MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. Moscow will provide assistance to any foreigners who want to escape the neoliberal ideals being put forward in their countries and move to Russia, where traditional values reign supreme, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.
Under the document, such foreign nationals will have the right to apply for temporary residence in Russia “outside the quota approved by the Russian government and without providing documents confirming their knowledge of the Russian language, Russian history and basic laws.”
Applications may be based on the rejection of their countries’ policies “aimed at imposing destructive neoliberal ideals on people, which run counter to traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.” The values are listed in the foundations of Russia’s state policy in this field, while the Russian government is expected to compile a list of countries imposing unhealthy attitudes on their citizens. The Foreign Ministry has been instructed to start issuing three-month visas to such applicants as early as in September.
In February, Putin supported the idea of Italian student Irene Cecchini that Russia should ease entry rules for those who share traditional cultural and family values. The head of state agreed that each case requires an individual approach.
https://tass.com/politics/1831019
Comment: This came out as a presidential decree “to provide humanitarian support to persons who share traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.” It’s not a new idea. In May 2023, Russia announced the construction of migrant villages to invite conservative Americans to immigrate to mother Russia. One American seems giddy over the prospect of taking Putin up on his offer. Alex Jones seems to be peeing himself with excitement. Given his legal problems, it might be a good idea for him.
BREAKING: PUTIN JUST DROPPED A BOMBSHELL DECREE—INVITING PEOPLE FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE WHO ARE FED UP WITH THE GLOBALIST, NEOLIBERAL NIGHTMARE TO SEEK SANCTUARY IN TRADITIONAL RUSSIA!
This new decree blows the lid off the establishment’s agenda, letting freedom-loving folks bypass the usual bureaucratic nonsense like language tests or history exams. If you’re ready to reject the insane policies of your home countries that push these destructive, anti-human, neoliberal agendas, Russia is rolling out the red carpet!
The Russian government is about to compile a list of countries poisoning minds with these twisted ideals, and the Foreign Ministry is gearing up to issue visas to true patriots as soon as September! It’s time to stand up for spiritual and moral values!
I can think of a number of people who might find this attractive, but I won’t be encouraging them to take up residence in those new villages outside Moscow. That would just be echoing the old “America, love it or leave it” mantra of the sixties. I never liked it then and I don’t like it now. But I do have to hand it to the Kremlin for latching onto this as a solution to their growing demographic problems.
TTG
I doubt there will a mass movement and the few that do make the move will probably regret it in the middle of the first winter and the places where they come from will probably encourage them to go, for good reasons.
“Fag and Tranny haters of the world! Come to our Great Motherland!”
Why — to be killed by a US manufacturered cluster bomb?
————————–
F&L: I don’t know if I trust TTG’reporting on this conflict…
[Identity hidden]: What makes you say that?
F&L: Can’t you see? He censored the first line of President Putin’s proclamation.
[Identity hidden] (same identity as “Identity hidden” above]: You mean the one that read: “As is well known, the FSB of the RF has in it’s possession an infallible technique for determining whether or not CIA and MI6 agents are pretending to be against the Satanic LGBT agenda of the degenerate Western partners…” (?)
We should send the socialists, multigenerational low IQ criminal welfare suckers, fags and trannies to S. Africa, since the prisons won’t keep the criminals like they should and the perverts won’t go to mental health treatment facilities, where crazy degenerates belong. I don’t see why normal people should have to move anywhere, let alone Russia.
Eric Newhill,
I agree that normal or any people should have to move elsewhere and i wouldn’t recommend anybody move to Russia.
All these weirdos should seek help. Functionals, like homosexuals who are otherwise well balanced and productive members of society should keep their sexuality to themselves like the rest of us.
As soon as they become jealous and rueful of normal successful people – just like the socialists – and try to influence and wreck the rest of us, right down to the children, and that sort of thing, they become degenerate enemies of society.
The worst enemies of freedom and healthy living are the libertines who, like spoiled toddlers, think that the good life is doing whatever you want to, whenever you want to, especially of it mocks the older generations’ wisdom and the hard work that is necessary to keep everything going. That includes doing taboo things with your private parts and being a cynic and perpetual critic of all traditions. The louts call that “enlightenment”. We should not flee from them and allow them to finish transforming our society into Sodom and Ghemorrah.
TTG you wouldn’t recommend anybody moving to Russia, because you ingested Russophobia with your mother’s milk.
Lars persists in the myth that all of Russia is frozen hell in Winter, I guess he doesn’t know that palm trees grow on the Black Sea coast.
Lots of Westerners have moved to Russia in recent years despite the immense bureaucratic hurdles. This new decree merely removes the hurdle of being reasonably fluent in the language, laws and history for a Temporary Residency. At the end of the Temporary Residency (three years) they must pass those requirements to obtain Permanent Residency, or leave Russia.
Most posting here (with a few exceptions) have been so indoctrinated by Western propaganda, that they cannot see the real Russia, and what it possesses to attract immigrants.
The Russian population is fearful that this is a pathway to allow woke Westerners to come to Russia. That is so unlikely, and the few that make it won’t last long as Russian society is far from woke!
Someone remind me who the first American colonists were and why?
They weren’t invited.
I am not you mean inbound or outbound, but I would choose the three stooges. They are a silly answer to a silly question.
That country your own ancestors came from chased bunch out to begin with , a bunch morecame voluntarily. A couple centuries of intermittent warfare ensued before the folks in London got the heaven ho. Now they are doing the old world divide and conquer routine domestically. Gotta save clown world don’t you know.
Would you vote for Kamala Harris after reading these two articles?
“No.”
OK would you vote for Donald Trump after reading these two articles?
“Very funny.”
Fair enough. If for the sake of argument Joe Biden had not pulled out of the 2024 Presidential race, would you, afer reading these two articles, vote for President Joe Biden?
“Hmm..”
———————————
Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
By David Sanger
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/politics/biden-nuclear-china-russia.html
President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the United States that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal.
The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade.
The White House never announced that Mr. Biden had approved the revised strategy, called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which also newly seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed to a few national (Continues at link)
——————-
Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine
For a few weeks in October 2022, the White House was consumed in a crisis whose depths were not publicly acknowledged at the time. It was a glimpse of what seemed like a terrifying new era.
By David Sanger
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/us/politics/biden-nuclear-russia-ukraine.html
President Biden was standing in an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to come hear optimistic talk about the Biden agenda for the next few years.
It was Oct. 6, 2022, but what they heard instead that evening was a disturbing message that — though Mr. Biden didn’t say so — came straight from highly classified intercepted communications he had recently been briefed about, suggesting that President Vladimir V. Putin’s threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine might be turning into an operational plan.
For the “first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he told the group, as they gathered amid Mr. Murdoch’s art collection, “we have a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they’ve been going.” The gravity of his tone began to sink in: The president was talking about the prospect of the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.(continues at link)
—————————————————
Ok enough joking. Remember, those of you who followed my crazy deconstruction of the juxtaposition of the names Harris — Trump which started with Harry S Truman and ended up with Harri Strumpet —- remember if you can which person successded Harry S Truman as President after the 1952 election. If not Google it. Now ask yourself …
The world is at the nearest point ever in its history of Nuclear war except possibly the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In other words now — August 2024. You are in the voting booth. Your choices are:
A) Kamala Harris
B) Donald Trump
C) General Dwight David Eisenhower
… … ….
Ok. We have counted your votes. Now, a simple show of hands, please, ok?
How many of you know that choice C) above will NOT be one of your choices in November 2024?
Didn’t work out for the Donbass Cowboy, they not only tortured him and chopped his head off, they raped him also. Guess Putin’s traditional Russian spiritual and moral values has a few fags in the woodwork. Neither did it work out for the Feenstra family.
And Russia just gave a medal to pedophile Ilja Bielostocki who raped a 14-year-old boy.
But the sad thing is that the people most likely to take up the offer might be Evangelicals. When they do they’ll be proselytized to convert to Putin’s state religion. Perhaps not at first, but eventually they’ll have to convert or face continuous harassment. Patriarch Kirill has been using strongarm tactics on Russian Baptists for years as the KGB did long before him. It is worse for Ukrainian Baptists in the occupied zone – they’ve been tortured and accused of being US spies.
This man explains it in plain English.worth watching
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=1oLy1Oxo5l6rGSZc&v=3moUXO7fiqw&feature=youtu.be
mcohen,
Your video says:
“What is at stake at the moment is no less than the question if a civilized society can defend itself against barbarians.”
So basically you saying the same thing that Putin is saying, that apartheid era South Africa said. I’m pretty sure that ‘he who shall not be named’ said it.
History does not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.
James,
What was the immigration rate into South Africa under apartheid? Something around?
Fred,
There was a lot of immigration fromEurope and the old Portuguese colonies after WWII. Both before and after that, the white population was fairly steady until apartheid collapsed.
Fred,
As white South Africans will be quick to tell you there was a great deal of immigration into South Africa under apartheid.
From the German Federal Agency for Civic Education:
“Even today South Africa is one of the most important mining countries in the world. Since the mining industry is an important employer for the entire southern African region, the neighboring countries continue to be politically and economically dependent on South Africa, as well as on workers’ remittances back to their countries of origin. This dependency strengthened South Africa’s economic and political dominance in the region. Migrant labor in South African mining reached its climax in the 1970s, when approximately 30,000 of the mineworkers were foreigners – that is, more than 80 percent of all people employed in the mining industry at that time.”
Reference:
https://www.bpb.de/themen/migration-integration/regionalprofile/english-version-country-profiles/200462/history-of-migration/
The Apartheid era S. Africans – the whites – were correct. The country has gone to hell now. Like Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago…….
Call me any name you want to. I could care less what you and your moral posturing crowd of social justice dunces think.
Don’t let it get to you, Eric. It was known since the inception of the US republic that the racial divide would doom America — there’s a large correspondence trail distributed throughout several archives of our founding fathers — I’m thinking particularly of letters written by Thomas Jefferson to various notable contemporaries. And you’re familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the matter, I’d wager. It was (and is) so obvious that the experiment of Liberia was attempted.
Russia doesn’t have a state religion, proselytization is not something what Russiand did or do (others have a history of such politics), nobody in Russia usese ,,strongarm tactics” to convert others.
You were probably talking about Ukraine and their new law on banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a continuation of the battle against the Orthodox Church. The Zelensky regime are not the first ones to try, it’s an old battle.
Jovan P,
Although Russia is by law a secular state, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is the de facto state religion of Russia or, at least, the Kremlin. Patriarch Kirill is closely alined with Putin in the furtherance of Russkiy Mir. That includes the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), formerly the Ukrainian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. That’s the church now banned in Ukraine. Most Ukrainians belong to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), not connected with Patriarch Kirill. The OCU was granted autocephaly by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019. That orthodox church is thriving in Ukraine.
