The Davos crowd and the Borgist post grad students running US foreign policy do not believe in history. They believe altogether in economic determinism. For them, history and culture are surface phenomena that mask the economic realities beneath. History is an amusement trotted out for the dummies on national days.
But Putin has brooded long and deeply over what he sees as injustices done to “Holy Russia.” People who are spiteful and mean spirited toward their adversaries want to say that he wants to re-create the USSR. No! He wants to re-create the Russian Empire. They have missed little details like his secret conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity while serving in KGB counterintelligence. His father was an ardent communist. Do you think the man’s son would have been welcome at home if the father had learned? Do you think Vladimir’s superiors in the KGB would have been pleased?
Putin has taken the measure of Biden, BoJo and company. He sees his chance. Will he stop for now at the line of contact? IMO that depends on whether or not the Anglo-Americans are now willing to talk seriously about Russian national security. If we are not he may well decide to advance to the limits of Russian ethnic habitation in Ukraine. pl
Thank you a very accurante reading, and almost immediately after your posting, there is a hint of what is the true measure of Bojo, Biden, Borgistas et al in Putin’s eyes:
He has recognized the two nascent republics on the borders as per their constitutions, meaning, he will eventually push to the original administrative borders of Donetsk and Luhanks:
https://www.rt.com/russia/550281-putin-donbass-recognition-borders/
Just saw this bit from a Ukrainian journalist.
“Russia recognizes sovereignty of its proxy republics in #Donbas not just within the occupied territories, but within its borders as Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, Putin said. This means Ukraine-controlled territory as well.”
This fits with the continued shelling of Ukrainian civilian and military targets along the line of contact. Earlier this morning a Ukrainian Marine on the line near Mariupol said the shelling hasn’t stopped since yesterday. The thermal power plant in Schastye is burning due to “a fierce Russian barrage.” The Duma has authorized the use of Russian military forces outside the territory of the Russia.
I wasn’t sure if Russia would go beyond the line of contact although I was sure that the republics, now that they are full of piss and vinegar, would demand just that. I thought Europe and the US would weasel word their way out of calling the move into the already occupied zones of Donetsk and Luhansk a further Russian invasion. Well, EU was first to call it an invasion and began applying sanctions including stopping Nord Stream 2. We’ll find out shortly what Biden proposes. Congress is clamoring for a massive response while the White House has been a little more calm in the last few hours.
Yes, Putin yearns for the grandeur of the former Russian empire and desires to be czar of all the Russias. Trying to impose that yearning onto others doesn’t sound much different than the Thousand Year Reich or the Islamic Caliphate. The Kenyan Ambassador to the UN gave a great speech to the UNSC addressing this concept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soNBEjzWY08
So, the crazy old man in the White House was right about Putin’s intentions to invade Ukraine. Those of us, and there were many, who believed Putin’s denials were proved naive fools in this matter.
TTG
Ah, this is aimed at me. No. No. Putin has done what I said he would do. Russia recognized the independence of these two places and now will defend them. I think it is enormously tempting for him to go to the line of the Dnieper River.
pl,
This wasn’t aimed at you, but you, me and many others here are in the blast radius. I wasn’t surprised by the recognition of the DNR and LPR. That’s not an invasion. Even reinforcing and openly recognizing Russian troop presence in the republics could be spun as no further invasion. Going beyond that, even to the Dnieper, is a full on invasion and can’t be spun any other way. That would make Putin a liar and us fools for believing him. If he stops at the line of contact and forces the DNR/LNR forces to stop shooting, we will be remain right about no invasion.
Gentlemen, you seem to forget that we (US) took Russian’s for fools and forget about our promisses in 1990’s to not to move NATO an inch from their current positions if USSR agreed to dismantle Warsaw pact and let Germany to reunite. Don’t forget the very same Germans killed close to 20 Million Russians. Then came the Maidan and the Minsk agreements. The combined West strung them (Russians) along for close to 7 years. Minsk agreements should be implemented as a Mantra all the while sanctioning Russia. So who is fooling who? Didn’t mean to be a wise guy, if I am wrong where am I wrong?
although tactically advantageous, advancing to the Dnieper would be a defendable natural feature, I’m not sure if the occupants are all so pro Russian, also the way Oblasts are laid out it would split some up,
a tidy mind would absorb Oblast by Oblast, choosing those most pro Russian, the Oblasts are self contained administrative districts and you’d not disrupt day to day life much leaving them intact,
a good objective would be to take the Oblast adjoining the landbridge to the Crimea to have better depth of defence, there’s also an argument for taking the Odessa Oblast which would link up with Moldova, the disputed yet loyal Transnitria and also offer Transnitria access to the sea, the Borg were mumbling about causing mischief in Transnitria recently so it would be an idea to secure it before, instead of try and reclaim it after,
curiously, in 2004, during the Orange revolution and the election betwixt Yanukovych and Yushchenko, a proposal for a South-East Ukrainian Autonomous Republic was floated, see wiki article;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-East_Ukrainian_Autonomous_Republic
note the voting preferences in the attached map, Oblast by Oblast,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-East_Ukrainian_Autonomous_Republic#/media/File:Ukraine_einfach_Wahlen_3WG_english.png
a Guardian article about it from that time;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/29/ukraine
for me, the path of least resistance, that would produce the most advantageous outcome, would be to try and recreate this proposed S-EUAR,
a bit like the partition of India after the British left, two Ukraines, one leaning East, the other leaning West.
Matt
That is a helpful map, thanks.
There are innumerable ways to partition Ukraine. It is notable that Putin mentioned the atrocities in Odessa again in his speech yesterday – and bringing the culprits to justice.
Kyiv is a big question. Ironically enough the State Department, demonstrating again quite exceptional levels of cultural tone deafness, highlighted the historical importance of Kyiv to Russia themselves in a tweet yesterday:
https://twitter.com/USEmbassyKyiv/status/1496115593149358081
…he said if Russia’s security concerns are not addressed diplomnatically per the December ultimatum they would resort to military/technical solutions. This is not about Ukraine per say…it is the tip of the spear. Only Gilbert Doctorow foresaw the liklihood of the present course of action. What come after this is anyone’s guess but knowing Wova it will be unexpected and catch the IC off guard yet again; “we” are still deaf or absorbed in self delusion and hubris and will need to wake up and face the music soon.
(or should i say LIC …Lack of Intelligence Community ….courtesy of Andrei Martyanov sardonic humor)
TTG,
>Yes, Putin yearns for the grandeur of the former Russian empire and desires to be czar of all the Russias. Trying to impose that yearning onto others doesn’t sound much different than the Thousand Year Reich or the Islamic Caliphate.
No. The former Russian empire was never a totalitarian dictatorship – unlike the Thousand Year Reich and the Islamic Caliphate.
rho,
The Russian empire was an absolute monarchy. The rulers ruled absolutely and by divine right. What’s the difference between that and a totalitarian dictatorship? Very little in my opinion.
TTG
The Russian Empire experienced great economic development in its last 20 years. That prosperity was experienced by the masses and made possible the revolutions against the monarchy. You greatly underestimate the amount of political development in Russia in that period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma_(Russian_Empire)
pl,
I’m familiar with the political and economic developments since the Russo-Japanese War. It was remarkable, but Nicholas II was also declared the Supreme Autocrat during that period. The Russian people also made great strides economically under communism, especially during the 50s and 60s. Both periods were forms of totalitarian dictatorships.
TTG
It seems that you did not read the linked artilce.
pl,
I read the article. That’s where I got the Supreme Autocrat thing. I didn’t know that.
TTG
It was a title, like Defender of the Faith in the UK.
