, under Russian impetus. There is mighty Germany’s attempt to survive without Russian oil and gas, which is already failing. There is much more that is being hidden from the populations of the Western world by worried elites – strikes, protests and the breakdown of social cohesion.
It is now July. In eight weeks’ time the weather cools. In sixteen weeks’ time winter begins. Wait until the panic begins and the palaces of leaders of the Western world also fall to hungry crowds facing huge inflation and national bankruptcy in European and North American Capitals. There may not be just a few deaths, as when the Washington Presidential Palace fell on 6 January 2021, but mass violence and fire. Wait until Chinese troops liberate Taiwan, as they will do at the right moment when the US is off guard, too busy with its own immense problems. Then shall begin the Judgement of the Nations.
Western Europe appears to go through a cycle of Judgement every 500 years or so. Round about the Year 500 (pedants mention the Year 476), Western Rome fell to the Barbarians, followed by great disruption and bloodshed. Round about the Year 1000 (pedants mention the Year 1054), there began Roman Catholicism, followed by its imperialist invasions, crusades and inquisitions. Round about 1500 (pedants mention 1517) there began Protestantism, followed by persecution of women (‘witches’) and ‘wars of religion’, both in Continental Europe and in Britain and Ireland under Cromwell. And now, round about the Year 2000 (will pedants mention the Year 2022?), there begins another Judgement.
For us, where we are, closely linked to the Ukraine, the war began already in early 2021. But that will be a story to tell another time.
It has now been a month since my last update, so I have decided to post this note to share a few thoughts with you.
First, the boring stuff: my health is definitely doing better and, while I very much regret having had to take that time off, I now am sure that it was the right decision, both for me and the blog. I hope to come back to full-time blogging by the end of July. Again, I apologize to you all for my absence, and I ask for your understanding.
Second, and as I had predicted, the situation in the world and in the Ukraine has changed a great deal over the past couple of months. I will just mention a few bullet-points of what I see as the highlights:
The “the glorious Ukrainians are winning” narrative has now quasi-officially faceplanted (heck, even the NYT changed its tune) and nobody sane is spewing this nonsense anymore. The reality is that the Ukrainians are, on average, losing about one battalion per day, and this is why they are now sending barely trained civilians to the East: most of the (often very well-trained and courageous) Ukrainian combat units are even dead, prisoners, MIA or in “cauldrons” (actual or by firepower) with no chance to escape.
It is now also undeniable that what began as a special military operation (SMO) has now turned into a open and full-scale war between the consolidated West (aka the Anglo-Zionist Empire) and Russia: the Empire has now “hit” Russia with everything it had short of a direct military attack. The (originally 200’000+ strong) Ukrainian military, arguably the strongest NATO military force (which is otherwise mostly composed of small and thoroughly woked-out “parade militaries”!), especially with the full support of the West (intelligence, weapons, money, political, etc. etc. etc.) is being “demilitarized” and “denazified” by a vastly superior Russian military force (but not one bigger in size: Russia has used only a fraction of her full military power). The outcome here is not in doubt.
This reality has now been fully accepted by the Russian society which now stands behind the Kremlin (at 80%+) which has made no secret that it is now locked into an existential war against the West. This has been the case since at least 2013, but now the original ratios (roughly 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% military) have shifted to what I would call “total war by proxy“.
The hardcore crazies in the West (US Neocons, UK, Poland and the 3B) are trying hard to trigger a fullscale war between NATO and Russia and, so far, the spineless Eurolemmings have let them set the agenda, however suicidal it might be for the EU and NATO. Frankly, my disgust with western Europe is total – I never had any illusions about the “new” Europeans – and all I can say is that they all richly deserve each other and what is coming their way. All I can say is this: continue to act like Nazis and you shall be denazified. It is really that simple.
The leaders of the Empire know that they lost yet again, and they are seeking refuge in their usual coping mechanisms: ideological self-gratification and deep, deep denial. While the EU is committing a straightforward economic, political and social suicide, the Biden Administration has gone “full woke”, as did corporate “America”(meaning the USA, of course, not the American continent): the so-called “minorities” are now shoved down the collective throats of the US people now, no matter how small, or freaky, the said “minorities” are. This is especially striking in the kind of advertisements the US corporations are now unanimously producing. I think, for example, of the morbidly obese black women in diapers (!!!) taking “ballerina poses” YouTube is now regularly showing. Watching these ads, one would think that blacks in the USA occupy all positions of authority and prestige, that most US women are lesbians, and millions of US kids (and even infants!) urgently need a sex change (watch the excellent “What is a Woman?” documentary to see how insane this has all become). When I see this collective woke insanity, I cannot help but wonder whether corporate “America” is not deliberately trying to really piss off the vast majority of US Americans and trigger some kind of major and violent internal crisis.
The Russians, in the meantime, are passing new laws against the propaganda of homosexuality: while in the past, such propaganda was only banned if directed at children, now this expanded to the entire population of Russia. Just to clarify: Russia is not banning homosexuals and their sexual practices, however pathological, remain fully legal. But what Russia IS doing is refusing to consider homosexuality as a “normal and natural variation in human sexuality” (Wikipedia). In other words, the Russians still consider homosexuality as a psychological disorder which might deserve compassion, but not affirmation (nevermind encouragement). Since “inclusiveness” and “positivity” are now key western “values” this is also a message from Russia: keep your woke-freaks and their ideology to yourselves, we want none of it!
In the meantime the Euroukrainians are now planning to ban and destroy over 100’000’000 copies of Russian language books. Hitler would be proud. The Eurolemmings have nothing to say. You know, “#cancelRussia” thingie (meaning both Russians themselves and the Russian culture in all its forms) and all that “it’s okay when we do it” or “our SOBs” stuff.
