“Russia appears to have reversed itself after the country’s top diplomat said Moscow’s overarching goal is to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian artillery barrages and air strikes continue to pummel cities across Ukraine.
The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports, something that would help ease global food shortages, under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend.
Speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, Lavrov said Moscow is determined to help Ukrainians “liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime.”
Lavrov accused Kiev and “its Western allies” of spouting propaganda intended to ensure that Ukraine “becomes the eternal enemy of Russia.”
“Russian and Ukrainian people would continue to live together, we will certainly help Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical,” he said.
Lavrov’s remarks contrasted sharply with the Kremlin’s line early in the war, when Russian officials repeatedly emphasized that they weren’t seeking to overthrow Zelenskyy’s government.
Lavrov argued that Russia was ready to negotiate a deal to end hostilities in March when Kyiv changed tack and declared its intention to rout Russia on the battlefield, adding that the West has encouraged Ukraine to keep fighting.”
“The West insists that Ukraine must not start negotiations until Russia is defeated on the battlefield,” Lavrov said.
Comment: Amazing! At last, some truth!
Lavrov: Russia’s Ukraine Goal Is Zelenskyy’s Ouster | Newsmax.com
It seemed obvious this was their goal from the start. They thought he would run scarred into exile when they rolled their tanks to Kyiv. He was after all a comedian. He was not seen as a real man.
“Dooz da Troofs hurts dat much sos it ain’t tolds, ya reckon, Massah Huck?,” said Jim.
Pat, your comment suggests that what Lavrov said, if he said it like that, confirms a hidden agenda you expected from the very beginning. Allow me to make a few observations. First of all, the Russians stated as one of their goals, from the very start, the ‘denazification’ of Ukraine. They had been on record before the war that they felt ‘Kiev’ was held hostage by ‘nazis’, by which they meant certain violent groups openly advocating their sympathy for ‘Banderite’-thinking, with non-elected representatives on key positions within the government.
Recently, Zelensky purged his own government of people who were accused of working with the Russians, after a chief negotiator on the Ukrainian side from the early days had been executed by right-wing activists within the administration, because of treason, and some observers suggest that the British and American guardian angels protecting Zelensky are there to make sure Zelensky doesn’t do ‘anything foolish’, or he will end up like that negotiator, stone cold dead.
After four months of fighting it has become abundantly clear that NATO-leaders want Ukraine to continu till the last Ukrainian, in order to bleed Russia dry. No lack of citations from various political leaders who said so out loud, and Boris Johnson kept paying Zelensky visits to encourage him to stay the course, despite horrendous losses. More so if you believe the Russian side. Whether the Russians miscalculated, expecting the civilized part of the Ukrainian government to rise to the occasion and throw out the ‘nazis’, is another matter. Recent developments confirm the opposite is true, when seen through Russian eyes. Yet, they apparently want the Ukrainians to liberate THEMSELVES of what the Russians regard as a burden. Throw out the ‘nazis’ and NATO, and become a truly independent, neutral country. I fail to see how this can be seen as a change of heart, or a revelation. What am I missing?
Jake
Whoever and whatever you are, I will tolerate you as a needed but pro-Russian voice.
Jake just sounds eminently sensible in his posts. He’s just highlighting the destructive madness of a proxy war that the Ukrainians should never have allowed themselves to become involved in.
Unless forces within the country act soon against the Zelensky regime Ukraine will end up like Yugoslavia – nothing but a rump state.
Steve,
Russia itself may have to worry about Balkanization. Chechens are now starting to make rebellious noises against Moscow.
No doubt the Chechens read me a couple of days ago. Okay, humor button malfunction. Now how about Kazakhstan doing the same.
TTG,
I think this is why Russia doesn’t want NATO on its border. They don’t want a bunch of Green Berets smuggling weapons to Russian separatists (Chechen or otherwise). It’s a pretty legitimate fear given our history.
JamesT,
The Chechens don’t need Green Berets. All they need is to catch a whiff of fear and weakness coming from the Kremlin. That may be enough for other separatists to start distancing themselves from Moscow as well.
That’s why the Kadyrovski are fighting so fiercely as members of Rosgvardia. Sorry TTG, you are delusional if you think that the Chechens want a return to Wahhabism. They know what side their bread is buttered on, and it’s not as an independent tiny Statelet.
Regarding Peter Williams comment:
The only fierce fighting the Kadyrovski are doing is against Ukrainian civilians or Ukrainian POWs. They are also being used as enforcers against desertion-minded Russian troops or those that refuse orders to advance.
Other than that they are using TikTok videos taken well behind the lines to play-act at being in the thick of the fighting.
Peter may be correct that Chechens don’t want a return to Wahhabism. But that won’t stop Kadyrov from secession if he suspects the RF is disintegrating. He fought against the Russians before in the First Chechen War. He may well try to make peace with hardcore Chechen Islamists, those that went on jihad in the past with Umarov. But maybe not, many of those died in Syria or Iraq while fighting alongside ISIS.
Serbs existed b/f Yugoslavia. So did Croats and Slovenes. I suspect each is independently happy. Again and again I remind all that this war d/n begin in 2014, but in 1914. That little truth is the stone upon which is dashed all the arguments that Ukrainians really want to be Russian. It should also be remembered that Russia invaded Ukraine and there would be no damage to Russia if it returned to its borders. It can do that this afternoon.
Of course I don’t know but I read stories about Chechen, Kasahkstan, and even Mongolian resistance to Russia. Of course these c/b “planted” stories. If true Russia may be spread very thin.
What they are saying in Kazakhstan: “If you are a friend of the bear—even if you are the best friend, even if he is in a good mood—always watch your back.”
Hat tip to WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-ukraine-kazakhstan-central-asia-11658439761
Leith,
The WSJ article is behind a paywall for me, but I’ve seen the same sentiment elsewhere.
“Kazakhstan is preparing an army to defend against Russia, a sharp $918 million military budget, and expanding cooperation with China and NATO, fearful of becoming next on the Kremlin’s list of geopolitical ambitions”
China is definitely taking advantage of the situation extending their influence in the region and wooing the Stans from Russian influence.
Pat, pro or con doesn’t change the basic facts, and I don’t mind debating people who are vigorously in favor of anything NATO does. But we are unlikely to arrive at a resolution if we push people who do not agree with our basic likes away from us into the opposite camp. I can accept that you never understood the concept of ‘denazification’, clinging to the line: ‘But Zelensky is Jewish!’, or turning Ukraine into a neutral, demilitarized nation, as an attempt to change the regime in Kiev, but I do not understand how? Obviously Moscow had designs for the future of Ukraine from the very beginning, which were not going to happen if they kept sending Lavrov to talk to Zelensky, who wouldn’t or couldn’t listen to what he had to say.
Please understand that it does make a difference to assume that Russia wanted to place her own puppet in Kiev to replace Zelensky, and move on from there, or to accept that they didn’t, yet wouldn’t accept Kiev to continu to be ‘managed’ by NATO and ‘Banderites’ in the background. Everything about this war changes if you accept this Russian invasion as a ‘Special Operation’, with the goals stated. Likewise, the better defensive strategy changes dramatically. The wrong strategy may destroy the country, and way too many lives.