TTG,
Banning churches is “why we fight”. If accused, you are guilty. Or guilty by association. Lots of history of that in old Europe. Too bad we are still picking sides.
Fred,
Ukraine is not actually banning any church. She is demanding that within nine months after the bill enters force, those churches have to sever their official association with Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. A thousand churches have already done so since the invasion began.
Patriarch Kirill has declared Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a holy war and fully supports that invasion. He is part of the Kremlin crowd.
TTG,
LOL. From the Avignon Papacy to the Kiev Orthodoxy the politics never change.
Fred,
You left out the Moscow Orthodoxy. The Swiss classified Kirill as a KGB asset in the 70s. Even Pope Francis admonished Kirill not to become “Putin’s alter boy.”
TTG,
Did he have one of those ‘secret’ Swiss bank accounts? Which of the guys in Istanbul are our assets? Like the latest patriarch perhaps?
Bad analogy Fred, you have it backwards. It was the Russian Orthodox Church that cut ties with the Eastern Orthodoxy’s Ecumenical Patriarch. That makes Moscow the modern day equivalent of the Avignon Papacy. Kirill, the KGB officer like his master, and who calls the Russian invasion a Holy War has damaged all of the Orthodox Church and put a stain on himself that will last a thousand years. His remarks have prompted clergy in other Orthodox dioceses to condemn him.
The Orthodox Church in Ukraine was granted self governance by the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Did the Russian Orthodox Church force Ukrainian congressmen to sign loyalty oaths to Russia the way AIPAC forced US congressmen to sign loyalty oaths to Israel? Asking for a friend.
leith,
things that ‘last a thousand years’ generally don’t.
But 3 letter agencies, (take your pick) would never …..
https://orthodoxhistory.org/2019/12/11/ousting-the-ecumenical-patriarch/
“Everyone knows that the Moscow Patriarchate is in bed with the Kremlin. Few realize that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is deeply beholden to the United States government. ”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-cias-man-in-constantinople/
Fred –
Your first link does not in any way claim CIA interference in the vote to elevate Athenagoras to be Patriarch. It says that Maximos ousted himself because of a nervous breakdown. It does not suggest that ”foreign intelligence reporting is tantamount to CIA’s controlling the situation”. CIA reps in embassies throughout the world occasionally reported on religious affairs of Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics, Protestants, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus et al in addition to Eastern Orthodox. Here’s one example: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/hz663v/cia_declassified_map_europe_dominant_religious/#lightbox
Not surprising that Truman backed Athenogoras and sent him to Constaninople via the Presidential Airplane. Before that Athenagoros had been Patriarch of several million Orthodox of the Greek Diaspora and was loved and venerated by milions of Greek-Americans. Not just in America but also Canada and all of Latin America – so he was spiritual leader of Greeks spread over both two continents. Truman had also provided economic, political and military support to the Government of Greece in their war against a communist insurrection promoted and sustained by Stalin. Alexei, Patriarch of Moscow at the time, was said to be ”highly valued by the KGB as an agent of influence” by the British. In Alexei’s first statement after assuming control of the Church, he assured Stalin of his “profound affection and gratitude”. I thought you conservatives despised communism, what made you flip-flop on that? What’s next, donOld to endorse the CCP?
Your second link lies by omission. They neglect to tell their readers that the Axis occupiers murdered 70,000 Greeks and left a million homeless during WW2. Yes, Athenagoros agreed to help the OSS. Why wouldn’t he, he probably also helped the British SOE in Greece. Hundreds of the OSS men in Greece were Greek-American US Army soldiers who specifically volunteered for the assignment. He probably helped recruit them. Good on him I say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece#Axis_atrocities
They also neglect to say that the Orthodox clerics in Greece are quite proud of their association with America because of the massive financial support that they get from wealthy Greek-Americans.
Your second link also passes on Russian lies about what they call a ‘particularly egregious episode’. That so-called episode is straight out of the Kremlin by Kirill. Note the Russian flag on the link that they referred to. They also quote the convert who they call the “great Kallistos Ware”, AKA Timothy Richard Ware. They leave out the fact that Kallistos received his first taste of Orthodoxy in a Russian Orthodox Church, and that he preached in a Russian Orthodox Church in England. Damned biased reporting!
While Russia does not have a State religion, it does have four Traditional religions – Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism.
Leith,
Your current statements (Donbass) and older ones regarding the Kurds (Northeast Syria) are extremely curious.
It would be nice if you could provide some written or video evidence to support your claims.
In the meantime, I consider your claims to be fantasies. Besides, accusatory reversal is an age-old procedure.
All conflicts give rise to criminal actions, criminal indeed, but individual or in groups of tcharbés (sick people). It’s important to distinguish this from a systematic policy.
D74 –
The cowboy, Russell Bentley, was raped before being beheaded, probably by the sick people you mention. But male-on-male rape is not unknown within Putin’s military. Dedovschina, which has been discussed here in the past sometimes goes beyond hazing and beatings. When that happens it can include rape and even forcing weaker a conscript to be a rent-boy prostitute with an officer or NCO as the pimp. See Dedovschina in Wiki or in past posts here on Turcopolier.
The torture of Ukrainian Evangelicals by Putin’s security services is a matter of public record, testified to in the US Congress by pastors from Ukrainian Baptist, Pentecostal & Seventh-day Adventist churches. Putin’s Propaganda has of course branded them as spies. Those same three (Baptists, Pentecostals & Adventists plus Roman Catholics) were persecuted in Russia and the Soviet Union before that. As were all religions in the USSR but especially those that devolved from religions the West. Some were imprisoned in the Gulag as Solzhenitsen mentioned. Others forcibly sent to mental hospitals. Some had their children taken away. There are hundreds of cases of documentation by the United Nations, by the US Commission of International Religious Freedom, by the UK’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, et al.
But yes, not just Moscow policy, some of their churches were vandalized by your ‘tcharbés’, the Russkii version of the KKK, their crosses burned and walls adorned with swastikas or satanic symbols.
What is your beef against the Kurdish people?
leith, if you are still hiking at the age of 81, I admire you for that.
But with regard to this statement
“Didn’t work out for the Donbass Cowboy,
they not only tortured him and chopped his head off,
they raped him also.”
can you give a reference for that?
Thank you.
Keith –
I should not have used the word hike. I “walk” the beach or low hills, usually just two to four miles sometimes just one. That is not hiking. And if I get back on the PCT, it will only be for short day hikes on some easier sections.
Here is one link on Bentley below. There were others including a quote by his wife, a citizeness of Donetsk City that has now disappeared. Let’s hope they have not now kidnapped her to keep her silent.
https://x.com/dim0kq/status/1781601503566020911
leith,
I tip my hat to you – if I can maintain my fitness as well as you have I will be well pleased. I am 58 and it is something I am definitely cognizant of these days.
James –
“Use it or lose it” as someone used to say.
“Donbass Cowboy” was indeed murdered and his body desecrated, as Leith says.
It does NOT tell us who did it. I suspect a Ukrainian service, but it could just as easily be a personal matter of revenge.
I remember a Ukrainian service claiming responsibility for the assassination of 2 “Givi” and “Motorola” battalion commanders of the DNR militia and Zakarchenko, the elected leader of the DNR. And another one in Lugansk whose name I don’t remember. He was notable for helping an orphanage as well as being a remarkable warlord.
Both republics were, and probably still are, sieves for his enemies.
d74,
Here’s an account of the DPR unit that killed the “Donbass Cowboy.” ?It wasnot Ukrainian service.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1824501968821256208.html
TTG,
Sorry, I don’t believe it. It’s all about one-sided combat literature, with the standard phrases that go with it. An example: “in 2014 when Russia seized Donetsk”. The Russians didn’t take Donestk. It was the people of this Oblast who gave themselves, by majority vote, to Russia.
The photos prove nothing.
I don’t think you can die from the electric generator of a small-capacity telephone center. The voltage is 48 volts, the current low. It must be very unpleasant, and in any case it’s degrading treatment and therefore unacceptable torture. As you know, this method was used on a large scale in Algeria between 1958 and 1961. There are many testimonies. A general submitted to it before authorizing its use by his specialized troops. It’s true that people can die under such torture, especially from cardiac shock, if their health is not good.
All this sounds like a claim that the Russians are using poison gas, when in fact they are using tear gas. What’s more, the conditions of use described are such a waste of resources that the whole thing is questionable. After all, why deliver CS when an explosive would be far more effective?
So I reject this kind of literature. However, it is worth consulting it to find out what the other side of the hill thinks.
D74 –
Bentley’s wife Ludmila, a resident of Donetsk, says he was abducted and murdered by soldiers from Russia’s 5th Brigade. Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the DPR Vostok Battalion, said that the American was killed by Russian military. However, he must have been threatened, because he has now taken his message down. Alexander Kofman, in the DPR Chamber of Deputies, implied that Bentley was killed by Russians.
By the way, the field phone used for torturing Bentley generates 80V, not the 48 that you claim. And although 80V DC may not be fatal in all cases, it depends on the path through the body. And other circumstances, was he wet? In August he could have been drenched in salty sweat lowering his skin resistance. In any case Bentley was a 64-year-old fatman, so he could have died of cardiac shock. And why the beheading? Or maybe it was a cattle prod instead of a TA-57. Brit Shaun Pinner who was captured at Mariupol was tortured with a cattle prod. So was Lieutenant Serhii Strachuk another Mariupol POW and many others.
Givi commanded the notorious neo-nazi Somalia Battalion. Both he and members of his command committed war crimes. Motorola was a Russian national not Ukrainian. Amnesty International accused him of killing and torturing Ukrainian POWs. Zakharchenko was responsible for hundreds of forced disappearances of Donetsk citizens according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
As for your remarkable Luhansk warlord, he may or may not have helped orphans. But it was undoubtedly him and his cohorts that killed their parents and turned them into orphans. Did he connive with Putin to transport them off to Russia?
TTG
This is a smart move by Russia.
Some Westerners have already accepted the offer.
This Canadian farmer moved his entire, big family to Ru this year and is building a house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn_6W1G0dss
I am not moving, but living in the Peoples’ Republic of Mass. the “liberal” ideals seem somewhat totalitarian.
Bloomberg did in fact run this story. Since I haven’t.a subscription this can suffice.
Pasted from Telegram this morning. Bottom line – DIA thinks it’s a stalemate.
———————–
https://t.me/infantmilitario/134436
Pentagon believes that the war in Ukraine is heading to a stalemate, – Bloomberg
“Ukraine and Russia do not have sufficient military resources to conduct major offensive operations, and this may indicate that both sides are heading to a stalemate,” the publication writes, citing the Pentagon’s intelligence agency.
It is reported that Ukraine still does not have enough ammunition to match the Russian Armed Forces’ ability to fire about 10,000 artillery shells per day.