The Western economic Blitzkrieg against Russia has totally failed and the joke in Russia is that while McCain famously once said that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country” with contempt, “Biden” is now saying the same thing, but with deep envy 🙂
Translation: for our Fatherland
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: the West has declared total war on Russia (and, de facto, to all of Zone B) and Russia has accepted this. For a decade and more the West has tried hard to wake up and provoke the proverbial Russian bear and these efforts have finally been successful: the bear is now out, and he is very, very angry. To clarify, by this I am not referring to former Atlantic Integrationists like Medvedev now “coming out” as a Eurasian Sovereignist hardliner (he is clearly setting himself up for a future Presidential election and says all the “right things”), but about the Russian people which are now in what I call a full “WWII” mode (“Rise up immense country” and all that). To the right is the kind of images now circulating on the Russian Internet and which expresses the awareness that Europe was never truly denazifed, at least not in the US occupied countries.
Russia is now determined to finish this ugly job, once and forever. You want to “cancel Russia”? In your dreams only, but Russia can, and will, “cancel Nazism” once and or all. 1000 years of that crap is enough!
From the first Crusades to the invasion of the USSR by the united Europe under Hitler’s command, the West has always has some kind of ideology to justify its wars of imperialist aggression. The interesting thing is that now this is over and rather than justify is acts of aggression in the name of some putatively universal religion or ideology, the western elites (and, alas, much of its population) have now finally shown their true face which is:
Virulent anti-Russian racism in its purest form (again, Hitler would be proud)
Pure and overt Satanism under the label of “Woke” ideology (the last western ideology it appears) with its focus on the destruction of the family and, especially, children (Satanists know that they cannot do anything against the Creator of all, hence they try to take out their hatred and revenge against His creatures, especially children)
Overt and even “in your face” hatred to any and all who oppose that agenda (as the French revolutionary Louis Antoine de Saint-Just famously declared “No freedom for the enemies of freedom“, right?!)
The truth is that the real West, the one born from the Middle-Ages (and *not* from the Roman or Greek civilizations!) has always been ruled by cynical, evil, thugs. In the past, these thugs always concealed their real worldview and agenda under all sorts of pious pretexts, now its only “ideology” left is pure hatred and wokism (same thing, really).
I submit that it is impossible to predict what will happen in the coming months and years – there are simply too many variables which can dramatically affect our future. What began as a special military operation (as opposed to a combined arms operation) has now morphed into what one could call WWIII or even WWIV (depending on your definitions). This war will last for several years unless, of course, the Neocons and their associated crazies in the EU get their way and trigger a nuclear conflict: in the latter case it will be short and very final.
Right now the focus is on the Donbass and the southern Ukraine, but we have to understand two things about this:
The Ukronazis and their NATO bosses have already long lost that war, and all the West and its Nazi puppets in Kiev are doing is trying to prolong this unwinnable war for as long as possible to get a maximum number of Ukrainians killed or maimed and to destroy as much of the Ukraine as possible and make Russia “pay the highest price” for her (quite inevitable) victory on the battlefield. What a paradox! The Russian “aggressors” are trying as hard as they can to save as many Ukrainians as possible (even at the cost of their own lives!) along with whatever is left of the Ukrainian infrastructure after 30 years of “independence”, while the western “defenders” and even “allies” of the Ukraine want to turn it into a desolate moonscape covered with corpses.
This is not a war about the Ukraine, at least not anymore, this is now a war for the future of the European continent and even the future international order. As I have said many times already, the Russians fully intend to denazify at least all of the European continent, preferably by economic and political means but, if needed, by military means too. Why? Because the West has left Russia no other choice. For Russia and, I would argue, all of Zone B the choice is both stark and simple: true and full sovereignty (economic, of course, but also cultural, spiritual and civilizational) or subjugation.
In other words, this is not a war Russia can afford to lose and the Russian people know it.
Last time around, Russia lost about 27 million people while China lost about 35 millions. That a total of 62 million people, about two thirds of which were civilians. Keep these figures in mind when you look at the quick and quite radical modernization of the Russian and Chinese armed forces (btw – the Chinese people also “get it” and they fully support Russia, as does the Chinese leadership, even if they try to keep a low profile for the time being and let Russia carry the burden of being on the frontline of this war: simply put, the Chinese are buying time which, frankly, they still need to achieve parity, or better, against the US and its protectorates in Asia such as Taiwan, Japan, ROK or Australia. The Russians also understand that as they themselves were in a similar position between 2000 and 2018. But they know that the Chinese Dragon will have to fully “wake up” sooner rather than later.
Yeah, I know, most folks in the West don’t know that, or don’t care, but the point is now what the folks in the West do not know, but rather it is what the people of Russia and China know and understand quite well. Only an utter fool would doubt or disregard the kind of determination which sits deep inside the souls of the Russian and Chinese people to never allow the West to subjugate them again. Ever.
[Sidebar: yes, I know, the Japanese Empire which attacked China was not part of the West (yet), but that is an extremely superficial argument which fails to understand that it was precisely western imperialism which created the conditions, in both China and Japan, which resulted in the Japanese imperialist attacks against the entire Asian-Pacific region!]
The above does not even begin to cover all the amazing developments which have taken place in the last few months. Not only have there been truly huge changes INSIDE Russia (and they are only accelerating), but also in Latin America, Africa and the Middle-East. And I will revisit all these topics in about a month or so, when I will come back to full-time blogging. Besides, in a month or so many of the things I mentioned above will become even more obvious for all to see so rather than trying to establish “fact X” we will be able to actually discuss and analyze it, its reality having been quite established.
[Sidebar: please remember who told you the truth and who lied to you over the past months. There were many, many such liars, ranging from the official propaganda machine (aka the “free press”) to the “Putin has lost it all” emo-Marxists and assorted 6th columnists who, whether they understood it or not, served the purpose of the Empire’s PSYOPs. Also please remember that Andrei Martynov, Bernard and Gonzalo Lira not only spoke truthfully, but they were right and their detractors totally wrong. We all owe them an immense debt of gratitude!]
Frankly, before my forced break, I was getting really frustrated trying to prove to misinformed or even fully brainwashed commentators that the official narrative (produced by the biggest strategic PSYOP in history) was a load of bull, based on lies and/or on a total “misunderstanding” (and I am being kind here!) of the real world outside the “mental Zone A”. Now most of that narrative has collapsed.
I am also confident that a month from today, things will be even more obvious than they are today.