One of my often repeated points of view is that Americans tend to call everything a ‘War’. Even when no strategy will bring victory, because there is no enemy which can be defeated. Examples are the ‘War on Terror’, the ‘War on Poverty’, and this list is way too long for comfort, since it is bound to create enemies. ‘Denazification’ was actually agreed upon after the Second World War, and when the Russians refer to it, they are serious, but not at war. Not yet. But today they are, with a stated territorial goal, enforcing ‘Minsk II’ through recognizing the two Donbas republics since Kiev never came through with creating a federalized state. And in addition non-military goals, which cannot be realized with military force. Therefore I do accept that the Russians MAY have miscalculated when they aimed part of their military effort in the direction of Kiev, ready to support a spontaneous uprising against the ‘Banderites’, and grafters like Hunter Biden as he is seen by many today, buried in ‘everything Ukraine’. But I do not subscribe to the reading of heroic Ukrainian troops driving them away. And I do not discard the concept of this ‘Kiev-thing’ as a diversion, to tie Ukrainian troops while Russia prepared for her artillery assault on the fortifications bordering the DPR and LPR controlled areas, and taking Kherson to reconnect Crimea to her traditional water- and electricity supply.
All I’m saying, is that if Kiev insists on staying away from the negotiating table, they are likely to lose a lot more territory. While most pro-NATO people on this website are already dividing the loot after a successful run on Kherson, I read that the Russians are getting ready to take the rest of the Black Sea coast. Impossible according to the Ukraine/NATO fanclub, but I no longer trust any assessment coming from NATO, or their intelligence operations. This sense of distrust is too strong today to discard the possibility of deliberate misinformation to bring my beloved Europe to its knees for all the wrong reasons, as it commits economic suicide to ‘help’ Ukraine losing sight of ever becoming an independent country. I’d wish you could see it my way, and help me save Europe and Ukraine from that ordeal.
Well reasoned posts. Agree with what you say, unpalatable as it may be for many on this side of “the front”
“Banderite thinking” … wow, that phrase harkens back in time. When the “good” Ukrainians throw out NATO and the Nazis, they’ll be truly independent!? You can’t sell that fish anymore, its a day old. I suspect you know that Finns, Balts, Slovaks, and Armenians also had military units who fought w/t Nazis. That d/n mean they liked NAZIs. Does the gov’t of Russia believe that other countries to Russia’s west also labor under the burdens of latent Nazism? Then they had better watch out too. Jake, here’s the hard truth. Ukraine’s future will be separate from Russia’s. They’ve fought for independence for over 100 years and aren’t giving up. Is Russia willing to fight on for another 100 years? Always the question comes to mind; why can’t you just leave the other guy alone? Can you answer that one?
Bill,
You wrote:
‘ Is Russia willing to fight on for another 100 years? Always the question comes to mind; why can’t you just leave the other guy alone? Can you answer that one?’
I cannot tell you what Russia is prepared to do, or not. I’m not in the Kremlin, nor do I have a back-channel informing me of their plans. But like I tried to explain in a previous contribution, the fight is about enforcing the ‘Minsk II’ treaty, which was signed by Kiev, and the Ukrainians who held out in the DPR and LPR, and countersigned by Germany and France. For eight years the people in the DPR and LPR waited for it to be implemented, while they witnessed an impressive military buildup across the border, supported by NATO, and counted the bodies of people shot, or bombed by nationalist extremists which did not hide their love for Nazi regalia, and matching ideology. Apart from the threat to the DPR and LPR, there was the threat of taking Crimea, which voted, with a massive majority to boot, in favor of joining Russia after Victoria Nuland and her team staged a coup against the elected president of Ukraine.
How is a bitterly divided country, with arbitrarily decided borders within the former Soviet Union for administrative reasons, suddenly a viable country which has to be left alone, if outsiders stage coups against elected representatives? Don’t you think that a divorce between the pro-Russian minded population and the pro-NATO leaning part was the better solution? Just leave the other guy alone?
Jake,
“Always the question comes to mind; why can’t you just leave the other guy alone?”
Good question. Putin and Lavrov should pull all troops back across the Russian border and leave the other guys alone. Perhaps they should withdraw even further out of the vestiges of the Imperial Russian Empire. They’re lost a lot with the breakup of the USSR. They could lose more if they insist on continuing this war. They had the war torn rump DNR and LNR for eight years and truly turned it to shit. They could have chosen to make them much better rather than let them decay into a 1930s style gulag.
Russia should do their own denazification rather than relying on their own neo-nazis and ultra nationalists of the Wagner Group and others to fight their battles. Denazification is a lame-ass excuse.
Ttg. You mean
Denazification of the Jews
Let’s call it for what it is.Brilliant reverse engineered propaganda by the Russians.
Now Russia is cracking down on the Jewish agency in Russia.
Predictable and obvious from the start.Russia sided with the Arabs in israels wars of independence.
mcohen,
Attempts to shut down the Jewish Agency have far more to due with the increased flow of Jewish emigration to Israel from Russia than any antisemitism in the Kremlin.The continuing brain drain is killing Moscow.
mcohen
Russia making it harder for Israel to brain drain Russia’s Jewish population can only be seen as antisemitic from a certain viewpoint. All Your Jews Are Belong to Us?
Could not agree more. I have said it before and will say it again: the Russian people deserve better than that midget and all those flies around him.
Special thanks to Leith who sent the WSJ article about the Kazakhs and C.Asians starting to the think twice and hard about their relationship with the midget in Kremlin!
Jake
I can think of many countries with arbitrarily defined borders and bitter internal divisions, some of which have even witnessed recent coups. Are they all fair game for invasion & regime change by their neighbors, or is this the peculiar fate of Ukraine? If someone decreed your own country as non “viable” would you accept this judgment and lay down arms in the face of an invader?
I re, then rere read Jakes response on divided countries w/arbitrarily defined borders. Something more troubled me. “within the (former) Soviet Union for administrative purposes” clicked. That is the core, I think, of Jake’s unwillingness to accept a sovereign Ukraine. Ukraine is a mythical county, with a mixed people, and a divided past. It has no right to be. It is an administrative region of Russia and Putin will rtn it as such.
Barbara Ann, Bill,
My apologies for not responding earlier. I was kind of busy enjoying the freedom left to me over the past couple of days. I do support the concept of sovereign nations, but NATO clearly does not. It interfered actively in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine, and a whole range of other countries, while they actively try to topple Putin and undercut Xi. Through placing coups, including against elected governments, like in Ukraine, or militarily by invading them. If (part of the people) rejects this blatant interference with internal affairs from afar, and vote to leave the country taken over by NATO, and join the country next door, that is their sovereign right as well. Especially if violence was used, and these people feel threatened as a people. As stated previously, on numerous occasions, I strongly feel that acting in accordance with the signed and countersigned Minsk agreement would have saved the day for Ukraine. Kiev setting its sights on regaining lost ground, and to impose the will of a minority, was bound to lead to war. According to my reading of the intentions of the Russians, they will leave Ukraine alone, after securing the areas where the threatened people live. Which then may become independent states, between Russia and Ukraine, or join the Russian Federation if they vote that way.