TTG,
Oh, there is a huge difference! Totalitarian dictatorships have the explicit goal of obtaining full control over all aspects of society. Any opposition gets physically eradicated, all mass organizations are controlled by the regime, usually you get an extensive surveillance state and all media is regime propaganda. I can quote you some Hannah Ahrendt or Karl Popper or even Brzezinski if you want a more detailed definition.
The Russian Czars were content with being Czars, i.e. early Modern Age kings, or maybe “emperors” if you want to translate the word in that way. Their power over what happened in their country was far less than the power of Hitler or the power of any Daesh leader in the territory that they controlled at any given time.
Would you claim that absolutist France in the age of Louis XIV was a “totalitarian dictatorship”, too? If not, why not?
..or the US as of late which is run my Esecutive Orders?
If he has such power why did he have to get approval from the Duma for recognition of the twin republics and for authoriztion to use military outside Russia’s borders…just for two of the latest examples of bureaucratic controls over the presidency in the government?
More Russophobic BS. The big problem for the Russian Federation is that it DOES NOT want the huge responsibility of taking on the reconstruction of the Ukrainian economy and denazification of Ukrainian society. Let the EU and the U.S. pay th bill. As S.A. Karaganov, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, one of Russia’s premier security think tanks, has stated: “And the seizure of Ukraine, I am sure, is not included in our military plans. If only for the reason that capturing a country that is castrated economically, morally and intellectually, a country with a destroyed infrastructure and an embittered population is the worst-case scenario. The worst thing America can do for us is to give us Ukraine in the form to which they brought it.” http://karaganov.ru/publications/589 (in Russian). I’ll take this assessment over the Blinken-Nudelman scaremongering about a “Russian invasion” and a “reincarnation of the Soviet Union.”
MILLER..
Thank You For This from Your Quotes
, I found That Interesting from Karagnov…..
He has Completely Explained Russias Current
Thinking…He Sould and Does Know..Couldnt
Be more ……CLEAR…
However,,After another Re-Read Now..There Are Points I DONT Agree With,..Comments Made..
1..What Karagov Said The Russia Federations ” Big
problem” Is That it Does Not ..Want The Responsibility
For Taking On The Reconstruction of Ukrainian,,or its “Denazification..” of Ukraine Society..”
I Believe That is an Accurate and Correct Outline of The Russian Federations And Vladimir Putins Opinion Of
The Ukraine..Its Government and Its Society,,
2, I dont Like His Comment That The Worse Thing
America” can Do..Its Not America Doing Anything..
Its All Those Surround That Huddle with Joe Biden
..in His LOCKER ROOM..And Wall Street,and In
Congress.And All The Offices Up And Down And
..Around That Entire Area Of D.C.
WE The Peopl Are America..
3,.. All That Goes for The Same Crew,,in England..
4. I DO NOT Believe That V. Putin Wants To Destroy
Any Part Of Kiev..This Is All About
Putins..Historical and Personal Ties To KIEV.
..Back To Vladimir The Great,, and His Conversion
To Christianly..Which Brought The Russian
Orthodox Church To Russia..V. Putin is A
Active Member Of The Church..As Was His Mother
Whose Cross he wears around His Neck..
5,
There is Alot of History,,And Connection With
Ukraine…That Drive..The Russian Federation..
JT
Hi Every one.
I managed to Catch The TV coverage of
The State Department meeting With
Tony Blinken..the Foreign Minister of
Ukraine…Dnytro Kulebq,,,Live…
Blinken Spoke First..Missed Most of That
Dnytro ..Next..Comments,,Read Entire Prepared Script..Stumbled over Some Words…”
He Called for Strong Sanctions..and
European Unity,,Actions And Support..
Blinken Then Came Back..Blamed Russia..For
NOT ..Negoating..
(That works Both Ways)
Jyntro.. Back..WE will Fight to the Death..and
Win..
Q. How Many $,,Billions Have Been Sent To
Ukraine..Long Term,, ??
Q,,WHO,,,,,Where…..Why….?
Comment..The Biden Family Proved.. At ALL
Levels..Proved..on Record..That The Current Ukraine Administration..Is Totally CORRUT
Like Many Other “Administrations..Around The World..i/e Biden and His Mainline Supplier China,
Opinion…Blinko and Nytro flew back to DC
together,,Consulting private..and SECURE,,
Q,, How Long Will Nytro..Hang Around In American Bunkers ?While Getting the “TOUR”
Maybe Hang Out With Hunter,,? They Posibly Once Negotiated..in Ukraine in The Past ??
The Meeting Sounded Like Everyone Bkames V Putin,,Very Aggressive ..Posturing..
oPINION..They all Have Thier Reasons,,and Motives..NYTRON..Sounds Like He is Smoozing NATO and Mr Biden..Demanding sanctions and Suport..
Mr Blinken..I Susect….Represents a Mixed BAG
of People..and Groups..That have Long Wanted An Excuse For WAR,,With Russia,,Especially
Vladimir utin..
Well, TTG, Putin does not usually mince words, he sated he will help with completing the “decommunization” process left incomplete by the Ukrainian junta, unelected, I recall to you, who are there through a violent coup facilitated by nazi thugs, and whose first president of Ukrainian Rada was one Parubyi claimed as highly likely organizer of the Odessa masacre ( there are graphic material of him there organizing the thugs, plus one policeman enjoying the afternoon shooting at discretion on the fallen from the windows and walls of the burning Odessa House of Unions…These people burnt alive and beat to dead once in the floor over their burnt injuries were peaceful demonstrators who met at the fornt of the odessa House of Unions to protest the “Enabling Act” immediately promulgated by the junta on prohibition of Russian language and opposition political parties, especially the Communist Party of the Ukraine.
Many were killed mainly from the Mirotvorets List collected by the nazi battalions, this one yes, a kill list proper, on “enemies of nazi Ukraine”, amonbgst them late Ukrainian writer and poet Oles Buzina and even a Donbass girl in her teens who turned writer. Last added to the kill list have been two mmebers of the BBC crew of the few who dared interning themselves in Donbass to try to do something resembling a journalist work.
You never complainedc about this.
The people of Donbass had not but defend themselves from nazi death squads, you, as intelligence official, know it, that you deny that speaks volume..or may be you are really a nazi sympatizer?
Several people who are well plugged in in that part of the world, including Martyanov and Escobar, have said German PM Scholz’s dismissal as ridiculous Putin’s statements during their recent conference about the Odessa fire as genocide may well have been the nudge that induced the Russian PM to take the 2/21 action.
What was the alternative? The Ukes signed the Minsk accords 8 years ago albeit to extricate themselves from a cauldron. They have been shelling Donbass ever since. They have shown they have had no intention of implementing the agreement they signed which was endorsed by a UNSC resolution. NATO/Otan has put no pressure on the Ukes to implement Minsk.
How long was this situation supposed to go on?
Why didn’t the Russ act sooner? could be their military capability and public opinion had to ripen to a certain threshhold?
I am curios… the shelling right now is done only by the rebels/russian side?
Alves,
For years there was an even exchange of occasional shelling and sniper fire from both sides. Last year the Ukrainians used one of their Turkish drones to take out a rebel SP howitzer that was shelling a Ukrainian village. In the last few weeks, the shooting from the rebel side intensified dramatically. The Ukrainians were ordered to not return fire for fear it will be taken as a provocation. I saw one recent video of a shelling around Donetsk. The shells were fired from the far side of Donetsk and landed within the rebel lines. It was a manufactured provocation.
That is not the truth, just the other way around, it was the Ukraine who restarted the shelling.
In fact, all this was way long before prepared by the economically bankrupt West with the only goal of grabbing what of value is possible to grab in lack of ioptions to plunder Russia proper.