It is also noted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are still capable of conducting defensive operations, but will not be able to launch a large-scale counteroffensive for at least six months.
“At the same time, Russia has adopted a strategy of attrition in Ukraine and will be able to maintain a buffer zone captured by its troops, but also does not have enough forces to threaten a deeper advance into Ukrainian-controlled territory, such as the city of Kharkiv,” the article says.
F&L – Bloomberg still living in fantasy land. As are we all.
The questions now facing us are the same questions that faced us in 2022. 1. How will the Russians deal with the problem of remnant Ukraine. 2. Will the Russians impose reverse sanctions on Europe.
The second question may become superfluous. The Europeans are doing the work for the Russians and are still imposing sanctions on themselves. But they’re still partially dependent on Russia for fuel and raw materials so there’s room there for reverse sanctions should the Russians decide to impose them.
The first question is unresolved as yet. As many opinions as there are people to give them. But a recent discussion elsewhere led to a consideration of a (possibly unlikely!) solution to the problem of remnant Ukraine. It’s one that’s been hovering in the air for a couple of years now – that the Ukrainians might solve the problem themselves!
………………………….
With reference to the Putin statement – “Russia President Vladimir Putin, Address to Security Council, August 12, 2024: Now it is clear why the Kiev regime refused our proposals to return to a peaceful settlement plan, as well as proposals from interested and neutral mediators.” I believe that statement has a wider application than is immediately apparent.
The Russians are faced with a problem few on our side of the fence recognise. The problem of remnant Ukraine.
For eastern Ukraine the future is clear. The four oblasts will become Russian and as much or as little of the remaining Kharkov-Odessa arc as the Russians see fit. Maybe more. We don’t know yet. That leaves the Russians with a problem. Remnant Ukraine.
Remnant Ukraine the Russians will not wish to absorb or even to occupy. We must remember that in early 2022 the expectation in the West had been that the Russians would defeat the Ukrainians in short order but then would find themselves faced with a long and wearing guerilla war. Ukraine would then become “Russia’s Afghanistan” in the phrase that all were using at the time, and the weapons we had provided would be suitable for that as they were not suitable for the combined arms warfare the Ukrainians found themselves in the event facing. As Borrell pointed out, so too the training.
That’s because we had trained them before 2022 in urban warfare and small unit fighting. Had the Russians “taken Kiev in three days” as we expected, that would not have been the end of it. They would then have found themselves facing an insurrection. Supported by the West and with a large number of suitably armed fighters determined to keep the fight going that would have been an insurrection very difficult to cope with. That was the same problem we faced in Iraq. Defeating the Iraqis was child’s play. Occupying and pacifying them afterwards, not.
The Russians sidestepped that problem in a way we had not expected. Instead of finding themselves chasing all over the country rooting out fighters, they established themselves behind secure lines and allowed the fighters, and as much equipment with them as the West cared to supply, to come to them to be destroyed. We’re now seeing the end of that process of destruction of fighters and equipment.
That still leaves the problem of remnant Ukraine.
If left unoccupied remnant Ukraine will be, to use Sleboda’s term, a “zone of destabilisation and insecurity”. Budanov or his like will be running assassination or sabotage missions into Russia indefinitely. Missile attacks, using missiles supplied by the West but the use of which the Western powers can deny responsibility for, will remain a common occurrence. The Russians will find themselves no more secure than they were before 2022.
If occupied, remnant Ukraine would need heavy and manpower intensive policing.
It would not be the drain on Russian resources that it would have been in 2022. Most of the ultra-nationalists will have fled. Much of the equipment that would have been at their disposal has been destroyed in the killing fields of the Donbass. And the population has been sharply reduced since 2022, mostly by emigration but also by the fighting. Guesses on that – they can only be guesses – range from 17 million to 25 million. By the time the fighting has stopped, and the emigration, it’ll probably be in the lower part of that range. Nevertheless occupying and policing remnant Ukraine will be an unwelcome drain on Russian resources.
There is an additional factor that is seldom considered: the Brics countries, or the SCO countries, the developing bloc of non-Western countries. The strengthening of diplomatic and sometimes military links between these countries gathered pace during the various contacts between them at the end of the Afghan war and has continued since.
The more powerful members of this bloc are most reluctant to see alterations in existing boundaries. Setting a precedent for that in Ukraine would leave them themselves vulnerable. What of Kashmir, what of XinJian, if boundaries can be altered like that? And particularly in Africa, the sympathy for Russia in this war derives from the belief that Russia is defending itself from a predatory West. That sympathy would markedly reduce if it looked as if Russia was pursuing the war for territorial gain. From their point of view the taking of eastern Ukraine can be justified by the argument that in reality it was the only way of protecting the inhabitants of the region. The taking of western Ukraine, where the population mix is different and the majority of the inhabitants clearly do not wish to be under Russian rule, would be for many of the Brics countries not only a step too far. It would in their eyes turn the Russians from defenders against Western aggression to no more than land grabbers!
That is the Russian dilemma. Leave remnant Ukraine unoccupied and it becomes a country that will remain a running sore to them. Occupy it, and it becomes an expensive liability and one that will weaken their credibility within the new bloc they attach so much importance to. That last is important for reasons of trade too. The infrastructure required to accommodate the new patterns of trade is expensive and that demands long term commitment. Who will trust themselves to enter into such commitments, if they fear the Russians might depart from the principles of non-interference in the affairs of others on which the new bloc will be founded?
A long reply so I had better speed up. The Russians are aware, as we in the West are not, that the current government in Kiev is no normal government. It is dominated by the ultra -nationalists we put in power in 2014. Zelensky’s war policies are in direct opposition to the peace policy he was elected on by a large majority. Repression is the norm and corruption is if anything worse than it was before. It is a government only in place because it is locked in place by Western support and by the powerful internal security apparatus.
Increasingly, within the population and even within the Kiev government, the Ukrainians are aware that they are a proxy being used by the West as a means of attacking Russia, and a proxy that is being used for that purpose to its own grievous harm. Also, and this matters, a proxy aware that it was promised unlimited western support “as long as it takes” but is now finding that the West is reneging on that promise and in any case has no effective military support it can give in this theatre.
The Russians are hoping that the people will themselves be able to get clear of this government. They do not want the type of solution that failed for us in Iraq. They want the solution they looked for in Syria, where the reconciliation teams did more than the soldiers ever could to defeat the jihadis. In fact at the start they were sending analogous teams out into Ukraine in the hope of achieving the same result. Since February 2022 they have been searching for that solution from within Ukraine unceasingly. We may see the misrepresented Qatar talks as but merely one component of that search. There will be many other such components in the background.
Our response? We may see the recent Kursk offensive, and it has become clear now that that was a western inspired offensive, as a means of holding the Ukrainians to a war it is not in their interests to fight and that an increasing number of them do not wish to fight. When, therefore, we look at the future for remnant Ukraine as a bleak choice between occupation or continuing as a Western proxy we should be aware that there is a third possibility. One I believe the Russians are hoping for. That is, that the people of remnant Ukraine will free themselves from an unwanted and ineffectual government and themselves arrive at the solution to the problem of remnant Ukraine.
A remote possibility, as it seems at the moment, but a possibility that should not be ignored as we wonder how this war will end. When Putin said “Now it is clear why the Kiev regime refused our proposals to return to a peaceful settlement plan, as well as proposals from interested and neutral mediators”, he had been hoping for a resolution to the conflict coming from inside Ukraine. We’ve just blocked that possible resolution with that otherwise inexplicably foolish Kursk offensive. I hope we don’t keep on attempting to block it. Time, one might feel, for us to let the Ukrainians off the hook.
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/ukraine-rolls-the-dice-on-kursk-incursion
………………….
As said, an unlikely solution to the problem posed by remnant Ukraine. If anything, though, more likely that the somewhat unrealistic prospect Bloomberg is considering.
EO,
Your postings, although still well written, have become increasingly based in fantasy.
EO,
After a second reading, I acknowledge you raise some good discussion points especially about how other BRIC countries will view Russia’s territory grabbing behavior. But you still assume Russia has all but won the war and occupied all the territory they want and that Russia will not face a resistance in those territories. It’s in those territories that the resistance is now active.
You are also wrong about ultra-nationalists in the Kyiv government. They were gone by the 2019 elections.
Well, I still think the Russians have got a problem, TTG.
That is, how to prevent remnant Ukraine remaining a permanent base for hostile NATO activity. That’s the Russians’ key objective. They don’t want NATO “look no hands” missiles and drones coming over and they don’t want NATO founded and directed groups running assassination or terrorist attacks into Russia.
Looks weird, writing that. “Us? Helping with terrorist attacks?” But we’ve known since 2014 that’s what NATO was using Ukraine for and the recent WAPO and NYT articles have surprised us by giving us chapter and verse on NATO ‘s use of Ukraine (“Our baby”, all that,) that showed us that that NATO use of Ukraine goes a lot further than most of us had previously suspected. What was previously little more than gossip about the Fifth Directorate and the CIA bases along the border has now become established fact. That and Budanov boasting about the killings and the sabotage and we now know for certain the Russians aren’t just shooting a line.
So that’s the Russian objective. They want to stop NATO using remnant Ukraine as a handy means of getting at Russia. A logical objective, whether or not we in the West are opposed to it, and an objective they are determined to achieve come hell or high water.
But they want to prevent that while not being forced into occupation of a part of Ukraine where many will be opposed to that occupation and some fiercely opposed.
Your article on the resistance in the Baltics underlined that. The Forest Brothers. When the Russians arrived the Balts didn’t sit around saying “Oh, the Russians are here. How interesting. ” They fought, those who could, and the rest were with them as far as they dared.
They fought with no Western support and I don’t think much in the way of arms. Even so they were only crushed by a most brutal use of force.
By contrast, anyone wanting to fight in remnant Ukraine would have maximum Western support, access to Western ISR, and supplies of guns and RPG’s and explosives left over from the war that the IRA, for instance, could only dream of.
Remnant Ukraine could easily become a hornet’s nest for any occupying force. “Russia’s Afghanistan”, as we were hoping it would go in the entirety of Ukraine when the Russians first invaded.
That’s considering the problem of remnant Ukraine purely as a practical problem, as I attempted to do in that comment to the Canadian magazine. But there’s also the moral problem. Moral problems aren’t something the politicians worry about but their electorates do!
At present, for most of the world, the Russians are seen as fighting for their existence against the West. The Great Crusade. Life and death struggle. We Westerners very much as the bad guys and the Gaza/West Bank atrocities underlining that image of us as the bad guys even for people who don’t take much interest in world events.
Not how most of us in the West see it of course, and there’d be a lot of indignation in the West if that were said. You’d risk prison in Germany if you said we are the bad guys and not the Russians. In most of the West as well it’s not the done thing to say that. We need merely remember how Patrick Armstrong got into trouble and he’s not the only one.