Every nation has ‘administrative regions’, even tiny Holland. For administrative purposes the borders of these regions are sometimes redrawn. The reasons for these changes vary, as well as the process that may lead to these changes, as laid down in the law of the land (or absence thereof). In a Federation, like the United States, or present day Russia, people tend to be sensitive about this, but in many European countries people are more relaxed about it. Despite the fact that large difference may exist between regions. In the tiny sub-region of Friesland, in the north of Holland, they have their own language, and culture, and they tend to be Protestant, while the tongue of people from Limburg is such that I can’t understand what they are trying to tell me, and they tend to be Catholic. Holland considers itself to be a sovereign nation, although it signed away way too much of its sovereignty to ‘Brussels’, where unelected officials wield way too much power. ‘Brussels’ to be understood as both ‘EU’ and ‘NATO’, which have their headquarters in that Belgian city. It is to be expected that European nations will try to reclaim sovereignty when the recession and energy scarcity created by these unelected officials in ‘Brussels’, (EU and NATO), will hit in earnest. Which will weaken both the EU and NATO, but only because they failed to deliver. If Ukraine would have taken off as a prosperous country right after declaring independence, it would have had many options today. Instead they allowed ‘agents of influence’ to decide their destiny, and that didn’t work out.
Jake … Sergi Lavrov is a slick talker but I’m not fooled. One must read his remarks closely. He spoke to the Arab League in Cairo last Saturday of a Ukrainian regime that is anti historical, unacceptable, anti-people and admitted that the Russian military intends to liberate Ukraine from Zelinskyy’s regime….change it to what it wants.
1. Zelinskyy’s regime is unacceptable to …Russia!
2. Zelinskyys regime is anti-people… But Russians are pro people??
3. Zelinskyy’s regime is anti-historical… Because Ukraine doesn’t really exist!! The Russians keep coming back to this. N.B. it means Ukraine is just a Russian administrative unit. It belongs to Russia.
4. The Russian army will liberate Ukrainians (I’m confused. I d/n think they existed). When did those non existent people ask for liberation… they did not!
So Russia finally admits their objectives were never the Donbas and home, but Ukraine or bust.
Putin will fight to the last 20 year old Russian kid to force Ukraine to submit to him. But are the Russian people amorous enough of Ukraine to forfeit their sons. Who wants Ukraine more; Ukrainians or Russians.
Leave’em alone, they’re not Russian.
A lot of these pro-conseravative/ clash of civilization gibberish from the midgets in Moscow about Ukraine and NATO is to appeal to the far-right idiots in Western countries who fetishize closer relationship with Russia. I can’t think of any sensible person falling for this clash of civilization discourse. Hopefully, sooner than later the Russian polity will experience what happened to Colonel Qaddafi back in 2011.
Bill –
Plenty of Russians also fought for Hitler and the SS
leith
More in the Vlasov Army of the Wehrmacht than the SS. My father was present when the Truman governmet gave their PWs back to the Soviets. They loaded them into boxcars still in their German Army uniforms. They were all killed. Many now on this blog will be pleased with that. Now I am described here as “someone as who knows a lot about the ME.” Anyone here want to match their war experience to mine? A lot of foreign armies knew me well, The Russian effort in Ukraie is going to collapse.
Colonel
if their primary goal was to bring about a complete political and military collapse, then they have failed already.
However what constitutes a failure in this phase of the conflict. Failure to capture and hold the Donbass, failure to keep the landbridge to Crimea, failure to keep Ukraine economically and militarily exhausted?
Colonel
I wonder how many who question your forecasts even know who “Antar” is. Read Tattoo folks.
Although I don´t agree with your overall stance on Ukraine – from personal experience I believe the majority of the inhabitants of Donbass were opposed to the Maidan movement – your stance on the moralistic denigration of Ukrainians as Nazis is exactly right. After the horrors of Communism people of course went over to the German side. And who can blame them?
tom67
I don’t have a “stance” on Ukraine, just an analytic position. If Russia had intended only to seize the Russian ethnic areas east of the Dnieper I would have thought that a good policy, but it was more than that. I would favor a Western Ukraine/ Polish arrangement of some kind.
Pat –
You are right about Vlasov’s Army. And right about the RU effort in Ukraine collapsing.
Several thousand of the 35,000 XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps who had surrendered to the Brits were executed in Lienz Austria by the Red Army. The remainder probably met the same fate after repatriation.
@Leith
Are you sure about the numbers?
As far as I remember the Germans never really gave Vlasov’s troops the chance to fight, suspecting them (rightfully) that in a fight with the Soviet Russians they would join arms. I think that happened somewhere in Vienna or Prague. The ranks of Vlasov’s troops were filled by Russians who had the choice to join them or to perish in German POW camps (several milion Russian POW’s were deliberately murdered by the Germans, mostly by famine).
What I don’t know is did the Germans give the chance to Vlasov’s units to fight against the US troops on the west front.
jovan p
How many Russians served in the SS?
Jovan –
25,000 to 35,000 for the SS Cossack Corps is credible. Although I’ve seen claims that they numbered a quarter million. That perhaps counted families and supporters and not solely for combatants? They were not former POWs like the Vlasovtsy who volunteered just to get released from the death camps. During the 1942 German summer offensive in Southern Russia (Case Blue), Cossacks were actively recruited. Many of their fathers and grandfathers had fought for Denikin’s White Army against the Bolsheviks just two decades previously. They rushed to sign up from throughout S.E. Russia, from the west by Voronezh, Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav; southwest by the Sea of Azov; south by Kuban and Stavropol; and east by Astrakhan and Saratov. Some even came from the Donbas, todays LPR and DPR. They fought primarily as anti-Partisan units in Belarus, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia where they are said to have committed many war crimes: ”During punitive operations in Serbia and Croatia, the Cossack regiments under Pannwitz’s command committed a number of atrocities against the civilian population including several mass rapes and routine summary executions. Even for von Pannwitz these atrocities exceeded what he perceived as normal. Moreover, in his eyes they threatened discipline and military success. Therefore he issued an order dated 20 October 1943, according to which crimes of that kind would result in the death penalty.” They did fight later against the Red Army in Hungary near Lake Balaton.
The Vlasovtsy (or Vlasovites of the RLA) did serve at Normandy. Strange group. They even had a Korean or two, which I believe was discussed here a couple of years ago. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/koreans-captured-at-d-day.html?firefox=1
I’m not sure where else they served.
Jake
what you are missing is your own blog and youtube channel.
So many others are already making money off of this war, spewing their “analysis” so hop on the gravy train. You’ll find plenty of acolytes absorbing your every word, regardless of which side you choose to support (in your case it is obvious)
Borko, Leith, TTG,
What is missing from your replies, is content addressing the arguments, and recent historical context I provide. That will not elevate the debate. If someone states that we should listen to the people, and honor their choice, and I point to coups and referenda, and accords being treated as if they meant nothing, then what exactly to you want me to say? What is the meaning of debate if we can’t see eye to eye, and have an adult exchange of opinions, where a man is called a man, and a horse a horse?
Jake,
a debate doesn’t necessary mean that the other side will fight every one of your arguments, especially the ones perceived as strong.
Jake
what arguments? Russian fanboys justify every Russian action including the current sh*tshow by referring to 2014 coup, Nuland, cookies etc.
Russian agression is destroying the lives of the people they have supposedly come to protect.
Borko,
‘Russian fanboys’ reveals to me a need for anger management, unless you are in the thick of it. Are you presently serving on the front lines by any chance? If not, what are you afraid of?