Taking into account what the UK has seized, a robbery and new piracy started with the missappropiation of the Venezulean gold, and, for now, ended with the seizing of the assets of the Rottenbergs olic¡garchs plus another very rich guy of whose name I can not recall now, with which UK seems to think it will cover for some of the hole made by the pandemic measures plus Brexit, plus the bill in wine and spirted drinks from the numerous parties at Downing Street, to which it will have to be added the coming bill from the financial crash.
The requisition season had been declared open with the robbery taking place in Canada, even before Putin called his security council, with the mayor of Ottawa selling the trucks, campers and cars requisitioned from the peaceful protesting taxpayers, one guesses for him and his police mafia own proffit.
If you take a look at the map I posted at Mr. Johnson post on the evolutiuon of the so called Ukraine through tghe decades startin the 1664 or so, you will test that highly likely Putin refers to the gift provided by Lenin ( a person against whom he keeps a lot of bile for what it seems…) to the original Ukraine, just a tiny region before, and which comprises the current Novorrosiya plus the Dnieper basin all the way to Odessa and Mariupol going through Kherson…
https://twitter.com/castrocalo/status/1495918705561243650/photo/
The people from Odessa never more rised their heads and just went underground after the House of Unions´ masacre.
Few dared to continue demostrating, including some elders trying to celebrate significant dates of the Grat Patriotic War they all fought as Soviet people.
I have seen a lot of videos of people being stopped while driving in their cars and beat the hell out by nazi thugs because they were carrying the Saint George ribbon in their cars or lapels.
You forget also that a referendum on self determination took palce in the Donbass repoublics which thrown an overwhelming majority voting for the escision from nazi Ukraine.
Were not a nazi junta been placed as the unelected government of their country, with life threat for them, for the only reason of being Russian speakers and of Russian culture and religion ( which was also harassed, their parishes destroyed then forbidden…) these people would for sure had cotinued with their humble difficult lives coping as they could with the usual oligarchic corruption, a problem we are not free from either in the West, as the past two years is a patent case..
The Ukraine nazi coup was the first seed for what we are witnessing in the world today, especially in places like canada, not in vain a main actor in supporting, arming and trainning the nazi battaliuons and junta throyugh is Ukrianian diaspora organizations, one of whose members is the current Minister of Economy, Christya Freeland, who has of Christian may be the name only.
Had the peoples of the West protested such outrage in the very heart of Europe after all what we passed and lost through the past two greazt wars, those same pushing nazism from the very center of Switzerland, people with ancient ties to the German nazis, as some of us did, may be we would not be facing today such harsh dictaroships being impossed on us through the whole West.
May be you find yourself at ease with all this situation, I, for one, would prefer to live under Putin than under obedient shills of the WEF Trudeau or Macron
People pushing plain nazism today from the very center of Switzerland, forgot to add, will have it much more difficult for their plans to be swallowed and impossed and probably an organized strong resistance againt the re-nazification of Europe could have been built.
Now, cry me a river….
When they came for the Russians in the Ukraine I did not mind since I was not Russian…
Germany never did mind nurturing this abcess in the center of Europe, even at the price itwill come for the German taxpayers, since the goal here was clearly, for the one who wants to look, reviving the Reich.
You just watch recent adress by Von der Leyen at EP on digital ID and her histrionic gesticulation completely out of place, she must think she is the female version of Hitler…Look at the way she rise her head is strokes while talking…That is a school…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azaOdC5Fsv0
I totally agree with you. If you noticed there is no condemnation of these great leaders by the MSM. That shows the Propaganda machine is performing as was designed.
TTG:
There is intentions and then there are options available depending on how the politics progresses.
I see Putin’s move as options to betaken after a refusal of Biden & Co to make a comprehensive security deal for NATO/Russia. Which is what have happened.
If the negotiations of a deal had begun I think nothing would have happened. Unless Ukraine started a fire.
If you listen to the man (speak Russian) you would see that he is growing weary of the insults, depravity, and “stubbornness” of the US-lead West. His latest TV appearances (of this week) display an intensity in speaking we have never seen him use..call it anger if you wish but is more like extremely aggravated. He proposed joining NATO to Clinton back in the day and way rebuffed. He strove to link up with Europeans for economic and security reasons and was stonewalled. He is patient and his patience has worn thin. He is dedicated to improving life in Russia in all aspects and is looking for a worthy successor,,, he has grown weary. He sleeps an average of 4 hours nightly by accounts of those personally close to him. He is a mnemonist of extraordinary abilities…hence his immense wealth of facts that he brings to bear extemporaneously during conversation/interviews. He deeply regrets that 10s of millions of Russians were stranded in Russia’s near abroad after the collapse of the USSR and the economic devastation that the country experienced; he has no desire to recreate the Soviet Union per se (geographically nor politically). We should watch and learn from the stateman of this century regardless how he is painted by the knuckleheads in the West.
1. Minsk has been lying dead for 6 years at the behest of the US which has made Ukriane its vassal state.
2.The bombardment, intolerance of the Russian language and people who use it, and aggressive resolutions passed by the Rada under influence of the neo-nazis has all the earmarks of genocidal plans, not withstanding the atrocities commited in person by the Azov-types against civilians wince 2014.
3. Indiscriminant bombardment of civilians and infrastructure consitute war crimes.
4. The latest actions (March 2021) showed the true intentions of the Orks…wipe the Russians in Donbass off the map and retake Crimea. The movement of Russian forces were in response to the buildup on the Ukrainian side as deterrence which has held rather well up until recently.
5. Nordstream 2 has dead last November; it has been paid for already by the increased price of gas and was sacrificed willingly. Gas will flow east instead.
6. Since all of the Western “diplomacy” has been nothing but deflection and stalling tactics, the bear has called the bluff and the gloves are coming off.
7 Behold the birth of the multinational world order.
oops…multipolar…not multinational!
I don’t watch much Fox, but last evening my wife (who does) told me that Tulsi Gabbard was going to be on a segment with Hannity. Now that might be interesting, I thought, so I stood by to watch the short interview.
Went fine until the end, when Gabbard reiterated Putin’s talking point that security has to work for all nations, including Russia. She also said that taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table forever would go a long way towards resolving this crisis, and how would the U.S. like it if a belligerent power put their tanks and missiles in Mexico on our southern border.
At this point Hannity (forever sporting his CIA lapel pin) muscled in and told Gabbard that Putin claims Ukraine isn’t even a real country and that for Putin “this is personal.”
The interview abruptly ended.
Gabbard’s foreign policy orientation when she was running in the Dem primaries in 2020 was decidedly non-interventionist. I figured that Hannity would shut her down at some point when she went ‘off script.’ And he did!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lui3zKZTGvY
Ed Lindgren
I saw that. Hannity is a drop-out dimwit. Gabbard is a goddess.
Pat, I think her beauty has you beguiled. Remember, despite her siren’s call she remains a woman of the left. Still, I am beginning to find her the most level headed leftist around. Trump/Gabbard in ’24. Don’t put that link up beyond Trump. And yeah, I’d go for that. As to Hannity, NY’ers would say he’s a F’n jerk.
Bill Roche
Beguiled? Certainly. We need more people of the left in the GOP to balance out the war nuts like Cotton. I say again the GOP should find her a safe seat and lure her over.
Col. Lang,
She’s speaking at CPAC. Who knows where that leads?
On FP matters I find her one of the most sensible politicians around across both parties. Realpolitik & US national interests rather than empty rhetoric. In many of her interviews and speeches she talks about the cost of unnecessary military interventions to servicemen from poor backgrounds.
Compare her to slimmed-down GOP presidential hopeful Mike Pompeo? And even John Kerry, Hillary, Albright, Powell who were SoS?
As we saw in this interview segment she speaks with both logic & coherence, compared to empty suit Kamala.
COL Lang –
I donated a little money to Tulsi Gabbard when she was making her play for the Dem presidential nomination.