But that’s in the West. For most of the other seven billion it’s now cut and dried. For them, the Russians are the white knights, the leading edge of the struggle against the predatory hegemony of the West.
Me, I don’t see it quite like that. I reckon we’ve just got ourselves lumbered with a bunch of psycho politicians. But that’s another subject. Fact is, right or wrong, most of the seven billion see the Russians as in the right.
Bit of a come down for the Russians, if the Grand Crusade morphed into what would inevitably be a squalid and brutal occupation of remnant Ukraine. A remnant Ukraine that would at best be forced into a sullen acquiescence and at worst could explode into a Northern Ireland plus.
So as I see it Putin is after a political solution rather than a military. And as said, the current Kiev government is not popular so he might, just, have a chance of getting it.
EO,
Like I said I have no subscription to Bloomberg so I simply passed on that DIA thinks it’s a stalemate at the moment. Bloomberg reported that DIA said that, not that they – Bloomberg – made the appraisal.
I believe that Russia will take the arc from Sumy through to Odessa, give Romania and Hungary the areas where their populations are the majority, and allow Poland the poison pill that is Galicia. The Galicians hate the Poles as much as they hate the Russians.
Peter Williams,
That’s as likely as ISIS establishing a new caliphate across the Middle East. Both ISIS and Russia have their dreams of conquest.
Fyi. Drones in Murmansk. That’s waay north. And in the Rostov oblast which is waay south, the huge fires at the Proletarsk oil projects are still burning on day 5 – drone attack. 51 firefighters injured, some very seriously.
1-
Murmansk region of Arctic Russia targeted in drone attack.
https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2024/08/21/murmansk-region-of-arctic-russia-targeted-in-drone-attack/
2-
Ukraine targets Moscow in massive drone attack, one of largest since war began.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/ukraine/2024/08/21/ukraine-moscow-drone-attack-updates/74886216007/
Russian defenses shot down dozens of armed drones, including several in the Moscow region, in one of the biggest assaults on Russian territory since the war began, Russian authorities said Wednesday.
Some of the drones were shot down over Podolsk, a city of more than 300,000 people about 20 miles south of the Kremlin, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
3-
Proletarsk oil depot in Russia burning for third straight day. 22 out of 74 tanks on fire – video:
The area of the fire at the oil depot in Rostov Oblast reached 10,000 square meters. On August 18, it was hit by Ukrainian drones.
https://news.liga.net/en/politics/news/proletarsk-oil-depot-in-russia-burning-for-third-straight-day-22-out-of-74-tanks-on-fire-video
22 out of 74 fuel tanks are already on fire at the Russian oil depot Kavkaz in Proletarsk, Rostov Oblast, which was attacked by Ukrainian drones. Russian propaganda media published a video from the spot where the fire cannot be extinguished for the third day. (More at link ..)
There is a third alternative for remnant Ukraine: a no mans land. A wasteland. How would the. Europeans like that on their doorstep?
There are also tit for tat consequences for western support of terrorism within Russia. For example, how would the DEA/ATF/ Border patrol like to encounter the drug cartels and MS13 fanboys if they possessed a few MANPADS and ATGW?
As for the Baltic the English Channnel and the Black sea, what if Russia takes the attitude that if it can’t navigate then nobody can?
As for infrastructure, isn’t the North Sea full of Western oil infrastructure?
Sure we can make trouble for Russia – but they can return the favor. Do we want that?
Walrus,
Or Russia can leave Ukrainian territory and stop bombing her cities. That would end drone and missile attacks on Russia’s airfields, rail and energy infrastructure. It will end most if not all of the sabotage attacks on Russian factories. It would soon lead to a withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Russian territory and will most certainly lead to a dropping of most if not all sanctions. And both Ukrainians and Russians will no longer be killed and maimed.
TTG, yes, but that still leaves Ukraine as a NATO thorn in their side, to be joined by other NATO thorns in Romania, Lithuania, Poland and elsewhere.
That destroys the possibility of a mutual European security treaty and crosses every red line Russia has.
The American equivalent would be Russia building bases in Cuba, Venezuela and everywhere else it can and stationing nuclear weapons therein while doing their best to stir up anti american activity elsewhere including Mexico, Panama, etc.
So apply the golden rule; “would we want that for ourselves?” Heck no! Would we react violently? Heck Yes! Why do you think Russia would behave any different?
The sane and rational way to behave is the creation of a network of buffer states – demilitarized but secured by international treaty, which is what we have had or were building right up until the U.S. establishment decided war and death had a better investment return.
“The sane and rational way to behave is the creation of a network of buffer states –
demilitarized but secured by international treaty”
You are absolutely right.
Keith Harbaugh,
Where do we create those demilitarized buffer states? Ukraine, Belarus and Estonia? Aren’t states free to associate with whoever they choose to? Or do you plan to return to the time of smaller states being either a colony or satellite of a few major states? Will Russia ever agree to a demilitarized buffer strip on Russian territory?
Buffer states tend to create instability, with a faction in every buffer state pretending to be the stalwart of power A or B. A or B then usually indulge these factions, and the buffer states are fought over at varying levels of intensity. The long history of buffer states between the Roman and Persian Empire is very well documented and led to ever escalating competition and outright wars, which in the late sixth century ruined both empires.
On the other hand, a clearly defined, highly militarised line, the “Iron Curtain” prevented escalation in the area where it was most scary. Chances of survival around Fulda Gap were zero.
Zeihan says the most significant thing about the Kursk episode is that the Nukes didn’t fly, and redlines have diminished to nearly zero. He expects that to have fateful consequences in the near future (next 2 to 3 months) — namely continued well organized attacks.
——————————-
Ukraine Pushes Into Russia — Yet Nukes Didn’t Fly | Peter Zeihan
https://youtu.be/_AVSki6dIgg
Ukraine has made a significant push into Russian territory, capturing roughly 1,000 square kilometers within the Kursk province. The Ukrainians also destroyed a handful of bridges that will hinder Russia’s logistical support for Belgorod and complicate Russian reinforcement efforts.
—————————-
The link below is automatically translated from the original Russian once the user clicks. This is the most interesting read in a longtime especially the comment section. It will give the reader a sense of how disorienting and enraging the attack has been. A whole lot of Russians really despise their leader and their leadership in general. In my opinion they badly need to get out of Dodge but they likely won’t because their advances in Donbass will present the illusion of victory and “progress.” They are also humiliated by Putin’s cringeworthy and kowtowing visits to Chechnia where he was filmed kissing the Koran. Elsewhere he inspected fruits and apples while his conscripts were being captured by the hundreds. His “Pet-goat” moment a la Dubya. But we already knew that Dubya was a complete idiot spoiled rich kid.
August 15. ‘Kursk Raid’ – NATO test attack – last call for Russia | Top-war . ru
https://tinyurl.com/ydwkjfxw
What is happening is the result of the dismantling of the USSR and its military machine, as well as the entire destructive liberal course that continues, no matter what. Neither the demographic gap nor the increase in the Central Bank rate will stop Moscow’s course. (Much more at link including especially the comments)
Another article on Massive Drone attacks on Volgograd airbase. (Article translates automatically.) In the comment sections of several of these articles (i posted another on a separate thread) there are at least two instances where the commenter has said that the claim of no casualties is a lie and that in fact there are dead. Of course I certainly don’t know but it’s more than plausible given descriptions of the explosions.
There’s also this —-
MOSCOW UNDER ATTACK! Putin wants to draft 1.2 million … (20 seconds).
https://youtube.com/shorts/codnYA7YS94
——————————-
Everything is burning, everything is exploding”: residents spoke about the first minutes after a massive UAV attack near Volgograd.
Residents of the Kalachevsky district woke up from deafening explosions at three in the morning:
https://tinyurl.com/3kamasfu
Residents of the Kalachevsky district of the Volgograd region spoke about the first minutes after the massive UAV attack. According to them, at three o’clock in the morning they woke up from deafening explosions that were heard one after another. Now there is a terrible smell of burning in the area, residents of the village of Oktyabrsky were being prepared for evacuation.
I haven’t slept since three o’clock in the morning.” It was so loud that the walls were moving in all directions. Much the same thing happened during the UAV attack on the oil depot. They buzzed, fell, exploded. The explosions came one after another. From the oil depot, it was clear how many drones were flying. But here it was impossible to figure it out. Now I can’t breathe again. There is no wind, the smell of burning is terrible. There are also military houses there. How are they doing now? – residents report.
Some residents, filming the consequences of a major fire, cannot hide their emotions from the scale of the emergency. Judging by the footage, thick black smoke spreads for several kilometers. (More at link including > 65 comments.)
TTG, let me ask you a direct question.
Suppose Mexico were to join the Collective Security Treaty Organization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization
Invite or allow Russia to place all sorts of offensive weapons on its territory, within easy striking range of critical U.S. assets.
Invite Russian advisors onto its territory to operate them, and perform other covert functions.
How would you feel about that?
Would you think that should be ignored by the USA?
Keith Harbaugh,
I suppose we’d finally close the border with Mexico, sanction the hell out of Mexico and stop most cross-border trade. Then the Russian advisors will have to deal with the migrants and cartels. Although my guess is that the Russians would try to push more migrants over the border as they try to do with Poland and Finland.
Russians would trade vodka for tequila. They’d have easy access to all kinds of drugs – & take advantage of that. Drug wars between the local narcos & the fresh (but skilled) Russian gangsters. The Mexican economy would collapse when all the free trade zone factories shut down – esp auto & electronics. Everyone would learn that Mexican & Russian cultures are not an easy mix. Lotsa Russians would refuse to return to their motherland. For the USA, establishing a functional consensus on border security & immigration policy would unit former domestic adversaries. so, all-in-all : muy bueno, comrade!
ked,
I have never met a Mexican who had anything good to say about NAFTA. Do you remember how much narco crime there was in Mexico before Mexico signed NAFTA? Approximately zero.
I don’t know if life would get better for Mexicans if Mexico left the US sphere of influence and moved into the Russian sphere of influence … but it doesn’t really matter because there is no way the US would stand for it.
Before the Arab Spring Damascus was ‘safe as houses’. It was definitely a dictatorship, but there was zero crime. Damascus felt safer than Toronto.
there’s been drug smuggling through Mexico forever. does narco crime have a specific / unique definition? NAFTA & narco… causation or correlation? maybe F&L can weigh-in to clarify.
yes, dictatorships can be safer in some ways, sometimes in some places. & deadly in others. does one wish for a style of government intended to protect via state power, or compel?
Article autotranslates. News from Proletarsk in southern Rostov Oblast. Notice discrepancies throughout between eyewitnesses and government officials. Now do this — imagine stories like this continue day after day for 6 months. From all over Russia. So far in one or two days there are attacks in Murmansk, Moscow, Kursk, Belgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd and Proletarsk in Rostov. Can the Russian government continue to act as if everything is going according to plan?