Fear is an interesting concept. People who appear absolutely fearless, almost eager to dive into a firefight, head first, may claim to be afraid of someone they never met, whose language they don’t understand, wearing sandals and living in another country, on the other side of the planet, considering him an immediate threat to his personal safety. Yet he isn’t lying. A rather obscure part of our brain called the amygdala is generally considered to perform a central function in our ability to perceive fear. This part is considered older than more recently developed parts which control thought-processes, if you subscribe to evolution and human beings developing to its present state over the ages.
In literature there is an enormous amount of relevant studies, which list ‘rational fear’ as opposed to ‘irrational fear’. The very fact that we are able to add thoughts to our fears does not turn it into ‘rational fear’. And human beings can overcome fear through training, conditioning, or medication, and thus they can be manipulated. In both directions. Training and conditioning in order to fear the people next door is ugly, but it happens all the time. To defuse the situation, the people next door will have to prove they can be trusted to do the right thing. From what I heard and read, that was the general idea when Russia invaded Ukraine, as it has been in Syria. We will not know how successful they were, until it is all behind us.
The opposite party, Ukraine and NATO, are not in the business of befriending the Russians, that is for sure. Quite the opposite, since anyone asking to consider the Russian experience, from Napoleon, western countries fighting on Russian soil between the wars, to Hitler, causing twenty-seven million Russians to perish, and various plans to conquer and carve up Russia, with various excuses, is now considered close to being a traitor (Russian Fanboy), discussion closed. And traitors are dangerous. We fear them. Which is not a bad idea if this traitor has set up shop to terrorize the ‘home country’, but it may have devastating effects if you exclude reasonable people from debate. Two opposing parties limited to acting according impulses derived from their amygdala need a therapist, and not an army.
Jake,
That 27 million figure for WWII deaths is not for only Russians. It’s for the entire USSR including 7 million Ukrainians, over 2 million Belarusians and a million Balts. Those non-Russian deaths are seldom acknowledged by Russian apologists. Even worse, those deaths are shamelessly appropriated by those same apologists.
WWII sounded the death knell for several empires. The Russian empire in the guise of the USSR and the WTO lasted for another 45 years. But it finally, if belatedly, fell. Just like London and Paris, Moscow has to come to terms with that loss of empire. I would say that Washington has to do the same.
Jake
Ah the therapist, one of the central characters of modernity. Not so long ago the term “survivor” was reserved for experiences like shipwrecks and battle. Today we live in societies where it is permissible and even praiseworthy to show fear and weakness, with the therapist always available to confer the blessing of social acceptability on an ever expanding list of failings. We are being conditioned as helpless dependents and a violent counter reaction is overdue.
It is how we order our fears that is important. In one of noble character fear of failing in one’s duty, of dishonor, or of failing one’s comrades is set above the fear of death. But alas the Lennonists dreamers would have us inhabit a world with nothing to kill or die for. This is what I fear the most.
TTG,
Twenty-seven or eighteen million, still three times as much as the number of Jews killed, which we remember vividly, and because we should. The number was not important, but the question of which country/people have every right to feel threatened by their neighbors when they start misbehaving. My own point of view is that historic events are clearly driving fear in some people, without real cause in many cases, while other trends should raise a few eyebrows. Like seeing an organization which was set up to battle COMMUNIST Russia which refuses to die after the communists are removed from the scene, and starts expanding in ways eerily similar to what you witnessed before on more that one occasion, with many of the same faces as before, each time resulting in the invasion of Russia. That is not so easy to discard out of hand. Less so if people within this organization state publicly that Russia has no right to exist as a country, and the elected leader has to go. You are sure going to trip a few alarm bells in Russia. I hope you do understand why it is ironic that more than a few people are up in arms because Lavrov expressed his displeasure with the Kiev-regime, inviting the Ukrainian people to do something about it, while you recently invited a bunch of Al Qaeda affiliated extremists within Chechnya to pick up arms and go on the offensive? Not too many people favor being ruled by people like that, and none on this website, I hope.
Barbara Ann,
Some people who battle with anger and/or unreasonable fear, eager to list people who do not agree with them as the enemy, should not be given control over an army. I do not advocate involuntary therapy, like the approach they favored in the USSR. Talking to your partner or friends who care might do the trick. Or taking a deep breath before composing a reply. As long as a return to adult debate and engaging those with a different opinion, instead of calling them names, or entering them on a shortlist of people to be separated from ‘People Like Us’, ensues. You make some interesting observations about fear, but how to arrive at a balanced station in life?
Given the recent ultra-authoritarian direction the Ukrainian government has taken to all its citizens – not just the Russian speakers who are now only permitted to speak Ukrainian – I guess Lavrov is floating the idea that the Ukrainian military would find support from the east should they decide on mounting a coup, followed by a purge of the Galicians. Then let the Poles do the rest as they reclaim their slice of the pie.
Steve,
No one is prevented from speaking Russian in Ukraine although the use of Ukrainian over Russian was being strongly pushed for official uses and in higher education even before the war. Now a lot of Russian speakers are learning Ukrainian out of patriotism.
“Now a lot of Russian speakers are learning Ukrainian out of patriotism.”
Really? 😀 😀 😀
jld,
Yes, really.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220530-russian-speakers-in-ukraine-reject-the-language-of-the-enemy-by-learning-ukrainian
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/apr/08/ukrainian-langauge-interest-spikes-support-country-war
TTG,
It’s not just in “higher” education.
“All public schools in Ukraine wiped out the Russian language from their programs this school year to implement the law passed by the country’s parliament, Supreme Rada, three years ago.”
https://www.fairplanet.org/editors-pick/schools-in-ukraine-scrap-russian-language-from-their-curricula/
If the Chinese did this to the Uyghurs we would yell “Genocide! Genocide! Genocide”, but in fact the Chinese continue to allow Uyghur children to be educated in their own language.
JamesT,
The current law allows for Russian language instruction in kindergartens and elementary schools. Beyond that, Russian is a foreign language in public education. I don’t know if there are private schools in Ukraine and if the curriculum of these schools, if they exist, are affected. My father, although born in the US, spoke Lithuanian as a child and went to a Lithuanian language grammar school for a number of years before immersing into English.
Ttg
to the millions of Russian speakers in Ukraine, it is not a foreign language.
Ukrainian efforts to gradually marginalize its use is not helping and plays into Russian propaganda about how the Banderovites are out to get them.
borko,
Yes, this does play into Russian propaganda. But it will only become a more accepted and popular move within Ukraine. I doubt there will be a widespread backlash unless active efforts to prevent Russian being spoken anywhere in Ukraine are undertaken. Russia’s continued aggression is only making the Ukrainian language more popular and the Russian language less desirable.
Ttg
there was an attempt of, as you say, active measures in 2014, days after the coup.
The bill that was passed would have made Ukrainian the sole state language at all levels.
There was backlash, even from the European institutions and the bill was vetoed. The damage however had been done and it helped fuel discontent in Crimea and Donbass.
Looks like the government is still trying to achieve Russian language replacement but in small, incremental steps.
Your post reminds me of those damned Quebecois who put street signs in French! How was I supposed to know where I was going! And the damn republican Irish are putting more and more documents in Gaelic. My last name is Roche but I can’t read Gaelic! And then, there was a time when speaking Ukrainian in Ukraine was not approved by the Russians. Thank goodness Mr. Putin’s Russia is not ultra authoritarian. Perhaps Zelinskyy can model Putin’s more liberal gov’t.