I voted for Trump in 2016 (and did so again in 2020). However, I thought Gabbard was saying some sensible things regarding how America should conduct itself on the world stage. I wanted to help keep her voice in the race as long as possible so she could continue to present her point of view realizing, of course, that she had no chance of being the Dem candidate.
Frankly, I thought her foreign policy views were, in many ways, far superior to Trumps. But Trump saddled himself with advisors like Bolton and Pompeo, so what could one expect.
Ed Lindgren
Her handlers had her call me twice. I was charmed.
Colonel: I agree that Gabi is
1.) Smart and Capable
2.) Easy on the eyes
3.) Was the best democratic candidate and the only one I
actually gave money to.
BUT:
I just found this out
https://www.younggloballeaders.org/community?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&status=alumni§or=Public+Figure®ion=a0Tb00000000DC9EAM#results
I am very leery of Klaus Schwab’s money minions. I am keeping a close eye on this.
Just FYI for everyone. Politics makes strange bedfellows, and I am still a Gabi fanboy, but I am keeping a weather eye out.
By the expressión and her Monalissa last smile thanking Hannity, along the change of expression of Hannity himself, she realized som eone told him to terminate the interview there.
Then, this Hannity, had something to do with the CIA in the past? Incredible…
Tulsi never gained any traction nationally as a Democrat. I was shocked she didn’t catch on in the New Hampshire primary. She put a lot into campaigning there. I saw today that she may speak at the next CPAC. She has a lot of radically progressive positions, but assuming she can translate that into something palatable to Republicans and even Trumpians, she could be the next big thing on the national stage.
Ok, here is my ticket to get me out to vote: Rogan/Gabbard. Joe Rogan has the name recognition, interviews top experts, listens to all sides, seems a gentleman, belongs to neither puppet hand of the corporate or banking elite, and is a fighter – Tulsi brings the gravitas.
Ed,
“Putin’s talking point that security has to work for all nations…”
Which nations should not have security work for them?
I just watched that interview: the look she gave Hannity when he pulled the plug was priceless: “smiling contempt” is such a difficult look to pull off.
It must be depressing for her to do these interviews, knowing that the talking head on the other screen has an invisible hand shoved up his ass. Perhaps next time she can ask Fox to do away with the middle-man and just let her talk directly to a sock-puppet.
Still, kudos to Hannity for managing to mangle his way through an almost-articulate sentence. That must be very difficult when someone is screaming in your ear.
The Russians have been preparing for this for some time, since 2008 at least.
They bootstraped up their economy and military capabilities to be ready.
Their leaders(Putin, Lavarov et al) watched the West draw the cord around their neck. The West has always hated Orthodox Civilization. Why I don’t know…
Our bosses have no historical sense. This is an existential moment for Russia.
They are bound to defend themselves before the cord gets too tight.
Our leaders better wake up. Russia just wants a defensible perimeter around their homeland. This is doable. But our greedy oligarchs and their minions want to extract every available pound of flesh.
sir, i could not agree more. too many western elites have come to actually believe in the always naive post nation state world of john lennon as a possibility on their road to a one world government…….perhaps they never read the story of the tower of babel.
they will now be schooled in ancient cultural and linguistic realities the russians, the chinese, the iranians and a host of other peoples contented or mostly so about who they are in the nations in which they live.
the western elites preside over disintegrating social and cultural nations, rife with illegal immigration and no assimilation.
these elites are trying to sell the world an idea from an empty cupboard while no longer having the force to coerce the skeptical.
“…depends on whether or not the Anglo-Americans are now willing to talk seriously about Russian national security.”
Col. Lang,
The history on this is not very good. Baker & Genscher agreed with Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand “an inch” eastwards. That didn’t happen. Clinton rebuffed Putin’s suggestion of Russia joining NATO. It appears the Anglo-Americans to date have not been interested in discussing with any seriousness Russian national interest, instead have been focused on vilifying Putin personally.
What’s the end game? Do the Anglo-American foreign policy leadership even know? Clearly they cannot be that deluded to expect Putin will know-tow to their diktats to the detriment of Russian national security interests??
I doubt they expect Putin to kow-tow at this point. They hope that he will leave office at some point and be replaced with another Yeltsin type figure who will simply hand over Russia to be raped and pillaged by the US as it was in the 1990s. Alternatively, if he is replaced by another ‘uncooperative’ president, they want to build up enough military forces on Russia’s border to do Operation Barbarossa v2.0, presumably preceded by a nuclear first strike.
News from Russian media this morning is that Ru recognizes the official borders of the two republics, which extend well beyond the Line of Contact.
F & L
Ominous
Not sure how Russia would “recognize” the republics without recognizing their borders. The important thing is what Russia does about them. It’s not obvious that they should reclaim them by force.
One way to interpret these developments: Russia is forcing the implementation the terms of the Minsk II agreements. (This understanding will gain credence if the Russians stop the shelling and sniping along the LOC.) The plan would be to “internationalize” the conflict so that Ukraine is compelled to talk to the governments of the peoples republics. Then it’s over.
Maria Zakharova has denounced in his telegram channel that the US DoS sent a letter of complaint to the UNCHR and UNSG with regard alleged plans by the Russians to “eliminate” wanted people who were involved in war crimes and genocide in Eastern Ukraine kept in a kill list, as that bully in the scholl yard who then when the big brother of the bullied comes to take him the measure runs to the professor or his father to ask for protection.
What Putin and the members of the Russian Security Council stated will happen is that those guilty of genocide will be brought to justice in Russia as the crimes were comitted agsint Russian citiznes on Russian soil.
I dunno what Bachelet or Guterres will say, but, to date, I can not recall Bachelet stating a word on behalf of those burnt alive or if scaped beat to dead once in the floor outside in Odessa plus the human rights situation of the Donbass citizens for 8 years in the basements or hartassed by psycho snippers who ramined temrinating them in their yards or then in the cemetary when going to bury their friends and relatives.
Also, have not heard a word from neither the UNCHR nor the UNSG about the current war crimes being commited by the Ukrainian Army who, as the Russian troops started entering the country, run to destroy every civilian infrastructure, obliterating today a termoelectric station, a process started with their current offensive,. in fact twarted by yesterday Russian decission blitzkrieg, as they have passed the past weel obliterating pipelines, water conductions and other essential civil infrastructure.
All this reported from the terrain by a European humanitarian association of friendship with the peoples of Donbass which you will not read in the Western media, nor denounced in the “alt” blogs, except this and may be Martyanov´s.
Marlene..
Want To Let You know..You ”Post Many..But Well Real, Informative..
Well Researched..Posts..here..They always Cause Me To Researh your Data
and I Learn Alot..Thanks…Be Well..Stay Safe,,,
JT
‘economic determinism’ and the Borgists will find a reason to attack any infrastructure project Russia does w/another country so we can keep our financial weapons intact.
A little levity, a 15 sec clip of Gene Wilder’s ‘you-get-nothing Good Day Sir!’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_TYom5_gDk
The manic look on his face was perfect. This is what it is like negotiating w/Wash DC.
I love how Biden is saying how ‘freedom isn’t free’. Yep, the first thing we did was take away NS2. So we will fight Russia to the last German and EU member who will have to pay higher transit fees to Ukraine for NG and buy LNG from the U.S. and Qatar. We are giving up Russian bonds (yawn).
————————————————–
Separate topic. This was personal for Putin. The land area this gives Russia is nothing. He couldn’t take having a couple of hundred Russians shelled every year with no end in sight like it was nothing. He looked enraged when he referred to the Odessa massacre. He will stop the shelling and not advance any further. Well, that is my prediction.
Dear Colonel,
“Putin has taken the measure of Biden, BoJo and company.”
Fortunately, Kamala Harris is waiting in the wings should Biden’s medications no longer work. She will definitely “woke” those Russians up!