——————————————–
We wear masks.
The windows and doors are all closed”:
residents of Proletarsk – about how the city has been living for four days next to a burning oil depot. (20
Comments)
https://tinyurl.com/p4jcar5j
all this discussion & no mention of making a place for Donald?! he refuses to move into Idi Amin’s retirement quarters in Saudi Arabia – can’t imagine why. ‘course close friend Kim would be thrilled to have him around as playmate. maybe he & Vlad can share.
TTG, with respect, you should remember the difference between public sentiment and public opinion. Public opinion is the general consensus among the public about an issue. It can be modified by propaganda.
Public sentiment OTH is what people as a group feel about an issue.
In the context of the ukrainian incursion, public opinion is rational and classifies this event as perhaps nothing more than a nuisance – to be handled by the authorities.
HOWEVER, if the Russian people decide that this incursion is emotioonally offensive and represents a personal threat, then public sentiment may be that they will not rest while one stone remains on top of another in Europe as a whole in which case Putin will be swept away as too soft and the people, in their rage, decide they are going all the way to the channel. In which case nuclear war is guaranteed. THIS IS THE SITUATION PAT LANG WARNED ABOUT AND WHY HE STIPULATED THAT RUSSIANS AND AMERICANS MUST NEVER FIGHT EACH OTHER. EACH SUCH CONFRONTATION ENDS IN A NUCLEAR EXCHANGE .
……and that nuclear exchange will not be “Tactical”. “Measured or calibrated” or “Limited” or a ‘demonstration” despite what governments may want.Once America or Russia loses a city, public sentiment demands immediate retaliation. and that triggers a full strategic exchange – mutually assured destruction, because of the “use it or lose it” nature of nuclear war infrastructure. Anyone who thinks they are goimn to survive unscathed is dreaming. As Kruschev said: “The living will envy the dead”.
walrus,
Do you feel the same about the Ukrainians and their reaction to Russia’s invasion of their country? As you said, the Ukrainian “people decide that this incursion is emotionally offensive and represents a personal threat, then public sentiment may be that they will not rest while one stone remains on top of another” until their homeland is free of the Russian invaders.
TTG,Yes, but the Ukrainians, despite warnings and entreaties from Russia, ate Victoria Nulands offered cookies and started it in 2014.
It’s not their fault that Ukraines geographic location and world events make it a natural buffer state for the foreseeable future, but that was the logical fate.
Ukraine could have signed treaties with Russia, driven their defense budget to zero and concentrated on building great aircraft, stealing Porsches and skimming credit cards throughout Europe and everyone would have been happy. Look at the mess now.
Who benefits? We do and all those bureaucrats in brussels;s get to keep their jobs.
walrus,
Ukraine could have signed treaties with Russia. Belarus did. But both the Verkhovna Rada and the majority of Ukrainians wanted closer association with Europe and the West. They did not want to go the way of Belarus.
TTG,
The national endowment for democracy spent how much over how many years putting the politicians into parliament that voted that way?
Hopefully the Russians know that launching any kind of nuclear device will result in suicide. I still consider any threat to use nuclear weapons to be rather speculative and overblown, regardless of what those ingesting Russian propaganda believes. What is happening is that the cost to Russia keeps increasing and at some point it will cause a reaction. What that reaction will be is unknown, but it is unlikely to turn nuclear. The cost of that is terminal.
Lars:”Hopefully the Russians know that launching any kind of nuclear device will result in suicide.”
Hopefully America, Britain, France and Israel know likewise.
I am reasonably sure none of them will launch a first strike.
Lars- the Russians threatening nuclear is a Washington meme I’ve seen picked up ad nauseam by the UK press. The Russians have no need to use nuclear. They can handle the war without much trouble using conventional.
What kicked off the nuclear meme was some off the record discussions Washington had with the Russians some time ago. We’ve only got the Washington side of it but Washington leaked those discussions later. Made it appear that the Russians had threatened nuclear and had been warned off.
The Russians were irritated on two counts.
They found it improper for off the record discussions to be leaked in the first place. They were particularly irritated by the fact that the content of those off the record discussions had been misrepresented. They had not threatened to use nuclear in those discussions.
What they did do at the very start was reaffirm their nuclear doctrine from way back. That the Russians would not use nuclear unless their existence was threatened.
Since their existence is not threatened I, like you, was “reasonably sure none of them will launch a first strike.” I don’t think Washington will launch. At least I hope not.
Though from what’s coming out of Washington that I happen to see they’re in a flat spin as never before. The Democrat administration in Washington is having to get to grips with the loss of the Ukrainian war and they’re not finding it easy.
So I too dismissed the talk of nuclear – until I listened to the interview with Colonel Trukhan. He was talking about the attempt to breach the “Surovikin line”. He detailed the forces NATO would have needed to do that – air and armour etc. But then remarked that had NATO assembled such a force, and had that force looked like being successful, Russian doctrine would have dictated using tactical nuclear to defeat the threat.
Illustrates why this war is unwinnable, that. The Ukrainians themselves have nothing like the force to defeat Russia. All accept that. So what then? We have to back up our proxy. There’s the problem.
If NATO doesn’t back up its proxy with sufficient NATO manpower and equipment, we lose. If NATO were to put in sufficient manpower and equipment, it goes tactical nuclear. We still lose.
The whole discussion rendered entirely academic, of course, because NATO doesn’t have the manpower or equipment to put in anyway. It’s all talk!
The Americans are the only NATO component that has serious military power that can be deployed in this theatre – and it’s not serious enough. Their armaments are technologically inferior to Russian armaments in many important respects: they have nothing like enough of it: they don’t have the industrial base to turn out more in a hurry: and they are woefully short of usable manpower.
And if by some colossal effort they managed to remedy those shortcomings it’d still not work. It couldn’t be done in time: the American electorate would not back Washington entering into a major war in Europe: and if all those hurdles were surmounted and the Russians looked like being defeated – it’d go tactical nuclear. There is no route through to victory for us.
We knew before this war kicked of that the European armies were all hat and no cattle. When it comes to doing anything useful in a land war in this theatre the Americans are in exactly similar case.
That’s why I have asserted from the start that the only chance the West had of winning this war lay in the sanctions war. That failing, as it has done, there was never any point continuing to feed our proxies into the killing fields.
…………………….
D’you think Blinken and Sullivan and the rest of them don’t know all this? Of course they do. Their aim now is simply to keep this war going until after the next American election
With Trump breathing down their necks the Democrats cannot afford to suffer what the electorate will see as the second military defeat of the Democrat administration.
As some American politician said recently, the Democrat administration is obsessed with this Ukrainian war to the exclusion of other issues they’d have done better concerning themselves with. The Democrats do not wish to go into the elections having to confess that the vast expenditure of money and effort and prestige they have put into the Ukrainian war was all money and effort and prestige thrown away for nothing.
EO,
The threat of nuclear war and various redlines are memes kept alive by the Kremlin and their talking heads. Do they truly believe it or are they just rhetorical flourishes? I don’t know. The US administration has been reticent in providing military aid to Ukraine because they want to eventually reset relations with Moscow… again. They definitely don’t want Russia driven to collapse and don’t want to test those nuclear war memes.
“The US administration has been reticent in providing military aid to Ukraine”
This sounds like an absurd falsehood.
I am constantly reading about HIMARS and ATACMS landing strikes in Russia that are causing most serious damage to Russian forces and infrastructure.
E.g., way back in April
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-uses-long-range-atacms-russia-first-time-rcna148309
Giving Ukraine HIMARS and ATACMS doesn’t sound like reticence to me.
Let us recall that at the beginning of Russia’s attack, back in February 2022,
the U.S. said it was just going to be providing defensive weapons, such as anti tank and air defense missiles to Ukraine.
How much the U.S. has escalated!
Keith Harbaugh,
The US didn’t provide any HIMARS until July 2022 and then it was only eight. ATACMS missiles were much later. And we still limit what the Ukrainians can target. We sent 31 Abrams, around 250 Bradleys and a similar number of Strykers beginning in 2023. We have hundreds more in storage in Europe. We slow rolled the F-16s as long as we could and tried to stop Poland from sending their MiGs.
All the while the Russians were using everything in their arsenal short of nuclear weapons across all of Ukraine.
TTG,
Ha ha. You need to make up your mind, are the HIMARS, 777s, etc game changers – like they were said to be when introduced in theater – or too little to make a real difference, as you say now.
Eric Newhill,
None of those weapons were game changers, although the 777s, Caesars and other SPGs in 155 caliber kept them in the game. The HIMARS didn’t change the game, but it did force the Russians to modify their logistics practices.
It was cut and dried
Hung on a hook
Definitely not fried
Done by the book
Sun tzu-The art of waffle
mcohen –
I liked that one very much.
Here’s another first – Iranian propaganda reported in Russian and translated in English. What I’m wondering is if this isn’t the intended outcome of the so-called ceasefire negotiations between the various powers? Namely a negotiated and partially staged “victorious” Hezbollah strike in long-awaited revenge for their assassinated military leader in Southern Beirut. Thinking being that ok, now Hezbollah is placated it can go away — it’s honor has been visibly upheld. Purely speculation on my part. But Israeli discontent with Netanloonybird is impossible to miss (Lapid, for one).
——————————–
Netanyahu’s regime ‘lost the north’
https://tinyurl.com/47crnfwv
TEHRAN – After Lebanon’s Hezbollah struck the Israeli settlement of Katzrin in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, former Prime Minister and opposition leader Yair Lapid sharply condemned the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lapid posted a map on social media showing the areas where the sirens sounded and wrote: “Day in the north of the country, and now a direct hit in the city of Katzrin. The government has lost the north.” Likewise, Golan Regional Council head Uri Kalner posted a video of himself standing next to a fire caused by Hezbollah strikes and declared it a new reality, calling on the Isra government to nut an end to it. citing ongoing (More at link)
I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms.
Leander,
I’m in shock — it actually IS IDIOCRACY! Those who saw the film will understand.
See two brief videos at link.
https://x.com/partisangirl/status/1826821829962485838
DNC convention vs the film idiocracy.
Now we know Idiocracy was a documentary.
There will be twerking at the White House.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpxJE026eU8
Leander,
I’m in shock — it actually IS IDIOCRACY!
First, I felt mcohen’s latest artistic pearl quite good, too. But now I forget the aka you & cohen decided how we could call our resident poet from now on. Sorry, aging brain cells.
Second, don’t get me started on my furrreign bewilderment about the US of A’s ability to turn close to everything into entertainment, even news. That’s how it felt way back then, post 2001.
BUT: Trump & Kennedy. Quite a coup. What Ya Think? Seems the meme has been used on the Golden One too earlier.