But lets talk about Lavrovs doing his job; sowing seeds of discord. Yes he encourages some UM to “go east young men” and they will find succor at the Russian teat. Then someone (?) will purge Galicia of the (?) and the Poles will take the hindmost. Halychnia is a polygot of Germans, Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Little Russians, and Lithuanians. They have considered themselves Ukrainians unless Lavrov knows of some dissent. Lavrov’s just doing his job.
Steve & James T –
Meanwhile if you speak Ukrainian or sing Ukrainian songs anywhere in occupied Ukraine you are arrested and harshly interrogated and in some cases disappeared.
In those parts of Kharkiv Province that are occupied, library books written in Ukrainian language are burned by order of the Russian authorities. Same thing happened years ago in the LNR and DNR.
The Russian line on anything bends in whatever way the Kremlin wants it to, it certainly isn’t a straight line connecting A to B. Perhaps they have been learning from their Turkish neighbours, and it is another sign of them being an effectively less-than-great power when it comes to any domain outside the nuclear.
There’s this saying about plans not surviving first contact with the enemy and I would think maybe the Russians didn’t expect (or maybe hoped not to encounter) the Ukies’ obdurate resistance. Now that the situation has evolved as it has, it surely has to be their intention has to be the end of the current regime. And it may also be that Lavrov’s statement may have been made with the idea it might encourage the Ukrainians to get rid of Zelensky and his entourage. Maybe they might think they can get a better deal if they do that, and indeed they might.
In the end, I see the Russians taking Kharkov, everything east of the Dnieper, and the entirety of Ukraine’s Black Sea Coast. They would then have a rump Ukraine which would be dependent on Russia for an export economy
not based entirely on rail. I still expect Ukrainian resistance to fold quickly in the proximate future as Russia gets into the western farm country with fewer larger urban areas favoring the defense. That may happen sooner rather than later. I know this is not how you’d like things to go, but it appears heading in that direction and the Russians may dial things up by doing things they have so far refrained from doing and, in this, I’m referring to taking a page from our playbook and destroying the power grid so as to turn off the lights in Kiev.
This, by a former foggy albion (limey) military intel offhislure, is interesting indeed and comprehensively otherwise than the dry velle on offer from the neocon Inns Toot toot for Wore.
Sez the stratergee of Your Cranium is snot to storm Kherson (I’m amused at similar sound to Curzon, but doubt relevance) butt rather to sequentially implant old fogeys into the strong fortifications of the Yeast. Where a few hundred dead here, and another there, won’t be something to fuss over. Your thoughts, kemosabe?
https://intellinews.com/don-why-is-russia-s-progress-in-the-ukraine-campaign-so-slow-251117/
I’m impressed that the worse things go in combat, the more openly combative the talking heads grow. Heck, they may man the ramparts someday! … for a photo op. This war is more classic in nature than many expected. New hardware is neat – it always is. Humans? ever the same, mostly.
Anyone note evolution in the Russian Character? I still don’t think they want to die for Ukraine as much as the Ukrainians are willing-to. Could be an issue.
That’s the best line I have read on the war. Are Russians as willing to die to keep Ukraine, as Ukrainians are to be free.
That is the issue isn’t it.
Soros and the WEF folks are on record stating Russia invading is a major setback for their open society (borders) and it’s taking away from the focus on climate change (pick pocketing the middle class).
So come on Ukraine !!??!! I guess….
Babeltuap
I think the WEF has come out with this line because too many realized how deeply Putin and Xi are in on the plans for the great New World Order. They have created a narative where only Trump, Putin and Xi stand in the way of the UN Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset. Watch this documentary. It is completely linked to every source it uses: https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-297-china-and-the-new-world-order/
“Yuri Bezmenov: The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion” This has been underway here, in the US, for too long…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw
Whose investments, and what part of deception and societal breakdown do you not get? I’ve said many times, Trump is fake. And is this answer the best you got?
Thought it was a Greatful Dead Song?
Think again.
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs: Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down.
https://youtu.be/F9HnT419E9c
if we’re going to drag The Dead into the fight, let’s get the name right and pick a tune Jerry wrote – about the future. subtitled, Vlad’s Lament.
https://youtu.be/VWY4hyIlsqQ
“Human Rights Watch report show the whole of Kherson has become a concentration camp. Indiscriminate murder, rape and unimaginably cruel torture used against civilians. “ Putin’s neo-KGB is getting stronger, they thrive on these horrors. Looking for the mythical Banderites I presume. Similar atrocities happened to pro-Ukraine citizens of the Donbas in 2014/2015.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/22/ukraine-torture-disappearances-occupied-south
…”and understand that they can, and will, be held accountable…” Yoohoo, NATO
Zelensky could leave tomorrow, but I’m sure that wouldn’t cause Russia to return to the pre-invasion borders any more than Putin’s leaving would.
A point I don’t see much discussed in this debate is the viewpoint of the Eastern Europeans who had first hand experience of Soviet occupation. They don’t want a militarily resurgent Russia with a mindset that this our backyard and we want to control the political outcomes.
This war is as much about them and their fears based on a lived experience. It is not only Putin who had concerns about NATO expansion but also the Eastern Europeans who had concerns about their security and needed the NATO umbrella to safeguard against Russian adventurism.
It is not only Victoria Nuland who was meddling in the internal political affairs of Ukraine. So did Putin.
Whether Putin wanted to just annex the Donbass or achieve regime change in Kiev doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day this has naturally heightened fears among many of the Eastern European and Nordic countries and they want to wound as much as possible the Russian military’s capacity to invade them. The question is who folds first?
My point is that none of this is black & white. The complexities are extraordinary.
The complexities are extraordinary and the more I know of their history, the more I know I don’t! Your comment brings to mind the guns of the former Soviet “Republics”. In ’91, the S.U. fell and the “mice” all skedaddled away. But they pointed whatever weapons they had back at Russia. Not the west. The Balts were not forced by the Brits and Amers to join NATO but I’ll bet right now they are glad they did. Currently the Swedes and Finns, who have avoided “siding up,” have announced their intention to join NATO.
My answer to this seems too simplistic. It cant be true, but I think it is. Putin and his side are on a holy mission to restore Russia to her imperial palace as mother of all Slavs. I chose my words deliberately. They seem to come from a different century. They could have been spoken in 1914.
Bill Roche
Putin is the archetypal irredentist. He refers to Ukraine as “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine” as if subsequent events and 30 years of independence were irrelevant. His incessant references to the inequities of a century ago (particularly the 1917 revolution) expose him as a prisoner of the past. As you imply, he seems himself as Czar of all the Russias. Communism and the Cold War are merely temporary interruptions in the glorious history of the Russian Empire from Putin’s POV. He and Erdogan must be a hoot at parties.
Barbara Ann,
I’ve listened to Englishmen sing “Britannia Rules the Waves” and don’t even get me started on the French. Putin isn’t the only person who years for the glory of empire past and I think he is being more realistic than he is being given credit for. But if he allows a hostile foreign power to set up camp on his doorstep he is going to be the victim of a “Syrian revolution” faster than he can blink.
realistically (in this early 21st Century), when I hear BRtW, I think Monty Python. when I hear Putin… echos of the Gulag.