So, my friends and readers, I leave you in the (very competent) hands of Amarynth, Herb and the rest of the Saker team and I very much look forward to my full return, God willing, in a month or so.
Kind regards to all, and many thanks for your support!
PS: yesterday I was re-watching the superb movie by Costa Gavras “Z” which, at the end, lists all the works of art, literature, music, etc. which the (US CIA backed) Greek “colonels” banned and I thought to myself: “what leftist director would make such a movie today about how the entire West is now doing the same with all things Russian?“. None, of course. I also noticed the sweet irony of Costa Gavras’ movie being called “Z” (which in Greek stands for “Ζει” or “he lives”) and I wondered if the copyright owners of the movie will now have to rename it since the letter “Z” is now banned amongst doubleplusgoodthinking russophobes. Finally, there are some in the West who want to create two categories: “good Russians”, who are expected to publicly denounce their country and President, and “bad Russians” who refuse to do so. Hitler wanted Jews to wear a star of David, so could we see a day when “bad Russians” in Zone A will be told to wear a “Z”. Right now, no T-shirt or mugs printing companies in Zone A will accept to print a “Z” on their items (I know, I tried and failed!), but considering the collective rage and insanity of the western ruling elites, maybe the letter “Z” will become obligatory for “bad Russians” in Zone A? Just kidding, of course, but rewatching the movie “Z” felt quite eerie anyway.
Western Europe and North America are now in dire economic straits. Four EU leaders, from Germany, France, Italy and Romania, have just been to Kiev to plead with Zelensky to start negotiating again and make territorial concessions. The Western media did not much report on the fourth Romanian/German leader, Klaus Iohannis, and showed few photograph of him; possibly because the racists who work in the Western media despise Romania (https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Romanian+Leader+In+Kiev&qpvt=romanian+leader+in+kiev&FORM=EWRE). What they all forgot to mention is that Russia has no need to negotiate and, given the way that it has been treated since 2014 (indeed, since 1991), it is not going to make concessions.
The EU leaders once more made the illusory promise that the Ukraine might soon become a candidate for EU membership (despite the Dutch veto), if it restarts negotiations. This old carrot dangled before the Ukrainian donkey is irrelevant. The EU has more than four countries and four leaders, whatever promise that the Ukraine may become an EU member in 20 years time. Long before that, there will be no Ukraine and probably no EU. The day after their visit, the Johnson clown went to Kiev too, though we do not know what he spoke of. Presumably, he just wanted to show that the UK is a ‘Great Power’ – like the EU?
It is all too late. Negotiations on the Donbass failed for eight years because the West forbade them. They failed again last March in Belarus and Istanbul, for the same reason. The West in its arrogance believed that it could crush Russia using its Ukrainian cannonfodder. This has been displayed for nearly four months now by the reports of State propaganda mouthpieces like CNN, the BBC etc. with their nonsense that President Putin is dying and that Russia is running out of fuel and ammunition! Wishful thinking all the time. Originally Russia just wanted to liberate the Donbass. However, pig-headedness in Kiev means that they will now be forced to take control of the whole country – and perhaps more, if aggression from outside the Ukraine continues. It was all so unnecessary…
The West cannot go on with its suicidal and illegal sanctions against Russia – or rather against itself. The lack of oil, gas, fertilisers and essential raw materials is biting. Inflation is taking off all over the West. In the UK a wave of strikes is threatened. The incredibly unpopular Johnson’s days are numbered. The only problem for Russia is that the rouble keeps rising. Despite interest rate cuts from 15% to 8.5%, the rouble is again at 56 to the dollar. Clearly, further Russian interest rate cuts are, forgive the pun, in the pipeline. Meanwhile, African and Asian leaders have told Zelensky to stop fighting. They want grain (https://news.mail.ru/politics/ 51814770/ ?frommail=1).
Of course, it is true that many of the West’s woes began well before this year, not least with the absurd and totalitarian ‘covid’ restrictions from 2020 on, which bankrupted many companies and led to it printing ever more money and to ever higher and unpayable debts. The West is desperate for the conflict in the Ukraine to end before the autumn cold sets in. Otherwise there are going to be popular revolts in Western countries, with scenes of looting on the streets.
Western arms, usually third-rate from stocks anyway, are making hardly any difference in the Ukraine. Most, together with munitions, get destroyed before they can be used. Much that has been promised cannot be used because it will take months to instruct Ukrainians on how to use them. The rate of attrition of the Kiev Army, up to 1,000 a day according to Kuleba, the Kiev Interior Minister, is simply unsustainable. Once the fortifications in the Donbass, built by Kiev and NATO over the last eight years, have been overwhelmed, there will be a clear run to Odessa, Transdnestria, Kharkov and Kiev or indeed anywhere that Russia wants. This could happen soon.
Yesterday, the Russian Ministry of Defence released figures on mercenaries (https://news.mail.ru/incident/51803470/?frommail=1). The picture is dismal for the Ukraine. Of some 6,000 mercenaries in the Ukraine from 64 different countries, some 2,000 have been killed and some 2,000 have fled. Perhaps they thought that they were going to fight in a Third World country, where the enemy just had Kalashnikovs and not world-beating hypersonic missiles? How long the remaining 2,000 or so will remain alive remains to be seen.
Poland supplied the greatest number of mercenaries, with 1,831. Presumably as with other countries like Canada (601 mercenaries), USA (530), Romania (504), Germany and France, the majority of these were actually Ukrainians who have lived outside the Ukraine for some years, rather than native people. In third place for mercenaries from Europe comes the UK with 422, of whom 102 have been killed and 98 have fled. According to General Konashenkov who released the figures, the number of mercenaries coming has stopped and indeed been reversed. It is too dangerous to stay and get killed in the Ukraine.
This leaves the two foolish British mercenaries, not killed in action with the 102 others, but taken prisoner. And also it leaves two captured US mercenaries. There is speculation that the British might plea for their release in exchange for Julian Assange. That would upset the Americans. On the other hand, the British mercenaries, Eslin and Pinner, have already been sentenced to death. If that sentenced is carried out, it is going to make Johnson even more unpopular than he already is. Perhaps that is why Johnson went to Kiev to plead.