Leander,
1-The clip on the left in my IDIOCRACY post demonstrates perfectly Kamala Harris’s estimation of American blacks. To wit — lower than low.
2- Re: Trump — Kennedy.
Bobby Kennedy Jr is crackpot fool. Always has been. It’s a match made in perdition.
Leander if you can access this you will enjoy it. According to this writer who knew RFK Jr as an undergrad at Harvard he was a heroin addict for much of his adolescence and early adulthood. And dealt cocaine in college. He’s.described as a petulant, entitled and entirely spoiled rich kid.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/rfk-jr-endorse-trump-execute-drug-dealers/679597/
If you’ve no Atlantic subscription (I despise the pubiction because it’s Zionist to the core) maybe you can access is thru apple news (as I did)
https://apple.news/AQ7VqFMwMQVWabQpPdSKMCg
They are both fairly wicked and stupid men but that Kennedy does this is appalling given his origins — but read “The Dark Side of Camelot” by Seymour Hersh or some of Gore Vidal’s writings on the Kennedys who he knew well. He said that the country was thoroughly bamboozled by JFK and that he was 180 degrees opposite his liberal image and in fact extremely right-wing. Son of a gangster. People fell in love with his good looks and charm. His brother Bobby worked with Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn persecuting commies — it’s difficult to go any lower than that though Trump manages effortlessly.
Things to keep in mind — the Atlantic piece may be partly bogus — there is a considerable core of Jewish sentiment that absolutely despises the Kennedys due to father Joe’s notorious dalliance with the Nazis — and the Atlantic is a wholly owned subsidiary of you know who.
————–
An excerpt:
But Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I’ve referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since we met freshman year at Harvard—have always had many features in common as well. Both are entitled playboy sons of northeastern wealth; both (in Michelle Obama’s words) were “afforded the grace of failing forward” as misbehaving, underachieving adolescents admitted to Ivy League colleges thanks to “the affirmative action of generational wealth”; both were reckless lifelong adolescents, both attention-craving philanderers and liars, both jerks. And Kennedy’s hour-long speech today was nearly as meandering and filled with lies as any average hour of Trump.
On the subject of reckless-adolescent entitlement, I’ve got one Bobby Kennedy anecdote to tell. But it’s actually relevant to his endorsement of Donald Trump for president and his apparent expectation of joining a second Trump administration.
In Kennedy’s speech today, he spoke at length about federal pharmaceutical regulation and programs addressing chronic disease. “I’m going to change that,” he said, promising to “staff” the health agencies very differently. “Within four years, America will be a healthy country … if President Trump is elected and honors his word.” Trump, he added, “has told me that he wants this to be his legacy.”
My Bobby Kennedy story involves pharmaceuticals—not the legal, lifesaving kind, such as the vaccines he’s made a career of lying about, but the recreational kind.
As a candidate, Kennedy got a very sympathetic pass on his years of drug use because he’s an addict, having used heroin from ages 15 to 29. He quit when he was arrested after overdosing on a flight from Minneapolis to the Black Hills and found by police in South Dakota to be carrying heroin; he pleaded guilty and received only probation. Kennedy, as Joe Hagan wrote in a recent Vanity Fair profile, “has made his history of addiction part of his campaign narrative.” As a teenager in Nebraska, I’d smoked cannabis and dropped acid before I got to Harvard in 1972. Sometime during my freshman year, I tried cocaine, enjoyed it, and later decided to procure a gram for myself. A friend told me about a kid in our class who was selling coke. (More at link)
Looks like some sort of cult, F&L, not serious politics. Down-market showbiz. Or more accurately, the sort of hype and razzmatazz the organisers of pyramid schemes put on to get the mugs in the right frame of mind. Presumably it’s effective.
Our politicians mimic it but not very successfully. There was one appalling occasion when Prime Minister May came on stage as the Dancing Queen with music in the background. I was in Germany not long after that and got ribbed mercilessly. Most embarrassing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbCDFNRA-Wo
Then there was the time the MP’s suddenly burst into song in the House of Commons. I got ribbed about that in Germany too. All I could say was “Well, you’ve got to admit the Welsh MP’s had some very fine tenors in their ranks” but that was a poor defence. At least that costive automaton Starmer is unlikely to let us down like that, ultra-neocon bastard though he is.
Getting more serious – and how! – I saw this just now and not for the first time was consumed with envy as I looked across the Atlantic. We produce nothing of this quality.
https://youtu.be/y8jRnvK5W4M?t=4689
The video doesn’t start properly for about an hour. Set to 1.18, if it works, where he moves to talking about Ukraine.
Doesn’t mince his words. “This is a first class calamity for our country”. “Ukraine is a victim of this war and it’s the victim of the West.” Unusually, he goes into the chances for peace we threw away – Minsk, Istanbul – but I doubt many Americans know about that so it’ll get little purchase.
Then the Intelligence Agencies – “Getting the US Intelligence Agencies out of the business of propagandising, surveilling and censoring Americans.” I hear nothing like that from any European politicians. Too busy doing it themselves. To us.
Then environmental. Health. Childhood diseases. That, for me, was the central part of the speech. Yes, I am envious. I wish we could rustle up politicians as sincere and able as that. Or just one would do.
EO,
It’s a great pity that RFK Jr says several things I agree with and proposes things that badly need doing (doing long long ago) , but he’s a crank pure and simple. I wish it weren’t so. I agree that Ukraine is a disaster caused by the US and UK — there’s this for example:
———————————–
https://t.me/logikamarkova/13655?comment=4300061
There are 17 million Ukrainians left in the country, – former Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov in an interview with Belta.
The politician is sure that after the coup d’etat in 2014, Ukraine is a dying country. The country will not survive if the war continues
—————————–
Maybe that’s exaggerated but not by too much.
Ukraine is already virtually owned by the huge agro empires managed by the degenerate plutocrats at Blackrock — I’d nominate Larry Fink himself for Crown Prince of Hell. They have no use whatsoever for the Ukrainians for whom they have a deep-seated genetic hatred. Have you read perchance what the former mayor of NY City thinks of “farmers?” It’s sickening, especially that it’s said so openly.
I badly wish I could agree with you about RFK Jr, I really do, but he’s a pathetic jackass in my opinion.
To top it off — look at his stance on Gaza, it’s as horrible as Netanyahu’s, Trump’s or Biden’s. And in an era of world conflict and mass migrations he wants to do away with childhood vaccines? Deep deep thinker. Vote for the tooth fairy EO. She promises to fix everything. Just like RFK Jr.
F&L –
Azarov is Russian. Moved to Donetsk in Ukraine in his forties, and became an ally of Yanukovich. He’s hiding now near Moscow where he runs a puppet Ukrainian government-in-exile for Putin. He is on an international most-wanted list for his role ten years ago in 4 deaths, 21 missing, over 1000 injured including 40 journalists.
You need to vet your sources.
Leith –
Right, I should have checked.
And on the day immediately after the Great Emperor Vladimir Vladimirovich kissed the Koran in Chechnya, voila ..
It is written (elsewhere) that the rebels here purchased the tools with which they accomplished this break from the same guards here who they killed and grievously injured. This is the lead story at V1 dot ru, the Volgograd outlet that covered the “Massive Drone Strike” which hit a military airfield yesterday. Don’t forget Crocus City Hall as long as we’re on the topic of Islamic terror in the RF.
————————
https://t.me/logikamarkova/13634
Another Islamist rebellion in a penal colony. In the Volgograd region, several people killed two guards. And seized the penal colony. Recently, there was a similar Islamist rebellion in a penal colony in Rostov-on-Don.
This shows that radical Islamists and terrorists are actively forming organizational structures in places of detention. And the leadership of the special services has little control over the situation there.
Traditionally, zones in Russia were divided into Red and Blue. Red – there all the power is in the hands of the administration. Blue – there was informal power between the administration and criminal authorities.
Now Green zones have appeared: there the administration is forced to share power with the leaders of radical Islamists.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) once said, “It is possible that your soul may dislike something that God has ordained for your own good.”
Ibn Zafar Al-Siqilli
Solwan or Waters of Comfort
Consolation For The Ruler During The Hostility of His Subjects
Fred-
When did you convert? Just kidding.
Confucius say… Man who walk in front of car gets tired, man who walk behind car get exhausted.
F&L,
Confucius say – Ah, you have troubled soul
Lot of discussion about all this on “b’s” site. Don’t think it changes my view, or the discussion here. “Walrus” gave us the bottom line and that about wraps it up. So pitched in this comment, which I also submit here:-
… I see no reason to change the conclusion I arrived at in early 2022. This thing goes nuclear or Ukraine gets demilitarised and denazified. If this lot doesn’t come down fairly soon I shall be most surprised. Or fried.
https://forward.com/news/462916/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-ukraine/
I’m puzzled by the talk of NATO coming in in strength. One can only ask, with what? The US doesn’t have sufficient manpower over here in Europe and the Europeans don’t have much usable at all. Certainly the US could deploy its formidable air force but 1, the losses would be exceptionally heavy given Russian AD and 2, that air force would need to be based in Europe, surely?
My impression is that we Europeans, in the main, see this conflict as a sort of video game being played out “over there”. We cheer for “our side” much as there’s always big talk about football matches or the like. It’s not real for us.
It’d become very real if bases or logistics in Europe started getting bombed. And that’s what would happen if NATO tried direct conflict. Let alone the probability of it going nuclear.
A contributor on Colonel Lang’s old site sets out the reality there. In capitals because it deserves capitals:-
THIS IS THE SITUATION PAT LANG WARNED ABOUT AND WHY HE STIPULATED THAT RUSSIANS AND AMERICANS MUST NEVER FIGHT EACH OTHER. EACH SUCH CONFRONTATION ENDS IN A NUCLEAR EXCHANGE.
https://turcopolier.com/russia-offers-safe-haven-for-people-trying-to-escape-western-liberal-ideals/#comment-242009
No more to be said. Except, maybe, that this casual and disregarded sacrifice of so many unfortunate Ukrainians will, I think, be a black mark for the West for ever.
Not sure what you mean by nato coming in in stength.although it could well be possible that they have come already.in strength….
Suddeny out of the blue you wake up one day and rostov in the don has been overrun by “Ukrainians”.Magic happens but there are other names for it including the famous blitzkrieg.
Russia cannot cope with Kursk.
https://youtu.be/IvA8cxxtcLc
Chuck Pfarrer, one of America’s most renowned and respected military authors and analysts, discusses with Kyiv Post’s Jason Jay Smart why Russia is showing all of the signs of having fallen into a quagmire with no strategy or hope of being able to get out.
Pfarrer, having been a former Squadron Leader of SEAL Team 6, explains why the failure of Russia’s attempted attack is indicative of larger, systematic problems within the Russian military.
