Myths from the Past and the Third Incarnation of Russia since 1721

June 22, 2022

By Batiushka

The First and Second Incarnations of Russia

The Russian Lands existed for well over a thousand years before 2022 and took on many highly significant political and geographical forms. These could be described at another time; here we do not have space. However, in the last 300 years, between 1721 and 24 February 2022, they had known only two incarnations: The Russian Empire (1721-1917), and the Soviet Union with the Post-Soviet Russian Federation (1917-2022). The USSR and its totalitarian faults are fairly well known in the West, but even here the West still refuses to believe in the many ‘Soviet’ social virtues, its free medicine, education and culture, which were all inherited from the Empire. The West has blinded itself with its own anti-Russian (disguised as anti-Communist) propaganda. The continuation of a weakened USSR in the Post-Soviet Federation was initially loved by the West, as it was its own creation. Indeed, in many respects the post-Soviet Federation appeared to have adopted the worst of the West and rejected the best of the Soviet Union. By reaction, some suggested that the Federation should return to the USSR. That was never on the agenda. That was an experiment that had failed. On the other hand, the idea that the Federation would become just another Western chimpanzee like Japan was never going to happen either. The Russian Lands have their own identity, their own civilisation.

On the other hand, the Russian Empire is virtually unknown in the West, as the West still believes its own ignorance and lies about it. After all it was the West which destroyed it, with the help of internal traitors and decadent aristocrats, who cruelly exploited the poor and so guaranteed the fall of the Empire. Unsurprisingly, many of these traitors soon afterwards emigrated to the West, given the disaster that they had created in Russia with Western backing. We will therefore spend some time below disillusioning those who still believe in the racist Western/Soviet propaganda stereotypes of ‘tyrannical Asiatic autocracy’, ‘backward obscurantism’, which kept its people in a state of poverty and ignorance. The condescending West said: ‘If only they had been like us clever Western people, all would have been well’. We will look at these realities (1) firstly because they are so little known and many still actually believe in the myths, and secondly because the positive aspects of the pre-Revolutionary Empire are at the heart of the USSR and will also be at the heart of today’s Third Incarnation (see further). Below we look at the real Russian Empire.

The Economy

In the 20 years before 1917 the population of the Empire increased by 62 million, some 50%. It was a time when industrialisation and modernisation accelerated very sharply. National income and productivity increased at a rate unrivalled anywhere else in the world and the budget increased threefold. Personal taxation in the Russian Empire was half the level of that in France and Germany and a quarter of that in Great Britain.

Average earnings were higher than those in any Western European country, less only than those in the USA. Prices were among the lowest in the world and inflation and unemployment were practically non-existent. Thanks to the monetary reform that the Tsar personally insisted on carrying out in 1897, the rouble was guaranteed by gold. The Empire had the largest gold reserves in the world and the Russian gold rouble remains one of the safest investments in the world.

Between 1890 and 1913 GNP increased fourfold. There was a fourfold increase in the extraction of coal and the production of cast iron, and a fivefold increase in that of copper. Between 1911 and 1914 investment in engineering increased by 80% and electrification had begun in many cities. In 1901 the USA extracted 9.9 million tons of oil, Russia 12.1 million tons. Between 1908 and 1913 productivity surpassed that of the USA, Great Britain and Germany. The Empire was the biggest exporter of textiles and one of the biggest of metals and engineering. Russia was on course to becoming the leading world economy by 1950, surpassing both Europe and the USA.

Infrastructure and Agriculture

The Trans-Siberian Railway was completed at the insistence of the last Tsar despite opposition. In 20 years the length of railways and telegraph networks doubled, indeed, the rate of railway construction was one of the highest in the world, the later Soviet rate being a mere fraction of it. Its locomotives were among the best in the world. This was why armoured trains appeared in Russia. The largest fleet of river ships in the world doubled in tonnage during that period. The plane industry was on a par with that of the American.

The car industry was in a similar situation to the German, Russian cars winning races at rallies in Monte Carlo and San Sebastian. Indeed, Mercedes and Daimler engines were invented by the Russian engineer Boris Lutskoy. Pre-Revolutionary Russia also invented: the wireless telegraph, the helicopter, the television, cine-news, the tramway, hydroelectric power stations, the electric plough, the submarine, the parachute, the radio, the electron microscope, the powder fire extinguisher, the astronomical clock, the seismograph, the electric omnibus, the flying boat, the icebreaker, the motorcycle, the airship and double-decker railway carriages.

Thanks to the Agrarian Reform, by 1914 100% of usable land in Asian Russia and 90% in European Russia belonged to the people. The Empire was the biggest exporter of cereals, flax, eggs, milk, butter, meat and sugar in the world. The wheat harvest was one third larger than that of the USA, Canada and Argentina combined. Cereal production doubled during the reign and the number of cattle increased by 60%. The Empire was also first in the world for the numbers of horses, cows, sheep and one of the biggest for the numbers of pigs and goats.

Social Justice, Health and Education

From June 1903 all employers in the Russian Empire were obliged to pay benefit and pension to all employees and their families who had suffered an accident. This amounted to between 50% and 66% of their salary. Trade Unions were formed in 1906 and from June 1912 compulsory health insurance at work was introduced to cover illness or accident. Social insurance legislation was introduced before other European countries and the USA. The US President William Taft declared that: ‘Your Emperor has created such perfect labour legislation which no democratic state can boast of’.

In 1898 the Empire introduced a universal medical welfare system that cost the tiny sum of one rouble per year. The Swiss hygienist Friedrich Erismann praised this system as ‘the greatest achievement in the world in the field of social medicine’. Russia was third in the world for the number of its doctors. The Tsar personally insisted on introducing economic reforms and measures against alcohol abuse, often in spite of the Duma. Alcohol consumption per head was one of the lowest in the world and the lowest in Europe outside Norway. In 1913 the number of mentally ill was 187 in every 100,000, compared to 5,598 per 100,000 in the Russian Federation in 2013. The number of suicides in the Empire was 4.4 per 100,000. In the Russian Federation in 2012 it was 19.5 and 12.1 in the USA.

Compulsory primary education was introduced in 1908, over a generation later than in the West. However, by 1916 literacy in the Empire had already reached 85%. By 1914 there were 150,000 students studying at university institutions. In terms of numbers of students the Russian Empire was joint third in the world with Great Britain. Another 300 million roubles was spent in 1913 on country schools, a budget up from 70 million in 1894. In less than 20 years the education budget rose by 628%. By 1913 there were 130,000 schools in the Empire with 6 million pupils. All education, primary, secondary and tertiary, was free.

The Internal Situation

The pogroms of the late nineteenth century and very early twentieth century, basically race riots, led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, about half of them Non-Jews and about half of them Jews. Similar to the Catholic-Protestant race riots in Northern Ireland in the late 20^th century, some were started by one side, others by the other. There is no recorded instance of them being encouraged by the State, which built many large synagogues for the Jewish population. None of the pogroms occurred in Russia, but only in what are now Lithuania, Poland, the west of the Ukraine and Moldova. Many Jews lived there because they had been chased out of Western Europe by Anti-Semitism centuries earlier. Sadly, Western propaganda on this subject is still widely believed in the West. It is notable that where the race riots took place were the same places as where the Nazis received help from the local population when they invaded from 1941 onwards.

Another piece of Western/Soviet mythology is the ‘Bloody Sunday’ march in 1905. In this event it was revolutionaries who opened fire and troops defended themselves. There were 130 victims – not 5,000, as invented by Western propaganda. All victims were given immediate medical care. The Tsar was not even in the city at the time. When he learned of it, horrified, he sacked the officials who should have been in charge and at once gave each family that had suffered the enormous sum of 50,000 roubles from his personal money.

Crime was lower than in Western Europe and the USA. In 1908 56 people per 100,000 were imprisoned. In the Soviet Union in 1949 the figure was 1,537 per 100,000 and in the Russian Federation in 2011, 555, with 724 per 100,000 in the USA in the same year. There was a free press and freedom of speech, unlike in the West where strict ‘editorial policies’ (= censorship) were pursued. The Tsar never rejected a single petition for pardon. Fewer death penalties were carried out during his whole reign than in any single day in the Soviet Union until the death of Stalin.

International Relations

The Hague International Tribunal of Justice, suggested in 1898 to prevent wars, but derided by other European leaders, was the personal brainchild of Tsar Nicholas. If it had been implemented as he had wanted, there would never have been any First World War, let alone later wars. Thus, those who had derided it, notably the British and the Germans, signed their own death warrants.

When in February 1904 Japan, urged on, financed and armed to the teeth by the geopolitical imperialists of Great Britain and the USA, treacherously attacked the small and poorly-armed Russian Navy without first declaring war (as it later did at Pearl Harbour), it only took the non-militaristic Russian Empire eighteen months to recover. However, instead of continuing the war and crushing the by then bankrupt Japan militarily, Russia entered peace negotiations, but imposed such terms at the talks in the USA that Japan, forced to agree to them, went into mourning.

During the Great Patriotic War (as the First World War was then known) the Tsar constantly visited the Front. After less than a year, in 1915, given the incompetence of the former supreme commander, his arrogant and foul-mouthed uncle, he took on supreme command, against the advice of all, showing his strength of will. Russia began winning the greatest victories of the War, advancing huge distances and taking huge numbers of prisoners, for example the Tsar Nicholas Offensive, euphemistically known in the West as the ‘Brusilov Offensive’. This was undreamed of by the jealous Western Allies, who were bogged down in immobile and bloody trench warfare, where millions were dying. On the Russian Front, facing far more enemy troops, deaths amounted to fewer than 700,000.

The Armed Forces

In 1914 the Russian Empire was able to 2,000 engineers to help the USA at its request to set up a heavy armaments industry. The Russian Air Force, founded in 1910, was by 1917 the largest in the world, with 700 planes and by 1917 the Russian Navy, reformed and modernised after the dreadnought-armed Japan’s victories, was one of the strongest in the world. Had it not been for the treason of the Allies, of most of the aristocracy and many in the middle class, historians consider that Russia would have occupied Vienna and Berlin in 1917, thus ending the murderous war at least a year early and saving millions of lives. Over 95% of the 2,417,000 captured enemy soldiers returned home safely after the War.

Only 39% of males aged between 15-49 were mobilised in the Russian Empire, as against 81% in Germany, 79% in France, 74% in Austro-Hungary, 72% in Italy and 50% in Great Britain. Per 100,000 of its population, the Empire lost 11 people, as against 34 in France, 31 in Germany, 18 in Austria and 16 in Great Britain. (Reported very high Russian losses are propaganda myths of the anti-Russian West). The military reform was creating one of the strongest and best-equipped armies in the world, which would have been the best by 1917 if Germany had not started the First World War. It was the officers trained in the Imperial Army who in their forties and fifties won the Second World War.

Church Affairs and Culture

By 1913 the Russian Orthodox Church had 67,000 churches and 1,000 monasteries. It had great influence in the Holy Land, Asia and seventeen Russian churches had been built in Western Europe. The Tsar personally paid for the building of St Nicholas Cathedral in New York and ensured that the number of bishops in North America went from one to three. In 1916 there were plans to make sure that every Western capital would have a church and that the service-books of the Church would be translated into all the main Western languages.

Russian culture went through a period known as the Silver Age, with developments in science, philosophy, art, architecture, music and literature. The French writer Paul Valery stated that Russian culture at the beginning of the 20^th century was ‘one of the wonders of the world’. Two of the five founders of Hollywood came from Russia. Chanel No 5 was invented by the Russian émigré Verigin.

The Third Incarnation

So much for the little-known past. Of course, there were many iniquities in the Russian Empire. Otherwise, it would not have fallen. The corruption of the parasitic aristocratic class (oligarchs) and the neglect of the working poor were too great. The gap was too large and the Tsar’s move to social justice did not go fast enough to keep pace with the challenges of rapid industrialisation. However, the positive aspects of the Empire and its huge advances and industrialisation, were retained by the Soviet Union. Despite the huge step backward wrought by the Civil War, Bolshevik persecution and artificial famines, by 1930 the USSR was back where Russia had been in 1916. Only in the last generation since the fall of the Soviet Union have those positive aspects been threatened. However, we will talk no more of the past, but of the future, of Russia’s Third Incarnation, of post-24 February 2022 Russia, the New Russia. This Incarnation has realised that it must keep the best of all previous Incarnations in order to survive and to move forward.

We are able to speak of this now only since the campaign of liberation of the Ukraine began on 24 February. Initially, this was launched to free only the Donbass and prevent the planned NATO-sponsored attack on it, set for early March 2022. This liberation campaign has been so successful that it has had to be extended. It seems certain now that all of Novorossiya (the east and south of the Ukraine) will be liberated, enabling Transdnestria to join the Russian Federation. However, given the continued aggression of the rest of the Ukraine and NATO threats from elsewhere, Russian military success may have to be extended.

Until the whole of the Ukraine is demilitarised, and it is continually being remilitarised by the West, the liberation cannot stop. Moreover, with potential threats from NATO-armed Poland and Lithuania towards Kaliningrad and from Romania towards Moldova, from arms shipments from Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Lands and the Baltic States, especially from the US puppet-government in Lithuania, with threats from Sweden and Finland to join NATO, where will it stop? The West has to be freed from Nazism/woke liberalism (it is the same thing. As they say: there is nothing so intolerant as liberalism). True, Germany, France and Italy, their economies crippled by US-imposed, anti-Russian sanctions, are showing reason. This is unlike the laughable bluster coming from the militarily feeble Johnson-regime in the UK, which may well be toppled by popular internal discontent and a wave of strikes.

The Global Implications of the Third Incarnation of Russia

However, it is the economic aspect, with its international dedollarisation, of the Third Incarnation of Russia which is truly world-changing. In the light of the speech of Vladimir Putin at the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum of June 2022, we can say that Russia is returning to its historic path. It wants to leave aside the errors of the past, become a sovereign nation again and no longer be a Western colony. This is unlike the EU, which is clearly just a US vassal, both economically and politically. The future world order will be formed only by strong sovereign states, independent of the dollar and the massive debts of Western countries. These have been caused by their inflationary printing of money that is not based on real commodities such as cereals, oil, gas, minerals, metals, rare earth elements, fertilisers, timber, manufactured goods and gold.

The break with the West and the ‘obsolete geopolitical illusions’ of its elite’s superiority complex, essentially a form of Nazism, is irreversible. Russia will invest in internal economic development in microeconomic and macroeconomic terms, ensuring ‘technological sovereignty’ (which means for instance that Russia already has unique hypersonic missiles), encouraging free enterprise against bureaucracy, improving infrastructure, but also ensuring social justice, fighting against poverty and supporting the family, encouraging far more ‘families to have two, three or more children’. The ideal of social conservatism together with social justice is what is intended. Russia will also help nations in Africa and the Middle East to avoid Western-imposed famine. True, this is an ambitious programme for the future, but this Third Incarnation of Russia is beginning now.

Note:

1. As the definitive statistical source, compiled by my friend A. A. Borisiuk, see The History of Russia Which They Ordered to be Forgotten, Veche, 2018. This for the first time conveniently collates all Pre-Revolutionary, Soviet and Emigré Statistics (in Russian).

‘Nothing Will Be As Before’

June 20, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

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’.

Here is the future.

Pitchforks soon in Europe?

June 11, 2022

Source

by Jorge Vilches

Dear Europeans

For your own children´s sake — on my knees and with my saddened eyes humbly looking downwards — I beg of you to please stop the current self-destructive nonsense dead in its tracks by immediately demanding from your political class to import the bloody Russian oil normally once again as Europe had been doing for dozens of years. The impact that the ban on Russian oil has upon your daily lives now and for years yonder is such that at the very least a Referendum should have been held. But it was not, and without consultation, the EU leadership acted on their own.

Please be advised that the EU un-elected brass simply does not represent you or your needs. They were all voted amongst themselves into their positions like members of a committee in a private country club. If left unchecked, EU politicians will now continue misrepresenting you and, on your behalf — with your hard-earned assets and livelihoods – will keep on picking a most unnecessary and prolonged armed conflict with Russia, eventually forcing upon you a total war scenario where chances play out all very strongly against you, with Russia probably resulting unscathed.

their war

European leaders crave for their war, so they can´t think of a better way to provoke it than by applying ever larger and ´meaner´ sanctions on Russia as if (a) sanctions were effective and (b) as if Europe could win such war (not).

Accordingly, we now have yet another set of spanking new EU “sanctions” in package No. 6 that will eventually backfire flat on Europe´s face – like all the others — such as banning the insurance and financing of oil tankers that carry Russian oil. Accordingly, the EU is now trying its very best to

(1) bankrupt the successful Western oil tanker insurance business by reducing the number of participants

(2) induce higher shipping and insurance costs worldwide by reducing the number of participants

(3) foster the development of yet another Russian import substitution service namely oil tanker insurance & financing

(4) seriously hinder the world´s economy by not allowing deliveries of any oil tankers carrying Russian oil anywhere (EU or non-EU) thus cutting off some 15% of the world´s oil supply from the world market and necessarily sending its price yet higher with yet more EU-induced inflation as if we had not had enough already, please brace for it.

(5) force the construction of a new Russian-Chinese-Indian oil tanker fleet leaving idle part of today´s fleet

(6) tempt Russia to embargo strategic value-chain upstream items with captive consumers cascading into multiple failures thru lack of nat-gas, rare earths, inert gases, potash, sulfur, uranium, palladium, vanadium, cobalt, coke, etc.

Ref #1 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Insurance-Ban-Is-The-EUs-Biggest-Blow-Yet-To-Russian-Oil-Exports.html

Ref #2 https://www.rt.com/business/556904-us-russia-energy-revenue-sanctions/

Ref #3 https://www.rt.com/news/556894-russian-energy-resources-stagflation-difficulties/

Ref #4 https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/global-supply-chains-rattled-by-winds-of-war.html

lost war

Russia does not need to fire a single shot or land a single missile on European territories to win such a total war. Think tanks in Europe and elsewhere know this but say nothing. It´d be plenty enough for Russia to just shut off your nat-gas supply, period. And not even to the whole of Europe. It could possibly be to only, say, some limited area in Germany.

But you need not put up with any of this. Europe should already have learned from history books and its generals not to underestimate or discriminate against Russia. Let alone cheat on it repeatedly as Europe has done since the downfall of the former Soviet Union. Yet again, history will not be kind to anyone directly or indirectly involved, including yourselves. Equivalent events took place in Europe not that long ago and winter will not care what was said where or why or by whom. It will just freeze and starve Europeans to death with no mercy. Just ask the Germans: they should remember, or the French, they like history a lot. Russian attrition warfare is most efficient in any territory.

Please do not waste any more precious time with forever failed attempts to find substitutes of any kind. Quite simply it is very easy to prove in a matter of minutes ( see plenty of references below ) that God Almighty has no adequate oil available for you in large enough quantities anywhere on planet Earth other than Russia, let alone deliverable at refineries and processing plants per your own needs and capabilities. You simply cannot dismiss one full third of your oil supplies in one sudden stroke of a pen and assume that nothing important will happen including a very negative direct impact upon the price YOU pay. It´s market dynamics 101 that only a fool would dare to ignore, so innocent masses of humans should not pay for the stupid decisions of some few unelected groupie politicians that know jack about basic technical requirements. This is a live & kicking very tough field engineering for dirty-fingernails folks that don´t talk much, not yadda BS at a Brussels cocktail party with laughs, plenty of drinks, hot air, and photo ops.

bid forms AWOL

And not a single one yet making the scene, go figure… The current EU course of action necessarily calls for the 2022 execution of at least 100 projects related to the Russian oil ban thus allowing for non-Russian oil imports. Probably many more than 100 projects need to be executed if all refineries, processing plants, ports, pipelines, logistics infrastructure, etc., etc. are taken into account. But let´s keep it simple and in round figures. The Schwedt refinery alone will require 11 major projects at the very least already described in a previous article. As Schwedt can no longer export anywhere, large areas of nearby Western Poland will be left without fuels now having to urgently find an equivalent Polish supplier close by (???) if any. Same for Slovakia´s Slovnaft which will now also have to quit exporting – but unlike Schwedt — making it unviable although possibly still operational for domestic markets albeit with a huge new deficit to be paid by …?…?… (!!!). Who or how will Slovnaft export markets be supplied now is a dangerous mystery because of rough geography and unexistent logistics plus a newly required distribution infrastructure. All in all, we are talking hundreds of billions of euros that Europe does not have — and should not print — to be paid back in 40 to 50 years’ time long after (supposedly) fossil fuels have been phased out of the EU. This in and of itself does not make any sense whatsoever, but it does blend in perfectly well with other nonsensical stuff of this surreal non-Russian oil sourcing idea. Banks should logically reject approving any financing of dead-on-arrival projects such as these. Still, be it as it may, pre-feasibility and feasibility studies should right now already be underway “puffing smoke” as engineers say amongst themselves in such circumstances. Yet no headlines announced on anything, no bid forms issued or trans-European call for bids, no joint-ventures, no engineering firms, plans or specs guidelines, no bidding documents, no tentative schedules, no consultants, no commissions or committees, no bid opening and contract award dates: nothing. Of course, one very serious possibility is that the effective EU plan is to keep on buying Russian oil as always but now from third parties instead at a MUCH higher price with kick-backs here and there no? So all of what´s missing would actually be another European fake as the Maastricht Treaty acceptance criteria just to name one. This would at least make EU “sense” no? Can´t make this stuff up…

no diesel so freeze

Europeans: even in theory, there are no viable oil-field reservoirs able to expand their production for the enormous quantity and type of oil blends you need even if they wished to or if geopolitics allowed them. So what would happen then without massive amounts of high-quality diesel fuel that European transportation and industries require?

There is no viable tanker fleet afloat either for such an unexpected and suddenly imposed massive supply-switch project, with complex geo-climatological access and serious sea lanes issues plus seasonal requirements with dedicated facilities yet to be designed, built, permitted, and commissioned, and with terribly limited installed infrastructure at key unloading ports from heavy-duty/heavy traffic roads to cranes and dedicated storage facilities. The same goes for nonexistent in-land logistics for delivery of such yet unknown boutique oil blends with still-to-be-seen minimum quality specs and anywhere near the enormous un-findable quantities as Europe requires no matter how you dice it or slice it or pray for it. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Just maybe some “fly-by-night” un-vetted headache providers. You are thus running around in circles with the very serious and certain risk of freezing and starving millions of Europeans to death very soon which Russian oil has solved for you for decades. And whichever narrative you choose, it will always be your own stupid needless fault, not Vladimir Putin´s for Heaven´s sake who is still willing to sell Russia´s oil to you with very important discounts, something which you should not ever take for granted despite Europe´s recent shameless robbery of legitimate Russian savings deposited at Western banks, including personal individual accounts and assets.

So for your own benefit please stop the Russophobia right now, reverse the current unwarranted course 180 degrees, return the money robbed, by your own doing change your leadership ASAP, accept Russia´s territorial claims, accept the decline of Europe and the Western world at large, drop the Anglo-Saxon Brexitology superiority philosophy, guarantee Russia´s existential security and stop the shameful European nonsense now exposed for the world to see.

Otherwise, enter your very own European angry pitchforks with lit torches that will fix this fast. Are you ready?