Ukraine has been an ongoing one way disintegration for decades heading for a genocide against Russian speakers (given European history, what else would one expect). Also, the shift in military balance away from the EU (largely demobilized its heavy formations) and US (grinding readiness down for decades with low-level gorilla warfare suppression in the desert).
Clearly the timing was right, and this event planned long ago.
Still, Ukraine is a side show and clearly not the military technical response promised the US for disdaining that Russia has legitimate security concerns (Blinken could not even pretend).
Interesting that the Whitehouse did not position itself (rhetorically) for Russia to do what Putin said it would do – bad intel being fed to the committee behind Biden’s voice? deafness? Ominous indeed.
The Ukraine now exist in theory only. No one who can, want to pay for its survival. So it will split up. Russia can just wait until 2024 at the latest when Ukrainian gas contracts will have to be renegotiated. People keep saying Russia could do this or that without explaining why Russia should. The Ukraine is being depopulated of the under 50s, most of those with good skills are going to Russia, the rest mostly EE what´s left behind is mostly cost.
Here is a question, why would Russia bother to advance to the limits of Russian ethnic habitation in Ukraine?
I can’t make up my mind about Putin. Recognizing the Donbas republics and sending peacekeepers / a tripwire force would be the minimal thing he could do in Ukraine, short of doing nothing at all. This fits his precious MO about being slow and cautious except when his back is against the wall. But something about his demeanor in his recent speeches suggests that he has changed – had enough with the West, not only with America but with Europe, and is ready to make big moves and burn bridges. I have the sense the Russian leadership is already factoring in heavy sanctions and is resigned to a break with Europe. This would not be their ideal choice, Russians feel a deep affinity with Western Europe and none at all with China.
Sean
You may be interested to read Vladislav Surkov’s 2018 essay “The Loneliness of the Half-Breed”. In his opinion it is time for Russia to boldly take its civilization into the future alone. Given the current state of the rest of Western civilization, one cannot blame them. Perhaps one day it will be renamed “Northern civilization”.
https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/the-loneliness-of-the-half-breed/
This is an excerpt from a contrarian, you might say dissident, blog-online-magazine of some repute in the Russian language. – it has to carry a header over each story declaring it is distributed by foreign mass media acting as an NGO. It comes far along down the page of an account of Putin’s public endeavors yesterday. Found (and translated by Yandex) here. The POV is based on the observation that what Putin did essentially preserved the status quo: though you wouldn’t know it to
listen to that corrupt old President Joe BuyDem, his staff, his braindead Yurpeen allies (dubya’s one positive talent, a knack for catchy names and diminutives, perhaps that region of his brain survived alcohol and cocaine) and especially in the mega falsehoods of our media.
No. Chicken Little had a lot of offspring. Too many.
https://republic.ru/posts/103207
—–
Although sanctions will no doubt follow, their severity and scope may be limited, since the recognition and deployment of troops in the DPR and LPR is still a more moderate scenario than the capture of all of Ukraine and the occupation of Kiev, which was prophesied by American intelligence. Speaking not legally, but in fact, Russia has maintained the status quo – some commentators even believe that the recognition of the republics was only an attempt by Putin to save face after the West refused to give Russia security guarantees.
I doubt Putin made this decission based on any personal sentiment.
The recognition of the People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk is not a geopolitical whim of Putin, it is a claim of these peoples in the first place.
On May 11, 2014, a referendum was held.
-74.87% participated
-SI independence, 89.07%
-NO independence, 10.19%
-Null, 0.74%
Btw, a guy made notice that the recognition of the Novorrosiyan Republics took place between February 21-21, the same date the nazi coup in the Ukraine took place in 2014….That yes could have something to do with personal…
Donbass SitRep:
The Ukrainian army is heavily shelling the hottest areas of the Donbass front line with mortars, artillery and GRAD rockets. In the Lugansk People’s Republic (PLR) the People’s Militia has already had its first casualties.
Today the Lugansk Thermoelectric Power Plant has been on fire due to bombing by the Ukrainian army. It seems that in the face of the upcoming deployment of Russian troops, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are destroying the infrastructure before withdrawing to the borders of Kharkov.
Today at 4:32 p.m., in the Kalinin district of Donetsk, there was a bomb attack against the former Minister of Defense of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Vladimir Kononov, who escaped unharmed, but not a civilian who was seriously injured with the amputation of a hand.
G´night.
blue peacock,
There’s still an off ramp for Putin that NATO would be happy for him to take. If his peacekeeping mission is just that – stops the shooting with no further advance into Ukraine — they are unlikely to ramp up sanctions. If the invasion proceeds then he leaves them with little choice.
There’s still time, and it looks like Putin’s support at home for a wider war is questionable. Lavrov and Naryshkin were notably less than full throated in their support yesterday, with the former noting that the Western powers haven’t been as unified in this in a long time. They can’t stop him, of course, but that they felt it necessary to pipe up at all would seem to be significant.
The Russian stock exchange has suffered a steep drop with the war news. If Putin does not have a diplomatic rabbit to pull out of the hat, and I now doubt that he does, none of this looks good for him, let alone the country he runs. He got a big boost in the polls after annexing Crimea, I believe. It may be different this time.
I’m afraid the whole Putin-as-master-strategist thing is going to take a big hit as well.
All well and good, now we know what Chatham House and Foggy Bottom are trying to get the world to believe, but what does Navalny have to say on these developments? /s
Stephanie –
During Putin’s ranting speech, the expressions on some of the faces of his security counsel seemed to be thinking that maybe he should be committed in one of his infamous psychiatric penal hospitals.
Leith
I disagree entirely. The on camera SC meeting’s purpose was to demonstrate that Putin has a consensus that a third patriotic war will be fought, if need be. John Helmer has offered his view on Putin’s address to the nation which followed yesterday. An extract:
As I said on a previous thread, my own interpretation is that it was a “they shall reap the whirlwind” speech.
The [redacted] Russophobes in DC and London have brought it to this. I pray some sanity remains among the military top brass, I’ve a feeling it will be needed soon.
http://johnhelmer.org/the-body-language-of-the-speech-putin-has-repudiated-lenin-stalin-gorbachev-yeltsin-mobilized-russias-defence-against-us-attack-as-never-before/
Barbara Ann –
Did you see the humiliating tongue-lashing Putin gave to Sergey Naryshkin?
Sergey is Director of the SVR. Putin should be careful and watch his back, but I’m sure Bortnikov’s FSB or other internal organs of the state will make sure nothing happens to him. And Sergey may well be replaced soon.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1495791855073644549
@Leith
Very interesting, you understand that by showing this very specific information you confirm your status as an operative of the Borg/Deep State/Whatever, right?
😀 😀 😀
Leith
I did, it was hilarious, the man looked petrified. Putin does not look to me like a man who is frightened of his IC’s ‘six ways from Sunday’. L’Etat, c’est il.
Barbara Ann –
Naryshkin needs to stay away from windows and brew his own tea from now on.
I’ve seen some speculate that Putin deliberately embarrassed him because of the many flubbed ‘false flags’. Or some others suggested that maybe the leaks to the western IC came from somewhere in the SVR.
First of all, Colonel, your first paragraph mentions some unmentioned layers of anthropological reality that are indeed far more important than economical power – in fact, by defining societies’ sense of purpose and organizational possibilities, they greatly supersede it.
Now, addressing the possible reconstruction of Russian Empire, there are several things to note:
1 – Russian Empire is not the most important concept in understand the rise of Russia into global power. Deep inside it there was a big dream of human development which transcended the concept of Empire (and indeed in fact led to the destruction of the Russian Empire, by implanting a Communist Utopia).
1a – The United States had a very similar Utopian desire at that same age – 19th century. Then, at the end of the century, they were deviated into a different, more materialistic and strictly militaristic, dream.