Russia, time and again, fails to make significant headway in Ukraine as it tries to face down not only Ukrainian soldiers, but its own Russian troops who are becoming increasingly unwilling to become cannon fodder. As the war progresses, Russian morale will only further fall, leading to larger organizational problems within their faltering military.
Before you know it, they will have all the colors of the rainbow, which would be rather interesting.
Gruesome footage of the Volgograd jailbreak. It’s been quashed (essentially by killing everyone including hostages) but that was after the events filmed here. I’ve posted this translated text below which is laced with sarcasm and warnings of worse to come. I should add that my own previous and sarcastic remarks about Putin kissing the Koran may have been inordinate piling-on because representing these 4 jailbreakers as “Islamic terrorists” was uncalled for — their crime records have been published and they are basically incorrigible outlaws of the lowest sort. (7 brief videos at link).
————————-
https://t.me/voprosvlasti/470
Today, four of our hard-working compatriots demonstrated what they are capable of, being inside a restricted facility, against armed FSIN officers and having only knives in their hands. Imagine what millions of hard-working compatriots are capable of, being at large and, most likely, with weapons in their hands.
What conclusions will the country’s authorities draw from what happened? Correct ones. The following will be done:
Firstly, even more hard-working compatriots will be brought in, sharing traditional values without knowing the Russian language.
Secondly, all who will oppose this incitement of interethnic discord will be held accountable. Whoever does not like it is an enemy.
Thirdly, Bastrykin will record another video. Everyone will be happy and say: “Well, finally, the government sees the problem and has started to solve it.”
In principle, this is enough.
Fred –
I’ve no idea of the truth of this writer’s.assertions but it seems like your meat n potatoes. Corruption and high finance. Maybe you’ll get a laugh. Translated from Ru.
———————————————-
Natural cannibalism began in world finance.
Quite by chance, within two days, all the triumphants of the Hulett-Packard court were dead against the management of Autonomy. And also the head of the second largest transnational financial company in the United States, Morgan Stanley, directly related to the mentioned triumphants.
https://tinyurl.com/4pzhnedz
Fred –
Non-sarcastic thought of the day: Putin arranged for the Kursk invasion because he wants (/needs -(?)-) to negotiate.
Whether it was copied from Joe Biden’s notepad or Kamala Harris’s Apple Notes we aren’t able to say.
Well there you have it. Russia needs to get out of Dodger Stadium. Them Yurpeens is gonna invest Western Urkaine and find themseffs trainin’ in Kursk soon as y’knows. This is from Ru ruling establishment analyst and commenter Elena Panina
—————————-
https://t.me/EvPanina/14739
EU prepares decision on sending troops to Ukraine
France is the first to advocate sending military instructors to Ukraine, with support from the Baltics, Denmark and Sweden, writes Welt am Sonntag. At the same time, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Malta and Slovenia “fear further escalation and unpredictable risks.”
Formal preparations for this issue began with a letter from Kyiv on May 31 addressed to the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell.
▪️ EU foreign and defence ministers will discuss the issue for the first time in the middle of next week. They will meet informally on 29-30.
Technically, the introduction of EU instructors to Ukraine can be carried out by expanding the mandate of the EU Military Assistance Mission to Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine), which ends in mid-November. It should be extended for two years. The mandate can be expanded so that in the future, training of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will also be conducted on Ukrainian territory.
The publication notes: “In this case, the EU military will officially take part in a war on Ukrainian soil for the first time.”
A report from the European External Action Service has been presented to decision-makers, outlining the positives and negatives of the deployment of EU instructors to Ukraine. The document notes that Kiev “expects up to 150,000 new conscripts as a result of the May mobilization, as well as ten new infantry brigades.”
▪️ Most likely, the EU will decide to send instructors to Ukraine, albeit not the first time. The European bureaucracy is in favor. It remains to persuade some skeptics. The US will do some of the work, and the European bureaucrats themselves will do some. In the worst case, the decision will involve voluntary sending of instructors to Ukraine by member countries, not mandatory.
For Washington, yet another convenient situation is being created in which the risks of a direct military clash with Russia will be further shifted to the European Union, while it will supposedly stand aside.
And we should understand that a foreign military instructor can be at the training ground, and can be in the headquarters and in combat formations. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are currently suffering greatly from a shortage of officers, primarily junior ones. European military personnel can reduce the severity of this problem by forming the skeleton of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
▪️ In fact, the introduction of EU military instructors into Ukraine is the introduction of EU troops and official participation in the war with Russia.
The main question is how will Moscow react to this? If in the usual manner, then later full-fledged NATO personnel units will enter with their equipment.
F&L,
who, pray tell, are “Yurpeens”?
Thank you.
Keith Harbaugh -“Yurpeens?” That’s my lot. The Europoodles. Soon to be known as the Eurolemmings.
Am researching Montana. Seems to be becoming quite fashionable as a bolt-hole. Is one allowed to get there by plane still or does one have to walk up from the Mexican border?
EO,
This video is just what you are interested in. Meaning postwar Ukraine. Unusual style but it’s quite good.
How Ukraine Solved a US Electoral Conundrum with Kursk Raid. | William Spaniel
https://youtu.be/qDA2337lsJg
The offensive on the Kursk Bulge began in August, but its origins date back to two months earlier. This video talks about Ukraine’s concern about U.S. policy that began in June and how they forced Ukraine to take risks with Russia. Then we’ll look at the details of Trump’s potential peace plan and how the Kursk Bulge offensive could change its feasibility. 0:00 Origins of the Kursk Bulge offensive 1:01 Washington NATO Summit 4:55 The mystery of the Ukrainian elections 6:23 Formulation of Ukraine’s strategy 10:11 What would Trump’s Peace Plan look like?
F&L – thanks for the link. Instructive. But as you will know better than I, William Spaniel is discussing possible resolutions of the Ukrainian conflict without, it seems, having the least idea of what is actually going on over there!
Spaniel is working from the assumption that the Russians are conducting the war for the purpose of taking territory. Why else does he dodge all those lines around on his map? He does not understand that the Russian aims were not territorial. Their aims were to prevent the Kiev forces getting into the Donbass and to prevent Ukraine being used by us for hostile purposes. Or if he does understand that he’s keeping very quiet about it.
Certainly pursing their aims – protecting the Donbass and putting a stopper to our use of Ukraine – has now resulted in the Russians taking territory and will lead to their taking more; but the lines on his diagram showing territory lost or taken under various scenarios demonstrate that Spaniel fails to understand why the war is being fought in the first place.
Spaniel’s discussion on the Trump peace plan is similarly defective. Spaniel seems to believe that American wishes or actions will have a significant influence on the final settlement in Ukraine.
Again, he fails to understand that the US is now out of the game as far as any settlement in Ukraine is concerned. All the endless Western talk of peace plans or DMZ’s or ceasefires, or two Germany or Korean solutions, is merely the West talking to itself. The Russians have dismissed the entirety of the West as “not agreement capable” and do not therefore see much point in coming to any agreement with us. Waste of time because we’d break it.
This was clear after Istanbul at the latest. It was then apparent that the only negotiations between Ukraine and Russia would be discussions on the terms of Ukrainian surrender. I always used to put in a proviso on that, to the effect that if Putin could he’d look for a way to enable Washington to save face. Putin’s always very keen not to push things to extremes and I’m sure he would have been looking for some way of letting the Americans off the hook.
I don’t think this proviso can apply any more. The Kursk incursion has seen to that. That was a Western planned incursion using Western weapons and, it seems, even Western personnel.
Worse than that. It appears that some of the weapons used cannot be used without NATO targeting packages. If that’s so then we have just seen the Americans themselves directly firing on a Russian convoy within Russia and killing large numbers of soldiers in that convoy. We’ll have to wait for confirmation of that but in any case we are now seeing American forces directly attacking Russian soldiers and civilians inside Russia.
This is for the Russians as much an act of war as if the Russians were firing weapons into American territory from Mexico using Mexicans only to pull the trigger. All the rest – provision of weapons and ammunition, providing the targeting packages, using Russian ISR to identify the targets – being done by the Russians. That’s what the Americans are doing the other way.
It’s very difficult to get this point across to Americans. Not helped by the Washington pretence that they haven’t been doing it for a long time now. So I doubt one in ten thousand Americans understand any of this. Spaniel doesn’t. Certainly very few in England understand what we’ve been doing in the Black Sea out of Odessa, or what we’ve been doing with Storm Shadow, which is roughly equivalent to what the Americans have been doing.
The Russians do of course understand it. It’s their people getting killed as a direct result of our attacking them. They’re not fooled by the pretence that it’s the Ukrainians pulling the trigger. If there were any Russians around who didn’t understand it, the Kursk offensive has now underlined it even for the dumbest of them. After that, I don’t think the Russians are interested in helping the Americans save face – if Putin still wanted to I doubt very much the Russian people would let him.
Spaniel also fails to grasp the military reality on the ground. But that goes without saying. Few Western academics do and only a handful of Western politicians.
Not a waste of time, the video, though. It demonstrates how very far from reality most of us in the West are when considering this war. We talk of our military strength as if we were all still living in the ’90’s. We still believe we have preponderant economic clout. We still assume we have the diplomatic prestige and credibility we used to have. How we can assume that even after Gaza I don’t know, but we obviously do.
But those days are gone. We’re not entirely down and out, obviously. At least you Americans certainly aren’t – not so sure about Europe. But the West is not the only show in town any more and for us to think we can dictate how Russia sorts out the problem we’ve set them in their near abroad – well, that thinking’s so out of date it hurts.
Unless the psychos in the Democratic administration resort to nuclear, and I think it most unlikely they will go as far as that. Sneak attacks on nuclear power plants or staging atrocity theatre is more their line. Those psychos are information warriors, not warriors. It’s all they understand. So mushroom clouds? Probably not.
Spaniel’s video is certainly instructive therefore. It demonstrates clearly how far out of touch most in the West are with what their politicians and militaries are doing. It demonstrates a lack of understanding on how the Russians intend to cope with what our politicians are doing. It shows, yet again, our think tankers and academics and analysts living in a bubble that is dangerously divorced from reality.
“Pursing?” Should have typed “pursuing”. Apologies.
EO,
Yes Mr Spaniel’s wavy lines on maps are not my cup.of tea either.
It’s these events. — like the one reported here below by Nesmiyan just now that are going to spell doom for the RF unless something turns around sooner rather than later. I assume you know there have been many of these especially lately. The oil ferry at Kerch strait par example. That hit is almost like losing the bridge. The US / UK also just installed a huge new radar in Romani which looks out over the Black sea. And for all we know the number of F-16s is nearly unlimited – anytime they decide to make it so. It’s crazy I know but crazy is what my country America is these last few years if you haven’t noticed. I appreciate your input.