Ref #5 http://thesaker.is/europes-mad-ban-on-russian-oil/

Ref #6 http://thesaker.is/why-russias-oil-ban-is-impossible/

Ref #7 http://thesaker.is/germans-schwedt-hard-for-russian-oil/

Ref #8 http://thesaker.is/dear-ursula-you-are-dead-wrong/

Ref #9 http://thesaker.is/europe-now-cheats-or-suffers/

Ref #10 http://thesaker.is/for-europe-from-russia-with-love/

Ref #11 https://www.rt.com/business/556870-good-times-over-for-europeans/

pitchforks ready

Not that long ago, the French Revolution was planned and led by the middle classes. And in the very near short term that will be the new game of the game throughout Europe if the EU leadership insists on fighting a-la Don Quixote its inevitable dependency on Russia. Besides, in case you didn´t notice, Russia is winning on all fronts, militarily, geopolitically, logistically, socially, economically, and financially. The Ruble is as strong as it cares to be and Russia is the only world power able to self-sustain independently from what happens in the rest of the world. After many years of trying to accommodate your requirements, Russia simply does not care anymore what the West thinks, does, or threatens to do. It can now beat you at any of the three at any time. Your sanctions work against Europe, not Russia. You must see and feel that for sure, so why do you fake being blind? Or are you “brain-dead” per President Macron?

Russia´s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov nailed it for history: the West is simply not “agreement-capable” with the post-Brexit US-led Anglo-Saxon leadership in charge. Did you not have enough with Victoria Nuland´s loud and clear “ fuck the EU ” audio recording? What else would you need to accept what´s really going on? Maybe having a character such as Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruling the Ukraine? He already is… Why has European leadership now turned so unwarrantedly Russophobic? You do not need to be their friend, but why should you make Russia your enemy even proposing an anti-Russian coalition cartel? Ref #12 https://www.rt.com/news/556913-yellen-coalition-russian-sanctions/

European infighting

A network is only as strong as its weakest link. As initially explained in the “their war” paragraph, just-in-time fragility will trigger cascading failures throughout Europe in a matter of days, if not hours. So what´s the European game plan for the 21^st. century without energy security? Fighting even more yet again amongst yourselves? What will become of Europe without Russia as a business associate and energy provider? Are you aware of how weak European economies and fragile finances currently stand? Did you know that 85% of the world´s population does not belong to NATO?

Hungary et al will continue to receive cheap and excellent Russian Urals blend through the Druzbha South pipeline for a yet undefined period of time. This would mean a wholly unfair competitive environment with tremendous advantages for some few over those fed with new unknown expensive non-Russian oils plus the costs for the corresponding retro-fitting / reconversion downtime (or plain non-performance) kicking them outright out of the market for an unknown period of time possibly bankrupting them and creating extraordinary logistics problems to consumers throughout Europe. Allowing for the Druzbha South pipeline to continue feeding 15% of Europe with excellent Russian oils will provide the perfect comparison standard of practice. And it would reveal the fallacy that Russian oils can be substituted easily and without enormous great pains per Ursula von der Leyden´s historical bad joke: “the EU will make sure to phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion to allow us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes minimizing the impact on global markets”. It´d be like trying to change your car´s engine oil while cruising at 150 km/hr on a German autobahn.

quantities & qualities

By any means, there are definitely not enough adequate oil blends around to satisfy European requirements without continuous Russian high-quality Urals supply. And also please understand and accept once and for all that a specific oil blend is not just “an oil blend” to be plugged & played anywhere anytime. A very specific refinery or processing plant tune-up needs to be specifically matched with an always constant high-quality oil blend in large enough quantities and for a given desired output such as diesel. No “open architecture” is possible here, that´s just for IT nerds, not for chemical engineering realities. And definetly there are no vendors all lined up happily willing and able to sell you their oil blend in unlimited quantities already fully adapted to whatever plant you may have for whichever desired production output you may need. And also any door-to-door pipeline performs infinitely better than the best batch-delivery system, let alone with un-prepared ports thousands of kilometers away from “beach-front bazaar” vendors.

Should ´climate change´ already agreed goals reduce or further increase worldwide oil production? Which is it, please make up your mind. Furthermore, oil-field production will be very hard to maintain into the near future because of constant shale reservoir depletion, fracking prohibition, ever-increasing labor shortages, rising drilling costs due to worldwide inflation, and temporary or permanent lack of missing components caused by supply chain disruptions.

Ref #13 https://www.rt.com/business/556816-eu-buying-russian-oil/

Ref #14 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Reshuffle-Of-Oil-Flows-Since-The-1970s.html

no people no project

For decades Europe has streamlined supplies and specifically matched its processing capabilities for the Russian Urals blend which means that now Europeans cannot just suddenly switch to whatever little and bad oil blends are found elsewhere. It just does not work that way. If any of that is attempted, the result will be absolutely disqualifying higher prices and costs plus un-thinkable risks for the whole European economy. Furthermore, Europe will spend a FORTUNE it does not have while simultaneously risking project non-performance of the trouble full reconversion projects required ending up with many half-finished facilities that will not be anywhere ready on time, or ever. And as 95% compliance is not enough to produce a single drop of a processed product (diesel or whatever) this means that under current circumstances and 2022 established deadlines until Europe has 100% modified and retrofitted facilities up and running you really have NOTHING. Additionally, the human resource challenge related to all of the above is insurmountable and probably un-compliable. Ref #15 https://www.rt.com/business/556600-analysts-warning-russian-oil-embargo/

How blaming Putin is helping Putin

June 06, 2022

Source

By Dmitry Orlov

The systemic crisis which we are currently witnessing in the West (and in other parts of the world that are too tightly interconnected with the West to avoid experiencing it as well) is objectively being caused by the West itself. But Westerners, being unaccustomed to acknowledging their mistakes (being all superior, indispensable and infallible-like in their own addled minds), are forced to resort to explaining away their epic failures in virtually every sphere by blaming it all on Putin. That is, they don’t even blame Russia in general, but blame Putin personally; after all, Russia can be good and agreeable at times (as it was under Gorbachev and Yeltsin) but Putin makes it misbehave. That’s why it’s all got to be Putin’s fault.

Here’s what it’s come to: an entire President of the United States (or whoever runs his teleprompter), who, in the course of his election campaign, swore up and down that he will take responsibility for whatever happens under his command, now blames “Putin’s Price Hike” so regularly and monotonously that the phrase has become a meme.

By now the narrative of “it’s all Putin’s fault” has spread to encompass all of the more sensitive problems: inflation, fuel prices, food price hikes and even… shortages of baby formula! It turns out that the shortages aren’t caused by the discovery of dangerous bacteria in the products of a monopoly producer but by shortages of imported sunflower oil from… the Ukraine. That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, no less! The logical steps needed to make it all Putin’s fault are then obvious: the shortages are because of the war and the war is Putin’s fault.

This wonderful strategy works just fine for the short term, but it has a major vulnerability in the longer term because of a certain mechanism of mass psychology. Superficially, it is simple and seemingly bulletproof: Putin is irrational; he has imperial ambitions, suffers from paranoia, delusions of grandeur, is obsessed with restoring the USSR… Since his motives are irrational, they cannot be dealt with through rational means such as negotiation, diplomacy, compromise and so on. Putin is a crazy dictator with lots of nuclear missiles and so all we can do is suffer. This construct seems good enough for most purposes, such as explaining away social problems, economic issues and failures of leadership. But only in the short term.

If the unprecedented tidal wave of sanctions which the West had sent toward Russia had produced some sort of tangible effect during the first two or three months of Russia’s special operation in the Ukraine, then this strategy would have been quite enough to ease suffering Western masses through the shock of the unfolding crisis (although the crisis would continue to unfold even if the Russian economy had collapsed). But over the longer term this strategy stops working. First, the “blame Putin” narrative is rather monotonous and gets old quickly. Second, and far more importantly, at the level of mass subconscious, it creates the impression that Putin is a god: super-powerful, super-influential and able to influence processes both global and local through subtle and invisible means. Moreover, Putin the god is Zeus-like and has powerful atomic thunderbolts at his disposal, adding terrifying appeal to his already frightful image.

Sooner or later the Western mass subconscious will form a simple and perfectly logical thought: if Putin is all-powerful and super-influential, and if we with our feeble “sanctions from Hell” can do nothing to weaken or dislodge him over three, then five, then seven months, then, obviously, we must come to terms with him and accede to his demands before things get any worse for us! And while it would be demeaning for the Western mass subconscious to negotiate with a petty tyrant or a mad despot, negotiating with an all-powerful demigod who holds the fate of humanity in his hands is not shameful at all but a necessary, unavoidable, eminently reasonable measure. Moreover, it should be possible to portray such a compromise in flattering terms: as a magnanimous gift from the community of civilized nations offered in good faith in order to save the world from nuclear armageddon about to be unleashed by an angry, all-powerful demigod.

In turn, if Western politicians are, as one might expect, reluctant to negotiate with Putin and to compromise, suffering Western masses will blame them for any delay. If Putin is all-powerful and super-influential, then why aren’t they negotiating and seeking compromise? What are they waiting for? What’s wrong with them? The better-informed element among the Western masses might even be able to vaguely guess at a seldom-discussed but rather obvious fact: what Putin wants is not at all unreasonable. He just wants some of Ukraine (not necessarily even all of it—just the enthusiastically, patriotically Russian bits) and he also wants NATO the hell away from Russia’s borders. “What do we want this Ukraine for anyway?” this enlightened element might inquire. After all, most people in the West lived many happy years not knowing that the Ukraine even existed. What’s more, their recent discovery of its existence has coincided with the onset of a very nasty crisis—and they still can’t find the damned place on a map! And now they have to suffer with sky-high gas prices, with unaffordable food, galloping inflation, shortages of baby formula—all because some idiot politicians are refusing to give Putin this fucking Ukraine which nobody else wants anyway? (Well, Poland does, but who the heck is Poland?) Come on! Be reasonable! Get rid of this stupid Hunter Biden playground and let’s get on with it!

That is the new narrative that is inevitably forming in the mass subconscious of the West, and as time passes, energy prices continue to increase, shortages of all sorts of things become commonplace… and meanwhile the ruble strengthens and Russia gets richer and richer in spite of “sanctions from Hell,” unhurriedly moving its fabled wall of artillery fire westward across the Ukrainian landscape, this narrative will become stronger and stronger and will eventually become dominant. At that point, any attempt to “blame Putin” will be met with boos, hisses and a volley of rotten vegetables. What should we expect Western politicians to do under such circumstances? We should not expect any surprises; they will do what they have always done: they will try to suppress the new, competing narrative. They will “cancel” anyone who tries to articulate it within the media space. (Tucker Carlson beware!)

In doing so, the West will neatly echo what’s happened within the Ukraine itself—a symptom of a creeping Ukrainization of the West. In the Ukraine, for every single disastrous, catastrophic failure that had occurred in 2014 and 2015, the Kiev regime blamed it squarely on Putin personally. Over time it has succeeded in forming a sort of quasi-cult of Putin as an all-powerful evil deity hell-bent on destroying poor, sore-beset little cuddly Ukraine. As a result, by 2018 give or take a year, in the Ukrainian mass subconscious there formed a new narrative: “What do we need this Russian-infested Crimea or this ornery Donbass for? Why can’t we just give them to Putin, so that he leaves us alone and lets us develop as a European-oriented country?”

What did the Kiev regime do about this new narrative? It did whatever it could to suppress it. This wasn’t any sort of independent initiative on its part; it is, after all, a colonial administration run from Washington. And since Washington was busy architecting a Ukrainian war against Russia, any narrative that involved making peace with Russia was simply not allowed. That’s why all Ukrainian opposition political parties were banned, all non-government-controlled television channels were shut down and anyone who ventured to guess that giving de facto independent territories a chance to decide their own fate might be a good idea were charged with separatism and imprisoned or killed. As a result, the West got what it wanted: a Ukrainian war with Russia.

But then something went horribly wrong. Putin pre-empted the Ukrainian attack and lit a backfire by sending in tank columns into territory previously controlled by the Kiev regime, scrambling its logistics throwing its battle plans into ghastly disarray. Then he set about methodically blowing up the Ukraine’s warmaking capacity using standoff weapons. According to schedule, it will be all gone later this month, Western military aid notwithstanding. And then it turned out that Russia was ready for “sanctions from Hell,” having spent eight years preparing for them, and was able to sustain the blow, which then bounced back onto the West and started smashing it to bits. The West reflexively continued to follow the Ukrainian pattern and blame it all on Putin. By now the alternative narrative of an all-powerful Lord Putin is fully formed and we should expect to hear more and more voices clamoring for negotiation and compromise with him.

The aforementioned Tucker Carlson is one of these voices, and his influence on his vast audience sets the tone for a significant chunk of electorate in the US—not that their vote counts for much. Much more surprisingly, the same opinion was voiced at Davos by none other than that talking fossil Henry Kissinger! In response, the Ukrainians added Kissinger to their… terrorist database. Various Kiev regime mouthpieces positively choked from fury. How could he? Doesn’t he know that negotiating with Putin is strictly verboten? That narrative must be suppressed—in the Ukraine and in the West!

The strategy of blaming it all on Putin has backfired grandly in both the Ukraine and in the West and will continue backfiring, eating away at the social fabric and demoralizing the population. But that’s not all! This strategy is also immensely helpful to Russia. Ignoring the obvious thought that anything that is detrimental to the West is automatically beneficial for Russia, there is another, much more significant benefit that this strategy provides to Russia directly: it works to raise Russia’s, and Putin’s, prestige in the rest of the world, which is already much more important to Russia than the West will ever be again.

By now, the world is quite unified in terms of access to information. The elites of just about every country have access to the internet and can either read English or can feed it through Google Translate and get the gist. And what they read is that in the West, which is entering into a major crisis, they are blaming it all on Putin. Therefore, Putin is all-powerful and super-influential. Further, these elites can observe that Putin isn’t the least bit afraid of the West and is willing to enter into conflict with it—armed conflict, as in destroying the largest army in Europe, one trained and commanded by Western specialists, over a period of three months using just a small fraction of his own army and with minimal casualties. They see Putin consigning to history books the traditional military dogma by which attackers must outnumber defenders by a healthy margin. This causes them to reach an obvious conclusion: Putin is definitely someone they should treat with great caution and respect; the West—not too much any more. The longer the “it’s all Putin’s fault” narrative continues to be in use, the greater will grow Putin’s already very significant influence and prestige on the world scene, and this will, in turn, improve Russia’s chances of reaching favorable agreements in just about any international negotiation.

But this advantage extends far beyond Russia’s bilateral relations. For the first time since Russia was part of the Mongol Empire, Russia has a real chance to confront the West not standing alone but as part of a mighty international coalition.

• Where were the large non-Western countries when Russia was confronting the collective West in the 17th century, with Poland spearheading the charge? India, Persia and China were all stewing in their own juices, while the Ottoman Empire was, as usual, hostile to Russia. Africa, South America, Southwest Asia were Western colonies.

• Where were these countries in the 18th century, when Russia was being accosted by the Swedes, with the rest of the West standing behind them? The situation was barely different, except the conflict with the Ottomans was even hotter.

• Where were they in the 19th century, when Russia was assailed by the French, with the rest of Europe fighting on the side of France? Same thing again.

• Where were they in the 20th century, when Russia battled Germany—twice!—with the rest of the West arming and funding the Germans? During the first half of the century they were still all colonies or semi-colonies, while during the second they were still finding their own way and had little to offer militarily, economically or politically.

From the time of Genghis Khan’s Empire of the Blue Sky, which at one point encompassed Russia, China, Korea, India and Persia (and featured the familiar Russian themes of collective security and obligatory mutual aid) and until the present time Russia has stood alone in its perennial conflict with the West. But now Putin, standing alone, stands a chance of cementing a gigantic international alliance of non-Western nations, comprising the vast majority of the world’s population, an independent and plentiful resource base and well over half of all the economic power. Nobody else has anywhere near this level of Western public relations support, care of the “blame Putin” campaign. Putin’s only peer competitor in vying for the position of a new Genghis Khan is Xi Jinping, who would very much want to join the coalition as Putin’s equal. But China has a test to pass before this dream can be realized: it must reconquer Taiwan. Avenging the humiliation it suffered at the hands of the Japanese would be a nice additional feather in its cap. Once Russia expels the US from the Ukraine and China expels the US from Taiwan, the path toward Eurasian unification will be clear.

What, if anything, should the West do about that? Why, blame Putin for it all, of course!

Credit: A. Galkin

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Clash of Christianities: Why Europe cannot understand Russia

April 29 2022

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By Pepe Escobar

Under an ubiquitous, toxic atmosphere of cognitive dissonance drenched in Russophobia, it’s absolutely impossible to have a meaningful discussion on finer points of Russian history and culture across the NATO space – a phenomenon I’m experiencing back in Paris right now, fresh from a long stint in Istanbul.

At best, in a semblance of civilized dialogue, Russia is pigeonholed in the reductionist view of a threatening, irrational, ever-expanding empire – a way more wicked version of Ancient Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Ottoman Turkey or Mughal India.

The fall of the USSR a little over three decades ago did hurl Russia back three centuries – to its borders in the 17th century. Russia, historically, had been interpreted as a secular empire – immense, multiple and multinational. This is all informed by history, very much alive even today in the Russian collective unconscious.

When Operation Z started I was in Istanbul – the Second Rome. I spent a considerable time of my late night walks around Hagia Sophia reflecting on the historical correlations of the Second Rome with the Third Rome – which happens to be Moscow, since the concept was first enounced at the start of the 16th century.

Later, back in Paris, banishment to soliloquy territory seemed inevitable until an academic pointed me to some substance, although heavily distorted by political correctness, available in the French magazine Historia.

There’s at least an attempt to discuss the Third Rome. The significance of the concept was initially religious before becoming political – encapsulating the Russian drive to become the leader of the Orthodox world in contrast with Catholicism. This has to be understood also in the context of pan-Slavic theories springing up under the first Romanov and then reaching their apogee in the 19th century.

Eurasianism – and its several declinations – treats the complex Russian identity as double-faced, between east and west. Western liberal democracies simply can’t understand that these ideas – infusing varied brands of Russian nationalism – do not imply hostility to “enlightened” Europe, but an affirmation of Difference (they could learn a bit from reading more Gilles Deleuze for that matter). Eurasianism also weighs on closer relations with Central Asia and necessary alliances, in various degrees, with China and Turkey.

A perplexed liberal west remains hostage to a vortex of Russian images which it can’t properly decode – from the two-headed eagle, which is the symbol of the Russian state since Peter the Great, to the Kremlin cathedrals, the St. Petersburg citadel, the Red Army entering Berlin in 1945, the May 9 parades (the next one will be particularly meaningful), and historical figures from Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great. At best – and we’re talking academic level ‘experts’ – they identify all of the above as “flamboyant and confused” imagery.

The Christian/Orthodox divide

The apparently monolithic liberal west itself also cannot be understood if we forget how, historically, Europe is also a two-headed beast: one head may be tracked from Charlemagne all the way to the awful Brussels Eurocrat machine; and the other one comes from Athens and Rome, and via Byzantium/Constantinople (the Second Rome) reaches all the way to Moscow (the Third Rome).

Latin Europe, for the Orthodox, is seen as a hybrid usurper, preaching a distorted Christianity which only refers to St. Augustine, practicing absurd rites and neglecting the very important Holy Ghost. The Europe of Christian Popes invented what is considered a historical hydra – Byzantium – where Byzantines were actually Greeks living under the Roman Empire.

Western Europeans for their part see the Orthodox and the Christians from the East (see how they were abandoned by the west in Syria under ISIS and Al Qaeda) as satraps and a bunch of smugglers – while the Orthodox regard the Crusaders, the Teutonic chevaliers and the Jesuits – correctly, we must say – as barbarian usurpers bent on world conquest.

In the Orthodox canon, a major trauma is the fourth Crusade in 1204 which utterly destroyed Constantinople. The Frankish chevaliers happened to eviscerate the most dazzling metropolis in the world, which congregated at the time all the riches from Asia.

That was the definition of cultural genocide. The Frankish also happened to be aligned with some notorious serial plunderers: the Venetians. No wonder, from that historical juncture onwards, a slogan was born: “Better the Sultan’s turban than the Pope’s tiara.”

So since the 8th century, Carolingian and Byzantine Europe were de facto at war across an Iron Curtain from the Baltics to the Mediterranean (compare it with the emerging New Iron Curtain of Cold War 2.0). After the barbarian invasions, they neither spoke the same language nor practiced the same writing, rites or theology.

This fracture, significantly, also trespassed Kiev. The west was Catholic – 15% of Greek catholics and 3% of Latins – and in the center and the east, 70% Orthodox, who became hegemonic in the 20th century after the elimination of Jewish minorities by mainly the Waffen-SS of the Galicia division, the precursors of Ukraine’s Azov batallion.

Constantinople, even in decline, managed to pull off a sophisticated geo-strategic game to seduce the Slavs, betting on Muscovy against the Catholic Polish-Lithuanian combo. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 allowed Muscovy to denounce the treason of Greeks and Byzantine Armenians who rallied around the Roman Pope, who badly wanted a reunified Christianity.

Afterward, Russia ends up constituting itself as the only Orthodox nation that did not fall under Ottoman domination. Moscow regards itself – as Byzantium – as a unique symphony between spiritual and temporal powers.

Third Rome becomes a political concept only in the 19th century – after Peter the Great and Catherine the Great had vastly expanded Russian power. The key concepts of Russia, Empire and Orthodoxy are fused. That always implies Russia needs a ‘near abroad’ – and that bears similarities with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vision (which, significantly, is not imperial, but cultural).

As the vast Russian space has been in constant flow for centuries, that also implies the central role of the concept of encirclement. Every Russian is very much aware of territorial vulnerability (remember, for starters, Napoleon and Hitler). Once the western borderland is trespassed, it’s an easy ride all the way to Moscow. Thus, this very unstable line must be protected; the current correlation is the real threat of Ukraine made to host NATO bases.

Onward to Odessa

With the fall of the USSR, Russia found itself in a geopolitical situation last encountered in the 17th century. The slow and painful reconstruction was spearheaded from two fronts: the KGB – later FSB – and the Orthodox church. The highest-level interaction between the Orthodox clergy and the Kremlin was conducted by Patriarch Kirill – who later became Putin’s minister of religious affairs.

Ukraine for its part had become a de facto Moscow protectorate way back in 1654 under the Treaty of Pereyaslav: much more than a strategic alliance, it was a natural fusion, in progress for ages by two Orthodox Slav nations.

Ukraine then falls under the Russian orbit. Russian domination expands until 1764, when the last Ukrainian hetman (commander-in-chief) is officially deposed by Catherine the Great: that’s when Ukraine becomes a province of the Russian empire.

As Putin made it quite clear this week: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.” Operation Z will inevitably encompass Odessa, founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great.

The Russians at the time had just expelled the Ottomans from the northwest of the Black Sea, which had been successively run by Goths, Bulgars, Hungarians and then Turkish peoples – all the way to the Tatars. Odessa at the start was peopled, believe it or not, by Romanians who were encouraged to settle there after the 16th century by the Ottoman sultans.