1b – In summary, first, the US lost its edge, then Russia, and now Russia is returning to it, hands on hand with China. Such vision, such purpose, attracts in every age the best and brightest.
2 – Regarding the possible boundaries of a new Russian Empire, that sphere of influence may indeed approach, in the West, the borders of the map you have shown, but only in terms of cultural and ideological predominance.
2a – Because it is very important to understand that Russia has no desire to weaken itself by taking possession of the territories at its West or South borders, and it is not even remotely feasible to consider an Eastern expansion – in fact, what they can do and have planned is a consolidation in the East, and it is the right strategy. Again, development, progress, vision.
2b – How could the acceptance of the current LOC in the Donbass as the new states’ borders be anything else than a crippling demonstration of lack of vitality, leadership, ambition? Neither would you do such a thing, Colonel, if were you in charge.
3 – The United States will have to face a period of consolidation, as well. Whether a fault line, based in culture, customs and deep believes, anthropological divides, you name it, will emerge and stabilize, that will have to be seen.
If you can have the same dream, you will remain united, if not, you will split.
3a – People like Gabbard are islands of serenity in a sea of madness; and it is indeed a charming sight. She did however endorsed Biden at a given point; a matter of political survival, most likely.
3b – What needs to be done is a deep restoration. I do not mean the United States in particular.
“Will he stop for now at the line of contact?”
At the Russian security counsel meeting Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev proposed the recognition of the borders of the Donbass republics “in which they were before the occupation by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
https://asd.news/articles/dnr/istoricheskiy-den-dlya-donbassa/
At a recent press conference Putin was asked point blank whether Russian troops would stop at the current line of contact or go further, he refused to answer the question and immediately ended the press conference.
https://t.me/antideza/3943
The breakaway republics have been recognised in their original boundaries when they were proclaimed following the referenda, i.e. the original oblast boundaries. Putin said so here:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67838
As to whether the troops will stop at the current line of contact, probably yes. Going on past form, the Kiev regime will then be asked, several times, politely at first and progressively less so, to withdraw their forces from the newly recognised republics. When they refuse all requests to do so, who knows what will happen. Maybe Russian troops will push them out, or maybe they will simply provide lots of new weapons to the LNR/DNR forces to enable them to do so.
True, Putin recognized the entire province, including the part occupied by the UAF. I’m still convinced he has no intention of going beyond the LOC. Putin has a very legalistic mind. He wanted to make very specific boundaries but this does not imply action, look at Syria which is still partitioned.
This is how I see Putin viewing it … prevent the UAF from bombing LPR/DPR, I could see him reshaping the LOC for an optimal buffer zone. I could also see an occasional raid if there really are detention camps in the Ukrainian occupied Donbas province.
———————-
As usual, I’m getting into too much detail. The thing that is driving Putin is an orderly and legal protection of the Russians (and others) living in the province. The land means nothing to him. The DC crowd is acting like he is obsessed w/gaining new territory. Putin’s idea of the Russian Empire is not about land, it is about the identity of the Russian people.
What is the source on the story of Putin’s ‘secret conversion’? Putin himself has stated that he first got a religious awakening in 1993 after a car accident, And it was no secret, his father was alive at the time and surely knew. It was two years after he resigned from the KGB. But his resignation probably does not mean squat because he is also quoted as saying: “There is no such thing as a former KGB man.”I believe his ‘conversion’ was purely political and so do some Russian Orthodox parishes. He is no more a Christian than Little Kim.
The long suffering people of Russian will someday get out from under his boot and will build a prosperous and peaceful Russian Empire. They deserve it. I hope it can be done without bloodshed. They have been friends of America since Catherine the Great. And they have been our Allies, de facto or otherwise, in many of America’s wars. They helped broker the Treaty of Ghent which ended our War of 1812. We brokered their peace with Japan, which cost us the enmity of the Japanese. American doctors and nurses tended to Russian sick and wounded in the 1850s when the Brits, French, and Turks attacked them. It’s a shame our tycoon interventionists of 1917, the rightwing nutjob John Birch Society of the 50s, and Reagan’s Evil Empire speech, and Putin’s paranoia drew us further apart.
Leith
https://religionfacts.com/putin Why are you so much a Russophobe?
I don’t trust Xi and bin-Salman either. Does that make me a Sinophobe or Islamophobe? Or a hater of Chinese and Arabs? I think not.
Russians are just as good as any other ethnicity, or better in many cases. Russian literature, music, and art is a credit to its people and culture.
and ‘Russian science’ I also meant to add.
Leith,
What is your actual name, and from where do your ancestors come – when?
We know that those of ‘TTG’ comes from Lithuania, and that you regard him as a reliable source on matters such as the continued significance, or lack of it, of the ‘Azov Regiment.’ So, I think it might be helpful if you could ‘stand up to be counted’ a bit more – as indeed he has done.
On the question of whether Putin’s adoption of Orthodoxy is purely cynical, as you suggest: It seems reasonably clear that, after they met with Putin in New York, at his request, in September 2003, Metropolian Laurus and his fellow members of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia were less sceptical than you.
I must admit, that I am more readily prepared to take their professions of concern for Russian ‘deplorables’ at face value than I am yours. (Or any professions of concern for American ‘deplorables’ from ‘TTG.’)
From an interview, available on the ‘Orthodox England’ site, with Bishop Kryill of San Francisco and Western America:
‘We presented an icon of St. Elizabeth to President Putin. I watched carefully how attentively he looked at the icon, how he made the sign of the cross with reverence and then venerated the icon.
‘I was left with the impression that the President of Russia is someone direct, open and sincere. He loves his country and his people deeply and it is clear that it pains him to see and know how difficult life is for the ordinary people. One can really sense this pain for Russia.’
(See http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/kyrill.htm .)
This was clearly intended as a kind of test, as becomes even more obvious if you know something about Saint Elizabeth – aka Prince Elizabeth of Hesse and by Rhine (great aunt of the husband of our own ‘Queen Elizabeth’, who died last year.
The story of her life and death perhaps dramatises, particularly starkly, the contrast between Christianity and the ‘revolutionary antinomianism’ of the Bolsheviks. In practice, as I have also noted on this blog, finding a balance between ‘moral’ and ‘Machiavellian’ considerations is commonly difficult.
But, precisely those of us who have thought about such problems are likely to be rather less inclined than you, and ‘TTG’ to profess love, and respect, for some mythical ‘Russian people’, while only listening to those of them that profess to agree with you.
(For a brief account of ‘Saint Elizabeth’, see http://ww1.antiochian.org/node/18906 .)
The icon is also discussed in the interviews with Putin by Oliver Stone – in which it also emerged that it was the father of the mother who had him baptised who cooked for Lenin and Stalin.
Another interesting history comes out in a – rare – interview, published in September 2019, with a principal architect of the military capabilities which have been deployed in Syria and are now being introduced into the Donbass – Sergey Shoigu.
The headline ‘MEMRI’ translation is blunter than that of the original: ‘Russian Minister Of Defense Shoigu: Russia Returned To Her Senses In 1999 To Thwart Western Designs To Destroy And Enslave Her; Thanks To Russia, Today’s World Is Multipolar.’
(See https://www.memri.org/reports/russian-minister-defense-shoigu-russia-returned-her-senses-1999-thwart-western-designs .)
As I knew that he came from the Tuvan Republic, I had been surprised when, as his car was driven into Red Square on the ‘Victory Day’ parade, Shoigu made the Orthodox ‘Sign of the Cross.’
Relevant background was explained in the interview:
‘Q: “In Kiev, you can periodically listen to threats of ‘triumphantly entering Moscow on tanks.’ Is there a danger of a direct military clash between the armies of Russia and Ukraine?”