Blue Peacock,
Your observation that fear is an important driver is obviously correct. As well as the fact that many in the NATO-world can’t come around to the fact that Russia today is no longer the Soviet Union. But what is more, they somehow forgot how the Soviet Union came to be the ‘guardian angel’ (tormentor) of these Eastern European states. And how western nations fought on Russian soil between both World Wars, and not the other way around. Neither are they aware of this British ‘Great Game’ strategy which was driving British policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game
Britain, back then, was still a colonial power, looking for threats to their hegemonic power. And to this end they concluded that Hitler was their best bet as a partner to limit the ambitions of the French on continental Europe, and to conquer Russia. That set-up went south when Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union concluded the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact, carving up Poland between them. A tragic mistake from a German point of view, since all alarm bells went off in London because of it, as it feared Hitler would turn on them, with Stalin’s backing. London previously cheered the Germans along as they annexed Austria and invaded the Tsjech republic. In his book ‘Mein Kampf’ Hitler made it abundantly clear that he regarded the Jews as the driving force behind communism, and therefore the Soviet Union, and that he was after expanding Germany by conquering Russia, to create ‘Lebensraum’ for the Germanic people. But he wanted to buy time, and so did the Soviets, who had previously been begging the British and the French to stop Hitler, to no avail. Even after the war between Britain, France and Germany broke out over Poland, a dictatorship which was born-again after the First World War, the Germans were looking for an opportunity to repair their mistake, which is why Rudolf Hess flew to England on May 10 1941, hoping to arrange peace talks, a month before Germany unleashed Operation Barbarossa. And we all know how that ended. With the Soviet Union conquering much of Eastern Europe, and being granted supervising rights according to the treaty of Yalta. As noted before on this website, Churchill wanted to invade the Soviet Union right after the Second World War, a plan listed as ‘Operation Unthinkable’, but since Roosevelt didn’t want to hear about it, and Churchill lost the elections, it became truly unthinkable.
Now tell me which country should be weary of the imperialist other? In 2016 the Rand-corporation, which is designing foreign policy and ‘Game-plans’ for the US, published another ‘Unthinkable’ plan, ‘Thinking through the Unthinkable’, with designs for war between the US and China, after Russia would have been ‘neutralized’, taken out of the picture. Which was before Russia exposed some remarkable new weapons, and the developments in Europe and elsewhere, with NATO expanding rapidly, way beyond their Atlantic scope as laid down in the original treaty, drove them to embrace China, and vice versa. Moreover, as can be seen on this website, numerous commentators without responsibility for policy, are peddling a vision of breaking up Russia, and China, even encouraging Chechen and other Muslim extremists with close affiliation to Al Qaeda and ISIS to do their thing. I fear such people, who cynically create chaos in order for their country to come out on top, and call it a victory for ‘democracy’. And this fear drives me to participate in public discussions, like on this website, to educate people about the risks, and beg people so inclined to reconsider, because they do not know what they are wishing for.
Gentlemen, we should discuss the point on hand. The reasons for Russia’s invasion and her motivations, whatever they may be, shouldn’t consume every thread.
Steve made one interesting comment that I think is worth exploring.
After Lavrovs admission, are the Russians now counting on the Ukrainians to turn on themselves by ousting Zelenskyy? That seems unlikely to me. So how might Russia attempt to remove him and who do they hope to replace him with?
Notfakebot,
I agree that hoping the Ukrainian people will turn on Zelenskiy is a foolish and unlikely hope. I think it’s more likely that Russia will try to convince Europe to stop supporting Ukraine by further squeezing energy markets and maybe even food markets.
I have no idea who Russia would like to replace Zelenskiy. In the early days of the war, it appeared that Victor Medvedchuk was a possibility. He was already under house arrest for treason charges. He escaped in the confusion of the initial Russian assault on Kyiv, but was recaptured trying to cross the border into Russia in early April.
TTG,
The Dutch are squeezing their own food markets with environmental regulations, “for climate change”. This is a crisis manufacted by the EU governments not the Russians. You might want to search the inter-tubes for evidence, the MSM refuses to cover the ongoing protests.
TTG..
It Seems to Me You are Pretty Fast To Kick Out Someone Elses Point of View or Data .>Especially RE:Russia or DNC..Then Toy Cover It Up on Both Sides Often Like You Did With Fred and I Just Now..Sidebar TTG…TTG…TTG
Just Say..You Like to Dominate…The DNC is Corrupt..They Are Using a Trusted..And Suspect Security Company that would Get access to the Digital Images..and ONLY Reveal want the DNC Wanted revealed. And Cover up The Rest. My Belief..
Doesnt Crowd Strike Now Have Access to All Government Data Bases..Through the DNC Biden Administration..??
Should Foreign Investigation..Espionage Be Through CIA or FBI..?
Who Cares What Excuses About What Language is Used In Ukraine..Russia Uses To Attack and Mutilate a Sovereign Country Like Ukraine ..
Your Arguments are Petty. And Off Track Sometimes TTG..
JT
.
jim ticehurst,
I’m engaging you and Fred on the subject of Russia and the DNC hack because I know a great deal about the subject. Much of what I know I won’t reveal in an unclassified environment. As for your other questions:
“Doesn’t Crowd Strike Now Have Access to All Government Data Bases..Through the DNC Biden Administration..??”
Not at all. Any access they may have would be part of a government contract. It’s the same with any government contractor and that access would be limited by the specifics in the contract.
Should Foreign Investigation..Espionage Be Through CIA or FBI..?
Both the FBI and CIA, along with many other US IC agencies conduct foreign investigations and espionage. It’s their job.
“Who Cares What Excuses About What Language is Used In Ukraine..Russia Uses To Attack and Mutilate a Sovereign Country Like Ukraine ..”
Borko and JamesT care about Ukrainian language laws. I’m doing them the courtesy of engaging them in their interest.
TTG,
“Much of what I know I won’t reveal in an unclassified environment.”
You were engaged by the USG as part of those investigations?
This Event In Ukraine Has played Out this Way..It Seems.. of the The Russian
IO in 2016..To Hack The DNC Servers Digital Images…The FBI Claimed They Informed DNC The DNC ..Clinton Organization… Had CROWDSTRIKE….A Private Security Company Analyze Their Data…NOT the FBI..
Crowdstrike said It was All a Russian IO …and gave their Data to FBI and Justice Dept..who Indicted 12 Russian Spy’s in Russia..All Data Verified By Muller..
Donald Trump got elected anyhow…Despited The Collusion Claim…
Donald Trump was going through the Collusion Investigation Non Stop..Etc to 2019…A A New Election Coming Up..He was Then Told by Someone ..(NSC) ?? That Ukraine had The DNC Server..(Not True) And Crowdstrike was Owned by a Rich Ukrainian..And That What Trump was Asking Zelinsky About in his Now Public 2019 Phone Call..about Crowdstrike..
Trump had wanted a Good Relationship witn Russia and Putin…Russia knew that so Trump Was Believing the Ukraine story …and Not Supporting Ukraine..or sending them any Military Aid..
The DNC then used that Pnone Call to Indicted Trump and Impeach him..in 2019 during the Election..to Keep the Pressure on..
I believe All This was a Russian Operation..Delibertly Exposed..Then Blamed On Ukraine..so Russia..Could achieve Current Objectives..
Russia KGB Defectors Have Warned The CIA And FBI of These Deceptions Sive The Gorbochov Days With Reagan..And Berlin..