Catherine chose a Greek name for the city – which at the start was not Slav at all. And very much like St. Petersburg, founded a century earlier by Peter the Great, Odessa never stopped flirting with the west.

Tsar Alexander I, in the early 19th century, decides to turn Odessa into a great trading port – developed by a Frenchman, the Duke of Richelieu. It was from the port of Odessa that Ukrainian wheat started to reach Europe. By the turn of the 20th century, Odessa is truly multinational – after having attracted, among others, the genius of Pushkin.

Odessa is not Ukrainian: it’s an intrinsic part of the Russian soul. And soon the trials and tribulations of history will make it so again: as an independent republic; as part of a Novorossiya confederation; or attached to the Russian Federation. The people of Odessa will decide.

What is the Collective West?

April 30, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

Introduction

Western State propaganda mouthpieces like the BBC or CNN, their journalists abundantly supplied and rewarded by their spy services, love to talk about ‘the international community’. They substituted this new phrase for the old one of ‘the free world’ in the 1990s. Of course, both phrases are nonsense. What did/do they actually mean?

The Free World

The 1740 Imperialist anthem ‘Rule, Britannia’ has the words ‘Britons never will be slaves’. What it means is that the ruling class of the British Empire, which was founded on genocide, piracy and slave-trading (for instance, the slaver ancestors of former PM David Cameron), ‘never will be slaves’. As for the enslaved plebs of the rest of the world, including those of the nations of Great Britain and Ireland, they will be feudalised, robbed of their land by the Enclosures (= enforced collectivisation, only not run by the State, but by oligarchs) and sent to be exploited in the sadistic factories of Industrial Revolutionary Capitalists, or else forced to emigrate to populate the future Anglosphere. In the same way, this phrase ‘the Free World’ also meant the ruling class of the First World, that is, those who threatened the Second World (the Communist bloc) with nuclear extinction, all the while exploiting the Third World, assassinating anyone who opposed them (Patrice Lumumba, Dag Hammarskjold, John Kennedy etc etc).

The International Community

The International Community is an equally hypocritical phrase which designates the Zionist Anglosphere + Colonies. In other words, it means the Anglo-Zionist elite of the USA, Israel, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand + the EU, Japan and, arguably, South Korea. The latter non-English-speaking countries are simply US vassals, colonies or client-states, occupied by US troops and bases. This ‘International Community’ is dominated by a military wing called NATO (based almost next door to the EU headquarters in Brussels) and an economic wing called the G7, which is heavily influenced by Wall Street and the City of London. However, this ‘Community’ works together with vassal institutions, like the ‘World Bank’, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) or, to a considerable extent, the UN (United Nations), and think tanks and societies like the Trilateral and Bilderberg. It rewards its servants with awards like Nobel Prizes, generously funded by the CIA. However, whatever the acronym, it is all the same greedy clique.

The Collective West

This phrase is now used in Russia to designate all the enemies of the Russian Federation. These enemies are identical to ‘the international community’, i.e, that small but wealthy minority of the world, representing about 15% of the global population. There is nothing new in the reality of this collective enmity of hatred for and jealousy of Russia. For example, in the 13^th century the invading hordes of Germanic terrorists, called the ‘Teutonic Knights’, were also a bunch of bandits from ‘the Collective West’. However, to illustrate our point more clearly still, let us look at the five much more recent invasions of the Russian Lands by the Collective West. These invasions have taken place in the last 210 years (exactly once every 42 years on average). They were and are the events of:

1812. The Russian Empire was invaded by the French Empire, the Austrian Empire, the Kingdoms of Italy, Naples, Saxony, Bavaria, Westphalia, Wuerttemburg, Prussia, Spain and Denmark, the Swiss Confederation, the Grand Duchies of Hesse, Berg and Baden and the Duchy of Warsaw. The result? Although the Collective Western forces reached Moscow, they had to retreat with hundreds of thousands of deaths and in 1814 Russian troops liberated Paris from the tyranny of Napoleon.

1853. The Russian Empire was invaded by France, Great Britain, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire, supported by the Austrian Empire. This war, miscalled ‘The Crimean War’, included the invasion of the Russia through the Crimea, an attempted British invasion of Siberia from the Sea of Japan and the shelling by the British Navy of a Russian monastery from the White Sea. It lasted until 1856. The ending came when the British blew up the Russian dock installations of Sebastopol (Sevastopol), built ten years before by British engineers. For this ‘achievement’, 500,000 human-beings had died as a result of French and British Imperialism, mainly of disease. Another consequence – in 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the then friendly USA, and not to the enemy British Canada.

1914. The Russian Empire was invaded by Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and the German puppet kinglet of Bulgaria. After immense struggles, the enemy advanced only as far as Poland and Lithuania, never even entering Russian territory. The Russian Imperial Army, suffering fewer losses than the French and Germans on the Western Front even though facing twice as many enemy troops, was headed for total victory in summer 1917. However, in early 1917 the Russian Empire was overthrown by a British-orchestrated coup d’etat and implemented by a fifth column of treacherous Russian aristocrats (i.e. oligarchs, in modern language), generals, politicians, journalists and lawyers. We know what happened next.

1941. The Soviet Union was invaded by the troops of Fascist Germany, Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, but these were supported by detachments of Nazi troops from a great many Western countries, including France, Belgium and Norway. The result? Despite the slaughter of 27 million Soviet citizens by the genocidal Nazis who treated the Soviet peoples as wild animals to be massacred, in 1945 Soviet troops liberated Berlin, discovering the gruesome charred remains of the suicide Hitler.

2022. Ancient Russian Lands (recently become known as Eastern and Central Ukraine), occupied, attacked and threatened by Nazi forces, trained and equipped by NATO (the North American Terrorist Organisation), consisting of 30 states led by the USA, are being liberated. They are being freed by Russian forces fighting in what is not a Russian war against the Ukraine but a NATO proxy war against the Ukraine.

The Collective West? Nothing new in this concept.

Conclusion: A Word of Warning

27 million dead? Unless you are brain dead, please do not send Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, to intervene in the Russian special operation of liberation in the Ukraine. Her grandfather was a Nazi who as a volunteer became a staff sergeant in the Wehrmacht, led a unit on the Soviet front which hunted down resistance groups, participated in the capture of Ukraine’s capital Kiev and took part in the barbaric September 1941 Babi Yar massacre, in which more than 33,000 Jews were shot in cold blood.

And please do not send Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Vice-President, to intervene in the Russian special operation of liberation in the Ukraine. Her grandfather was a Ukrainian Nazi, Mykhailo Khomiak, after the war sought by the Polish authorities for his war crimes.

Our words of warning go out to all other Nazis and Fascists who seem to think that V.V. Putin is one of them. He is not. He is an anti-Fascist, whose grandfather, incidentally, was French. Like Tsar Nicholas II a century before him, V.V. Putin is for social justice against the Anglo-Zionist aristocrats/ oligarchs who run the Western world and have attempted to run the Russian world, from which the last oligarchs are currently being expelled.

Andrei Martyanov: They are terrified when seeing this banner

April 28, 2022

Please visit Andrei’s website: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
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Andrei Martyanov: Q and A session off the cuff

April 26, 2022

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Andrei Martyanov: Nuclear false flag, timing and victory in Ukraine – Geopolitical Reality

April 23, 2022

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Larry C. Johnson interviewed by RT

April 21, 2022

Larry C. Johnson: “RT sent an email and asked to interview me on the situation in Ukraine. I consented. Here is the result:”

المشهد الدولي والإقليمي في ظلّ المواجهة الروسية الأطلسية في أوكرانيا

الخميس 21 نيسان 2022

ـ مسار العملية العسكرية يدلّ بوضوح إلى أنّ النتيجة ستكون في منتهى السلبية للنظام القائم في أوكرانيا ومن خلال ذلك للحلف الأطلسي التي قد تكون ضُربت مصداقيته ضربة قاضية ـ كشفت جائحة كورونا التبعية للمواد الأساسية الموجودة في كلّ من روسيا والصين… والاتحاد الأوروبي منكشف تجاه روسيا في موضوع الطاقة ولا يستطيع الاستغناء عنها رغم التصريحات المعاكسة

زياد حافظ

لا يمكن أن نتصوّر تداعيات المواجهة المفتوحة بين روسيا والحلف الأطلسي في أوكرانيا دون التوقف على الأسباب. فهذه الأسباب التي دفعت إلى المواجهة هي التي ستلقي بظلالها على المشهد العالمي والإقليمي. فجوهر الصراع هو صراع بين مذهبين في منظومة واحدة. المنظومة هي الرأس المالية والمذهبان هما أولا الرأس المالية الريعية المالية التي تقوده الولايات المتحدة والحلف الأطلسي وثانياً الرأس المالية الإنتاجية التي تتماهى مع الاقتصاد الموجه التي تقوده الكتلة الأوراسية بقيادة روسيا والصين.

بهذا التعريف للمواجهة نضمّ الأبعاد الجيوسياسية والدوافع التوسعية لدى المحور الأطلسي قابلتها الهواجس الأمنية لروسيا والصين. وفي الإطار الأوسع للمواجهة هناك نموذجان من داخل العائلة الواحدة يتنافسان على قيادة العالم والنموذج الذي تتبناه الولايات المتحدة يخسر لصالح النموذج الآخر.

 يبقى علينا أن نستشرف ماذا بعد؟ والإجابة تتوقف على مسار العملية العسكرية القائمة في أوكرانيا ونهايتها. فالحلف الأطلسي وخاصة الولايات المتحدة غير متحمّسة على إنهاء الصراع بل على تمديده بهدف استنزاف روسيا عسكرياً واقتصادياً وفرض العزلة الدولية عليها. الهدف الأميركي بات واضحاً وهو تغيير النظام القائم في روسيا.

لكن الرياح الروسية لم تجر كما اشتهت السفن الأطلسية والأميركية. فمسار العملية العسكرية يدلّ بوضوح على أنّ النتيجة ستكون في منتهى السلبية للنظام القائم في أوكرانيا ومن خلال ذلك للحلف الأطلسي التي قد تكون ضُربت مصداقيته ضربة قاضية. فكيف ستكون تداعيات ذلك المسار على العالم بشكل عام والإقليم والمشهد العربي بشكل خاص؟

في هذه النقطة بالذات نريد أن نؤكّد أن قدرة روسيا على مواجهة الغرب لم تكن لتحصل لولا الصمود العربي خاصة في محور المقاومة. فالمقاومة في العراق أفشلت المشروع الأميركي واستنزفت قدراته بينما كانت روسيا تعيد بناء قواها العسكرية والاقتصادية. كما أنّ صمود المقاومة في لبنان منع تحقيق مشروع الشرق الأوسط الجديد بينما روسيا كانت أيضاً في إطار استعادة القدرات. كما أنّ صمود سورية في مواجهة العدوان الكوني ساهم في تعزيز الثقة بأنّ الغرب ليس قدراً على العالم. كما أنّ صمود المقاومة في فلسطين أفشل مشروع صفقة القرن والاتفاقات الابراهيمية وأنّ صمود اليمن ساهم في إعادة رسم الخارطة السياسية للأمن الإقليمي خارج النفوذ الأميركي. فهذا الدور العربي مكّن كلّ من روسيا والصين وحتى الجمهورية الإسلامية في إيران من تعزيز قدراتها وترسيخ تضمانها بل تحالفها والآن نرى روسيا تقف بوجه الهجمة الأطلسية في أوروبا الشرقية وتهزمها نيابة عن العالم. فلا بد للنظام العربي ان يتأثر بكلّ ذلك خاصة أنّ الجزء الخارج عن سيطرة ذلك النظام استطاع أن يقلب المعادلات التقليدية في الإقليم وبالتالي في العالم. هناك معادلة جيوسياسية بسيطة. من يريد السيطرة على العالم عليه أن يسيطر على الجزيرة الأوراسية لما لها من موارد وإمكانيات. ومن يريد أن يسيطر على تلك الجزيرة فالبوّابة لها هي المشرق بشكل عام والمشرق العربي بشكل خاص. هنا يبرز البعد الاستراتيجي لمحور المقاومة وما يمثله من دور في إعادة رسم التوازنات الدولية.

صحيح أنّ العملية العسكرية لم تضع أوزارها بعد عند إعداد هذا التقرير لكن هناك نتائج واضحة على الصعيد الدولي وبطبيعة الحال على الصعيد الإقليمي والعربي. أولى النتائج هو شبه إجماع على أنّ القوّامة الأميركية والأطلسية لم تعد كما كانت عليه. صحيح أنّ الولايات المتحدة لن تستسلم بسهولة إلى الواقع الجديد لكن ليس باستطاعتها تغيير موازين القوة والعوامل التي أدّت إلى ذلك التراجع. فهذه العوامل داخلية بالدرجة الأولى كما أنها خارجية تعود إلى التخطيط البعيد المدى الذي قامت بتنفيذه دول المحور الرافض للهيمنة الأطلسية والأميركية. فتقييم المشهد الداخلي لا يوحي بأن هناك إمكانية في تعديل الميزان. فليس هناك جهوزية عسكرية أميركية لمواجهة شاملة وحاسمة لكل من روسيا والصين كما أن قدرة اللجوء إلى الحرب بالوكالة عنها أصبحت شبه معدومة. فالتصدّعات داخل الحلف الأطلسي والاتحاد الأوروبي لا توحي بإمكانية حشد قوّات عسكرية تستطيع مواجهة روسيا وذلك رغم الكلام العالي النبرة لمكوّنات الحلف الاطلسي. ليس هناك من استعداد للتضحية في سبيل أوكرانيا. فالخطة هي فقط الاستنزاف عبر تحفيز الأوكرانيين والمرتزقة من الأوروبيين على مواجهة الالة العسكرية الروسية.

كذلك الأمر على الصعيد الاقتصادي حيث كشفت جائحة كورونا التبعية للمواد الأساسية الموجودة في كلّ من روسيا والصين. والاتحاد الأوروبي منكشف تجاه روسيا في موضوع الطاقة ولا يستطيع الاستغناء عنها رغم التصريحات المعاكسة لذلك. فالبديل للغاز الروسي هو الغاز الأميركي بأسعار مرتفعة تصل إلى أكثر من عشر أضعاف سعر الغاز الروسي ناهيك عن عدم وجود تجهيزات لاستيراد الغاز الأميركي قبل ثلاث سنوات على أحسن تقدير. فماذا تستطيع ان تفعل الدول الأوروبية طيلة الفترة غير الدخول في انكماش كبير أن لم يكن في كساد أكبر مما كان في الثلاثينات من القرن الماضي؟

أما على الصعيد المالي لن تستطيع الولايات المتحدة وحلفاؤها من منع قيام أنظمة مدفوعات دولية لا ترتكز إلى الدولار. كما أن التعامل بالدولار بدأ بالتراجع في دول واقتصادات وازنة كالصين والهند وروسيا على سبيل المثال. حتى بعض الدول العربية التابعة للقرار الأميركي بدأت تفكّر جدّيا بالتعامل مع الروبل الروسي واليوان الصين والروبية الهندية.

بناء على ذلك نستطيع أن نقول إن نتائج العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا ستكرّس تراجع دور الولايات المتحدة وأوروبا في الهيمنة على مقدرات العالم.

اما النتيجة الثانية لذلك التراجع هو واقعياً بروز نظام دولي جديد متعدد القطبية يرتكز إلى القانون الدولي وقرارات مجلس الأمن واحكام المحكمة الدولية إضافة إلى الاتفاقات والمعاهدات بينما الطرح الأميركي ومعه الأوروبي هو نظام «أحكام قيم» لا قاعدة قانونية لها وملتبسة في أحسن الأحوال ولا تعترف بسيادة الدول. وهذا النظام سيشهد تجاذبا بين الدول التي تريد الخروج من الهيمنة الأميركية وبين الدول التي لا تستطيع الخروج عنها وعددها يتقلّص يوما بعد يوم ولن يضم في آخر المطاف إلاّ الحلف الانكلوساكسوني، أي الولايات المتحدة والمملكة المتحدة وأستراليا وكندا وربما نيوزيلاندا. أما أوروبا الغربية فهي عدة أقسام: المحور الألماني الفرنسي الذي يقود الاتحاد الأوروبي، دول أطراف أوروبا، ودول أوروبا الشرقية. ليس هناك من انسجام في المواقف داخل هذه الكتل الثلاث لأسباب عديدة تعود منها للتاريخ ومنها لبنيتها السياسية والاقتصادية لا وقت لنا شرحها. ما يهمنا هو أن عدم الانسجام سيحدّ من فعّالية موقف موحد. ولذلك سنرى أوروبا في تجاذب بين النظام المبني على القانون الدولي والمعاهدات وقرارات المحكمة الدولية وطبعا قرارات مجلس الأمن.

في ذلك السياق لا نستبعد إعادة النظر في تركيبة مجلس الأمن حيث الدول صاحبة حق النقض هي خمس فقط بينما قد تدخل إليه دول كالهند والبرازيل وجنوب إفريقيا ودولة عربية بالتداول مع الدول العربية وحتى الجمهورية الإسلامية في إيران. كما نتوقع تقليص دور ونفوذ الولايات المتحدة في المؤسسات العاملة والتابعة للمنظمة الدولية التي أصبحت ذراعا للسياسة الخارجية الأميركية. فهناك دول وازنة تستطيع أن تملأ الفراغ المالي الذي سينتج عن تخفيض مساهمة الولايات المتحدة في تمويل المؤسسة وربما خروجها من المنظمة ككل. لن يحصل ذلك في المنظور القريب بل ربما في فترة لا تتجاوز نهاية هذا العقد من الألفية الثالثة. كما أن منظمة الأمم المتحدة المعدّلة ستعمل بتنسيق واسع مع المنظمات الإقليمية وخاصة الآسيوية كمنظومة شانغهاي على سبيل المثال وليس الحصر. هذا يعني أن القضايا الدولية ستعالج من باب النظر بمصالح الجميع وعلى قاعدة رابح رابح وليس على قاعدة اللعبة الصفرية التي تفرضها والولايات المتحدة.

النتيجة الثالثة هو التحوّل إلى نظام اقتصادي عالمي جديد مبني على تكامل المصالح وليس على تصارعها أو تنافسها. فدول الجنوب الإجمالي أي كل الدول الإفريقية وأميركا اللاتينية والدول الاسيوية غير الصين والهند ستجد في العلاقات الدولية ما يساعدها على نهوضها والحفاظ على سيادتها بينما النظام الاقتصادي القائم مبني على تبعية الاطراف للمركز الذي هو الغرب بشكل عام والولايات المتحدة بشكل خاص وعلى حساب مصالح تلك الدول.

النتيجة الرابعة هي تراجع دور الدولار في المنظومة المالية الدولية. فعملات أخرى كالروبل الروسي واليوان الصيني والروبية الهندية وفيما بعد الراند الإفريقي الجنوبي ستكون ركيزة الاحتياطات النقدية الدولية كما أن تعاظم التعاطي بالعملات الوطنية سيخفّض الطلب على الدولار ليصبح عملة من بين العملات وليست أداة لتمويل الحروب والهيمنة على العالم.

النتيجة الخامسة تعود إلى تراجع المكانة الصناعية الأوروبية. فرغبة قياداتها في التخلّي عن الغاز الروسي سيقضي على القدرة التنافسية الأوروبية ما يجعل الدول الأوروبية تدخل مرحلة تفكيك التصنيع (de industrialization) للدخول في مرحلة ما بعد التصنيع (post industrialization) فتصبح تابعة لمراكز التصنيع الفعلية في دول الجنوب الإجمالي.

هذه النتائج لن تأتي بسرعة ولكن مسارها واضح وحتمي إذا ما كانت الإرادة الجماعية تهدف إلى تحقيق الاستقرار والأمن. فلا بد من التعديلات في المؤسسات الدولية ولا بد من تعديلات في التعاطي والعلاقات ولا بد من ترسيخ قاعدة الرابح رابح ونبذ قاعدة اللعبة الصفرية. وما يساعد على تحقيق ذلك موازين القوّة الجديدة التي تظهرها العملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا والتحالف الروسي الصيني ونهوض الكتلة الاوراسية وتعزيز منظومة البريكس.

لكن إلى أن تحصل تلك التحوّلات فالعالم دخل فعليا في مرحلة ترقّب ومراجعات في العلاقات حيث العديد من الدول تقوم بتقييم النتائج المرتقبة من العملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا. لذلك سنشهد توترات عديدة في الأسواق العالمية في الطاقة والمواد الغذائية وسلسلة المورّدين إلى أن تستقر الأمور وتستسلم الولايات المتحدة للوقائع الجديدة. هنا تكمن المشكلة لان حالة الانكار بين النخب الحاكمة وأو الطامحة للحكم في الولايات المتحدة ما زالت تعتبر أن القدر المتجلّي للولايات المتحدة واستثنائيتها يجعلها موكلة بقيادة العالم. النظرة التوراتية للأمور تتحكم في اللاوعي الأميركي وهنا الخطورة من الانزلاق نحو حماقات كارثية خاصة أن الهروب إلى الأمام هو السبيل الوحيد عند تلك النخب. الرهان لعدم حدوث ذلك هو على تيقّن العقول الباردة، وهي موجودة ولكن معزولة، في التغلّب على موجة الجنون الجماعي التي تتحكّم بتلك النخب. وبالتالي قد لا نستبعد حصول تغييرات داخل البيت الأبيض وفي منظومة الحكم بعد الإخفاقات الكارثية التي حققتها الإدارة الحالية.

أما على الصعيد الإقليمي فنتوقع تحوّلات كبيرة في الملفات الساخنة كفلسطين المحتلة وسورية واليمن. كما نتوقع ترسيخ قواعد لنظام عربي جديد قد يأخذ ما تبقّى من العقد الحالي حتى منتصف العقد القادم، أي منتصف الثلاثينات من القرن الحالي.

فعلى صعيد فلسطين فإن الكيان الصهيوني الاستيطاني المحتل يواجه أزمة وجود بحدّة لم يألفها منذ إقامته. فالخطر الوجودي الذي يشعر به بسبب فقدان الأمن وعبثية الرهان على تطبيع مع أنظمة لا تستطيع أن توفر الأمن للكيان يتلازم مع ارتفاع وتيرة المواجهة المسلحة من أبناء فلسطين. فتداعيات العملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا عرّت المواقف الغربية في توفير الحماية لأوكرانيا في مواجهة روسيا. والدرس بات واضحا للقيادات الصهيونية أن وعود الغرب لا تتجاوز الحبر على الورق وأن الغرب لن يقاتل في سبيل ما هو أهم من الكيان. فمستقبل أوروبا أهم من الكيان وتبيّن أن القادة الأوروبيين لن يقاتلوا في سبيل تصوّراتهم لأوروبا. فهل يعقل أن أوروبا ستقاتل في سبيل كيان تتشوّه سمعته يوما بعد يوم وتظهر على حقيقته البغيضة؟ وكذلك الأمر بالنسبة للولايات المتحدة التي أعلنت أنها لن تقاتل مع الكيان في مواجهة الجمهورية الإسلامية في إيران وأنها لن ترسل إلا السلاح للكيان وكأن مشكلة الكيان هي الضعف في التسليح. كما أن الولايات المتحدة لن تقاتل من أجل أوكرانيا وفقا لتصريحات قادتها. تداعيات الازمة الأوكرانية ستكون وخيمة على الكيان خاصة وان قادته كانوا مربكين في اتخاذ موقف من الأزمة. وعندما حسم الكيان تردّده ووقف مع الحكومة الأوكرانية ضد روسيا فإن لذلك تداعيات مباشرة على العلاقة بين الدولتين وخاصة في مقاربة المشهد العسكري في سورية.