‘Shoigu: “I don’t even want to think about it. I really hope that the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian authorities have enough will, strength and ability to cool those hotheads that call for such stupidity and a crazy plot. Someday extremists in Ukraine have to be stopped. It is a pity that this was not done earlier.
‘”Back to your question. The Ukrainians are a brotherly nation. My mum’s relatives are from Ukraine. My grandfather is buried there. My mother survived the occupation there during World War II. From Ukraine, my mother’s brothers went to the frontline. And by the way, I was baptized at the age of 5 in a church the city of Stakhanov, Lugansk region. And I am absolutely convinced that with the Ukrainian people we will live in peace and good neighborliness. The time for this, I am sure, will come.”’
Also of interest in the interview is what seems to me a patently heartfelt expression of thanks:
‘If the West continued to behave as it began to behave during the time of Gorbachev, if they would have fulfilled all of their promises (not to push NATO closer and closer to our borders, not to expand their influence in our neighboring countries, not to interfere in the internal affairs of our country) it seems to me: in the end they would have succeeded in everything. They would have been able to solve the problem that they set for themselves – the task of destroying and enslaving our country. This is how it was actually done with the ‘Young Europeans’ and the former Soviet republics.”
This remark, in turn, can usefully be set in the context of a discussion by Nicholas Gvosdev the previous month, on the ‘National Interest’ site, which was headlined ‘Where Will Ukraine Go from Here?’
(See https://nationalinterest.org/feature/where-will-ukraine-go-here-87936 .)
A key paragraph:
‘For the last thirty years, U.S. policy towards Ukraine has been guided by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s aphorism: a Russia with Ukraine is an empire (and by extension, a threat to the security of the Euro-Atlantic area), but a Russia without Ukraine has the chance to become a “normal” nation-state (and, by implication, is better “balanced” vis-à-vis the principal European powers of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy).’
Thirty years takes us back to 1989. In February of that year, I and a colleague interviewed a range of figures involved in the ‘new thinking’ for a pair of BBC Radio documentaries. At that time, if one cared to look, the state of affairs which Putin described to Stone in explaining the revival of Orthodoxy was actually apparent:
‘This renaissance is due to the fact that the communist ideology ceased to exist. And in reality there was some sort of an ideological vacuum. And that vacuum could be filled by nothing else but religion.’
Among the figures we interviewed at ‘ISKAN’ – ‘The Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada’ – which under Georgiy Arbatov had a central role in the ‘new thinking’, was General-Mayor Valentin Larionov. A scholarly man with steel teeth, I thought that, by contrast to younger colleagues – people like Sergei Karaganov, who ‘MILLAR’ quoted on an earlier thread, who were not communists in any meaningful sense at all – he was a sometime believer, in a state of disillusion.
He spent some time discussing the 1986 volume ‘Game Plan’, by Brzezinski, whom he described as ‘nash drug (our friend) – a Pole.’ Later, I learnt that he was in a good position to know that the book was largely nonsense, as he had compiled and co-authored the initial 1962 edition of the study ‘Military Strategy’ published under the name of Marshal Sokolovskiy, which was actually a ‘bluff’ whose effects ran out of control.
My editor at the BBC, at the time, had earlier worked for the former Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, who was involved in the ‘Trilateral Commission’ together with Brzezinski and the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. That figure, she told us, used to explain that he could never work out which of the two traditional enemies of his country his Polish colleague hated the most.
The link ‘MILLAR’ gave was to the Russian-language version of Karaganov’s site. The material however also appears in English, at http://karaganov.ru/en/ .
If one reads it in conjunction with the Shoigu interview, one might translate the latter as follows: ‘Phew, all those ‘ISKAN’ types, like Karaganov, thought the Cold War was really about communism, so that the West was “in the right.” Had the West not been stupid, and made the ‘vassal’ status they offered us a bit closer to that which the West Europeans had enjoyed in the Cold War, people like Karaganov would have accepted it. But, thanks to Brzezinski and his like, they had their “noses rubbed in the shit.” So, they could no longer avoid facing the fact that the conflict was only quite secondarily about ideology.’
And indeed, if the real truth about the policy of the United States is that it is run by a ‘coalition’ of the ‘insulted and injured’ from the former Soviet, and Russian, empires, and the kind of ‘Russophobes’ from the ‘Anglosphere’ of the ‘Neville Chamberlain’ variety, then, obviously, the ‘ISKAN’ people were naive fools.
And so, it becomes profoundly unsurprising that Karaganov, who once dreamed of ‘rejoining Western civilization’ is now a leading advocate of ‘Eurasianism.’ (The transition can be seen very clearly in his writings, which are, helpfully, translated into English, on his site, at http://karaganov.ru/en/ .)
But then, as I have noted, as soon as there was a single – and clearly inconsequential – indication that China and Russia were not ‘marching in lockstep’, you concluded that one could discount the possibility of the kind of ‘Mackinderite consolidation’ about which some of us have been warning since Putin’s Munich speech, fifteen years ago.
This is what I have seen happening, time and again, with ‘emotionally incontinent’ people, who are very often to be found among the kind of ‘Russophobes’ I have discussed.
So, I revert to my question: Who are you, and, from where do you come?
David Habakkuk
I owe you a response to your questions from a previous thread and lest you think me impolite I’ll provide them here.
On the subject of the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine: I do not think this is inconceivable, but I do think Russia will do (has done) everything to avoid it. Yet the fact remains that if the puppet government in Kyiv remains captive to rabidly Russophobic interests, how else is Russia ultimately to resolve the issue of its spiritual brother nation being used as a weapon against it?
As to your second, perhaps rhetorical question, I dance to no one’s tune but my own and don’t dance that well anyhow. For the record, I have no known ancestry in the Balts or Eastern Europe.
DH –
Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no Ukrainian or East European bloodlines in my family closet. That I know of anyway, unless there was one hiding in a woodpile somewhere. Family surname is Allen, not one of the FFA of Virginia but Dad always said they got there as soon as they could. His Mom was a Dolan from Galway. On my Mom’s side they were also Irish. They snuck over the NB/Maine border four generations back – wetbacks they would be called today. But there was also a Griffin (any relation to you?), a Magnuson (damned if I know where he came from), and a Cyr in that line, as well as a trace of First Nations heritage. So claims a cousin who digs into genealogy.
But I do admit to once or twice visiting South Boston’s Lithuanian Club 60 years ago for after hours beer drinking. And my first wife, born in Belgrade, fled with her mother as a two year old from the Croat Ustaze and immigrated to Chicago. If that makes me a deplorable in your estimation, so be it. I’ve been called worse. BTW I myself have never called anyone deplorable and do not recall anyone on this site using the term as an insult. To the contrary I’ve only seen it used by some here applying it to themselves as an honor or a self-compliment.
I do not rely on TTG or anyone else here to form my opinion on the Azov fascists or any other Hitler-loving whackos whether Ukrainian or Russian or whoever. As Pat Lang and I discussed on another thread recently there were many ethnic Russian Nazi collaborators who fought for the SS. You know that or you should know it. Or perhaps you choose not to believe it.
You too should “stand up and be counted’ Let us know more about you. So this committee could understand where your ideas are coming from.
As for Shoigu, I have a good deal of respect for the man. But per Wikipedia his mother was born in Oryol Oblast in Russia, not from Luhansk as you imply.
Leith
DH has described himself many times on my blog. He is a graduate of Cambridge U. His father was master of a college at Cambridge. The small Christian sect in Wales where they came from (as I remember) changed all their surnames to biblical names. His family ended up with “Habakkuk.” DH was a producer and writer for the BBC for many years. If I got any of that wrong, I hope he will correct me.
PL –
Any son of Wales is a good man regardless of religion of worldview.
CBN: Putin officially declared that Christianity is the foundation of the Russian State.