There is The Art of the Deal..or The Deception of The Intentions of The Deal..
We are at Critical Mass..and One Hell of an Operation.
JT
jim ticehurst,
The DNC is a private entity and, as such, hired a private entity to remediate the hack. That’s what private companies and other private entities do. No one calls in the FBI to remediate their IT breaches. FBI does not remediate IT problems. It investigates potential and real crimes. They’d like to get more access to these data breaches and do try to convice companies to be more open about such breaches.
Crowdstrike didn’t call the DNC hack a Russian IO. They called it a data breach probably done by Russian government affiliated hackers. Yes they shared their finding with the FBI, but the FBI, probably with NSA help, developed plenty of their own evidence as noted in the indictment of the GRU 12.
The effort to shag this all off on the Ukrainians probably was another part of the Russian IO campaign to weaken the US. And Trump bought it as you said.
TTG,
The FBI never had possession of the actual evidence, they only got what the contractors of the DNC told them, which you well know. That is the same DNC that funded the Steele dossier. This was much discussed and disputed by the now banned one whose posts are, or were, still in the archives. That’s the same FBI that had a lawyer fabricate evidence presented to the FISA court and lied to Trump. “Trump bought it” LOL.
That’s the same FBI that committed more felonies to cover up Hunter Biden’s criminal conduct before the election of the most popular vote getter in history, as recounted by US Senator Grassley in his letter to the FBI:
https://www.scribd.com/document/584114450/Grassley-to-Garland-and-Wray-Hunter-Biden-July-25-2022#download&from_embed
Fred,
What the DOJ presented in the indictment of the GRU 12 goes far beyond anything CrowdStrike could obtain by just monitoring and analyzing DNC servers and traffic within the DNC network. The FBI and probably the NSA were inside the hackers’ network in order to get what was presented in the indictment. Besides, CrowdStrike and the DNC shared disk images and traffic logs of what they found. The FBI physically seizes servers and routers only rarely. I’ve never seen them seize entire servers in the case of a data breach. Too much evidence is lost when servers are abruptly disconnected from the network.
TTG,
“disk images and traffic logs ”
“The FBI physically seizes servers and routers only rarely. ”
No S***. The DNC wasn’t going to have anything siezed because they were not suspected of any crime. The police want to see the crime scene and evidence, not what is selectively to present to them. Except here. This was presented this way to prevent any connection to the now dead Seth Rich and any implication that wikileaks got material from him not the GRU.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/will-julian-assange-and-wikileaks-finally-tell-the-truth-about-seth-rich-918946/
Fred,
The DOJ indictment laid out how and when data was infiltrated from the DNC networks and how it eventually made its way to Wikileaks. The CrowdStrike investigation got none of that. As for Seth Rich, I don’t know. There’s nothin but innuendo linking him to any of this. Even the article you linked to point that out. Several of these purveyors of Seth Rich conspiracy theories, including Fox News, have found themselves in legal trouble because of their passing of these unfounded conspiracy theories.
TTG,
Thank you for not disputing my point that the FBI only recieved from the DNC and its contractor what the DNC presented to them. The indictment was uncontested by the Russians who did not show up in court, just as Mueller’s team knew they wouldn’t.
I think the likeliest explanation was a hack by Russia. It was tit for tat because of what Hillary did to Putin when she was secretary of state in the runup to Russia’s 2012 election. The goal wouldn’t have been to help Trump get elected but to damage and undermine her ability to govern, exactly what Hillary did to Putin.
Also those DNC emails weren’t that damaging. The more damaging emails were on Hillary’s private server that the FBI legally made public.
No rational person would believe the Ukrainians are going to oust Zelenskyy. His popularity is at an all time high. I wonder if Lavrov is playing an intricate negotiation game there. Everybody has to concede something in a negotiated settlement. This might be intended as a bone to give away at the table, perhaps with territory outside of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts they have taken.
They should be looking for end-game scenarios, ways to end this, by now. Militarily overwhelming the rest of Ukraine is no longer feasible.
Oh Jesus. Russia this. Russia that. Those people have been fighting and fucking each other for thousands of years.
The really mystery is what will happen with the US, over the next decade or two. What really holds this country together, other than the dollar? What if it’s no longer the world’s reserve currency and all those overseas dollars start coming home? What about our industrial base, that we shipped overseas, so the rich could get richer?
Hey, we’ve got the world’s greatest military, or at least the most expensive one. Except we can’t seem to win any wars. Has there ever been a time in history, where those levels of failure didn’t have a bunch of those responsible pay with their lives. Ours just get promoted, or at least get well paying jobs in the media or arms industries.
Look at the Covid fiasco and the ways that narrative is starting to break down. Think of all the other times we’ve been bullshitted. Ukraine this and Ukraine that. Remember when we were supposed to call French fries, freedom fries, because the surrender monkeys wouldn’t accede to our need to pound the Iraqi’s?
If anyone really doesn’t think this mess will be just one more giant fuckup, they are very, very gullible.
Making the case for Trump 2024 – character “flaws” or not, Trump by body language and deed kicked butt. Reprise of his 2016 election theme song: You don’t always get what you want.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/i_was_wrong_about_trump.html
America needs to yet again kick butt, and this will not be pretty. To save herself, if not the world this time. I too was a NoTrumper in 2016, but have no problem today with MAGA 2024.
Biden proved how very fragile we are today when America’s fundamental values are undermined: protection of private property; rule of law; free and competitive markets; limited government. Biden’s weaponized Deep State violates America’s long-standing belief in fair play and good sportsmanship.
When people fear their government, it is tyranny.
When the government fears its people, it is liberty.
(Thomas Jefferson)
Become a student of Trump’s expanded Schedule F that allows any incoming President, carrying the new and express will of the people, to terminate many more top civil service bureaucrats who became unelected obstructionists working against Trump in 2016.
Deep State self-protection at any cost cannot again define America in the 21st century, as it is doing right now.
$15 trillion national debt when Trump came into WH, $25 trillion debt in just 4 yrs when he left. A lot of “butt kicking” there!
Democrat ginned-up election year “covid” did knock the stuffings out of any promise of sane GOP budgeting.
How much was added to the Trump years debt “post-covid”?
Sad thing is Bannon pushed a one trillion dollar debt for infrastructure in the very early days of Trump 2017 – too big, too irresponsible. But in retrospective I believe this would have actually been spent on infrastructure, not the expanded welfare covid state that wasted this same amount anyway.
Trump was a builder – he got things done and even under budget and under time. That was his value added, but he never got to share that gift of experience with the people. Nancy Pelosi (plus media) stole that opportunity from him.
Trump added a trillion dollars to the national debt each year of his presidency before Covid!
And when he had the chance to declassify the role of the national security apparatus in the Russia Collusion hoax he wimped out. More like all hat (lots of macho tweets) but no cattle (no guts).
Then of course…
https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1552760546373652480?s=21
Personally I’m just going to write in Assange/Manning. Again.
We see the puppets jumping around, but we are supposed to ignore the strings.
This Vogue cover shoot of Zelenksy and wife as the glam cosplay couple of the year, just may change the course of his noble cause.
Others are having a lot of fun with this as Biden funnels more billions of dollars into the US defense industry unions in an election year claiming it to be aid to Ukraine:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/fashion-fury-ukrainian-first-lady-husband-volodymyr-take-time-vogue-staged-photoshoot-ukraine-burns/
Who wore their glam presidential cover shot better? Beto O’Rourke or the Zelenskyy’s?