من جهة أخرى نرى تحولين أساسيين في المشهد الفلسطيني. فنهاك تصاعد ملموس في المواجهة الشعبية الفلسطينية مع قوى الاحتلال تجلّى بتطوّر ملحوظ في طبيعة المواجهات. فبعد موجة المواجهات بالحجارة والدهس والطعن بالسكاكين برزت المواجهة بالسلاح الناري. لن نسترسل في مقاربة هذه التطوّرات لضيق المساحة بل نكتفي بملاحظة ظهورها مع العملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا ما يدل أن الشعب الفلسطيني يشعر بضعف الحلف المعادي له فيتجرّأ على الاقدام على عمليات لم تكن مألوفة.

أما التحوّل الثاني فهو تثبيت القوى الردعية لفصائل المقاومة في غزة ما يتيح الفرصة لانتفاضة شعبية ضد قوى الاحتلال في مختلف أنحاء فلسطين المحتلة. كما أن المقاومة وضعت الخطوط الحمراء فيما يتعلق بمستقبل القدس والاحياء العربية التي ما زالت تقاوم عمليات التهجير وأيضا فيما يتعلق بمحاولات المستعمرين لاقتحام الأقصى. أيضا القوّة الردعية للمقاومة تعزّزت مع الشعور بأن الحلف المعادي يعاني من الضعف ما يجعل آفاق النصر أكثر وضوحا وقربة.

ومن تداعيات العملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا الارباك في النظام التركي الذي تردّد بين مصالحه مع روسيا والشرق بشكل عام والتزاماته الأطلسية. لكن الضعف الأطلسي ستجعل تركيا أكثر استجابة للضغوط الروسية والإيرانية في الملفّ السوري خاصة أن أوراق الضغط الروسي ليست ضعيفة كصواريخ أس 400 والتدفق السياحي الذي يشكل خشبة الخلاص في الأزمة الاقتصادية التي تشهدها تركيا. فالخروج من سورية أصبح ضرورة لتجنّب التداعيات السلبية من رفض احترام السيادة السورية على أراضيها.

والتداعيات للعملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا تأتي في سياق أخفاقات كبيرة للسياسة الأميركية انعكست على سلوك العديد من الدول العربية المحسوبة على الولايات المتحدة والتي تدور في فلكها. ويمكن وصف الحال في تلك الدول بداية جادة لمراجعة العديد من مواقفها وتحالفاتها ومقارباتها للعديد من الملفات التي ساهمت في انقسام البيت العربي. نذكر في هذا الإطار الامتناع عن التصويت في الجمعية العمومية للأمم المتحدة لصالح قرارات تدين روسيا. كما نذكر عدم الموافقة على فرض عقوبات اقتصادية ومالية على روسيا. بل العكس نجد حكومات هذه الدول تفكّر جدّيا بالانفصال عن الدولار في تسعير براميل النفط التي تصدّرها وبدأت تدرس إمكانيات التعامل بالروبل الروسي واليوان الصيني. هذه الإشارات الصريحة لم تكن واردة منذ بضعة أشهر ونضعها في خانة تداعيات العملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا التي عرّت الأطلسي وأظهرت ضعفه وعجزه. فالدول العربية التي كانت تتبنّى نظرية ملكية ال 99 بالمائة من أوراق اللعبة الدولية بيد الولايات المتحدة بدأت بمراجعة لتلك النظرية.

وهذه المراجعة التي تأتي في سياق مشاهدة التراجعات الأميركية في أفغانستان وفي مفاوضاتها غير المباشرة مع الجمهورية الإسلامية في إيران في الملف النووي تدفع الدول المتخاصمة مع إيران إلى مفاوضات ما زالت في بدايتها والتي كانت غير ممكنة منذ سنة أو أكثر. كما أن المراجعات في الملفات المتعلقة بسورية واليمن والعراق ولبنان قد تصل إلى انفراجات ضرورية للنهوض من الحالة الكارثية التي تعيشها الدول. كل ذلك لم يكن ممكنا لولا وضوح الإخفاقات الأميركية في أوكرانيا التي لم تكن لتحصل لولا القدرات الروسية وحلفها مع الصين. فهذه القدرات كما أشرنا في البداية لم تكن لتقوم لولا صمود القوى المقاومة العربية في كل من العراق ولبنان وفلسطين وسورية واليمن.

الإخفاقات الأطلسية في أوكرانيا تتلازم مع التصعيد في المواجهة الشعبية في فلسطين ما يلغي جدوى التطبيع مع الكيان المحتل. فإذا كانت الأوراق بيد الولايات المتحدة غير فاعلة فإن البوّابة للحصول على الرضى الأميركي أي الكيان الصهيوني المحتل لم تعد ضرورة. هذا لا يعني التراجع الفوري أو القريب عن التطبيع بل سنرى اشتداد المقاومة الشعبية للتطبيع دون ان عوائق كبيرة ما يفرغ التطبيع من مضمونه.

أما في الساحة السورية فسنرى تصعيدا في المواجهة مع قوى التعصّب والغلو والتوحّش المحتشدة في إدلب وجوارها كما سنرى تصعيدا في مواجهة القوى المتحالفة مع الولايات المتحدة في شرق سورية ومواجهات متصاعدة مع القوات الأميركي التي ستخرج في نهاية المطاف في كل من سورية والعراق. الإخفاقات في أوكرانيا لن تمكن الولايات المتحدة في الاستمرار في العراق وسورية ومواجهات محتملة مع الحلف السورية الروسي.

وأخيرا فيما يتعلّق باليمن فقوى التحالف العدواني على اليمن مضطرة إلى إنهاء العدوان والتفاهم مع القوى اليمنية الصامدة. اما الحل السياسي للمشكلة اليمنية فهو في الحوار بين مكوّنات الشعب اليمني وليس عبر إملاءات خارجية سواء كانت دولية أو غربية أو إقليمية.

المراجعات والتحوّلات الميدانية في المشرق العربي وتراجع موجة التطبيع ستفرض حتما مراجعة للنظام الإقليمي العربي. من المبكر التكلّم عن شكل النظام الجديد بل نكتفي بالقول ان قاعدته ستكون المربع السوري العراقي الجزائري اليمني، وفيما بعد دول الجزيرة العربية بقيادة اليمن وبلاد الحرمين، ثم بلاد وادي النيل والتشبيك المتزايد بي مصر والسودان، وأخيرا دول المغرب الكبير محوره الجزائر والمغرب. وركيزة ذلك النظام هو التشبيك الاقتصادي والسياسي بين دول المجاورة في الأقاليم العربية ولكن لذلك حديث آخر في مناسبة منفصلة.

*باحث وكاتب اقتصادي سياسي والأمين العام السابق للمؤتمر القومي العربي وعضو الهيئة التأسيسية للمنتدى الاقتصادي والاجتماعي

Russia at war

April 17, 2022

War – for a long time

by Evgeny Norin from the Telegram “Readovka” channel and translated for the Saker Blog

War is too serious a matter to be approached with complacent illusions. Nevertheless, in Russia, it seems, many are still quite seriously convinced that the ongoing operation in Ukraine is just another local conflict that can be quickly ended in the style of the Five-Day War in Georgia, after which everything will be, if not like in 2013 exactly like in 2019.

Will not. The good old world will not be around for a long time.

Russia is at war, at war with a motivated, determined adversary; an adversary who does not have any moral restrictions and is not inclined to compromise. Ukraine has not been pumped up with propaganda, instructors, and now – also with weapons – for eight years, so that it can now easily seize and crumble. At first, the strength of the enemy’s resistance was underestimated, but it’s time to end with complacency. We will have to switch to a war footing now, otherwise the transition will turn into a shock for the whole society, and will happen unexpectedly and later than necessary.

Yes, the very beginning of the war, and its development was completely unexpected for everyone. It seemed to many that now the main thing is to lie low and wait it out. And there the sanctions will be curtailed, Insider will be unblocked, and Spotify will return.

Not curtailed, not unlocked, not returned.

War is for a long time. In February, many were mistaken, believing that a short spectacular operation would come out. Unfortunately, this is not so: the fight will be long, the fight will be difficult. Moreover, the enemy, unlike us, understood this immediately, the enemy’s reality is awake and alive with a bomb on the door, and this is very conducive to understanding some things. And the enemy is now wildly angry and set to war. Yes, as personnel units are knocked out, companies of the defense and mobilized are put on the front – on equipment sent by the good NATO with weapons sent from there. But the enemy has a lot of people. They tirelessly form new brigades to replace the broken ones. Soon a general battle will begin in the Donbass, but the enemy’s troops will not end – more and more brigades are coming from the west. And they just have to be smashed on the battlefield.

For us, all this means that we will have to put aside complacency, gain stamina and continue to act until the diplomats agree to some new reality. And they will agree only after they lose all desire to fight on the other side. Wars don’t usually end with compromise, unfortunately; they end when one of the parties can no longer fight. Yes, it simply means that the enemy’s armed forces will have to be ground down and his cities occupied. Rough, not very humane, but what is the alternative? It was necessary to walk with daisies before the war, and since the end of 2013, the level of violence has only grown; no one wants to bomb Kharkov, but now calls for peace on any terms are calls for Rostov to start receiving bombs instead of Kharkov. If anyone forgot or did not understand, the enemy (and this is by no means only Ukraine) is completely in no mood to bow and go to the corners. The enemy really wants to win the war on the battlefield. And until he is deprived of this illusion, the war will not end.

This also means that Russia will have to make simply titanic efforts to establish the production of everything that we have either never done, or have done before, but stopped. Some of the critical components for the industry can be bought in China, but not all; so localizing production to the maximum is now a super task.

By the way, the attitude towards the people of the nation will also have to be reconsidered. We do not have such crowds of people in general and specialists in particular to scatter them around. Nowhere – not on the battlefield, not in factories, not in the offices of managers. In order to win, Russia will have to abandon the vicious practice of treating people – including rare specialists – as an unfortunate necessity in production processes, in war and in the economy. There aren’t enough of us to think like that. Our forces cannot be called innumerable, and, therefore, we need to use what we have as rationally as possible. Money, people, resources.

This is all very unpleasant to say. All this means the need for exertion of strength, blood and sweat. But war is not a place where you can throw your cards on the table and go home, because now they will come home in our footsteps. Whether it was possible to avoid this war, what is its historical context – all this is interesting.

Will.

For historians after the war. Now, of course, no one interferes with discussing such things, it can be very entertaining, but during the operation, discussing the everyday habits of both the operated and the surgeon is the last thing that will bring real benefits. What matters now are those issues that will allow our country to get out of the current situation with victory and a minimum of losses. Consolidation of society, restructuring of industry, strengthening of the army. Helping others in the broadest sense. In the end, this war is a great chance for each of us personally to become better. We did not choose to live in historical times, history overtook us by itself – and it is better to go through it with dignity.

The Russian state, Russian society, the propaganda machine – everything seems to be running out of the last days of the holidays. The problem is that in reality we no longer have holidays, we already have an exam. The most difficult and terrible, on the country’s ability to cope with the difficulties and troubles of war. No one is to blame for being in the war. But the war has begun, and we need to be ready for it, to be united like never before, we need to get rid of illusions and stop playing spillikins.

This war is for a long time.

We will win.

• Two videos from the Ukrainian blogger Iurii Podoliaka (MUST SEE!)

Day 50 of the SMO – are things becoming clear(er)?

April 15, 2022

Source

So now we are 50 days into this Special Military Operation (SMO) and right in between the end of the first phase and the beginning of the second one.  So I want to begin by list a few things which were unclear/ambiguous/misunderstood and which now are becoming clear(er):

• There is this saying “no plan survives the first contact with the enemy” which I would even expand to “no plan survives the first contact with reality”.  Why?  The first one is obvious, the enemy will try to foil your plans, but the second one is less known: in war there is always a large element of chaos simply because your entire country and your military are in one mode up until the initiation of combat operations and because they have to very quickly switch over a completely new reality.  The point is therefore not to stick to plan A at any cost, but neither is it to ditch it all and reinvent the wheel.  What is needed is a quick response time to identify the problems and fix them.  I would say that with this in mind, the Russian military did a very good job by quickly transforming a integrated Ukrainian military capable of strategic operations into a broken up entity with its various parts isolated and unable to support each other.  What is my evidence for that?  There has not been a single Ukrainian counter-attack higher than on a subunit (battalion, company) level.  Considering that the Ukrainians have the double advantage of being on the defense and having a larger force, this is truly a remarkable achievement.  Add to this the money, weapons and intelligence support from the US/NATO and it is nothing short of a triumph.

• The clueless RT still has this on its webpage even though the Moskva sank 24 hours ago!At the same time, Russia as a whole, and especially the military, did an absolutely awful job talking to the public, both in Russia and in the West.  See a typical example of the image on the right.  The only mistake the US PYSOPs made was that they really “overdid it”, which profoundly angered and alienated the Russian public which went from “what is going on?” to “we are in a fight for our very survival” very quickly and most Russians are now in what I would refer to a “WWII” mode: total warfare until total victory.  In the West, however, the US PSYOPs truly triumphed and totally defeated the Russian counter-propaganda efforts which, the truth be told, were primitive, clumsy, slow and even self-defeating at times.  Does that matter?  Yes, very.  Why?
• Because most people in Zone A sincerely and truly believe that “Russia is losing the war”.  Now these are the same folks who until February of 2021 were all virologists/epidemiologists/microbiologists/etc. and who in a remarkable feat, became overnight military experts and now are sincerely advising the Russians on how to wage a war.  The fact that no “real” war has even begun does not elicit any second thoughts or doubts in these “experts in everything” folks who simply don’t believe that some matters require years of training to achieve the expertise needed to understand even the basics.  And no, as Andrei Martyanov always points out, a BA in communications or a law degree do not make you into a military expert overnight (by the way, I notice a very large “overlap” between the COVID death cult members and the armchair generals).
• Objectively, there is also a double language and culture barrier at work here.  Very few folks in Zone A are fluent, or even conversant, in Russian and even fewer understand the Russian mindset.  So if all the English speaking media (including putatively pro-Russian ones – more about those later) says someting it makes no sense to expect most English speakers to find the correct Russian language Telegram channels to get the other side of the information.  As for RT and Sputnik, in their naive and clumsy efforts to appear “objective” they just reinforce the western propaganda narratives.
• Then there is an interesting phenomenon which became very apparent over the past 50 days: there are quite a few websites and blogs who PRETEND to be pro-Russian but, in reality, that support is conditional on Russia supporting their agenda and if Russians do things differently those putatively pro-Russian outlets quickly take up the exact same talking points as the US PSYOPs.  There are also a number of PRETEND “liberal” or “Leftist” or “Anti-Imperialist” websites which were ALWAYS CIA-operated but which, over the years, acquired some (totally undeserved) credibility and which have now suddenly “flipped”.  Pro-Nazi “liberals”, got to love that…

The result of all this?  FUD: fear, uncertainty and doubts of course.

Even worse are the implications of this FUD on many levels:

• It gives the folks in the West a sense of impunity and it almost totally conceals the magnitude of the dangers the Empire of Hate and Lies is facing today: from real food shortages, to an economic collapse, and even to a continental war in Europe.  After all, if the Russians are losing, then “we” must be winning, so all is well.  Not very bright, but oh so human…
• It angers and frustrates the Russian soldiers actually doing the fighting who are living in fear not a a heroic Ukrainian counter-offensive, but what the Russian government (at all levels and in all branches) will screw up next.  Want an example?  Sure!  How about this: until senior LDNR official began to openly complain the Russian customs the latter did not allow non-governmental humanitarian convoys to cross into the Ukraine.  This was was solved, now the next one is this: how to organize pensions for the families of Russian volunteers who fight in the Ukraine?
• It greatly encourages the Ukrainians to fight this war down to the last Ukrainian and a total destruction of the Ukrainian civil infrastructure.  Yes, the united West wants to genocide Russians by means of genociding Ukrainians.  It cannot get any more openly satanic than that!

Having said all of the above, we now need to step back and only make some very basic predictions:

• What began as the “special military operation” is now turning into a total war of the united West against Russia and that means that the goal for the West is not peace, its victory and a Russian defeat.  My personal conclusion is that the West will only stop doubling down of the US homeland itself is threatened by Russian conventional and nuclear strategic deterrence capabilities.
• The Russians are slowly but surely coming to the realization that in spite of all the concessions and retreats made by Russia since 2013 the Empire of Hate and Lies will not stop by itself, it will have to be stopped, by Russia.  Again.  As the VDV motto says “nobody but us”.
• The Ukrainians have no agency, and neither do the Eurolemmings.  In fact, the USA is using both the Ukronazis and their EU serfs as cannon fodder because their calculation is that if Russia wins, then the Eurolemmings will become not only become terrified and even more subservient, but also that the EU will burn itself down removing a competitor.  I remind you that the USA’s wealth is based on how much the USA profited from both WWI and WWII.  So why not with WWIII as long as it remains within the confines of the European theater of operations?  And that will be doubly true if Russia loses.

My first conclusion here is that a direct military conflict involving NATO and Russia is now likely.

That, by itself, is simply horrible, but here is the simple truth: if the Anglos, yet again, want to burn down the European continent there might not be anything Russia could do to prevent that.  And forget about the suicidal Eurolemmings.  Russia can win that war, and she will, but yet again at a huge cost.

And that is exactly what the Anglos want.

So is there a silver lining here or is it all doom and gloom?

In fact, there is: the reactions of the Russian public to the rather ambiguous and sometimes outright weird stuff members of the Russian government, at different levels, have been doing and saying.  Like that terrible Medinski presser which totally freaked out most Russians.  Or the rumor that Abramovich (!) is negotiating between Moscow and Kiev.  Oh I know, that is just another rumor, but considering the DISMAL job of Russian information operations that rumor, and hundreds more, are making the public weary and angry.

And the general public itself, rather than any government officials, started to react to this kind of dangerous FUD by something we could think of as a grassroots counter-propaganda campaign.  For example, while the letters Z and V have been banned in the Ukraine (and in Latvia, Moldova, Greece and even in some German states) they are literally all over the Runet and you could say that Z and V have now become part of the Russian alphabet and that they are now often used to replace the traditional Cyrillic Z (З) and V (В).

And now Slovakia is declaring that the Nazis in Kiev are “fighting for the future of Europe“.

Basically, the EU politicians have now de facto rehabilitated the Third Reich.  At least now it is official.

Heck, since that war began, even Uber-Atlantic-Integrationist Medvedev has turned into a patriotic hardliner!

So maybe it will be the “Russian street” which will teach the so-called “specialists” how informational warfare is done?  I sure hope so!

The other major power from Zone B, China, immediately understood what this was all about: “West’s ban of ‘Z’ symbol a manifestation of its Russophobia“.

Yup, the letter Z is now serving a somewhat similar function to the Star of David in Nazi Germany.

Then there are the many iterations of the following slogans “our cause is just“, “the enemy will be defeated” and “we will go to the end!” which are also all over the Runet.  Note that all of these slogans are strongly associated with WWII in the Russian mind.

And then there is this: the, shall we call them “poor communication skills”, of the Kremlin have resulted in a real shitstorm of angry protests and freakouts so the Kremlin had to tone it down by a lot.  Yes, Putin PERSONALLY is very popular and trusted (over 80%), but not the government or, even less so, mid-level or local government officials.  It would not take much (another major SNAFU for example) to trigger angry protests.

But if anybody is to be truly credited with reassuring the Russian public that no “negotiators” will backstab the Russian military should go to the “Biden” Administration which “convinced” Zelenski to stop any and all negotiations and to restate the Ukronazis most extreme demands (including the LDNR and Crimea).  Now that truly made negotiations not only pointless, but pretty much impossible.

Thank you “Biden”!

I also want to use this opportunity publicly express my deepest gratitude to Josip Borrell, the Eurolemming’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, for declaring “this war must be won on the battlefield“!  When EU *diplomats* use that kind of language, it has a quasi-miraculous effect on the wannabe “peace camp” in Russia.  Even RT (!) seems to have smelled the coffee and now we can find an article entitled “It appears that the West doesn’t want peace in Ukraine“.  No kidding, geniuses!

As I have mentioned it in the past, I am personally very much in favor of negotiations and even talking to the enemy during a war, but that should be done very discreetly, very carefully and with the clear “message”  to the general public if these negotiations, or leaks about them, are made public.  If you cannot negotiate without freaking out your own people, then don’t try, you will do more for peace by shutting up and staying at home.  If instead of using the insect-like Medinski (he reminds of Blinken, same “I am a loser” look) Putin had sent Ramzan Kadyrov the perception about “negotiations” in Russia would probably be very different today.

So what is up next?

• A major battle around the Donbass cauldron
• NATO convoys moving into the Ukraine
• The collapse of the “the Russians are losing” narrative replaced by
• A Russian “atrocity” of some type
• The western media will begin to “discover sins” amongst those they lionized until now (see image)
• The full dimension of the economic crisis resulting from the collapse of the international economic system will become much more apparent, especially in the EU.

What about the Black Sea Fleet – can it operate without its flagship?

As I mentioned yesterday, I am not a navy person and neither do I know what plans the Russian General Staff had for the BSF.  But I can say this: Slava-class guided missile cruisers were designed in the 70s as aircraft carrier destroyers.  For this purpose they were equipped with very powerful missiles, superb (by 1970s standards!) S-300F,  OSA-MA SAMs, 6 AK-630 point air defenses and a lot of (old) electronics.  Since there are not aircraft carriers in the Black Sea, I suppose that the Moskva main role was as a command ship (its main canons don’t provide the range needed to support amphibious assault operations) and also as a relatively powerful mobile, floating, radar.  The Moskva was hit by something about 50km south of Snake Island which means that she was also probably watching the movement of ships near/from Romania.  Frankly, that is not a task for a guided missile cruiser.

[Sidebar: as to what actually caused the explosion, my personal best guess is a Ukrainian mine detached by the recent storm and drifting southwards which the Russians failed to detect.  That would explain the hull breach which later resulted in the Moskva taking in water and sinking while in tow.  I still don’t buy the “Ukrainian 2 “Neptunes” version at all, if only because the Moskva had very solid air defenses while bad weather makes minesweeping very hard.  But we will probably never find out for sure, unless the members of the crew reveal what really happened]

Considering that the Ukraine has NO navy at all, I don’t see how the loss of the Moskva would hamper or significantly complicate any BSF operations (navy folks, please correct me here if I missed something!).

The Moskva also had an important role in the eastern Mediterranean (Syria) and yes, there is probably where she will be missed the most.  I hope that this loss will provide the impetus to massively accelerate the modernization of old Russian (well, Soviet, really) ships and the construction of new ones.