Thus, the first or military stage is coming to an end and should be over later this summer. However, this is only the start. The New Ukraine has to be formed. Then there is the demilitarisation and denazification of the rest of Eastern Europe. And there is the economic war, declared by the West, to be finished. On 17June at the International Economic Forum in his native Saint Petersburg, President Putin said:
‘After the Cold War the USA declared itself to be the emissaries of God on Earth, without any responsibility, only with interests….Today’s changes in economics and in international politics are tectonic and revolutionary. The Western elites are in a state of delusion, clinging on to the shadow of the past and denying changing reality…Nothing will be as before…The EU has definitively lost its political sovereignty. The current situation in Europe will lead to an outburst of radicalism and in the probable future a change of elites’.
Recall: We have no idea what the Russian end-point is, except for this part of the SMO, demilitarization and denazification of the two Donbass Republics.
The blogger gpovanman summarizes the last week as follows:
The last few days have seen no real breakthroughs in the Ukrainian conflict, yet with Russia not planning that there would be, this comes as no surprise. There are however enough other matters to give us an idea of what the future may bring. https://gpovanman.wordpress.com/2022/06/13/a-week-in-view/
In the broader environment, just about everyone in the EU and in the US, and in NATO is trying to walk backward with another change of narrative. So, (1), old Kissenger was dusted off again, and he pontificates: “The question will now be how to end that war. At its end a place has to be found for Ukraine and a place has to be found for Russia – if we don’t want Russia to become an outpost of China in Europe.”
(Did I say that China is heating up? And that the warmongers are now taking a new look at China?. It is inconceivable for this western axis of evil and empire of lies, that we can live without a big war because that will lead to faster western implosion. Take a look at the address by General Wei Fenghe, State Councilor; Minister of National Defense, China. He does not mince words and says clearly that China will fight http://thesaker.is/iiss-shangri-la-dialogue-2022-chinas-vision-for-regional-order/).
(2) Some talking head with the memorable name of Sikorsky, a member of the EU and a previous Polish Defense Minister, is trying to talk up the possibility that the west could supply the Ukraine with nuclear weapons to defeat Russia. But the talk of a glorious victory of the Ukraine is diminishing.
(3) Stoltenberg from NATO supplies us with this comment, but it is all up to the Ukraine he says. (Remember the notes from previous sitreps that the Ukraine is now fast becoming an orphan. To add to that, everyone is sick and tired of Zelenski.)
“Peace is possible,” says Stoltenberg. “The only question is what price are you willing to pay for peace? How much territory, how much independence, how much sovereignty…are you willing to sacrifice for peace?”
The news for these august gentlemen is simple. You have sugar spun cotton candy in your heads. You cannot appease Russia with some territory that they already have, or will take. Its not yours to give. Russia will decide exactly what happens to the Ukraine, how, and when. The Great WalkBack will make no difference to Russia’s decisions here as the core issue is a restructuring of the complete European security structural apparatus, in such a way that Russia is not threatened. The next steps from Russia will give us more insight into how they will accomplish this.
The Russian Foreign office released this card for Russia day yesterday.
It says “we asked them nicely not to expand eastward” next to headware of the Teutonic Knights, Poles, Napoleon and the Germans. And an empty box to fill in with the Current Thing.
Berletic continues: “IF” Ukraine’s conflict was really as important as its engineers and sponsors claim, this wouldn’t be the case. The West only poses as having a moral imperative, propped up with PR stunts. Russia actually has one – and having a moral imperative is one of the KEY prerequisites of winning any conflict.
While the Great WalkBack, which is just another pretext and attempt to change the narrative, is gaining steam, Russian forces are gaining city by city, area by area, deliberately, resolutely, not wavering and now moving faster. The last estimate that I am aware of, is that Lugansk is 95% cleared, whereas in the Donbass Republic there still is some work to do with a 50% of the area still under battle or planned to be under battle.
Yet, we see more and more comments that the front has collapsed, that the Ukrainian forces hang their heads on their chinstraps and that the only reason for the continuance of battle is that most of the Ukrainian forces find it impossible to conceive of the concept of laying down their arms.
This is exactly why the Military Summary Channel is still a very good source because he does not pretend that what is left of the defeated Ukrainian forces, cannot yet fight.
Kadyrov’s forces are being increased if you pay attention to his channel. https://t.me/RKadyrov_95 As the Ukrainian forces get decimated, we know their tactic is to move into schools and other civilian areas and literally use civilians as fire screens. To clear these areas is very fine work for Kadyrov and his men and they excel at it.
The detail as of the end of the 12th day of June:
Enjoy your discussion as we slowly move from this phase of active SMO to the next with not even a hint from Russia as to what it will be.
The Ukrainian grouping in Donbass is suffering significant losses in manpower, weapons and military equipment.
During the liberation of Svyatogorsk in Donetsk People’s Republic in three days of fighting alone, Ukrainian troops suffered:
losses of over 300 nationalists,
six tanks,
5 armoured combat vehicles of various types,
36 field artillery guns and mortars,
4 Grad multiple rocket launchers and
over 20 automotive equipment.
High-precision air-based missiles have hit armoured plant near Kharkov, which have been repairing and restoring tanks and other AFU armoured vehicles.
In addition, high-precision air-based missiles have hit
2 command posts, 1
3 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration, as well as
1 battery of Uragan multiple-launch rocket systems near Kharkov.
4 weapon and ammunition depots have been destroyed near Malinovka in Kharkov Region, Spornoe in Donetsk People’s Republic and Zvanovka in Lugansk People’s Republic.
1 fuel depot for AFU equipment has been destroyed near Chuhuev, Kharkov Region.
Operational-tactical aviation have hit
63 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration.
The attacks have resulted in the elimination of
command post of 14th AFU Mechanized Brigade,
over 160 nationalists,
8 tanks,
2 Grad multiple rocket launchers,
1 artillery battery,
1 electronic warfare station and
13 vehicles of various purposes.