Deap
https://im1776.com/2022/05/27/servant-of-the-corrupt/
It might be hard to believe now, but revelations from documents in the Pandora Papers — millions of files from offshore service providers leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with partners around the world — sent Zelensky reeling last year, threatening to end his political career. Though the actor-turned-politico campaigned as an anti-corruption reformer, the Pandora Papers showed him to be just as crooked as his predecessors.
Of more than 300 politicians and public officials, including several current and former national leaders, in more than 91 countries and territories to whom the documents were linked, Ukraine was home to more secret offshore holdings than any other, including Russia. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which contributed to the investigation, found that just before Zelensky was elected president, “he gifted his stake in a key offshore company, the British Virgin Islands-registered Maltex Multicapital Corp., to his business partner — soon to be his top presidential aide. And in spite of giving up his shares, the documents show that an arrangement was soon made that would allow the offshore to keep paying dividends to a company that now belongs to his wife.”
Corruption is rampant in Ukraine, and has been from the very start. Zelensky was indeed outed as being just as crooked as the rest of them, but all of a sudden he is now turning against many of his fellow grafters. What gives? The ‘Vogue’-thing reminded me of Assad and his wife being portrayed as enlightened people taking Syria into modernity, moments before NATO started its regime change operation in that country, supporting ‘freedom fighters’ which wanted Syria to return to the Stone Age. Using the ‘Vogue’-thing as proof of Assad’s decadence.
Zelensky also just stripped three of the richest Jewish oligarchs of their citizenship according to the Jerusalem Post. Among them Igor Kolomoisky, previously seen as the most prominent backer of Zelensky. A blacklist of politicians and journalists in the west who are now considered anti-Ukrainian has been published, and ‘Kiev’ demanded that an impressive list of prominent western banks are prosecuted for supporting Russia. Telling the world that elected western officials and respected, prize winning journalists need to be seen as traitors, while exposing the most prominent US banks as war profiteers, is not how this game is played, up till now. And ‘annoying’ Israel is often a dead-sentence. Disavowing Zelensky now is impossible after everything NATO did to elevate him to God-like status.
Jake; corruption of leadership in another country is not acceptable cause for invading it. When it comes to corruption no state does it better than my home state, NY. Should I be worried? I have heard some African state leaders are corrupt. Perhaps Putin should root out corruption there? Happily there’s no corruption in Moscow.
For you Ukrainian history does not go earlier then 2014; Nuland, cookies, Neocons, NATO, Blinken, etc etc. You ignore facts of Ukrainian attempts for liberation as far back as 1900. I won’t recount these events, you’ll ignore them.
Your comments on Russian WW II war deaths illustrates this. You neglected to mention that Russia’s dead included 7 million Ukrainians. You remembered 6MM Jews murdered by the Nazi’s b/t 1940-45, but forgot 6MM Ukrainians murdered by the communists b/t 1930-32. I’ll bet there are one or two 95 year old Holodomore survivors who can tell you why Ukrainians don’t trust Russia.
I’ve posted b/f I KNEW this war would happen in ’91. I read the news of the Ukrainian declaration of independence in late August and I said, there will be war. Why, b/c Ukraine declared herself independent. You paint the war as an event that began in ’14, by a corrupt bunch of Ukrainians, encouraged by American Neocons, while Russia stood innocently by and d/n encourage, or supply Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas to revolt from Ki’ev. That history is deliberately incomplete. The option remains for Putin. Leave the other guy alone. But he can’t. Doing so admits Russia’s no longer an empire.
The US shouldn’t be held to the same standards you lay out?
“The option remains for Putin. Leave the other guy alone. But he can’t. Doing so admits Russia’s no longer an empire.”
How does expanding “defensive” NATO to Russia’s border figure in your foreign policy calcs?
A suggested starting point:
https://www.youtube.com/show/SCca2WL3EfAJes7MRYGuzcnA?season=1&sbp=CgEx
I tried but couldn’t open the youtube ref. sorry. You offered Oliver Stone as a starting point? Several years ago Chinese troops arrived in Panama. Today there are Chinese troops in Venezuela. Putin sends his boats to Caracas from time to time. Most recently our Canadian “friends” have allowed Chinese troops to train in western Canada. Funny thing about sovereignty, a sovereign nation can be friends w/whom ever. The Finns/Swedes have just reminded the Russians of that. Perhaps the Austrians will also. The Monroe document ended sometime in the 70’s. We don’t have it anymore. The Russians are learning that some of their very near neighbors won’t accept a Russian Monroe Doctrine either. Much like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and (soon) Finland and Sweden, if Ukraine survives Russia’s invasion it just may ask to join NATO too.
Bill”’
I think you made some excellent,,,and On Point Comments here
for background…Tpdays big Yahoo story with Images says Russia has had 75,000 casualty’s in this war so Far..And from the Constant Damage i had seen..I imagine thats close..
As far as Language…Well..Decades ago, in a Public American
High School…I had to take Latin..as a second language..Didnt make me want to Invade Italy..I will never have an Audience with the Pope..But I can still repeat My Favorite Latin,because its all I Remember….
“Mecca Mecca Parwa Stella..”…..Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,
JT
My personal favorite was always Luc cicandelli vitae vitae, luc cicandelli vita vita…
For the latin scholars there is always “Ubi oh ubi, est meas sub ubi.”
Teacher informed me I was failing big time. She offered a deal. I become Latin Club Pres, and I pass. I passed her course, she kept her latin club. At 15 I learned the art of the deal.
Vale!
Bill, you wrote:
‘Jake; corruption of leadership in another country is not acceptable cause for invading it.’
Where exactly did I say it was?
And:
‘I’ve posted b/f I KNEW this war would happen in ’91.’
So you didn’t suspect, or fear that outcome. It was absolute certainty. I fear and suspect you were not the only one, and that the ‘color revolution’, the ‘2014 coup’, and the frantic military buildup since, not to mention the non-compliance with the Minsk-accord, guaranteed it would come true. But does that make you a visionary?
Muddying the waters doesn’t help. I said I knew (yes, as a matter of absolute certainty) in the summer of ’91, that Russia would attack Ukraine. I was not a visionary, this eventuality was obvious. The summer of ’91 there was not 2014, so please don’t play in the mud. Jake this is the bottom line, Russia w/n permit a sovereign Ukraine b/c that destroys Imperial Russia. If the Balts had not gained the protection of NATO, I KNEW that one of those three nations would have been on Putin’s mind also. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is wedded to the myth of invincible Russia and to the role of other Slavs as inferiors. They aren’t going to accept this any more.
I believe the Russian people will flourish once released from the burdens of maintaining the shell of a 19th century empire that should have been ended in 1917. Russia should not just let Ukraine go, it should let the Russian people go.
Bill, I do not muddy the waters. It is your ‘knowing’ which is the problem. Because it became a self-fulfilling prophesy through anti-democratic interference to ‘save’ Ukraine. And that is the real problem.
Didn’t Putin also meddle in Ukraine? Or was it only the US?
Or is it acceptable that Putin can meddle but not the US?
No idea what you are talking about, exactly. How did Putin meddle in Ukraine prior to that coup? Is this familiar to this hoax of the Russians stealing the election from Hillary?