I would even be inclined to think that the deployment of hypersonic ASM has not only made aircraft carriers obsolete (at least against Russia) but, by the same logic, has made old Russian/Soviet “carrier hunter killers” obsolete by implication.  Nowadays, even SMALL missile boats can fire Russian hypersonic missiles thousands of kilometers away, so why bother with really big ships in anti-carrier operations?  Range?  Okay.  Firepower?  Okay.  Bigger and better sensors?  Okay.  But not in the Black Sea.  And not with a minimally modernized 1970 era ship.

Conclusion:

There is no doubt that Russia fought superbly during the SMO and there is no doubt either that the Russian probably calcualted that “just” a SMO would be sufficient to achieve the Russian goals (immediate: protect the LDNR, intermediate: denazify and disarm the Ukraine and long term: change the European and world collective security arrangements) was wrong.  It is now becoming almost certain that a real, much larger, war to crush the Ukrainian military will be needed, and it will have to be fought with much larger forces and means. 

The Empire of Hate and Lies has decided to “go max” and is acting exactly as it would be in preparations for a much larger war in Europe.  For example, with the steady stream of mass expulsions of Russian diplomats there is a very real possibility that Russia and the US/NATO/EU will sever their diplomatic relationships, something traditionally considered as the last step before a declaration of war.

One of the best things the Kremlin could do now is to carefully study how the Iranians since 1979 (!) managed to successfully:

• Never be drawn into a war they did not want (except the one launched by the West and the USSR following the Islamic Revolution which Iran won, by the way)
• Deter the Anglo-Zionist from direct attacks on Iran
• Survive both sanctions and even a blockade
• Defeat US PSYOPs (remember Neda Agha-Soltan?)
• Actively assist in the liberation of other countries around the world and, especially, the Middle-East
• Superbly combine political pragmatism with deep religious piety and idealism
• Preserve their economy (albeit with major difficulties, but not collapse!)
• Preserve their Islamic societal and civilizational model
• Remain truly sovereign
• Maintain a rock solid morale throughout it all

If Iran could do that, why can’t we?  I have an answer for this question, but I won’t offer it until the end of combat operations.

As I have also mentioned many times, Russia is a project, a ‘moving target’, a society which is recovering from at least 300 years of foreign domination (especially spiritual and political) and a society which is STILL changing, very fast in many aspects.

Yes, Russia has a superb military and immense resources.  But that is not enough.

Some say that the next “New Russia” was “born in the LDNR”, and I hope that they are right, not in the sense that Russia needs to copy all the decisions (often bad ones too!) of the LDNR, but Russia does need to purge herself from those in positions of power who are just stuck in the past or unable to adapt to new realities.

Can Russia denazify the planet?  By herself, no.  At most she can militarily destroy all of Zone A, but only in a mutual suicide act of desperation (the US nuclear triad is still mostly functional, in spite of its problems).  But can Russia and the rest of Zone B denazify the planet?  Absolutely.  Even “just” Russia and China together are more powerful than the rest of the planet combined, add India to this and you have a truly unstoppable force.

The Empire is already dead, but like a stinking unburied corpse, it still have enough “toxicity momentum” to continue to threaten the planet until the USA is both denazified and disarmed.  That will take a lot of time, even with the recent massive acceleration of the pace of events.

So no quick fix, no quick solution, no quick victory (or defeat for that matter).  This is not want Russia wanted, but that is what she got.

May she make the most of it to transform herself into the civilizational realm she was for centuries.  That could be the biggest homage to those fighting for the future of Russia today.

Andrei

PS: I want to remind you all one more time that if the USA and Russia openly and directly clash militarily, I will immediately “freeze” the blog until the situation is resolved in one way or another.  I am a guest, a legal alien (“Green Card”), in the USA and it is not my role to speak if my country of current residence and my country of ethnic origin are at war with each other.

The true importance of the Bucha false flag: a change of narrative

April 06, 2022

So, as predicted by pretty much everybody, the long announced false flag has happened.  Yes, it was very poorly executed, botched really, but in a way this makes it even MORE effective?  Why?  It conditions the public of Zone A to uncritically accept any fairy tale, no matter how stupid, illogical and otherwise going against both basic common sense and basic logic.  In a way, Bucha is really MH-17 reloaded.  Yes, they appear different, but in reality they are built exactly according to the same model.  It goes something like this:

• Russia was/is winning while the cannon fodder of the Empire of Hate and Lies was/is clearly being defeated.
• The leaders of the Empire of Hate and Lies want to make Russia pay as high a price for daring to defy the leaders of the Empire of Hate and Lies, and so an atrocity was quickly arranged for and propagandized urbi et orbi.  And it worked.  Each time.
• In order to prevent any real investigation, the Empire of Hate and Lies IMMEDIATELY proclaims that “those evil Snow Niggers” did it and then declares that to be “self-evident, indisputable common knowledge” and anybody asking questions is, therefore, a “Putin agent”.  I guess the West’s infatuation with “diversity”, no matter how obscenely grotesque, does not apply to ideas, opinions or views…

Those simple acts have proven that they are extremely effective in turning most of Zone A into a Russophobic lynch mob.

Check out this list of article titles I just saw a few minutes on RT: (no need to read them, I just list them to “set the mood”, so to speak)

• EU explains why it continues to arm Ukraine
• Major Russian banks hit by sanctions
• US reveals more military aid for Ukraine
• Major conflict between great powers more likely – General Milley
• More EU members kick out Russian diplomats
• France announces mass expulsion of Russian diplomats
• Finland reveals timeline of possible NATO accession
• US sells more fighter jets in Europe

That is only the already usual nonsense, but now there is even more truly crazy stuff, check those out:

• US warns of Chinese nuclear breakthrough
• NATO to target China – Stoltenberg
• Japan discloses revised military plans
• Australia makes major move on missiles
• Europe’s plan to ban Russian coal sends prices higher
• Hungary at risk of losing billions in EU funding
• US sanctions Putin’s family

I could continue the list, but you get it, the leaders of the Empire of Hate and Lies have fully opened the “Hate and Lies” valve and it appears that they are seriously “losing it”.

Remember how in the Skripal and MH-17 cases EU countries joined in the sanctions out of “solidarity”?

I personally would call that cowardice and submissiveness, but “solidarity” works too.  Well, the Eurolemmings have solidarized themselves into their own grave and now there is no undoing what they did to themselves.

From the Russian point of view, it is rather straightforward: Russia tried to encourage EU countries to use their own judgment and act in their own interests.  It is now quite clear that as long as they get to brown-nose Uncle Shmuel the Eurolemmings are quite content with their fate.  Russia needs to flush the EU down her “mental toilet” and only deal with sovereign countries which have retained enough agency to defend their own interests.  In the EU that means Hungary and, to a much lesser degree, Serbia (not the people, of course, but the government which remains subservient to the Eurolemmings).

The Bucha massacre itself will go down Zone A’s collective memory hole, that’s where all the previous false flags of the Empire of Hate and Lies have gone.  Once a demonization operation has served its use, it can be forgotten.

So what are the purposes of the Bucha false flag:

• Change the narrative from the (non-existing) Ukronazi “victories” to “stop the Russian atrocities”
• Obfuscate the DELUGE of evidence (witnesses and forensic) showing that it was the Ukronazis who engaged in mass atrocities in Mariupol.  Remember – Ukrainian victims are sacred, Russian victims are simply irrelevant.  In fact, a Russian CAN NOT be a victim unless he is anti-Putin, then it’s okay.
• To condition (I mean that in the psychological sense) the TV watching serfs of the Empire of Lies and Hate to hate anything Russian with a searing, explosive, hated.  Declare that Putin is now the “New Hitler” (though Putin has been Hitler pretty much since 2000, it’s just that now he is even MORE Hitler than before) and Russia some kind of broken, poor, and otherwise horrible Mordor.
• Use this pretext to try to eject Russia and Russians from as many locations and organizations on the planet as possible.  That means all of Zone A for sure, but also plenty of locations and organizations in Zone B where the comprador ruling set the tone and don’t give a damn about their own people and country.
• Try to scare Putin with the same fate as Gaddafi, Milosevic, and Hussein who were all demonized and later murdered.

If you think about it, I think that it is fair to say that these are all clear signs that the Empire of Hate and Lies has now declared total war on Russia, just short of overtly actually attacking Russian forces or Russia, of course.  In fact, Russia and the Empire of Hate and Lies have been at war since at least 2013, and Russia had to make many concessions to the Empire simply because from 2013-2021 Russia did not have:

1. A military that could take on NATO and win.  She does now.
2. The kind of advanced strategic deterrence systems (nuclear and conventional) she now has.
3. A stabilized southern axis (Middle-East, Caucasus, Central Asia) from which no threat can realistically come.
4. A legal case to justify the decision to openly intervene in the Ukraine
5. A society that would not crumble under the tremendous pressure of US PSYOPS
6. A society in which the 5th columnists, the 6th columnists, and the Atlantic Integrationist have been pretty much totally discredited.
7. An economy that could survive the kind of total economic war unleashed nowadays
8. A system of alliances Russia could count on (remember Lukashenko’s and Nazarbayev’s “multipolarity” of the mid-20s?)
9. Large enough stores of advanced weapons for a long campaign
10. The real and full support of China

Interestingly, while the idiots in the West saw each Russian compromise and retreat as a sign of Russian weakness (including supposed well-wishers of Russia, who acted like typical 6th columnists), none of these wannabe armchair strategists had the intelligence to see that with each concession Russia APPEARED to be weaker and weaker while IN REALITY she was getting stronger and stronger right under the Empire of Hate and Lie’s collective nose 🙂

Now that all which has been previously hidden or misunderstood is becoming clear for all to see, and in this context, Bucha is the Empire of Lies’ declaration of TOTAL war against Russia.

The leaders of the Empire of Hate and Lies know the real score, not only in Mariupol or the Donbass, but about this entire war whose scope and purpose have caught the West totally by surprise (and me too!), and now they are scrambling to retain a semblance of control.  And, let me tell you, they are not.

The collective West has now fully adopted a strategy first invented by the Israelis: if you cannot win a real war, win an imaginary one.  And just as the IDF bombing some border post between Syria and Iraq makes no military sense or even any difference whatsoever, it is great for the morale of the Israelis who, just like the folks in the West, feel a strong sense of racial superiority over their Arab neighbors so they *need* “victories” to boost their own egos and conceal the fact that Israel’s neighbors have lost any fear they might have had in the past.  What has to remain the biggest secret of them all is that, in reality, it is Israel which fears its neighbors (and it should!).  Hence all the Israeli hysterics about BDS, or the term “Apartheid”, and all the crap about anti-Semitism: they are all designed to hide the truth, and first and foremost from the Israelis themselves who all suffer from what Gilad Atzmon very accurately calls “the pre-traumatic stress disorder”.

Bombing a Russian border post, however, is not an option for the Empire of Hate and Lies – that would be waaaaaaaaay too dangerous.  So, instead, the Empire scores political “victories”, stuff like sending old weapons to Lvov, threaten to take Putin to the ICC, or make noises about super-dooper hypersonic weapons the US is about to develop and deploy.

Sooner or later, the delusional and ignorant psychopaths which run the Empire of Hate and Lies will come to realize that far from breaking Russia, they committed collective economic, political, social, moral, spiritual, and, of course, military suicide and they will be left with *nothing* else to do that try a desperate military provocation.  I hope that I am wrong, but I don’t see how the united West could de-escalate from the corner it painted itself into.

Both the USA and the EU are run not by individuals, but by a class (in the Marxist sense of the word) which we can conceptually call the “1%ers”.  One percent seems small, but in the USA 1% is over 3 MILLION people, and in the EU this is almost 4,5 MILLION people.  Throw in colonies like Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and others and we can see that it is reasonable to assume that there are about 10’000’000 very rich and very powerful people out there who want to see Russia dead and gone forever.

These people will NEVER be voted out of power.  Oh sure, here and there, for a while, some will lose an election and an outsider might be voted in, but that is what economic sanctions are for: to punish those nations which vote for the “wrong” candidate (like Hungary just did).

Consider this: the leaders of the West have always preferred actual warfare to any risk of social warfare (inability, protests, riots, shortages, etc.).  So the “wait, we just shot our economies, let’s send more weapons to the Ukraine” is the only kind of “logic” these folks are capable of.  And just to make sure that the TV watching serfs “get it” “correctly”, they will either do a false flag at the UN (Powell), in their own country (9/11), or outside (Srebrenica, Gouta, etc.).

In other words, it is all going according to the script.  Not because that is “the plan” but simply because that is what the Empire of Hate and Lies does.  It is the ONLY thing that Empire knows to do very well: hate and lie.

It is not just Banderastan that needs to be denazified – it is the entire Empire of Hate and Lies.  And I have no clue whatsoever how to denazify 10 MILLION Nazis from our entire planet without a major war.

The false flag in Bucha is not only a declaration of total war on Russia, it is also a rallying call for those 10 million who run Zone A and a good part of Zone B.  The fact that it was botched really makes no difference.  If you have a brain, you know who did it and why, and if you don’t, you know it was Russia, on Putin’s personal order, no less.

And I predicted exactly that when I wrote (many times) that as soon as the “the Ukies are kicking the Russkies’ ass” narrative becomes unsustainable, which it now has, it will be changed to “Russian atrocities”.

Next, I fully expect NATO weapon convoys to be camouflaged as civilian and when the Russians begin striking them, there will be even MORE cries about “atrocities”.  To be clear, I do NOT believe that NATO is sending weapons to the Ukraine to make a military difference, and I believe that the NATO leaders know that.

My fear is that the 3B+PU will try to make the Russians attack those convoys: if the Russians do not, western armchair generals will resume their cries to high heaven about “Russia is letting NATO arm the Ukie, Putin is about to sell out!!!” and if Russia does strike these weapon convoys, then they will instantly become “trains of refugees” and “humanitarian safe zones” or whatever crap the Anglo PSYOPS will come up with.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  Which might sound like an unsolvable dilemma, but that is simply not true.  If you are going to get hated in either case – then, by all means, do “it”.  And that seems to be the conclusion to which not only the Kremlin (and it’s Eurasian Sovereignists) have come to, but also the general public whose approval rating for both Putin and the Special Military Operation (SMO) has gone up.  Even better, there are signs that the Russian society is bracing for a “long war”, lasting months for sure, maybe even into next year.

We are 41 days into this horror and the end is nowhere near in sight, and remember that the real objective of Russia and China is not “just” to disarm and denazify the Nazi-occupied Ukraine, it is to completely change the European collective security architecture which, in turn, is the cornerstone of the Empire of Lies worldwide.   This will most probably take several years unless the coming economic crisis is even much worse than I expect it to be (in my total ignorance of economic topics).

Conclusion:

The Empire of Lies already understands that it lost Banderastan, so it executed the Bucha massacre to change the narrative and trigger a TOTAL “Cancel Russia” war.  The WWII  Nazis used the term “final solution” and that is what the Bucha false flag signals: the decision by Uncle Shmuel to achieve a “final solution” to the “Russian problem”.

This is the West’s way to signal that it too is now entering into its own 2nd phase of the war.

Signal received, loud and clear.

Andrei

Russian SMO in the Ukraine – Day 34

March 30, 2022

Lot’s of good stuff to share with you today.  So let’s begin

First, the misunderstandings resulting from an absolutely terrible public information policy explaining the reality of what is being negotiated between the Ukraine and Russia has resulted in a massive “NIET!” from the Russian public opinion.  There is a Russian saying “нет худа без добра” which can roughly be translated as “even a bad situation can have a silver lining”, in this case, the truly tremendous pressure put upon the Kremlin has resulted in a lot of damage control which, in turn, has strengthened the position of those who want to prosecute this war till its end and weakened those who dream about some kind of Minsk 3.0.

Second, General Shamanov, the former commander of the operation in Chechnia, Hero of Russia and Duma member has announced that Russian special forces have successfully snatched away the two Ukronazi soldiers which filmed themselves torturing Russian prisoners.  Yes, that is only two out of many thousands, but this still sends a chilling message to the Nazis.  The Russians have also publicly shown the photos and name of the Ukronazi who stuck a bayonet into a Russian POW eye to kill him.  Here I want to remind everybody that the Russians ended up killing almost all the Wahabi terrorists which ruled over Chechnia during the civil war.  It is now clear that the Russians will summarily execute any Nazis they find unless they present a public interest, in which case they will send in their special forces to capture them and judge them, à la Eichmann.  Finally, some will simply be executed where found.  Either way, the message here is clear: “we will not forget or forgive, we are coming for you“.  God willing, this message will save the lives and limbs of the Russian POW currently held in Nazi captivity.

Third, Scott Ritter wrote a good piece explaining the basic nature of the Special Military Operation (SMO) which you can read here: https://mobile.twitter.com/realscottritter/status/1508816667098423296.

Fourth, maps.  Here are two maps showing the exact same thing:

Remember the Russian “gesture of good will”?  The idea was that Russia would dramatically DECREASE her combat activities around Kiev and Chernigov?

Okay, now read Ritter above and please understand that Russia had no intention of occupying either city or, at least, no intention of taking the city in street-to-street fighting.

Both Kiev and Chernikov are blocked, but evacuation corridors are opened on a regular basis, utilities all work and besides Ukie hallucinations about Russian reconnaissance-diversionary groups all over the city resulting in innumerable cases of Ukies security forces shooting each other, no Russians are to be found inside these cities.  In fact, the point for the Russians is not to take Kiev or Chernigov, but only to prevent the Ukronazi forces from using these cities to resupply, rotate, reinforce or otherwise support other Nazi forces.  Which ones?  We will come to that in a second.

Here is the 2nd map I would like you to take a look at:

This maps shows the same area, but from a wider perspective.  The most important thing here is that Mariupol has now been taken, at least from a purely military point of view.  There STILL is an ongoing “mopping up” operation in and around the Azovstal industrial facilities, but this operation is executed by the Russian National Guard and not the military.  So look at the 2nd map.  What you will see is that forces from the north and the south are now moving to encircle the large Ukronazi force, which has already been cauldroned-off (see first map) into an even bigger cauldron.

So translated from diplomatese into plain English “we will dramatically reduce our military operations around Kiev and Chernigov as a sign of good will” would be “we are liberating a large force to go and finish off the Ukrainian military in the Donbass“.

Hopefully, this explanation will reassure those who assumed that what the Russians offered was a ceasefire.  It was not.  It was ONLY a REDUCTION of military activities around two cities which the Russians never planned to invade in the first place.

You might wonder what the Eurolemmings are up to these days.  Simple!  They are still waging a glorious and heroic battle against the letter “Z”: “Samsung drops letter ‘Z’ after Ukraine’s request“.  This just makes me wonder what these hate-filled infantiles will come up next…

The hyena of Europe smells blood

As for our Polak friends, they have just made russophobia “mainstream”.  What a surprise!  Who would have ever thought….  They are also planning to attack, sorry, liberate the western Ukraine as soon as it looks like a safe thing to do, with minimal risk and maximal pomp.

Will they do it?

It all depends on one thing: will the Kremlin be able to convince them that Russia means business and that, if needed, Iskanders can also be landed on the other side of the Polish-Ukrainian border.

When I look at freaks like Morawiecki, Duda or Sksipchak, I see the, shall we call it, “more extreme version” of the garden variety hate-filled infantiles I see in most European capitals.  That such people expect anybody to treat them with sincere respect absolutely amazes me.

Speaking of hating Russia, I want to share with you an example of the kind of things which now have been canceled by the Empire of Lies:

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/OYEmQroAnMJH

Okay, that’s it from me for right now.

I will “see you” later, God willing 🙂

Cheers

Andrei

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with the Serbian media, Moscow, March 28, 2022

March 29, 2022

https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1806841/

Question: As you know, Serbia has not joined the sanctions [against Russia]. Did it come as a surprise to you that some of the Balkan nations who have recently had a good relationship with Russia have joined the sanctions against it? What is your perspective on the efforts to bring relations with these Balkan countries back to normal later?

Sergey Lavrov: We are seeing unprecedented pressure as part of a general campaign, which some Western politicians call an all-out war against Russia where all means are justified. This did not just start now – far from it.

Over the previous ten years, the European Union, in its relations with the countries seeking to join it, has been demanding – the Serbs know this well – that they join all their foreign policy initiatives that of late have been increasingly anti-Russia in character. This has nothing to do with a single economic space or with introducing the rule of law or anything else like that. There is only an ideologically-charged approach that allows them to continue to put pressure on Russia to emasculate its independence in the international arena and have it accept European values, which Europe has long since been inculcating [in others], despite its Christian roots.

Allow me to remind you that when they were working on the European Union Constitution, which, in the end, was not approved and was replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon, the first version began with a reference to Europe’s Christian roots. The European “grandees” refused to support this wording, having repudiated their race and religious traditions. They can hardly be expected to have respect for the traditions of other faiths.

We are seeing this pressure being exerted on the Balkan countries, including Serbia, to have them join the anti-Russia sanctions, which cover almost all economic, cultural, humanitarian, political and other activities. President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic has spoken about this in detail in public several times, emphasising that Serbia will be guided by its own interests. There are also countries like this in the European Union. I just want to mention the recent statement by Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, who said that Hungary would stand up for its own interests.

This multi-ethnic self-reproducing bureaucracy with a seat in Brussels is trying to subjugate all countries without exception and concentrate all efforts to establishing rules and standards at the headquarters of the European Union, reducing to a minimum what its member countries can do on their own. This is a flawed policy. It shows yet again that, essentially, a certain trend is emerging in the European Union to strengthen autocracy as represented by Brussels in its relations with the member countries.

Montenegro and North Macedonia have been drawn into the sanctions war. They were tempted by the promise of fast rapprochement with the European Union, but this did not happen. They were drawn into NATO and anti-Russia actions and campaigns. Then they were patted on the shoulder, as it were, and told: “Good job, fellas, keep it up.” This is a serious problem. The EU’s reputation and the real goals of its policy in the Balkans are at stake. I believe the United States has given the EU complete control over the Balkans. The US is fully satisfied with the EU’s aggressive anti-Russia line.

Do you remember this statement by Josep Borrell’s predecessor Federica Mogherini? She accused Russia of being too active in the Balkans and said that if the EU started getting involved there, there was no room for others. Her successor Josep Borrell promotes the same idea. He has always urged the EU not to allow Russia to build stronger relations with those countries where it feels like “the boss of the show.”

We are seeing attempts by the US, the EU and NATO to impose their hegemony on others, not only in the Balkans but also in the rest of the world –virtually everywhere else. I am convinced that most of the countries around the world realise that this is the path to a deadlock. It will eventually be necessary to find a way out. There are not too many countries in Europe that can consider themselves sovereign and independent. Those that refuse to join the sanctions in favour of other states to protect their own national interest are fully entitled to be called independent regardless of their size.

Question: Did Russia envision such isolation and military losses, things we rarely hear precise information about?

Sergey Lavrov: The sanctions against Russia have never stopped. In Soviet times, we lived under the sanctions of the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom). Under this, the West did all it could to prevent the purchase and supply of high-tech equipment. The Jackson-Vanik amendment existed for many years. It was repealed to allow us to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) because the United States and other countries were interested in this. It was instantly replaced by the Magnitsky Act that continued the tradition of pressuring the Russian Federation through sanctions. These sanctions were valid until 2014.