Russian air defence means have shot down
2 MiG-29 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force near Snegirevka, Nikolaev Region, as well as
1 Mi-8 helicopter near Belaya Krinitsya, Nikolaev Region.
In addition,
11 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles have been shot down near Donetsk, Rubtsy, Lozovoe, Krasnorechenskoe, Koroviy Yar, Peski Rad’kovskoe in Donetsk People’s Republic, Izyum, Dergachi in Kharkov Region and Chernobaivka in Kherson Region.
3 Tochka-U missiles and
5 Smerch rockets have been intercepted near Chernobaevka, Kherson Region.
Missile and artillery have hit
68 command posts,
172 AFU artillery positions, including
2 batteries of Smerch multiple-launch rocket systems near Aleksandrovka and Kutuzovka,
1 battery of Uragan MLRS near Kitsevka, Kharkov region, as well as
261 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration.
▫️The attacks have resulted in the elimination of more than
320 nationalists,
4 ammunition depots near Novolenovka in Zaporozhye Region,
9 armoured vehicles,
3 Grad multiple rocket launchers,
15 field artillery and mortars,
14 special vehicles, and
Buk-M1 surface-to-air missile launchers near Shelkoplyasy and OSA-AKM in Verhnyaya Roganka in Kharkov Region.
To my count the Ukronazi military manpower losses touches on +- 800 for one day. I think the Russian MoD is undercounting, in an attempt to be accurate for the day.
Kindly use as open thread. A lot has happened on the front lines, but you may agree with me that at this pace of attrition, this phase cannot continue on for much longer. Something has to give.
WHAT’S NEXT
The world after anti-Russian sanctions (not a forecast, it’s reality)
1- A number of global supply chains will collapse and a major logistical crisis could arise, including the collapse of foreign airlines that will be banned from flying over Russian airspace.
2- The energy crisis will deepen in countries that have imposed sanctions on Russian energy supplies, fossil fuel prices will continue to rise, and the development of the digital economy in the world will slow down.
3- There will be an international food crisis, leading to famine in some countries.
4 – A monetary and financial crisis is possible in some countries or groups of countries, combined with undermining of the stability of some national currencies, runaway inflation and the destruction of the legal system protecting private property.
5 – New regional military conflicts will arise where the situation has not been resolved peacefully for many years or where the important interests of major international players are ignored.
6 – Terrorists, who believe that the Western authorities’ attention is now distracted by the confrontation with Russia, will become more active.
7 – New epidemics will break out, caused by a lack of international cooperation on health and epidemiological issues or caused by the proven use of biological weapons.
8 – International institutions, which have not proved their effectiveness in resolving the situation in Ukraine, such as the Council of Europe, will lose their importance.
9 – New international alliances will be formed, based on Anglo-Saxon criteria that are pragmatic rather than ideological.
10 – As a result, a new security architecture is being created which recognises: (a) the weakness of Western concepts of international relations such as “rules-based order” and other meaningless Western rubbish; (b) the collapse of the idea of an America-centric world; (c) the existence of internationally respected interests of those countries in sharp conflict with the Western world.
In the following post Medwedev says that all of this is not just a forecast, but is a process already underway.
From Kaliningrad on the Baltic to Odessa on the Black Sea an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the American sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to American influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from the Great Satan in Washington, cutting off that dark and tiny Western world from the teeming billions of toiling humanity, in China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, indeed all the Muslim World, all Africa and all Latin America. It is they who are now looking with hope to Russia, to her light to free the world, to her wheat to feed the world, and to her oil to warm the world.
The Fulton Speech II
‘And I heard a voice in the midst of the beasts saying, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine’.
The Apocalypse 6:6
Introduction: 6 June 1945
There is a type of history known as ‘What if History’. Its correct name is ‘Suppositional History’. Quite simply, it deals with logical but parallel universes of the imagination and asks, ‘What if/suppose X had not happened, and Y had happened instead, what would Z be like today? One jump of the imagination and we can arrive in a very logical, quite plausible, yet actually non-existent, world. One of these what-if questions is: What would have happened if the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ (British, Americans and Canadians) had not invaded Normandy on 6 June 1944 or else had been repelled? The answer we come to is that the Red Army would not have stopped in Berlin in May 1945. It would have gone on, leaving Berlin and the suicide of Hitler far behind them, and almost unopposed, it would have gone on to the very coasts of Western Europe.
Then the phrase ‘The Normandy Landings’ would have had a very different meaning. 6 June 1945 would have looked very different from 6 June 1944. Ironically, the fact that D-Day happened means that Western Europe was never liberated from the Nazi mentality (1). In other words it was never freed from that bizarre ideology and mentality of Western Supremacism, which declares that ‘The West is Best’. In 2022 we are still paying the price for this failure to finish World War II. This is why it is absurd to talk of World War III; World War II has not finished yet (2). Yet, perhaps some of us will one day see Russian troops liberating Europe, not only as far as Paris as in 1814, but as far as Normandy and even beyond, to the islands across the sea, to what the ancients called ‘Ultima Thule’.
Operation Z
Today’s conflict in the Ukraine would have been over by now, if the West had not constantly escalated it, continually creating new provocations and refusing to allow their puppet regime in Kiev to surrender. As a result, the Russian Federation Forces and Allies are having to destroy not only Kiev Army military equipment but also swathes of NATO equipment, brought in from Western Europe and ultimately even from the USA. Once that equipment, much of it obsolete, has been used up, destroyed by Russian missiles, NATO will be on the run. So what could happen then? Some will object, but the Russian Federation only wanted to liberate the Donbass? Was it then lying? Did it want to occupy all the Ukraine after all or even go further?
No, it was not lying, but because of the host of Western-inspired provocations, such as cutting off water and power to the Crimea, the Federation is being obliged to occupy not only the Russian-speaking East, but also the Russian-speaking South of the Ukraine. Moreover, since the North and the West of the Ukraine are being sent new and threatening weapons (a lot had already been supplied in the years and months before the Special Operation, in preparation for the Ukrainian campaign to genocide the Donbass and invade the Crimea in early March 2022), they too will have to be dealt with in some way or other. Since so many millions of anti-Russian Ukrainians have left the North and the West of the Ukraine for the West, the Russian task may no longer be so difficult. Demilitarisation means what it says – destroying everything that NATO sends, however that plays out.