——————————————–
https://t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/20230
According to Reuters, which cites a source familiar with the situation, as a result of today’s explosion and subsequent fire at the Omsk Oil Refinery, the AVT-11 primary oil refining unit, the most productive at the plant, was damaged and shut down.
In fact, half of the plant’s capacity has been disabled. The question now is how quickly the damaged production line can be restored. At the moment, two fatalities have been reported, who died in the hospital.
The Omsk refinery is one of the largest in the country. Every eighth liter of fuel in Russia was produced at this plant.
The reasons for the explosion are not mentioned, but most likely they are quite classic – a decline in technological culture and problems with “import substitution”.
P.S. Over the first five months of this year, fuel production in the country has fallen by approximately 20 percent compared to production volumes at the end of last year.
EO,
You definitely want to read this. And check out the two Mary Poppins characters who run ChatGPT!
The Frankenstein Monster and …
https://johnhelmer.net/
George W Bush (Dubya) famously called “those Europeans” .. “them Yurpeens.”
One of his folksy inventions for the “Bubba” vote. Yale man and son of old East coast money. Skull and Bones. Nice “folks.”
I see NATO, uhm the EU, ok Macron in France, has arrested the founder of Telegram for not censoring ‘wrong speach’ or some such thing. That being the guy who left Russia over censorship.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/24/world-news/telegram-founder-pavel-durov-arrested-at-paris-airport-report/
I wonder how many weeks before KKKamala has Tucker arrested? (Day one no doubt as our VP isn’t really in charge of anything) Or will that be TwoTier Kier or maybe some other defender of Freedom?
Fred –
Your so-called ‘wrong speech’ on Telegram included “serious crimes, including drug trafficking, child sexual exploitation, and fraud,…”
Let us hope that both Kamala or Trump would have done the same. Although Trump may not have due to his association with Jeffrey Epstein, his well-wishes for Ghislaine Maxwell, and his many fraudulent schemes.
Leith,
Have they arrested Zuckerberg over similar things on FB and the other social media platforms he owns? Maybe the guys who once ran Twitter?
What was Trump’s association with Epstein? Same as Hilary and her husband? Pray tell why oh why Obama did nothing, just like Joe and Kamala. She’s had 3 1/2 years, Barack 8 and Joe, good Catholic Joe from Scranton…..
No they didn’t arrest Suckerberg for kiddy porn and drug dealing. Why? (There was plenty on his platforms). He gave the FBI the keys and said “spy away! Spy away!” Durov did the opposite with the FSB. In fact he flipped them the middle finger.
Fred –
I don’t use FB and never will. Why should I contribute to Zuckerberg’s billions? I’d be happy to see Zuck locked up in the monkey house. FB at first ignored postings on hate speech, incitement of rape, violence against minorities, terrorism, fake news, murder, and other crimes & violence. But when they started losing online advertisers a decade ago they started weeding out those posts. Or trying, but my understanding is some filth still gets through. Plus there is Zuck’s own fraud on stealing the original code from his college buddies. And his censorship of content when asked to do so by India, Israel, Pakistan, Turkey, and other foreign governments.
But I’m surprised to see you preaching against FB. Moscow’s troll farms made good use of FB to help elect your boy DonOld eight years ago. Both Zuck and Trump’s VP pick, the wig & dress wearing guy from Ohio JD Prance, were both proteges of the homosexual billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel who donated millions to Trump. You should be patting Zuckerberg on the back.
Leith,
Zuckerberg the election fortifier! And bastion of integrity in business. You’re a few elections behind. Next thing you know you’ll be telling us AIPAC got rid of couple of the squad and not their own conduct and voting record.
I thought better of you Leith. Do we arrest the inventor of the machine gun whenever someone is killed with one? No. Durov didn’t sell any porn to anyone, he developed his web portals with his brother who is a mathematical genius. Our Tech oilygarchs are pigs by comparison. Musk either is full on promoting anti-Semitism or he’s working with Mossad (and the Democratic party) to put up lots of it so the users can be entrapped via their likes history. Twitter — the old Twitter — was over 50% porn but few people know it. Porn is still, or was as of 5 yrs ago the largest occupier of server space on the w w w. So let’s arrest the cloud service providers — should we start with Gates, Bezos Zuckerberg, …? Durov has told people you despise such as Putin to fuck off publicly. And here you are attacking a brave man.
For a site for former “Intelligence” analysts all I can say is thank God for these two huge oceans. You haven’t even guessed why he was arrested. It was a military move. Telegram is used by the Ru Armed forces to communicate! Yes really. So Pavel is being tortured right now either with injections, electroshock,( or other methods such as shooting his relatives in the next room and being forced to watch through a little window) till he hands over the encryption keys (like Zuckerberg did immediately).
F&L –
I believe it was the NSA, that got the keys to Facebook, not the FBI. They used the Prism and other programs to gather intelligence on terrorists and additional ‘threats’. Hopefully those threats included Putin’s troll farms that were posting hundreds of thousands of bogus messages on FB while posing as US citizens. And it wasn’t just FB for which they had the keys. It also included Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Paltalk, YouTube, AOL, Skype, Microsoft & Apple. But don’t worry, there is no low-level NSA tech out there right now chuckling to himself about your Confucius joke. Your and my and Fred’s privacy are in no danger from that. Your personal information is in much worse danger by FB itself selling your info to corporations. Or by other corporate data collectors. Or by online scamming.
Probably the NSA already has the keys to Telegram. Russia has them also. And Russia is not the only country that uses Telegram. Tens of million Ukrainians also use it and even more in India. Plus there is this from Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Reception
As I told Fred, FB at least tried (badly) to moderate their content to keep off vile and fake content. They tried with algorithms but when that did not work they used humans for moderation. That’s no excuse though. Even those humans aren’t catching everything. Did Telegram moderate their content? I don’t know, but the French Judicial Police seem to believe he did not.
Was Pavel the genius inventor of Telegram. No, it was his brother Nikolai.
Leith,
Did the FBI ever track “threats ” to our elections like the people who cooked up disinformation about “Russia Collusion”?
Fred,
Yes, they did and still do. They’ve tracked continuing Russian efforts as well as Chinese and Iranian efforts. Chia’s efforts were broader than Russia’s in the 2022 elections.
TTG,
Good thing what’s his name the Russian got arrested by – let me check – NATO ally France. I wonder when they go after Musk, not Dorsey, for what’s on the no longer controllable Twitter. But but Hilary’s Russia Collusion fraud, aided and abetted by the UK, the FBI, CIA, etc had the same affect as “Hunter’s laptop is a Russian info op”. Bots on the net though, very very influential.
Jonathan Turley, a stalwart defender of free speech, has an excellent column:
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/26/freepavel-telegram-ceo-becomes-latest-target-of-european-censors/
“for free speech advocates,
Durov’s arrest is a chilling escalation of global censors
in using European laws to control speech on the Internet.
…
reports indicate that French authorities took the action because of
his refusal to yield to their demands to censor content on his messaging app.
…
The Europeans have been threatening to hold executives liable
for how others use their sites.
Imagine if a mobster used a telephone to do business
and the FBI arrested the CEO of AT&T.”
Keith Harbaugh,
The charges against Durov are related to drug trafficking, the sale of child sexual abuse material and fraud. Efforts to stop those activities is not unreasonable and is certainly far different from “demands to censor content on his messaging app.”
Although Telegram appears to be more in line with the absolute free speech philosophy. It equates drug traffickers and child predators with other free speech advocates, a totally judgement free environment. I don’t know if Telegram makes any effort to shape access to content like Musk does on X. Those shaping algorithms are anathema to the idea of “absolute free speech.”
Can that illegal activity be throttled on Telegram, X or Facebook? Judging by past behavior on X and Facebook, it can. I bet Telegram activity can be throttled as well. Very little Telegram traffic is encrypted end to end. That’s a lot harder to do in Telegram than in signal or WhatsApp. Telegram pushes the idea of encryption among its users without actually providing a useful encryption app.
https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/
It’s strange isn’t it…. Only perverts seem to question U.S. Administrations.
Assange, Ritter, Trump and Durov; probably many others, all seem to be perverts, funny that, I guess its a character flaw.
Remember that guy who ran the world bank, or was it the IMF? Strauss Kahn? He didn’t like something we were doing and guess what? He turned out to be a pervert too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn
Walrus,
Don’t forget Sarkozy. “Nuts and sluts” entrapment the straight way.
There is something to be said about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his followers. Their steadfastness and willingness to take action. so be it
Ukraine wants to broaden the war yet farther:
“Ukraine to present Biden admin with targets it could hit in Russia, given the chance”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/26/ukraine-biden-targets-russia-restrictions-00176377
“Ukrainian officials are preparing to present a list of long-range targets in Russia to top U.S. national security officials
that they think Kyiv’s military can hit if Washington were to lift its restrictions on U.S. weapons.”
Where is this going to end?
Definitely not in a good place.
So many lives lost,
so much infrastructure destroyed.
Is resisting Russia’s totally valid security concerns worth all this?
I think that is insane.
Just tell Ukraine to make a deal with Russia.
Can’t we be friends with Russia, rather than enemies?
Keith Harbaugh,
Russia doesn’t appear to want to be friends with the US or Europe.
Keith Harbaugh – looks like no deal is there to be reached. Never was, I think, for all the talk.
The Chinese have picked up on the previous offer of Istanbul II. But that would now have to recognise that the Donbass is now Russian. And a few other bits where there’s a pro-Russian majority.
It would also involve “denazification” and the ultras can no more accept that now than in ’22. Zelensky is still insisting on full victory for Ukraine and President Biden has stated that Ukraine must win.
Something of a gap between the two sides, therefore. By insisting on Zelensky’s terms President Biden is playing into the Russians’ hands. The only hope now for Blinken and Sullivan is to keep the thing going until after the next election. To pray that Zelensky et al won’t do the Ghani thing until after November.
Could be a close run thing, judging by the way things are going at the front. Both the Ukrainians and the Euros are desperate for the US to come in in force. Neither seem able to recognise that the US has nothing of any value to come in in force with. Unless President Biden decides to threaten nuclear. But not even the Washington neocons are prepared to risk Chicago frying just to save Kiev or Berlin’s bacon.
At least I don’t think they are, but what do I know? They don’t call the neocons the Crazies for nothing. As we see from their backing straight atrocity in Gaza and the West Bank.
Oh dear. What with a senile delinquent in the White House and Russophobic nobodies cluttering up Berlin/Brussels, there have been times when things have looked brighter for the West.
Oh look at what Zuckerberg admitted to doing in 2020.
https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1828201780544504064
Fred –
And he promised no more Zuckerbucks will be going to those two non-partisan non-profits that helped cities & states ensure that residents could vote regardless of their party or preference”. 49 states – whether red, blue or purple – requested those funds.
So will you allow him to kiss the ring now? I wouldn’t. The guy is an arse-kisser. He’d do anything to save his online empire.