A coup took place in Kiev in 2014 contrary to the guarantees of the EU and with Washington’s direct support. Now there is no longer any doubt about it. The coup evoked indignation in both Crimea and in the east of Ukraine. The Crimeans held a referendum to return to Russia, protecting themselves against the armed militants that were bound for Crimea. The people in eastern Ukraine also proclaimed the creation of republics that refused to accept the anti-constitutional government coup. At that time, the Russian Federation was again blamed for everything. The West was disappointed that its plan to finally use Ukraine for its anti-Russia needs fell through.

The introduced sanctions simply reflected the West’s irritation. President of Russia Vladimir Putin has said more than once that since then the EU and the US have imposed sanctions on us almost every month, at least two or three times a year. I think it is always easy to find an excuse. The goal of the sanctions is not to resolve some specific problem but to curb Russia’s strategic and geopolitical development. We know that the West is good at finding excuses.

The surge in unprecedented Neanderthal-like Russophobia that has come to life in almost all Western countries whose leaders are vigorously encouraging and cultivating it was something that struck me particularly in the circumstances at hand. I’m aware that there are reasonable people in the EU who understand the danger of inciting this kind of Russophobia. They are issuing reminders to the effect that Europe saw a similar attitude towards a certain ethnicity over 80 years ago and they know how it ended. This obsession with regard to how they see everything Russian, be it culture, art, education, or Russian citizens (as soon as they start speaking their language in many European countries), has taken over almost all European countries. This struck me, because it revealed the Neanderthal entrails of Russophobia. It appears to have been brewing for a long time now. It’s impossible to bring to life a sentiment like that in just one day. So it was carefully hidden. We will make corresponding conclusions.

Isolation doesn’t exist and is brought up exclusively by those who, mentally and ideologically, have resigned themselves to the inevitability of a Western dictatorship on the global stage. This dictatorship is supported primarily by the West itself which is loath to lose its positions. The West has been the world’s dominant player for over 500 years now. A different era – the forming of a multipolar international order – is now here. The global economic development hubs pursuing a nationally oriented policy have risen, and they do not want to accept the impersonal neoliberal values ​​imposed by the West on the world. They want to be grounded in their history, traditions and values, including religious values. By and large, they are common to all world religions.

Russia has many partners in the Asia-Pacific region, Asia, Africa and Latin America. We have good relations with the vast majority of organisations created by the developing countries, including the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and many others. As you are aware, organisations with the participation of the Russian Federation have been created and are successfully functioning in Eurasia which is a critically important, strategically developing region: the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. In cooperation with ASEAN, these organisations are vigorously promoting interaction among them and developing a network of cooperation projects in conjunction with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, among others. We are building the Greater Eurasian Partnership. Our relations with China are at their all-time best. Russia has a particularly privileged strategic partnership with India. We have ties with the majority of the Middle Eastern, Latin American and African countries.

The West is trying to showcase the so-called “isolation” in which the Russian Federation allegedly found itself by presenting the mathematical results of the UN vote. We are aware of how they get these results and the kind of shameless blackmail the developing countries are subjected to, and personal threats against the representatives of these countries at the UN or other organisations. For us, this means only one thing: the United States and the Western countries that are playing along with this crude and undisguised blackmail are themselves afraid of being isolated. If they are that confident in their ideals and values that can win their way to the hearts and minds of all people around the world, then let them state their position and allow the countries to make a choice. These countries are aware of the position adopted by the West, Russia, China and other major global players. Let them choose freely without any pressure.

During his recent visit to Europe, US President Joseph Biden said that we were entering an era of long confrontation between democracy and autocracy. Look at how the modern West is functioning, look at the countries that have declared themselves a model of democracy. The United States has subdued the entire Europe. It is leading not only NATO but actually also the EU, using its infrastructure and potential for strengthening US military and political positions in the Old World. As for democracies and autocracies, this “community of democracies” represented by the US, NATO and the EU has become an integral whole (under US command). It is an overt autocracy if not a dictatorship as regards other members of the international community.

Our Western colleagues have urged us and other countries for many years to ensure the supremacy of law and democracy in the US interpretation. But whenever we suggested discussing democracy in the world arena, they were against it – there can be no democracy in the world arena. The Westerners have even cancelled the very term “international law” that implied respect for the principles of the UN Charter, primarily, the principle of the sovereign equality of states. Our Western colleagues did not give a damn (excuse me for this expression) about the sovereign equality of states or international law, generally speaking. They no longer use the latter term. They are saying now that all countries must follow the laws of a rules-based order. The rules mean only one thing – they are established by the West. Everyone else must obey. This is a typical example of autocracy and dictatorship that uses an ultimatum.

We don’t feel isolated. Isolation is the lot of those who couldn’t imagine their life without so-called “Western values” and without the welcoming embrace or at least a more or less warm reception in the West. Meanwhile, there are much more important things in life. They are a loadstar for the overwhelming majority of states and civilisations on this planet.

It is necessary to respect each other rather than impose one’s pseudo values in an aggressive manner. These have only existed for a short time. They appeared with the development of neo-liberalism and are used to discontinue millennia-old cultures and civilisations. This path is a dead-end. These attempts will continue for a while, but they are doomed in the historical perspective. Strategically, this policy will find itself in complete isolation.

Question: I know Russia now has more important things to worry about, but “everyone is out for himself.” Now Serbia has to harmonise its foreign policy. It has not introduced sanctions against Russia. For us Russia is the most important foreign policy partner when it comes to upholding our sovereignty in international organisations. How do you visualise Serbia’s possible political prevarication between the two geopolitical poles, and does this phenomenon have time limits?

Sergey Lavrov: It’s not up to us to be responsible for decisions made by Serbia, the Serbian leadership or the Serbian people. We are fraternal nations. We are united by common history and victories against common enemies. We feel how deeply these feelings are rooted in the soul of the Serbian people, in their historical memory. And now we are seeing this. We never impose anything by force. The West is trying to impose on Serbia its own policy and interests by force of economic pressure, threats, blackmail and ultimatums. It is telling Serbia that it must oppose Russia if it wants to join the EU. This is unseemly. This is not how one should behave in society, at home, with friends or in the world arena. This is an example of their policy of arm-twisting. President Aleksandar Vucic has mentioned this more than once. He said honestly that Serbia is a small country but it has its own pride and its own interests. Attempts are being made now to simply forget these interests and turn you into an instrument of Western policy. This is what happened with North Macedonia and Montenegro. This is what the West is now trying to do with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We have deep respect for the Serbian people, its commitment to its traditions, history and its historical friends. I am convinced that the Serbian people will continue making wise decisions in any situation, based on their fundamental interests.

Question: Is President Vladimir Putin ready to sit down at the negotiating table with President Vladimir Zelensky?

Sergey Lavrov: President of Russia Vladimir Putin has commented on this topic many times. He raised this subject yet again not that long ago when answering questions by his foreign colleagues with whom he maintains regular dialogue, including on the situation in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin said that he has never refused to meet with President Vladimir Zelensky. It is just that he believes in the importance of making sure that these meetings are well prepared. Considering the current crisis situation in Ukraine, its internal conflict which has been building up over all these years and the multiple challenges, simply arranging a meeting to discuss what one thinks and what the other thinks does not cut it. In fact, it would be counterproductive. When Ukraine suggested talks after we launched our special military operation, we agreed. These talks carried on and are ongoing. They will resume today or tomorrow in person in Istanbul after a series of videoconferences. The outcome we seek must deliver on our principled objective of stopping the killing of civilians in Donbass which has been going on for eight long years. The Western community has remained silent despite all its progressivism and has not issued even a single comment to condemn what was going on, even though everyone saw the shelling of civilian infrastructure in Donbass: hospitals, kindergartens, clinics and residential housing. Civilians were dying by the thousands. Still, the “enlightened” West remained silent. All it did was call for fulfilling the Minsk agreements. When Kiev refused, the West started saying that it was up to Russia to fulfil them. This is sheer mockery in terms of common sense, international law, human rights, you name it.

When negotiating with Ukraine, it is our duty to ensure that the people of Donbass never suffer from the Kiev regime again, while the West and NATO stop their military build-up in Ukraine, which creates physical, military threats to the Russian Federation. Ukraine must cease being subject to a constant militarisation effort and attempts to deploy strike capabilities there to threaten the Russian Federation. Ukraine must also stop encouraging neo-Nazi ideology and practices.

This has happened before, and we know these examples. In fact, they are rooted in Ukrainian law. Let me mention the discriminatory laws which run counter to the Ukrainian Constitution and all international commitments. These laws prohibit the Russian language in education and the media. Ukraine has recently adopted laws banning the Russian language from everyday life. Demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine constitute an indispensable component of the agreements we are seeking to conclude. I hope that Ukraine understands that the developments which have been running rampant there since the country’s independence are extremely toxic. This includes honouring the memory of Shukhevich and Bandera, who were Nazi criminals. The “decommunisation” drive includes demolishing monuments to the great people who liberated Ukraine from the Nazis. Western instructors helped train “nationalist” battalions whose members not only wore Nazi symbols but practiced Nazi methods of war. Seeing how Ukrainian Nazis from the Azov and Aidar battalions treat Russian prisoners of war should have dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s for you. We will need to arrange this meeting once a solution regarding all these key matters comes into reach.

For many years, we sought to raise awareness on these issues. The West remained impervious to our efforts, but they have heard us now. This is already something. What matters the most right now is to stop indulging the Ukrainians who want to use talks and solutions as a smokescreen. They have succeeded in this posture when they derailed the Minsk agreements immediately after signing them in February 2015. In the end, they said that they refused to fulfil them. We know how good they are at pretending to be involved. This time, they will not get away with it. We need to make sure that the talks yield results, and once they do, the Presidents will formalise them.

Question: I have a question about mercenaries in Ukraine. It is a hot subject in Russia, and it is being discussed around the world as well. Hundreds of people from Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina fought on the side of the Islamists in Syria. However, the West did not criticise Pristina or Sarajevo. These people are now willing to fight in Ukraine, and there are also Croatian volunteers there. The Kosovo Albanian authorities and Pristina have supported Kiev. We would like you to comment on this.

Sergey Lavrov: We were among those who for years warned our Western partners about the recruiters of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups working in several Balkan countries. We warned them about the consequences of such connivance for Europe. Statistics show that Pristina is holding the per capita anti-record by the number of militants fighting in Syria and Iraq. But nobody wanted to hear about that. Later our Western colleagues wondered where the cutthroats who staged terrorist attacks and massacres in European cities had come from. Mercenaries will not remain in Ukraine after their inglorious mission ends there. It is perfectly clear that they will move on to European cities, where they will continue their so-called work. You may know that participation in hostilities in foreign states is a punishable offence in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Kosovo Province. Some of those who fought in Syria and Iraq have even been punished upon their return home. But today Europe is acting differently. The policy of double standards has taken priority when it comes to Ukraine. The West has banked on it to contain Russia. It would use any means to achieve this end.

We don’t see any reaction to this. We have been trying to draw the attention of our Western partners and colleagues from other countries and parts of the world to the Ukrainian embassies’ activities to recruit mercenaries for Ukraine on their websites, which is a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and is discrediting the status of a diplomatic office. Some of these mercenaries have made statements on the social media and have appeared on several television networks. It is obvious that they are not volunteers. They are fighting for money. Therefore, they do not have the right to the status of combatant or prisoner of war under international humanitarian law. They are not entitled to protection.

As for Pristina’s support for Kiev, the matter is clear. Kosovo, which is a criminal self-proclaimed quasi-state, does not care for international law. It only wants to take advantage of the situation to win recognition for its pseudo-independence and is posing as just about the main ally of the United States and NATO in the Balkans.

Our attitude to this is well known. We warned about the inadmissibility of pandering to Pristina’s unacceptable actions, and we have always called for settling the Kosovo issue in strict compliance with UN Security Resolution 1244. When the UN General Assembly gave the European Union the mandate to facilitate dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade in 2010, this raised our hopes. In 2013, the EU convinced Pristina and Belgrade to sign an agreement on the Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo. It guaranteed the Serbs’ language and cultural rights, as well as their rights in local governments and their special relations with Serbia. However, the Community has not been established. When we remind our Western colleagues about this, they are embarrassed and say that “the matter is still on the table” and that efforts should continue to be taken to implement the decision. I believe that the EU has discredited itself as the guarantor of any agreements.

In February 2014, the EU guaranteed the agreement on a settlement in Ukraine between President Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition. When the opposition overturned the agreements the following morning, the EU said nothing and only cited certain democratic processes.

In 2015, France and Germany signed, together with us, a document that is known now as the Minsk agreements. During the subsequent years, Kiev did nothing to implement that document. It said openly that it would not do it.

[Prime Minister of Kosovo] Albin Kurti has said that he would not implement the agreements on the Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo.

The EU, which guaranteed the implementation of all of the above documents, has failed completely. I am sure that it will not do anything to force Pristina to implement the documents co-signed by Europe. The EU and the United States will not place any pressure on Pristina on the issue of mercenaries. The United States is feeling just fine. It used the situation to establish Camp Bondsteel, the largest military base in the Balkans. Pristina has not questioned the need to keep that base and has instead indicated its interest in keeping it. I believe that Pristina will be forgiven for anything it does and will be allowed to do anything it wants.

Question: The ultimate goal of your special operation is not quite clear. Originally it was stated as denazification and protection of the people of Donbass. Today, it seems, at least from abroad, that this is not the only goal being pursued by Russia. Many Russians cannot say what these goals are. Some of them are unable to agree with the rationale for this conflict.

Sergey Lavrov: Each person has the right to choose and define his or her position with regard to some or other events that take place in their own country or in other states.

As for our aims, they are certainly about removing the threats that over these long eight years have caused thousands of deaths and the destruction of civilian facilities in Ukraine – schools, hospitals, plants, factories, etc. This is what the Ukrainian regime has been doing against the population of Donbass with the West’s tacit approval. If today the West is suddenly concerned about the need to respect international humanitarian law and save people’s lives, I will only welcome it, but they should act in such a way as to see the causes and roots of the situation we are facing now.

The root cause of the matter is that an effort was launched to transform Ukraine into an anti-Russia immediately after its independence, its withdrawal from the USSR. You can see it for yourself if you look at the Kiev regime’s lawmaking: its laws in effect ban the use of the Russian language and encourage the development of openly Nazi organisations.

The Nazi ideology and practices have deep roots in Ukrainian society. Officers from the “national volunteer battalions” have permeated Ukraine’s army and armed forces; they publicly preach Nazi ideas, calling on others to follow the behests of Adolf Eichmann, a person notorious for his role in Europe during the Nazi rule.   Even their symbols and tattoos reproduce the swastikas and emblems of the Nazi SS battalions.  If we want to abide by the European values, I do not think they can include this sort of ideology and practices. Europe must put an end to this, if it does not want to find itself once again in a situation where it will be inundated by this “wave,” be it brown or of any other colour that the neo-Nazis favour.

The whole thing is much more serious than just solving a single problem.  Russia cannot accept NATO’s plan to turn Ukraine into its outpost chock-full of offensive arms aimed at our territory. We cannot accept the West’s effort to encourage the eradication of all things Russian in Ukraine (language, culture, etc.). Where were our Western colleagues when Kiev banned the Russian media, TV channels, and not only printed matter but also books published in Russia? They shut down three Russian-language TV channels owned by Ukrainian citizens.

You have mentioned the fact that some Russian citizens cannot accept what is happening today and express their concern. But others – journalists, cultural figures, artists, and athletes – do not voice anything and just do their job. Ukraine puts hundreds of them on sanctions lists.  Yesterday, the Ukrainian regime blacklisted another 46 Russian cultural figures, artists, athletes and journalists. And everyone believes that this is normal. Being Russian in Europe today means running a tremendous risk of violence. There have already been such cases.

Our task is to ensure long-term security in Europe. This cannot be done without cutting off attempts to draw Ukraine into NATO, or without agreeing on security guarantees that will take into account the interests of Russia, Ukraine and European countries. We were confident of this when we tried (unfortunately, to no avail) to start a serious conversation with the United States and NATO in 2021 about providing security guarantees, including for Ukraine, without expanding the North Atlantic Alliance. Nobody would listen.

We have heard repeated promises that NATO would not continue to expand. For example, when it came to the unification of Germany, then the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist. They just lied to our face. When we reminded them about those promises, they said they had never made any. Later on, when we presented proof, they said, well, there might have been some verbal agreement – meaning they just said things to “calm us down,” because they had more important concerns – to ensure that the Soviet Union would “shut down” without any “consequences” for Europe.

When they decided everything had “calmed down,” it was time to get moving. Now they are saying we “should not be afraid” because “NATO is a defensive alliance.” So it was when it was created. But they continued to explain, “NATO is protecting its territory.” We knew where their territory was when there was the Berlin Wall – both concrete and imaginary – between the North Atlantic Alliance and the Warsaw Pact. But when the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, NATO suddenly thought it wanted to “protect the territory” further east. Then it moved a little more to the east, and so on. What kind of defensive alliance is it that draws its own line of defence? Moreover, it keeps adding countries that no one was ever going to attack – actually, no one had ever even thought of threatening these countries.

Jens Stoltenberg (the Norwegian Central Bank is unlikely to have him back any time soon, as the Alliance has extended his term) declares that NATO should take responsibility for global security. This is where the line of defence is, and where democracy turns into autocracy and dictatorship. He says the alliance needs to increase its role in the vast Indo-Pacific region – that’s what they call the Asia-Pacific region, a direct allusion to the South China Sea. This is where their line of defence will be now.

We want NATO to return to sanity. We have reason to believe that Russia’s most serious concerns, having to do with our fundamental, legitimate interests, have finally been heard. They begin to understand now. If this is so, they will try to influence the Kiev regime, which listens to them, and in fact does everything the West tells them to. I hope that the Ukrainian negotiators will show a constructive approach, and at some stage, we will be able to achieve the desired result.

My colleague, UK Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss has actually confirmed with fantastic, amazing, naive frankness that those negotiators, like the Kiev regime itself, are not acting independently. She actually said they were assisting the Ukrainians in working out their negotiating position. Indeed, who knows the situation in our common region better than London? She went on to say they needed to continue to use the “hard lever” on Russia and “to double down on sanctions.” And when negotiations begin, the UK should be the country that will provide the necessary solutions. An amazing “revelation.” No need to comment.

I can see there are chances to reach an agreement. There is an understanding of the grossest mistakes our Western partners have been making for years. Although, for obvious reasons, they would hardly say this out loud.

Question: What do you think, wouldn’t Belgrade be a perfect place for the negotiations?

Sergey Lavrov: I believe Belgrade is a great city in terms of its position and status. It is quite suitable for talks at any level.

The venue for the negotiations must be acceptable to both teams. Three rounds of in-person talks were held in Belarus, followed by a break due to technical reasons. It was difficult to meet directly; therefore, we held several videoconferences. Now we have agreed to meet in Istanbul. It is a point on the map where both parties were able to arrive. We are ready to consider other locations, including Belgrade.

Question: These days Serbian people remember NATO bombings and many say that the reasoning President Vladimir Putin used to “attack” Ukraine is identical to the reasoning the alliance used in its aggression against Yugoslavia. What is your response to these claims?

Sergey Lavrov: Our Western colleagues are known for twisting facts without batting an eye or as much as a blush. They always want to justify their stance and demands by distorting the real picture.

We have already spoken about the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, when the settlement guarantees provided by the EU were trampled to pieces. The neo-Nazis who came to power immediately afterwards demanded revoking the status of the Russian language in Ukraine, getting out of Crimea, and sent combat units to Crimea to storm the Supreme Council. Only then did the Crimean people revolt against such attacks and held a referendum. Now, reviewing that period, the West starts its story not with the failure of the European Union, whose signature, apparently, meant nothing to the opposition that staged the coup, and not with the attacks on the Russian language and Russians committed by the putschists that came to power. The West begins the timeline of those events with what it calls an “annexation” of Crimea. The truth is it was not an annexation but a free expression of will that took place as a result of the coup staged with the support from the West. However, the West has crossed out those several weeks leading up to the referendum in Crimea, from history. They say Crimea was “annexed,” hence the sanctions, when in fact, they wanted to punish Russia for their own failures and inability to keep their promises.

For them, the timeline of everything that is happening in Ukraine right now begins on February 24, 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of a special military operation. The years of abuse targeting Russians, the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, ignoring Russia’s appeals to NATO and the United States about the fact that further “exploration” of the territories bordering the Russian Federation is unacceptable, direct calls to prevent Ukraine’s accession to NATO and to stop pumping Ukraine with weapons, building naval bases and, as it now turns out, biological warfare laboratories – nobody is talking about that. They claim that Russia started the operation against the Ukrainian state for no reason at all. What about the fact that the Ukrainian state could not care less about the Minsk agreements for eight years, bombing cities, towns and killing civilians? All this is now behind the line from which the West now marks off its angry and principled positioning.

I heard that President Vladimir Zelensky gave an interview to several Russian media outlets and, when asked about the biological warfare labs, he said it was all a lie and they did not exist. If the West is ready to buy into this kind of commentaries it means that our own experience with the modern Western politics will only be reaffirmed. There are multiple pages of documents that we submitted to the UN Security Council and President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky claims they are a lie.

To be continued…

A world at war

13 Mar 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

Alastair Crooke 

External actors removed from the frenzy that is largely focused in Europe must be shaking their heads in disbelief at Europe’s zeal to join in this ‘war’. Was it deliberately provoked? Is there an escalation ‘in the works’ somewhere? 

A World at War

What constitutes the most important geostrategic event of the week? Well, it was India insisting to remove the US dollar in trade with Russia and replacing it with the local currency (whilst the US reacts by threatening India with separate sanctions). The list of ‘recalcitrants’ is lengthening: China too has been threatened by US sanctions for not joining in sanctioning Russia. Other states, including Turkey, Brazil (a skeptical Bolsonaro) and Gulf States are boycotting the ‘war on Russia’. In effect, it is mostly Europe who has gone the ‘whole hog’ on the lines of French Finance minister Le Maire’s comments in “waging an all-out economic and financial war on Russia. We will cause the collapse of the Russian economy”. The rest of the world remains notably ‘cool’ and aloof.

I recall being told by a senior British panjandrum in 2006 — well before its actual outset — that war with Iraq had already been decided, and it would transform the Middle East (to the US advantage). When I demurred, I was told either ‘get with it’, or be removed (in the event I was exiled).  

I recall this incident because it seems to me that something rather similar must have been said to Olaf Scholz in Washington in the run-up to his February meeting with Putin in Moscow: Something like, we’re going to cause the collapse of the Russian economy, which will likely see President Putin evicted from office in the turmoil that would ensue. ‘Get with it’. 

Scholz did just that — and more — ultimately sacrificing Nord Stream 2, promising a big spike in Germany’s military size, and even endorsing sending weapons to conflict zones (such as Ukraine).

Boris Johnson already was using the Ukraine conflict to try to reclaim a ‘world role’ for a post-Brexit Britain; and possibly Scholz decided to make a ‘virtue of necessity’ — similarly to fulfill a wish to see Germany again becoming a “forceful” participant in global politics by jettisoning the German guilt-complex from WWII and becoming “combat ready” — all of which Scholz’ party aspires to – predating Ukraine.