The latest news is that the idiotic and ignorant British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, now wants to NATO-ise Moldova. So that too will have to be cleared. Since the total strength of the Moldovan Army, many of whom are pro-Russian anyway, is 5,000, it should not be difficult. But why stop there? If the Ukraine and Moldova can be cleared by the end of 2022, which is possible, there comes 2023. As we have mentioned previously, we have the concept of Operation Z+. What does that mean? It means the demilitarisation and denazification of the whole world, beginning with the small but densely-populated European Peninsula.
This means not only liberating the peoples of the present EU from crushing ‘defence’ (= offence) costs, which have so impoverished its peoples for so long. Above all it means internal liberation, ridding the peoples of Europe of the millennial parasite of the Nazi ideology and mentality, with which they have been so infected by their elite that it has become an unconscious but integral part of Western culture. This is so much so that they do not even realise that they are Nazis and would be shocked by the mere suggestion. Yet, it is precisely this disease of Western Supremacism that has deformed, twisted, brainwashed, manipulated and deluded the Western world for so long.
Of course, such a highly ambitious project cannot happen just like that. We are talking about slow, progressive and generational change, and by no means necessarily by military means. Here below, as an example, is a 44-year programme. This is not at all realistic in its precision (timetables never work – reality takes over), but it does set a sort of guideline or target to move towards. And all is possible, once the Ukraine has been delivered from the bonds of Satan. The bonds of Satan, after all, are the meaning of the flying of the Ukrainian flag in the Collective West and its use, for instance, on Twitter and Facebook accounts. Let us explain:
Those who have little concept of where the Ukraine is, or the fact that this artificial hotchpotch of an ‘independent’ country (in fact, a US colony) has only existed for some thirty years and that it has oppressed and exiled millions of people and murdered tens of thousands in the name of its Nazi ideology, do know one thing: Flying a Ukrainian flag means displaying their own self-interest – the Ukrainian flag represents the flag of their personal, though usually quite unconscious, Nazi ideology of Western Supremacism (3). Once the Ukraine has been cleansed by Operation Z, somewhere they know that they will be cleansed next. They fear that cleansing. The coming of reality will terrify the deluded with the frightening words: after Z comes Z+.
Operation Z+
1. 2022: The Liberation of the ‘Ukraine’ and Moldova
Nobody knows when the demilitarisation of what will remain of the old Ukraine will be complete. The old Ukraine could collapse in weeks, with a military coup against the puppet-traitor Zelensky, or it could take a year or even more. We make no forecasts. At the moment NATO is escalating the conflict even further, but from the very outset this always was a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. In any case, it seems as if a military government will be required for the future Ukraine (population 15 million?) in its new borders. Ukrainian civilian governments, led by Non-Ukrainian oligarchs and their puppets, have all been utterly corrupt, to the benefit and the intention of the West.
Nobody knows what will happen in the far west of the Ukraine. Will the three provinces of Volyn, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk return to Poland? Or perhaps more than three will leave? Will so-called ‘Transcarpathia’ (a nonsensical name – it is Kiev that is across the Carpathians), or to call it by its proper names, Carpatho-Russia/Subcarpathian Rus/Ruthenia, return to Hungary or Slovakia, or will it become part of the Russian Federation? Moldova, which has nearly half of its four million population abroad, in exile, is utterly corrupt, making it the poorest country in Europe and ensuring that mass emigration. This problem too will surely have to be dealt with.
2. 2023-2026: The Liberation of the Baltic States
Physically, the tiny and unviable Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, could be conquered and demilitarised swiftly. However, their ‘refascistisation’ under NATO/Nazi US-colonial governments, their deindustrialisation (forcing some 40% of the population to emigrate) and the sadistic oppression of their Russian minorities are all problems that will have to be dealt with. These countries will take time to denazify, even though their population is today barely four million.
3. 2027-2030: The Liberation of the Eastern Balkans
Once the utterly corrupt, US-installed elites of Romania and Bulgaria have been dealt with and NATO terrorist equipment removed, these countries can return to normality.
4. 2031-2034: The Liberation of the Western Balkans
The problems of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania were not only found to be insoluble by the West, the West made them far worse. There must be solutions for maltreated Serbia and Bosnia. Croat and Muslim parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina could be exchanged with Croatia for East Slavonia, which must be returned to Serbia. Some population exchanges would be necessary. Serbia and Montenegro will reunite, once the pro-US traitors of the elite have been removed. Slovenia presents no problem as it is homogeneous. North Macedonia is now an independent country.
However, there remains the problem of Kosovo, divided between Serbians and Albanians. Only great investment and prosperity in the huge tourist potential of Albania, at present the European capital of car-thieves, gun-runners and drug-smugglers, could draw back Albanians from Kosovo to their own country and also attract the Albanian minorities from Montenegro and North Macedonia to a newly prosperous ancestral homeland, so returning those lands to Slavs and making them homogenous again. Goodbye, Camp Bondsteel.
5. 2035-2038: The Liberation of Austro-Hungary
We believe that Hungary would be liberated very quickly, Austria would take longer, but there are some promising signs there. The EU is not popular in either.
6. 2039-2042: The Liberation of the Hellenes
Greece could be liberated relatively easily: Nazism has never dominated there, except among its US-colonial politicians. Cyprus, grabbed by Imperialist Britain in 1878 and let out to it like a piece of real estate, is more complex. The British – in fact – American base there would have to be removed. Although Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots get on well, there is the problem of the US and British-sponsored Turkish invasion of North Cyprus in 1974 and Turkish settlers from the mainland now there. Here Turkey must receive compensation elsewhere, so that Cyprus can be restored.