In any event, Europe has embraced an all-out economic war on Russia with un-customary zeal. The West has taken its economic war on Russia to new heights, never before experienced: Russian Central Bank foreign reserves were seized; its financial institutions frozen out of external capital markets, certain Russian banks expelled from SWIFT, and the Rouble suffered a concerted ‘sell’ operation mounted out of New York (as in 2014).

However, it is not the detail that matters. Not even the means by which Russia avoided its preordained economic demise (early wargaming war prospects). No, its salience lies with a state’s foreign reserves being expropriated; its institutions paralyzed; and its currency assaulted — at ‘the flick of a switch’.

Then, just as suddenly, Europe re-erected an Iron Curtain (but this time against Russia) via a PSYOPS media narrative, which when superimposed upon emotion-jerking imagery, has evoked a moral outrage which insists on certain retaliation.  

President Putin becomes the cold, inhuman irrational antithesis to the rational liberal order, necessitating a moral crusade – perhaps even a military one – to confront such inhumanity. All this sprung into a Europe-wide frenzy, at the ‘flick of a switch’.

And – at the ‘flick of a switch’ – Russian discourse and perspectives are canceled across the western information space: Singularity and unity of messaging is Brussels’ goal.

Again, it is the context that matters. In one sense, the tragedy in Ukraine is a distraction: The point – not lost on the rest of the world – is how this all ‘was switched on’ against a major power in a day. It could just as easily happen to them, they realize.

That’s why India’s decision to trade in Rupees and Roubles is a harbinger of things to come. In throwing the ‘kitchen sink’ at Russia, the West has starkly highlighted the risks to the rest of the world that are inherent through participation in this Western-led ‘rules-based global order’.

And in triggering through media management the outrage which demands certain punitive retaliation, and outlawing alternative views, they send a shiver through many non-western leaderships — whose civilizational and value distinctions clearly mean nothing to the West. We will see many of these countries increasingly ‘abandon ship’.

Finally, external actors removed from the frenzy that is largely focused in Europe must be shaking their heads in disbelief at Europe’s zeal to join in this ‘war’. Was it deliberately provoked? Is there an escalation ‘in the works’ somewhere? 

A ‘world at war’ – whether kinetic or the full-monty financial – will be a disaster for Europe. War is inflationary. War is contractionary (and inflationary too).  It acts as a tax on any big importer such as Europe. Energy and commodities prices are currently higher – relatively – than any year since 1915. Wheat prices (25% of global supplies are sourced from Ukraine and Russia) are at their highest since 2008. Everything is going up vertically. The whole production chain for food is under pressure from every side. 

Why did Europe say ‘yes’?

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation Statements and those biological labs

March 10, 2022

This will contain a few statements and this first one is from about 12 hours ago.  Source is MoD Russia Telegram Channel:  https://t.me/mod_russia_en

Briefing by Russian Defence Ministry

 The grouping of troops of Lugansk People’s Republic, continuing offensive operations, took control of Blizhnee and Tavla. The advance was 4 kilometers.

The operation to liberate Mariupol from nationalists continues.
The units of People’s Militia of Donetsk Republic took control of Azovskiy, Naidenovka, Lyapino, Vinogradar disticts in the east of the city and went to Azovstal plant. “Western” neighbourhood has been liberated in the west part of the city.

 The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to strike at the military infrastructure of Ukraine.

 In total, 2,911 military infrastructure facilities of Ukraine were destroyed during the operation.

 Among them: 97 aircraft, 107 unmanned aerial vehicles, 141 anti-aircraft missile defence systems, 86 radar posts, 986 tanks and other armored vehicles, 107 multiple launch rocket systems, 368 field artillery and mortars, 749 special military vehicles.

  The Russian Ministry of Defence continues analysis of documents provided by employees of Ukrainian biological laboratories on the secret military biological activities of the United States on the territory of Ukraine.

Russian specialists of the NBC protection troops have studied documents on the transfer of human biomaterials taken in Ukraine to foreign countries on the instructions of US representatives.

Detailed information about the implementation of a project by the United States on the territory of Ukraine to study the transfer of pathogens by wild birds migrating between Ukraine and Russia and other neighboring countries was of particular interest.

According to the documents, the American side planned to organize work on pathogens of birds, bats and reptiles in Ukraine in 2022. And further study of the possibility to transfer of African swine fever and anthrax by them.

According to the documents, experiments with samples of bat coronavirus were carried out in biological laboratories created and funded in Ukraine.

The purpose of these and other Pentagon-funded biological researches in Ukraine was the creation of mechanism for the covert spread of deadliest pathogens.

In the near future, we will show another set of documents received from Ukrainian employees of biological laboratories and present the results of their assessment.

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  Russian Defence Ministry continues to study materials of military biological programs of the United States and its NATO allies on the territory of Ukraine.

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   Briefing on the results of the analysis of documents (https://disk.yandex.ru/d/62hsNB8kC7MXPQ)related to the military biological activities of the United States on the territory of Ukraine

The Russian Defence Ministry continues to study materials on the implementation of military biological programs of the United States and its NATO allies on the territory of Ukraine.

The information received from various sources confirms the leading role of the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency in financing and conducting military biological research on the territory of Ukraine.

Details of the UP-4 project became known, which was implemented with the participation of laboratories in Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa and was designed for the period up to 2020.

Its purpose was to study the possibility of the spread of particularly dangerous infections through migrating birds, including highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza, the mortality rate of which reaches 50 percent for humans, as well as Newcastle disease.

Due to the fact that Ukraine has a unique geographical location where transcontinental migration routes intersect, 145 biological species were studied within the framework of this project. At the same time, at least two species of migratory birds were identified, whose routes pass mainly through the territory of Russia. At the same time, information about migration routes passing through the countries of Eastern Europe was summarized.

Of all the methods developed in the United States to destabilize the epidemiological situation, this is one of the most reckless and irresponsible, since it does not allow to control the further development of the situation. This is confirmed by the course of the pandemic of a new coronavirus infection, the occurrence and features of which raise many questions.

In addition, the R-781 project is interesting, where bats are considered as carriers of potential biological weapons agents.

Among the priorities identified are the study of bacterial and viral pathogens that can be transmitted from bats to humans: pathogens of plague, leptospirosis, brucellosis, as well as coronaviruses and filoviruses.
It is noteworthy that the research is carried out in close proximity to the borders of Russia – in the areas of the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus.

The project is being implemented with the involvement of not only Ukrainian, but also Georgian biological laboratories controlled by the Pentagon in cooperation with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the US Geological Survey.

The analyzed materials on the UP-8 project, aimed at studying the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever virus and hantaviruses in Ukraine, clearly refute the US public statement that only Ukrainian scientists work in the Pentagon biolabs in Ukraine without the intervention of American biologists. One of the documents confirms that all serious high-risk studies are conducted under the direct supervision of specialists from the United States.

The payroll of Ukrainian contractors clearly demonstrates how they are financed. It has been confirmed that the US Department of Defence paid the money for research participation directly, without the involvement of intermediaries. The extremely modest pay, by US standards, is noteworthy. This indicates a low estimation of the professionalism of Ukrainian specialists and the neglect of their American colleagues.

In addition, the studied materials contain proposals for the expansion of the US military-biological program in Ukraine. Thus, there was evidence of the continuation of completed biological projects UP-2, UP-9, UP-10, aimed at studying the pathogens of anthrax and African swine fever.

The Pentagon is also interested in insect vectors capable of spreading dangerous infectious diseases. The analysis of the obtained materials confirms the transfer of more than 140 containers with ectoparasites of bats – fleas and ticks from the biolab in Kharkov abroad.

Significantly, similar research was carried out in the 1940s on the development of biological weapons components by the Japanese unit 731, whose members later fled to the US to escape prosecution for war crimes.

I would like to remind you that representatives of Western countries are extremely cautious about handing over their biomaterials.

At the same time, available documents confirm numerous cases of transferring biological samples of Ukrainian citizens abroad. For example, 350 cryocontainers with blood serum samples were transferred from the Public Health Centre of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to the reference laboratory for infectious diseases of the Australian Doherty Institute under the pretext of determining antibody titers.

Another example is the German-funded project No. 68727 EN on the study of Congo-Crimean haemorrhagic fever pathogens and hantaviruses. As part of this project, one thousand blood serum samples of citizens from different regions of Ukraine belonging exclusively to the Slavic ethnic group were donated to the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (Hamburg).

It is highly likely that one of the objectives of the US and its allies is to create bioagents capable of selectively targeting different ethnic populations.

During a hearing of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on 8 March, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland reported on the presence of bioweapons in Ukraine where biosecurity research had been conducted. She expressed concern about the possibility of these bio-laboratories and the materials there being taken over by the Russian Armed Forces.

According to available information, the Americans have already managed to evacuate most of the documentation, including databases, biomaterials and equipment from laboratories in Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa to the Lvov Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene and the US Consulate in Lvov. The possibility of transferring part of the collection to Poland has not been excluded.

In fact, with her statement, Nuland indirectly confirmed the Pentagon’s military-biological program in Ukraine in circumvention of existing international agreements.

 Documents (https://disk.yandex.ru/d/62hsNB8kC7MXPQ)

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Tucker Carlson comments:

Ultimatum: China Demands US Account for Bio-Warfare Labs in Ukraine

 March 8, 2022

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country intends to abandon its non-nuclear status, that is, to acquire nuclear weapons.

By  VT Editors

VT: Sourced from Russian State Controlled Media

Viktor Medvedchuk, one of the lawmakers demanding the probe, alleged at the time that the creation of a Level 3 lab storing human pathogens may have been an indication of US plans for experimentation on people. The US dismissed these allegations, and Medvedchuk was put under house arrest in 2021, supposedly over an unrelated matter, and accused of “high treason.” The lawmaker reportedly escaped confinement after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in late February.

Sputnik: On Monday, the Russian military revealed that the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency has been involved in the operation of over 30 biological laboratories across Ukraine, engaged in the storage and research into a variety of deadly agents.

China has called on the United States to clarify the extent of its military biological activities across the planet.

“We once again urge the US side to fully clarify its biological militarization activities at home and abroad,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Liijian told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.

The diplomat suggested that the information publicised by the Russian Defence Ministry Monday about US military biological activities in Ukraine could be just the “tip of the iceberg.”

“The US Department of Defense controls 336 biolabs across 30 countries under the pretext of joint work to reduce biosecurity risks and strengthening global health. You heard right – 336,” Zhao said.

Washington has also unilaterally rejected international inspections of these facilities, including the Maryland-based Fort Detrick biolab, the spokesman added.

“What are America’s real intentions? What exactly were they doing?” the spokesman asked.

“For the sake of the health of the people of Ukraine, neighbouring regions and beyond, we call on relevant parties to ensure the safety of these laboratories. The United States, as the party with the most information about these facilities, should disclose the relevant data as soon as possible, including about the viruses held there and the nature of research into them,” Zhao stressed.

MoD’s Revelations

Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops revealed Monday the existence of a network of over 30 biological laboratories across Ukraine being run by the US military, with some these facilities feared to have engaged in the production of chemical weapons.

In a briefing, NBC Troops commander Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov said that the United States spent over $200 million on the programme, which is divided into monitoring, research and sanitary-epidemiological work, including the study of potential biological weapons agents with natural foci that can be transmitted to human beings.

The work has reportedly taken place under the purview of the Pentagon’s Defence Threat Reduction Agency, with private contractor Black & Veatch tasked with helping to implement projects.

Situation in Ukraine

30 Biolabs That Were Commissioned by Pentagon Were Formed in Ukraine – Russian MoD

Yesterday

Citing concrete examples, Kirillov reported on the existence of labs in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv working on infectious agents including plague, anthrax and brucellosis, and labs in the eastern cities of Kharkov and Poltava working with diphtheria, salmonellosis and dysentery.

Between 2020 and 2021, he said, the Pentagon spent $11.8 million on a project known as “Diagnostics, Surveillance and Prevention of Zoonotic Diseases in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

During the same period, the German Defence Ministry was said to have conducted research into Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic disease pathogens, leptospirosis, meningitis, and hantaviruses in Ukraine within the framework of a German-sponsored initiative to ‘ensure the biological security’ of countries bordering the European Union.

Additionally, the commander said that thousands of serum samples primarily of “Slavic ethnicity” patients had been sent from Ukrainian labs to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland under the pretext of testing for COVID-19 treatment methods.

On Sunday, the Russian military publicised documents obtained from biolabs from Poltava and Kharkov of instructions by Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Liashko instructing lab workers to destroy a broad range of pathogens including anthrax, plague, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.

https://t.me/sputniknewsus/8893?embed=1&tme_mode=1

US Biolabs in Ukraine

The United States has been engaged in the construction, modernisation, operation and funding of biolabs on Ukrainian territory since at least 2005. In 2020, Ukrainian opposition lawmakers asked the government to conduct a probe into these facilities, citing a series of inexplicable outbreaks of dangerous diseases between 2009 and 2017.

Viktor Medvedchuk, one of the lawmakers demanding the probe, alleged at the time that the creation of a Level 3 lab storing human pathogens may have been an indication of US plans for experimentation on people. The US dismissed these allegations, and Medvedchuk was put under house arrest in 2021, supposedly over an unrelated matter, and accused of “high treason.” The lawmaker reportedly escaped confinement after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in late February.

The military special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine coincided in time with the planned launch of American military biological laboratories in Kyiv and Odessa, the Octagon found out. Perhaps this particular launch was the deadline for the Kremlin.

Back in 2017-2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out the danger of developing biological weapons near the borders of the Russian Federation, and also publicly worried about the “purposeful and professional” collection of Russian biomaterials by foreigners.

Then the press actively discussed the possibility of creating a genetic weapon. Genetic technologies in general is a sensitive and topical topic for the president. And these new American-Ukrainian high-tech laboratories specialize in modern biological weapons.

Critical project

The US Department of Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in October 2021 published an additional agreement on “the fight against especially dangerous pathogens” on the US government procurement website. The document concerns the final stage of work on the launch of two biological laboratories – in Kyiv and Odessa. It deals with equipment, staff training and commissioning of facilities.

The cost of the work is 3.6 million dollars, however, a number of figures in the document are hidden for reasons of secrecy. It also reports more than 90% readiness of laboratories and a seven-month delay in completing the project (we highlighted in red) – from the date of signing the document (July 2021) until the end of February 2022:

The laboratories were built in accordance with the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. This Pentagon program started in 1991 and is aimed against Russia and the countries of the former USSR. The creation of laboratories was funded under one of the five subprograms – biological (Biological Threat Reduction Program).

Active cooperation between Ukraine and the United States in these areas began after the first Maidan Nezalezhnosti, in 2005.

Two new laboratories are being created on the basis of the Kiev State Research Institute for Laboratory Diagnostics and Veterinary and Sanitary Expertise and the Odessa branch of the Ukrainian civil service for food safety and consumer protection.

The main part of the Ukrainian collection of endemic strains of pathogens of dangerous diseases is kept in Odessa. The buildings of new biological laboratories in Kyiv and Odessa were built back in 2019, but were not put into operation.

The founder of the project is considered to be the former head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health , Uliana Suprun (a US citizen, therefore she worked in the status of acting), who received the nickname “Doctor Death”.

America expands the geography of biological laboratories

The United States is not just working on the creation of biological weapons, they are involving other countries in this process, said Yury Averyanov, First Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. Is Washington preparing for a biological war, where objects with deadly viruses are located and whether it is possible to neutralize a potential threat, Octagon tried to understand.

The work under the contract is carried out by an experienced contractor of the US government – the Jacobs group, more precisely, its division CH2M Hill. The need for an additional agreement is justified by additional costs and delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The notice makes it clear that this project is important and urgent for the US government: further potential delays are called unacceptable, and “DTRA requires urgent completion and handover of both laboratories in order to ensure the active and safe implementation of the DTRA mission.”

“Both sites are owned and protected by the government of Ukraine, but neither is currently performing active biological work, as DTRA has asked the Ukrainian authorities not to start work until acceptance and completion work is completed,” the procurement materials say.

It also talks about the risk that Ukrainian virologists may begin to operate and modify laboratories without the knowledge of DTRA.

The Americans fear that “theft or damage to equipment” is possible from Kyiv and Odessa. And, indeed, individual excesses have already arisen. In the summer of 2021, an employee of the aforementioned Kiev research institute took a sample of a dangerous virus (Newcastle bird disease) out of the institution and kept it in a regular refrigerator in her own apartment, intending to sell it .

Third world countries become testing grounds for nanoweapons

In Russian and Ukrainian media, these laboratories were associated with the development of weapons of mass destruction, but the American embassy called such publications a fake.

The fact is that formally such efforts are aimed at “food safety, consumer protection, as well as the secure storage of pathogens and threatening toxins so that they do not fall into the wrong hands and at the same time peaceful research and vaccine development can be carried out.”

The US is also “helping to develop Ukraine’s ability to detect outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose a threat to national security,” the State Department justified.

According to experts, today in Ukraine there are 15 (according to other sources, at least 16) biological laboratories associated with the US military department.Photo: Steven Tucker/ZUMA/TASS

DTRA (established in 1998 on the basis of the Agency for Special Weapons) is officially engaged in the destruction of nuclear, chemical and other types of weapons of mass destruction, their transportation, storage and decommissioning.

For example, from 1991 to 2012, the United States spent $9 billion on institutions that allow work with strains of viruses and bacteria that are deadly to humans and suitable for use as biological weapons in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. The program has numerous critics who point out that it is a cover for obtaining classified information by the Pentagon, and its authors are engaged in nothing more than bioterrorism.

The agreement between the Pentagon and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine on biodevelopment was lobbied by Senator Richard Lugar . In 2005-2009, as the WikiLeaks project reported, strong external pressure was exerted on the authorities of the republic. During the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych , activity in this area began to decline, but resumed again after the coup in the country at the end of 2013.

According to experts, today in Ukraine there are 15 (according to other sources, at least 16) biological laboratories associated with the US military department. Three are located in Kyiv and Lvov, one each in Odessa, Kherson, Ternopil, Uzhgorod, Vinnitsa, Kharkov and Lugansk, two in Dnepropetrovsk.

In Kharkov, where one of the points of American virologists is located, in 2016, strange deaths of dozens of soldiers from swine flu were recorded. By March, the bill had gone into the hundreds.

In 2019, an epidemic of measles and a disease “ similar in symptoms to the plague ” broke out on the border of the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

The Octagon showed the latest DTRA notice regarding these laboratories to a former member of the UN Commission on Biological Weapons, military expert Igor Nikulin . He explained that US military virologists prefer to conduct all dangerous experiments in third world countries:

– We are talking about cooperation between the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and the US Department of Defense (Pentagon). An institution like DTRA has very specific military tasks – testing the latest American developments on a specific gene pool – people, animals and plants.

This refers to the creation of biological agents – bacteria and viruses. It is clear that this is the activity of US military virologists, they work in a gray area. The Americans do not conduct such dangerous experiments on their territory, but [do it] where they have good positions, where the authorities are corrupt and under their control. And this document only confirms all this.

Igor Nikulin: “The Secret War of Poisons Continues”

The Octagon talked about the problems of chemical warfare agents with the former adviser to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the problems of biological weapons, military expert Igor Nikulin.

Nikulin believes that the current Russian military special operation could stop the DTRA program in Ukraine:

I hope that due to recent events, these plans will have to be postponed both in Kyiv and Odessa. The documentation states that due to covid, the deadlines for completing work are shifted.

In general, the Americans have already spent more than $2 billion on such programs in Ukraine alone, and there are also Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan. All this is very serious.

I hope that during the special operation all this activity will stop and at the same time evidence will be obtained that the United States is violating the 1972 Convention on the Non-Proliferation of Biological Weapons. I very much look forward to it.

The COVID-19 epidemic fueled conspiracy suspicions

Indeed, American activity regarding “biological threats” is not limited to Ukraine. A similar laboratory was set up by the United States in Georgia after Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in 2004 . In addition, DTRA announced related projects in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan , Moldova. In Armenia, 12 such organizations have been established to study tularemia outbreaks.

Back in the 1980s, American specialists worked out scenarios for a possible biological attack on an enemy city: 16 simultaneous attacks by yellow fever-infected mosquitoes from the ground and air and an attack with a spray of a tularemia pathogen.

Laboratory samples sometimes leak, and in 2012 an anthrax outbreak broke out in the Gegharkunik region of Armenia, where one of the laboratories is located. And in Georgia, human trials were carried out using ticks and Asian tiger mosquitoes – carriers of various fevers.

In 2014, a special project Sand Fly (“Sand Fly”) was developed in the republic, and a year later insects attacked Tbilisi and Dagestan. In Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, DTRA studied the transmission of viruses from camels to humans.

Moreover, two years ago, biolaboratories in Armenia, financed by the Pentagon, were engaged in the study of the Armenian genotype. However, in an interview with Octagon, a well-known American drug and vaccine developer from Boston, professor, president of CureLab Oncology, Inc. Alexander Schneider pointed out that it is very difficult to create a genetic bioweapon against Russia because of the heterogeneous composition of the population.

CH2M Hill is a major contractor for such projects in the post-Soviet space. The organization has collaborated with the CIA, biosecurity specialists, anthrax researchers and virologists to assess the threat of aerosol toxins and Burkholderia pseudomallei bacteria (which cause melioidosis in humans and animals), a possible tool for bioterrorism.

According to a military expert, the current Russian military special operation could stop the DTRA program in Ukraine.Photo: Markiian Lyseiko/Ukrinform/ZUMA/TASS

Leaders of various left-wing organizations from around the world have repeatedly spoken out in favor of the elimination of American military biological laboratories, calling them death factories .

One of the petitions states that 1,495 laboratories and facilities of the third degree of protection were created under the Pentagon’s programs alone, which are not accountable to the governments of the countries where they work, and their activities are not transparent.

In such institutions, according to the authors of the appeal, new strains of aggressive killer microbes (offensive killer germs) resistant to vaccines are being created. There are also questions about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, where the Pentagon’s military laboratories were also located, as well as about the strange infection of agricultural plants and animals.

Russia’s Chief Sanitary Doctor Anna Popova also made claims against the Pentagon’s biolaboratories . Speaking to the participants of the meeting of the heads of security councils of the CIS countries in 2019, she drew attention to the outbreaks of previously unknown infections in places where facilities were opened under the control of military virologists from the United States.

And last April, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev admitted that biological weapons could be developed in US military laboratories near the borders of Russia and China.

Indeed, American biologists do not publicly demonstrate any scientific achievements, and the results of their research are not published in open sources.

In Russia, such institutions were closed back in 2012.

Recently, American scientists, together with colleagues from the Pentagon, have been studying coronavirus and other infectious diseases. In January, the organization dedicated a separate video to Russian journalists in response to the criticism.

Washington denies all accusations and states that their goal is to prevent the leakage of microorganism strains into the environment in the states of the post-Soviet space, as well as to minimize the chances of a biological attack on America.

The Ukrainian authorities are also determined and are considering the possibility of using prohibited “special equipment”. As Octagon reported on February 23, the Ukrainian leadership was studying the issue of equipping unmanned aerial vehicles purchased in Turkey with biological and / or chemical weapons.