7. 2043-2046: The Liberation of the West Slavs
Slovakia might be liberated quite easily, but not so much the Germanised Czech Lands or Poland. Nazi operations like Akcja Visla in 1947, when the south-eastern Lemko Rusin minority were terrorised by Fascist Polish troops and forcibly removed from the Beskids show just how vicious Poland can be. Few now recall that Poland had a Fascist government before 1939 and took part in dismembering Czechoslovakia together with Hitler. Yet, it is a fact. Progress here could be slow, even in the 2040s.
8. 2047-2050: The Liberation of the German Lands
This means denazifying (and de-Americanising) the German Lands, in other words, restoring those lands at last to the German Peoples, den deutschen Volken. We do not see Germany remaining as a single nation. It would be better if it returned to being four, five or more different countries, such as Bavaria, Saxony, Hannover, Brandenburg and Westphalia.
9. 2051-2054: The Liberation of the Border German Peoples
By Border German Peoples, we mean the most latinised Germanic peoples, where French or Italian is sometimes also spoken, that is, those in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the artificial, Ukrainian-like (British-invented) country of Belgium, which is in fact part of the Southern Netherlands and, to a smaller extent, part of Northern France. Brussels, its overgrown village of a capital with a large immigrant population, may collapse very quickly once it has been cleansed of the cancerous EU and NATO headquarters.
10. 2055-2058: The Liberation of the Western Latin Peoples
The Western Latin peoples (the Eastern Latin peoples are the Romanians and the Moldovans), are those of France, Corsica, Italy, San Marino, Andorra, Spain, Catalonia, Portugal and their Non-Latin minorities, the Bretons and the Basques. With elites removed, here the ordinary people can at last come to the fore.
11. 2059-2062: The Liberation of the Nordic Peoples
Here we mean the Scandinavian and Nordic countries – Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland. All have very small populations, but all too often have the hypocritical woke mentality of the Nazis. We only have to look at their attitude during the Second World War. Finland fought with the Nazis, Denmark and Norway hardly resisted and ‘neutral’ Sweden willingly supplied essential raw materials to the Reich.
12. 2063-2066: The Liberation of the Isles
This might be the most problematic of all. However, Ireland, soon to be reunited, would surely welcome full liberation, Republican Scotland too, even Wales: only a few are affected there in these Celtic lands of low population. But there is still England, which has to be freed from alien ‘Britain’ and so restored. That which has poisoned England and English life for nearly a millennium, the British Establishment, centred in the Norman-founded City of London (the Old English Capital was Winchester) and spreading its tentacles throughout the country, must be removed.
Consisting of parasitic politicians, with its current Bully Bunter English public schoolboy leader Johnson, the Armed Forces, the Secret Police (politely called MI5), aristocrats, bankers and industrialists, their propaganda mouthpiece, the BBC, condescendingly utilised to control the plebs with the other oligarchic media, as well as other government arms, the Establishment does not represent England, only Britain. Let the oppressed provinces of England rise and reject the gangrene of the tentacular Metropolitan elite. Instead of a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, imported in order to avoid having a Catholic on the throne, let a Non-French/Welsh/ Scottish/Dutch/German but English monarch at last come to the throne after a thousand years and a trillion tears. Only so can the British abscess be lanced and England healed from its millennial brain and soul-fever.
Conclusion
Here then is a suggestion for raising the European iron curtain, by denazifying, deNATOfying, deEUing and so liberating the European Peninsula of North-Western Eurasia. Some will say that, even spread over 44 years, this project is hopelessly optimistic, it is even impossible; others will say that it is pessimistic, that all could happen within a few years, for Western Europe is a house of cards. We do not know who is right. Is there even a Russian appetite for this? Not without popular support on the ground. Without popular support, no invader can win – even the USA must know this from its defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan. However, in any case, if the West continues to escalate the conflict in the Ukraine, inevitably it will have to pay for the consequences of its great foolishness. You should not play American roulette (4), especially when you live in a house of cards.
Yet, if multipolar Afro-Eurasia is to forge ahead at full speed, Europe must be liberated from its Western Supremacist/Nazi ideology. And the New Worlds will also have to sort themselves out, though with help. Russia can help in Latin America, China in Oceania. As for North America, the USA will yet collapse into its component parts, with the southern States returning to Mexico, New England going to Canada, other parts becoming independent Confederations, Alaska returning to the Russian Federation, thus restoring the Federation as a tricontinental nation, which is its destiny. Perhaps the denazified British Isles and Ireland could play a useful role in the States that will remain? Of course, we know nothing of how far or fast such an ambitious vision could progress. But frankly, if only 10% of any of the above were achieved, that would be huge and miraculous progress.
Notes:
1. See our article on this site: ‘What Does Nazism Mean?’ (29th March 2022)
2. Many would say that World War II was itself merely the continuation of World War I. The French Marshal Foch considered that the Treaty of Versailles which officially ended the War would lead to a new War. As it was being signed in June 1919, he said: ‘This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years’. His forecast was exact to the very year.
3. See our article on this site ‘What Sort of People Fly a Ukrainian Flag?’ (3rd May 2022)
4. This is the correct name for so-called ‘Russian roulette’. It never existed in Russia, but was invented by a US writer for a work of fiction in 1937. Presumably he gave it the Russian name as it sounded ‘exotic’ to him. Another crazy and racist Russophobic invention that only gun-obsessed cowboys with their cult of violence could think up.
Evidence shows that Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine is a legally justified, critically necessary, and predictable response to the US’ recent escalation of its decades-long aggression against Russia in Ukraine–militarily, in the international corporate media, in cyberspace, and in the political-economic arena. The US’ hostile actions against Russia were summarized in a 2019 US-Army funded RAND Corporation blueprint for “Over Extending and Unbalancing Russia.” Underlying US actions is its aim is to dismember and asset-strip Russia–to appropriate its coveted oil, gas, and mineral resources and vast agricultural lands–and to enable US investors’ access to Russia’s economy. This is a step towards the US’ overarching goals of controlling Central Asia and achieving full spectrum dominance or global hegemony. Although the US war against Russia in Ukraine started years ago, US aggression escalated under the Biden administration and created conditions that posed an immediate existential threat to Russia and necessitated its military response.