It asked the manufacturer of the Bayraktar UAV whether it would be possible to place an “aerosol spraying system/mechanism with a capacity of more than 20 liters” on the device.

On February 19, at the annual international security conference in Munich, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country intends to abandon its non-nuclear status, that is, to acquire nuclear weapons.

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https://octagon.media/vojna/specoperaciya_rf_sovpala_s_zapuskom_voennyx_laboratorij_ssha_na_ukraine.html

VT Editors

VT Editors is a General Posting account managed by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff. All content herein is owned and copyrighted by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff

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A briefing on the medico-biological US activity in Ukraine (MUST SEE!)

March 08, 2022

Please press on the “cc” button to see the English subtitles!

Putin: Ukrainian nationalists use civilians as human shields (full speeches)

March 07, 2022

There are periods now where the Kremlin formal site is open as well as the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Following are two speeches of Mr. Putin: First, his Meeting with Security Council permanent members and secondly still an incomplete transcript of his meeting with female aircrew members of Russian airlines.

The resistance is up in arms about the news blackout and information war, and these were snagged by Resistance News and we thank them!

Meeting with Security Council permanent members

Vladimir Putin met via videoconference with permanent members of the Security Council on March 3, 2022.

Source: en.kremlin.ru

Taking part in the meeting were Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko, Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Minister of the Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu, Director of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin, and Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Environmental Protection, Ecology and Transport Sergei Ivanov.

* * *

Note: The Kremlin website has been down for days, being under constant DDoS attacks as part of the raging information war trying to suppress any Russian voice. It seems to work for now, but I publish these two important speech transcripts in case it goes down again.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Comrades,

On February 24, we commenced the special military operation in Ukraine. In achieving its objectives of protecting our people in Donbass and providing for the security of our Motherland, Russian soldiers and officers are acting courageously, like true heroes.

Our servicemen are fighting hard, fully understanding the righteousness of their cause. Soldiers and officers remain in position even after being wounded. They sacrifice themselves, their lives, to save their fellow soldiers and civilians.

Our servicemen and Donbass militia are really displaying mass heroism.

I would distinguish the personnel of the 100^th Motorised Rifle Brigade fighting in the Donetsk area. Its servicemen under the command of Colonel Alexey Berngard breached the deeply fortified defenses in the Volnovakhi region that have been strengthened and equipped by the nationalists for almost eight years.

Tank platoon commander Lieutenant of the Guards Viktor Sokolnik destroyed fived tanks in battle.

On February 25, outside of Chuginka, company leader of the 163^th armour regiment Captain Alexei Lyovkin came upon nationalist units including 15 tanks and six mechanized infantry combat vehicles. He and his personnel attacked the enemy and destroyed all the MICVs and five tanks, completing the mission without losses.

I have signed an executive order on awarding the title of Hero of Russia to Lieutenant Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, regrettably, posthumously. During a battle he confidently lead his soldiers, taking care of his subordinates as a good commander should. Even when he was seriously wounded, he continued fighting to his last breath, blowing up himself, along with the militants who surrounded him, with a grenade. He did that because he knew who he was dealing with —neo-Nazis who torture and brutally murder prisoners.

I am a Russian. As they say, all my relatives are Ivans and Marias. But when I see heroes like this young man, Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, a resident of Dagestan and an ethnic Lak, and our other soldiers, I can hardly stop myself from saying: I am a Lak, a Dagestani, a Chechen, an Ingush, a Russian, a Tatar, a Jew, a Mordovian, an Ossetian… It is impossible to name all of the more than 300 nationalities and ethnic groups that live in Russia. I think you can understand me. I am proud to be part of this world, part of our powerful and strong multinational people of Russia.

At the same time, I will never abandon my conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one nation, even though some people in Ukraine have been intimidated, many have been duped by nationalist Nazi propaganda, and some have consciously decided to become followers of Bandera and other Nazi accomplices, who fought on Hitler’s side during the Great Patriotic War.

It is a fact that we are fighting neo-Nazis, which can be seen from the course of the hostilities. The nationalist and neo-Nazi units —and there are foreign mercenaries in them, including from the Middle East— are using peaceful civilians as a human shield. As I have said, there is objective data and photos of how they deploy military equipment in residential districts. They are behaving like this, like outright criminals, and instead of honouring their promise to remove that equipment from residential neighbourhoods, kindergartens and hospitals, they are deploying more tanks, artillery guns and mortar launchers there.

They have also taken foreign nationals hostage, including thousands of young people, students who were receiving an education in Ukraine. For example, they held 3,179 Indian citizens, most of them students, at the railway station in Kharkov for over a day. And they are still holding the majority of them, including 576 in Sumy. The neo-Nazis opened fire on the Chinese students who wanted to leave Kharkov, wounding two of them.

As I have said, hundreds of foreign nationals are trying to leave the combat zones, but they are being prevented from doing so. In fact, they are being held hostage; the hostage-takers are playing for time or are offering them a chance to leave via Lviv or Poland, that is, to cross the combat zone, thereby risking their lives.

Our service personnel have opened corridors in absolutely all conflict areas. They have offered transportation so peaceful civilians and foreign nationals can go to a safe place.

I would like to point out again that the nationalists are preventing them from doing this. Moreover, they are telling foreign nationals to turn to their own authorities, which have to seek the assistance of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. In fact, they are pushing these people into the line of fire.

The nationalists are acting even worse towards their own citizens, their own people. As I said, they are using people as human shields. Our service personnel have reported instances where people in residential buildings in the Donetsk People’s Republic —in Severodonetsk, Lisichansk and other towns— are forced to gather in the middle floors; the windows and walls in the lower floors are broken open to mount heavy weaponry such as cannons, and tanks, and machineguns, and snipers are placed on the roof and on the upper floors.

It is only fascists that did this, they were the ones that treated civilians so inhumanely when Soviet forces were fighting them, including as they were liberating Ukraine.

I would like to repeat that our soldiers and officers are trying to prevent civilian casualties, and regrettably, they are sustaining losses while doing this.

It is our duty to support the families of our dead and wounded comrades, who fight for the security of our Fatherland, for our people, for the people of Russia.

All family members of the servicemen who have perished during this special military operation in Ukraine will be issued a death gratuity and a one-time payment of 7,421,000 rubles. Monthly compensation will also be paid to each family member of the deceased.

In addition, I consider it necessary to approve an additional payment of 5 million rubles to each family of Defence Ministry service members, and service members and other personnel of the other security agencies killed during the operation.

Any service personnel wounded during the operation will be issued benefit payments as well. I am referring to insurance benefits and one-time payments for being wounded, injured or for receiving a concussion.

Wounded contract service personnel found unfit for duty will be issued a one-time payment of 2,968,000 rubles, and a monthly payment in case of permanent disability. All these measures are provided for by law.

At the same time, I believe that an additional payment of 3 million rubles should be stipulated for Defence Ministry service personnel and service members and other personnel of other security agencies who are wounded during the operation.

I would like to emphasise once again that our men and officers are fighting in Ukraine for Russia, for a peaceful life for the citizens of Donbass, and for the denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, so that no anti-Russia, which the West has been creating for years right on our border, can threaten us, including with nuclear weapons, as has recently become the case.

Our people are proud of their Armed Forces. We will never forget our comrades who have been killed in action. We will do everything necessary to support their families and children, to give them an education, to support their loved ones.

Let us pay our respects to our soldiers who have died doing their military duty during this special military operation in Ukraine.

(Minute of silence.)

Comrades,

I would like to say that the special military operation is proceeding on schedule and according to plan. All the tasks are being fulfilled. The Defence Minister will report in more detail on this.

Mr Shoigu, please.

<…>

Meeting with female aircrew members of Russian airlines

Vladimir Putin visited the Aeroflot aviation training centre and met with female aircrew members of Russian airlines on March 5, 2022.

Putin spoke at length about Ukraine when answering questions.

Source: en.kremlin.ru

Before the meeting, the President inspected flight and emergency rescue simulators at the training centre. They simulate a real-life mid-air environment. The President inspected a cockpit allowing pilots to more effectively control the MC-21 medium-haul narrow-body airliner. He also used a simulator to fly a Sukhoi Superjet 100 airliner in the company of Aeroflot flight detachment commander Maria Kasyanik. Vladimir Putin also visited the unique Water-Land centre, whose specialists train flight crews to deal with emergencies, including water landings, mid-air firefighting operations and evacuating passengers via inflatable ramps.

* * *

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, friends,

Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev, who headed the Aeroflot Group just recently, has been asking me for quite a while to come here and to see this training and simulator centre. By coincidence, the well-known events are taking place, and March 8 is approaching. Therefore, he and I decided not to put off the visit any further and to see the facilities you have here, to find out how they are used and to evaluate this centre’s prospects.

I should say that all this is quite impressive. Maria Kasyanik has shown me how to control the aircraft, and I moved the joysticks under her guidance. This is really great, all the more so as next-generation simulators are available, the chief has also discussed them, and I have had a look.

But, of course, we should use this opportunity to discuss the sector’s development prospects. We will probably also talk about the current situation because, naturally, it is impossible to avoid it.

First of all, I would like to congratulate you all on the upcoming International Women’s Day and to wish you and your colleagues all the best. I will be able to address all women of Russia a bit later.

But I would like to say that the sector which we are talking about and where you work and with which you are affiliated employs over 70,000 women, including over 200 pilots and co-pilots, as well as flight attendants, of course, who are a special category and caste.

The people in Russia have always treated aviation with great respect and interest, especially for ladies in aviation. I think the first female Russian aviators emerged in the early 20^th century, and they won a reputation for themselves during the Great Patriotic War. We know all those famous names of female aviation regiments and their combat record. Today, women work in all positions, including flight controllers, engineers, technicians, and I repeat once again, flight attendants and pilots. On the whole, this is a substantial female force that supplements the aviation sector’s male section.

I think that is all for opening remarks since it would be more useful and to the point if I answer your questions. So, let’s go over to that part now.

Once again, congratulations on the upcoming International Women’s Day.

Remark: Thank you.

Do you have any questions? Or shall we just have some tea?

Maria Kotova: We have questions.

Good afternoon, Mr President,

My name is Maria Kotova. I am the co-pilot of the Airbus A320 airliner operated by Aeroflot.

My question concerns the current situation in Ukraine. We all support your actions and the special operation underway there. Of course, the most important question that, one way or another, each of us has been asking ourselves lately is: why did this special operation begin? Could it not have been avoided?

In our minds, we understand and strongly support your actions, but as women we worry about our families and loved ones who live in Ukraine. We are aware that the civilians are not impacted. But still, we would like you to reassure us: what is in store for us at the end of this road? What is the military operation in Ukraine supposed to end with?

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: I will provide a brief overview and start, as they say in such cases, from the “centre of the field.” I mentioned this at the beginning of the operation and even before this decision was made, which was undoubtedly a difficult decision to make.

What is this about? The fact of the matter is that after the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine, which was, unfortunately, strongly supported by Western countries… Let us face it. They are not hiding the fact that they spent US$5 billion on it, handing out cookies on Maidan and so on. And then, instead of bringing the situation back on track, even if it spiralled out of control, even if it was what is known as an excessive act —there is such a legal concept, that is, they planned one thing, but did another. Anyway, they could and should have brought this situation back onto the political track. Moreover, right before the coup, three foreign ministers came to Kiev in 2014, signed an agreement with the incumbent authorities and acted as guarantors of these agreements to the effect that the situation would remain within the political track.

Nothing of the kind. They carried out a coup d’état and supported the perpetrators. Then followed the well-known events related to Crimea and southeastern Ukraine, Donbass, whose residents refused to support the coup.

As you know, Crimea made a decision, people came to the referendum and voted to once again become part of the Russian Federation. Naturally, we could not but support this, all the more so since they were threatened by nationalists and neo-Nazis. There is a great deal of evidence that they were right.

Later on, or practically in parallel, events started in Donbass. What was the outcome? People who began to resist these developments were persecuted. The Kiev authorities started conducting military operations on that territory. They conducted two large-scale punitive operations with the use of heavy weapons and combat aircraft. They attacked Donetsk directly with tanks and bombed its squares from aircraft.

Both military campaigns failed. They sustained defeat. This was followed by the emergence of the so-called Minsk Agreements or the Package of Measures, to use its official name. They showed the way to a peaceful settlement of this conflict. And we did everything we could to let the developments follow in this vein to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity and protect the interests of the people who live on these territories.

And what did they demand? Basic things: the right to speak their mother tongue, this is the Russian language, and follow their traditions and culture. There were no special demands. Nothing special.

But no. These territories were put under siege and switched off from the banking system, food supplies and payments of pensions and other benefits. Sometimes, some handouts were thrown in. But to receive those benefits and pensions people had to cross the delimitation line.

Now listen carefully. Maybe this will sound rough but the situation compels me to say such things. You see yourselves that stray dogs attack people in different regions. They injure and even kill people (this is a separate problem and the local authorities must deal with it). Then we see how these dogs are poisoned and shot dead. But, look, people in Donbass are not stray dogs. From 13,000 to 14,000 people have been killed over these years. Over 500 children were killed or mutilated.

But what is most intolerable is that the so-called civilised West preferred to turn a blind eye to these events during all these years. Over eight years!

Moreover, recently the Kiev authorities began to say bluntly that they are not going to fulfil these agreements. They are saying this from TV screens and online. They are saying on the record: “We don’t like them, we won’t do anything.”

Meanwhile, Russia continued to be accused of failing to fulfil these agreements. This is simply nonsense, the theatre of the absurd: the white is called black and the black is called white.

It has been getting worse lately. Suddenly, there has been renewed talk about admitting Ukraine to NATO. Actually, it has been on for a long time, but has intensified lately. Do you understand what this could lead to or even can still lead to? If Ukraine is a NATO country, then in accordance with the North Atlantic Treaty, all other members must support that country in the event of a military conflict.

No one is recognising Crimea as a part of Russia, except for you and me. They carry out military operations in Donbass, and they will also move into Crimea, and we will have to fight with the entire NATO organisation. Do you see what that means?

Are the consequences clear enough? I think that everyone understands.

Now they are talking about gaining a nuclear status, that is, acquiring nuclear weapons. We cannot ignore such things either, especially because we know how the so-called West acts with regard to Russia. First, Ukraine has had nuclear competencies since the Soviet times. As far as enrichment and nuclear materials are concerned, they are capable of launching such projects. They have missile competencies. Suffice it to mention Yuzhmash —it created intercontinental ballistic missile equipment for the Soviet Union. They can boost it and do it. And they will also receive help with that from across the ocean. And then they will say that we do not recognise their nuclear status, that they did it themselves, and they will put these systems under control, and from that moment, from that very second, Russia’s future will change dramatically. From then on, our strategic adversaries would not even need to have intercontinental ballistic missiles. They would be able to keep us at the nuclear gunpoint, and that would be it.

But how can we let this go unnoticed? These are absolutely real threats, not some far-fetched nonsense. And our young men who are fighting there now are giving their lives, they are giving their lives to fight for our future, for the future of our children. This is a completely obvious thing.

People who do not want to understand this, especially among today’s leadership, must understand that if they continue to do what they are doing —I have already said this too— they will call into question the very future of Ukrainian statehood. And if this happens, it will be entirely on them.

What is happening now? I have already spoken about the goals we have identified.

The first is to protect the people who live in Donbass, of course. How? By demilitarising and denazifying Ukraine and giving it a neutral status. Why? Because a neutral country will not be planning on joining NATO. Right now, their Constitution says they are planning to join NATO. You understand, they included this in the Constitution.

What is meant by denazification? I have spoken with my Western colleagues about this: “So what? You also have radical nationalists.” Yes, we do, but we do not have people with extreme views in the Government. And everyone admits that they have them. Yes, maybe we have some idiots who are running around with the swastika, but do we support this at the government level? Do we have thousands of people parading with torches in Moscow or in our other regional capitals, with the swastika and with torches, like in the 1930s in Germany? Do we have this? But they do, and they support it. Do we support those who killed Russians, Jews, and Poles during the war? Do we hail them as heroes? But they do.

What is happening now is also very important. Look, foreign citizens have been taken hostage in Sumy and Kharkov —over 6,000 young people, students. They were driven to a railway station and have been kept there for three days. We told everyone about this and sent this information to the current leadership of Ukraine. “Yes, yes, of course, we will deal with it now.” We informed the leaders of major European countries about this. I spoke to them personally. “Yes, yes, we will influence them right now.” We told the UN Secretary-General about this: “Yes, yes, we will settle this problem now.” But nobody is doing anything about it.

They treat even worse those people whom they consider their own citizens. They are simply using them as a human shield.

This is taking place in Mariupol now as we are talking with you. They called us from the government, from Kiev and spoke with our military: “Provide humanitarian corridors so that people can leave.” Of course, our people responded instantly and even suspended hostilities. They looked at what was happening. Nobody was allowed out. Do you understand what they are doing? They do not let anyone leave but are using people as a human shield. Who are they? The neo-Nazis, of course.

We note the presence of militants from the Middle East and some European countries there. We know about them, we hear them in the air. They are using so-called Jihad mobiles —they stuff cars with explosives and drive them towards the troops. But they fail to achieve anything and they won’t reach their aims.

Who are they if not neo-Nazis? It is by these actions that they are destroying their own country and their statehood.

Therefore, one of our key demands is demilitarisation. In other words, we are helping people, residents of Donbass to achieve a neutral status and demilitarisation of the country because we must understand clearly what weapons are there, where they are deployed and who controls them.

Different options are possible here. We are discussing them now, in particular, with representatives of the Kiev government during the talks in Belarus. We are grateful to President Lukashenko for organising this work and helping us conduct them. Our proposals are on the negotiating table. We hope a group of negotiators from Kiev will respond positively to them. This is more or less what I wanted to say. Let’s go on.

Yulia Shvidkaya: Yulia Shvidkaya, co-pilot with Aeroflot Airlines.

Good afternoon, Mr President.

I have a question about the current situation. The thing is that there are so many rumours about the possibility of martial law, the enlistment of volunteers, the call-up of reservists, and that the new conscripts will be sent to Ukraine.

Can you tell us precisely if martial law will be declared and if conscripts will be sent to Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: Much of what is taking place now, of what we can see and what we come up against are methods of fighting Russia. Incidentally, the sanctions that are imposed on us are like a war. Thankfully, it has not got to that yet.

I think that our so-called partners understand what this can lead to and how much is at stake, despite their reckless statements, for example, like the statement made by the UK Foreign Secretary, when she blurted out that NATO could get involved in the conflict. And we immediately had to take a decision to put our deterrence forces on high alert.

Their reaction was instantaneous: they said that it was a misunderstanding. But nobody rebuffed her (the UK Foreign Secretary is a woman), and nobody has disavowed those statements. They could have told us something like, “You know, it’s her personal opinion, take no notice.” But nobody uttered a single word! What should we think about this? How should we regard it? Of course, we took that statement as a warning and acted accordingly.

And now I will answer your question about volunteers, conscripts, martial law and the like. Under the law, martial law is declared by a Presidential executive order, which should be approved by the Federation Council, in case of foreign aggression, in particular, in the zones of hostilities.

This is not the case now, and I hope it will not come to that. This is the first point.

Second, about the state of alert. There are several options: martial law or the state of alert, which is also declared by a presidential executive order and approved by the Federation Council in case of large-scale internal threats.

There is also the state of emergency. It is usually declared in a specific region or throughout the country in the event of manmade disasters, natural disasters, etc. Thankfully, this is not the case either.

We are not planning to declare a state of alert on the territory of the Russian Federation. There are no such plans and no necessity for this now.

Yes, we see that attempts are being made to stir up our society. Incidentally, this is further proof of what I have said —that we are dealing not with ordinary radicals but with neo-Nazis. Our people can freely express their opinions of what they like or do not like about our actions in Ukraine. But in Ukraine those who express views such as members of the so-called liberal part of our society do are grabbed on the street and shot. We have proof of that. Our security services are collecting this information and will provide it later on. They are simply shot dead. In our country, some of our liberal intellectuals hold protest rallies, but those who say similar things about Russia in Ukraine are simply executed straightaway, without charge or trial.

Now, about the martial law. To reiterate, it is usually imposed in case of an external aggression, a military threat. I hope this will not happen, despite irresponsible statements by certain officials.

We are hearing voices that a no-fly zone should be imposed over Ukraine. It is impossible to do this in Ukraine. It can only be done from the territory of neighbouring states. However, we will consider any move in this direction as participation in the armed conflict of the country from whoseterritory a threat to our servicemen is created. We will consider them participants in hostilities that very second. Their membership in any organisation will not matter then. So, I hope the understanding of this is there and it will not come to this, either.

Only professional servicemen —officers and contract soldiers— are taking part in this operation. There are no conscripts, and we are not planning to get them involved. To reiterate, only men who made a very responsible voluntary choice to take part in this operation and to defend their Motherland are participating in this operation. They are carrying out this mission honourably. In my answer to your first question, I provided the reason why this is so and why we are entitled to say this.

The same applies to those who are called up to the training camps. We do not plan to do this with this category, either. They are regularly called up to training camps. They were called up before and they will be called up afterwards. But we are not going to have this category participate in this conflict, in this operation. We have enough forces and means to address the tasks that we have set for ourselves with the use of the professional army.

By the way, speaking of the operation itself I know there are many speculations about it. Frankly, I have no time to get into that, but they report to me that there is much chitchat about what is going on. All analysts are seeing what is happening, so I will not reveal any secret to you. We could have acted in a variety of ways. We could simply (by the way, this answers your question, in part) help the republics of Donbass right on the line of contact, at the frontline, so to say, and simply reinforce them with our army. But in this case, the other side, I mean reckless support for nationalists and radicals coming from the West, would have provided endless support with the material resources, ammunition, equipment, and so on.

Therefore, our General Staff and the Defence Ministry took a different road. The first thing they did was destroy all the military infrastructure. Not completely but most of it: arms and ammunition depots, aircraft and air defence systems. Destroying air defence systems takes some time (you are civilians, yet you are connected with aviation) —they must be identified and then hit. This work has been practically finished. Hence the demand to impose a no-fly zone. However, doing so would have tremendous and disastrous consequences not only for Europe but also globally. I think those on the other side who are not completely at sea understand that.

That is why we chose that road, and it turned out to be absolutely correct. Our servicemen are working without haste and are doing everything to ensure the safety of civilians. Unfortunately, those bandits, neo-Nazis do not spare people. They shoot dead even their own service personnel who do not want to offer armed resistance. We know about such facts, too. Nationalists, Banderites, neo-Nazis —it is hard to call them anything else —shoot their own servicemen. These nationalists were put in nearly every military unit, up to several dozen in each, and they act in exactly that cruel way.

But I repeat that we are not engaging and are not going to engage conscripts or reservists in this military operation. I presume that our army will fulfil all the tasks it is facing, and I do not have the slightest doubt about that. The very course of the operation proves that. It is going according to schedule, and everything is being done according to the General Staff’s plan.

As for volunteers and those young people who come to military recruiting stations, we are grateful to them for this patriotic impulse and the desire to support the country and the Armed Forces. The very fact of their coming does matters, for sure. However, their assistance is not needed for now, and I believe it will not be needed.

I am turning to the cameras so that they will see and hear me say, “Thank you.”

Let us proceed.

To be continued.

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