In 2014, the US initiated a proxy war against Russia by engineering the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected president. This ignited a bloody civil war on Russia’s border in which the US-installed and US-armed Kiev regime attacked the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk whose largely ethnically Russian residents opposed the US coup. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented the Kiev regime’s attacks that killed thousands of civilians and terrorized the populace. In 2015, the US-installed then-president, Petro Poroshenko, publicly articulated Kiev’s anti-Russia stance and its policy for the Donbass:
“We will have jobs—they will not. We will have pensions—they will not. [….] Our children will go to schools and kindergartens—theirs will hide in the basements.” Popular Ukraine pundits openly called for Donbas residents’ extermination. In 2015, Congress lifted its ban on funding Ukraine’s neo Nazi militias and placed US military trainers on the ground inside Ukraine. NATO and the CIA also began training Ukraine regime forces–effectively establishing Ukraine as a de facto US/NATO mercenary state. During the past eight years, Russia exhibited enormous restraint as the US and Ukraine violated the Minsk Protocols and rejected requests for diplomacy. In 2021, US aggression against Russia increased dramatically once Biden took office–in Ukraine and in the Black Sea. US actions and Ukraine President Zelensky’s public statements generated immediate threats to the survival of the Russian nation-state.
Russia’s Military Response Was Over-Determined By Four Existential Threats
The US government and the corporate media falsely characterize Russia’s special operation as entirely ‘unprovoked’ and an ‘illegal invasion’. These allegations ignore four conditions which each independently compelled President Putin and the Duma to initiate Russia’s denazification and demilitarization operation and which establish this intervention as consistent with international legal norms.
Chief among the factors necessitating Russia’s immediate military response were indications of an imminent new massacre as 125,000 Ukraine forces amassed along the border of Donbass in December of 2021. This was never reported in the US corporate press. Instead, the US government and corporate media repeatedly stated that Russian troops were gathering on Ukraine’s border (inside Russia) and predicted an impending Russian invasion. In hindsight, US intelligence could make this accurate claim because it was aware of the menacing buildup of Ukraine forces. Anticipating an imminent massacre, Russia was obligated to intervene militarily because it had a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) the citizens of Donbass. R2P is a political commitment to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity; it was endorsed by the United Nations at its 2005 world summit.
Second, on February 19, 2022, Ukraine President Zelensky announced that Ukraine would seek to acquire nuclear weapons, saying, “I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.” Zelensky’s expressed desire to acquire nuclear weapons represented a dangerous threat to Moscow and signaled that the window of opportunity for conventional military intervention was closing. It is unlikely that Zelensky operates completely autonomously; Biden publicly bragged about his control over Ukraine government policies and has remunerated Zelensky following Zelensky’s implementation of anti-Russia policies and actions.
Third, Zelensky’s repudiation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was a reminder of Ukraine’s intent to join NATO. For years, US President Biden advocated NATO membership for Ukraine, assuring Zelensky as recently as December 11, 2021 that this was in Ukraine’s own hands. NATO membership would entail NATO nuclear missiles inside Ukraine, aimed at Moscow. Ukraine’s geographic proximity to Russia eliminates the crucial minutes in which Moscow could verify and respond to an attack and would effectively place Russia and the US at DEFCON Level Two. The US dismissed Russia’s December 17, 2021 verbal and written requests for a diplomatic response to its security concerns. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken deliberately rejected Russia’s entreaties and ignored the predictable consequences of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership. Renowned international relations scholars, diplomats and politicians, including John Mearsheimer, Jack Matlock, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and William Perry warned that NATO membership for Ukraine was a dangerous provocation which would trigger Russia’s military response.
A fourth threat requiring Russia’s intervention was the presence of US Department of Defense-operated biolabs inside Ukraine. Russia’s concerns were validated on March 11, 2022 when Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted during Congressional questioning that the Ukraine biolabs contained ‘biological materials’ which the US ‘did not want to fall into Russian hands’. While the pathogenic biological agents in these biolabs do not technically constitute bioweapons, they can become bioweapons once there is a ‘mechanism for spreading the agent.’ A delivery mechanism need not be sophisticated to be effective. Bioweapons researcher, Jeffrey Kaye, described the extreme level of US secrecy surrounding the biolabs. Kaye noted that the Director of the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Robert Pope, did not reassure when he stated that, “the Ukraine biolabs currently did not have the ability to manufacture bioweapons.”
Russia’s Intervention Is Consistent with International Law
These four US-generated conditions represented urgent existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state and contradict US claims that Russia ‘illegally invaded Ukraine’ and that Russia’s intervention was unprovoked. Russia was compelled to intervene militarily to neutralize these threats and its response is consistent with the United Nations Charter of 1945 concerning international rules governing a state’s use of military force. The United Nations allows two exceptions to its prohibition of the use of force in international law: “self-defence under Article 51, and military measures authorised by the Security Council in response to “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.” In particular, the UN Charter notes, “there is no problem – and never has been – with that state, without first seeking Security Council approval, using military force ‘preemptively’.’ Both exceptions apply to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine: Russia perceived an imminent threat to the Donbas and an imminent threat to the Russian nation-state. The immediacy of these threats obviated any requirement that Russia seek prior UN Security Council approval. Seeking UN approval would be futile, in any case, because the United States, a permanent UN Security Council member, is the principal combatant generating the hostilities.
Under the Biden administration, what began in 2014 as a US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine transformed into the US’ direct war against Russia. The US’ covert and overt military actions establish it as a legal “co-belligerent.” Now, the US continues to flood Ukraine with billions of dollars of heavy weapons and provides intelligence to guide Ukraine’s attacks on Russian forces. The US blatantly states that it wants to “weaken” Russia and that Russia must be defeated. This is the US whose regime change wars in the Middle East killed 5 million; whose 1955-1975 war against Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia cost 3.4 million military and civilian lives. This is the US CIA whose coups and illegal interventions around the globe since its 1947 inception left a trail of bloodshed and chaos. Russia is legally and crucially defending the Donbas and the Russian nation-state against the US quest for global domination. The US generated four existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state that necessitated Russia’s immediate intervention. The US—not Russia—is the illegal aggressor in Ukraine.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 