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/cwn/2018/july/putin-christianity-is-the-foundation-of-the-russian-state
In 2018 Russia built and consecrated a cathedral for the Russian Armed Forces (Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ) in Moscow. Putin and Shoigu were both present at the consecration. Check it out: https://youtu.be/x_lDNvwTx6Q
Head of the Russian military, General Sergei Shoigu, must also be faking being a Christian. Shoigu crossed himself beneath one of the Kremlin towers at the start of the Victory Day military parade in Moscow.
Putin and Russia’s intervention in Syria no doubt saved thousands of Christian lives. This was not lost among the Catholic leadership of Syria:
While the U.S. was making Obergefell v. Hodges the law of the land Russia was passing anti-LGBT proselytization laws. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow put up a rainbow flag to protest.
Some words from the prophetic Archbishop Fulton Sheen roughly 60 years ago (from Fulton J. Sheen, “Footprints in a Darkened Forest”):
Hank Somers
I recall seeing a video from the Russian Aerospace Forces of aircraft making a fly past of the Krak des Chevaliers in Syria. Highly symbolic stuff.
Someone else here quoted that passage from Footprints in a Darkened Forest recently. As for the prodigal son, he tried to return home, only to find his father had joined a cult. When the son refused to join the cult the father tried to kill him. The son is better off living elsewhere, at least for now.
Pat..FYI..I have been researching Bidens Strange attitude toward Oil and Gas..
and shutting down Our Oiland Gas..They just shut down ANY Expolration on Federal Land Yesterday..It Was announced..He Is RUN by The GREENS..The Walter Mondale
Proactive Anti Oil ,,gas..Climate Change Power Base..
Yet..Currently,,Even with Events inEuroe..He supported Germanys..Ples For Allowing NordStrea..m one..Favors ..for Politics..Now They are shuting Down Nordstream 2
.from the East..through Belarus..
My POINT..Thought..They,,Biden..UK..Schultz,,(Green Party Coalition..UK..Prince
Charles..whoMEET Biden at a Big Climate Change Conference last year. 2021,,
( I have Link to THAT CNN Political Site Online),,
Charles Also Green Activist..Lots of Power Will Be King soon..
My Thought…THATS Why all of THEM,,Want to Shut
RUSSIA/Putin own..Hurt Him..so..Opportunity To Cut Off His.Russias
MAIN Revenue Source..OIL and Gas,,
Who Benefits….? IRAN..Middle Easst Oil Guys..Big Increases In MONEY,
My Thoughts..Bones o Chew On
JT
P
utin Down
.
I’ve been quite surprised by the degree of loathing of Russia I’ve come across recently.
For some it comes natural. The countries along the Eastern borders of the EU have bitter memories of Russian occupation in Soviet times and before. They won’t forget that, any more than one can expect an Irishman to forget penal times or the potato famine or a Palestinian to forget the Naqba. History and culture, as the Colonel says above, outrank all else.
I don’t know why that loathing of Russia extends to so many of us in the UK. One can find plenty of material asserting it derives from Cold War times. More material, oceans of it, asserting it derives from our crony classes still casting an eye over the riches of the Russian Federation. Or we in the general public forget our Assanges and our White Helmets, if we ever knew about them, and from the moral heights of our observance of Democracy and the Rule of Law find the Russian way of governing themselves abhorrent.
It certainly looks to me something of a mess of a country. Seventy years of murderous ideologues, and self-seeking apparatchiks corrupt from top to bottom, followed by ten years of merciless looting, isn’t that great a starting point. They were lucky that, from somewhere in that raddled corpse of a nation that was Russia at the end of the twentieth century, some spirit of renewal manifested itself. Lucky that that enabled them to take those first uncertain steps along the arduous road to recovery.
Solzhenitsyn’s right out of fashion now. The scholars don’t like him, he soon fell out of favour in the West, and many Russians speak of him disparagingly. But there’s a photo of him, sitting old and decrepit and looking up at that enigmatic figure who symbolises that road to recovery. He looks at Putin with hope blazing in his eyes, and a measure of relief too. Finally, I think he’s saying, we’ve got ourselves on the way back. Why begrudge the Russians that unlikely turn of fortune? Why not say, as I do, good luck to them as they attempt renewal?
They’ll have to do it without us in the West. That loathing, that Russophobic contempt, is too deep. 21/2/2022 marks, I think, the time when the Russians finally came to terms with that loathing. There is nothing useful here for them, they now know, and if they are to survive and prosper they can only do so by shutting the door on the West. And, as best they can, ensuring that door has locks.
Solzhenitsyn:
“Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible—a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.”
(SPIEGEL Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn: ‘I Am Not Afraid of Death,’” Spiegel International, July 23, 2007)
Also Solzhenitsyn:
Quoted by Anatoly Karlin from Solzhenitsyn’s interview with Forbes in 2008.
https://www.forbes.com/2008/08/05/solzhenitsyn-forbes-interview-oped-cx_pm_0804russia.html
I don’t buy the lofty idea of a Russian renewal of a spirited and noble nation. I see what is put before me and it is not loathing to say no one likes a bully. The recent venom extended towards Ukraine d/n surprise me. It’s the “Stockholm Syndrome”. Those anti-semitic, corrupt, discombabulated, Ukrainians deserve every thing they are getting. What they don’t deserve is independence. That’s for others. A few words about corruption are in order. Ukrainians are corrupt; yeah, could be. Ask Joe Biden if the Ukrainians are corrupt. He presides over the river Potomac, frozen as the head of a corrupt gov’t. Joe oughta know about corruption. Ever try to do business in India w/o a little “bucshees”? Spend a day at the Grand Bazaar in Cairo (for you my friend the best price) and your head will spin w/deal making. Yes, Ukraine is an ethnic jumble. How many peoples combined to create Britain (read Churchill on this). I can count 7. Russia is not homogeneous. Look at the medal stand at the Olympics and see all the different faces representing Russia. But Ukrainians have had thirty years to build a gov’t and they can’t get it right. They are trying to survive under the nose of people who don’t want them to exist. Putin has said so. Thirty years is not such a long time. The Brits called here again in 1812 and almost won. The US was not even sure she was worth defending. That history is scandalous. I have also read herein about Stephan Bandura of the Galician SS. In ’14 Galicia was neither filled w/Austrians nor Ukrainians. Jews, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles, Litvaks, Czechs, Russians, Lats, and Gypsys filled it and they got along as well as any other multi ethnic society in 1914. What happened? WW I. Galicia was savaged but d/n enjoy a respite in ’19. Bolsheviks, mostly Jews, brought communism and more fighting to Galicia. Ultimately Communist victory resulted in the Holodomore and 6MM murdered Ukrainian farmers. Many of the Bolsheviks sent to Galicia to enforce grain collection were Jews. Is it any wonder that upon the renewal of hostilities in ’41 some Ukrainian veterans of WW I, would take up arms against the communists? Yes, Bandura exchanged one fascist uniform for another. His was a fools errand. By ’45 Ukraine was back under the USSR or, some prefer, the czar. But by ’90, at the dissolution of the USSR, Ukrainians opted for independence. I’m no fan of Wilson but here’s a crazy idea, Ukrainians don’t want to commit cultural suicide. They are not Russian. That idea also applies to the Balts, Poles, and don’t forget the Finns. Then again, they may all want to be part of a renewed and noble Russian nation manifesting itself into the 21st century. Maybe someone should just ask them.
Kudos to you for bucking the trend here, sir.
The recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics is a chance for Russia to climb down from the peak of escalation with a concrete result, because retreating empty-handed would have been a ruinous outcome for the Kremlin’s prestige.
It’s face saving and it’s a gift to the US and Ukraine.
The people calling this the end of the world are nuts.
Read:
https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/86501
“The recognition is also a chance for Russia to climb down from the peak of escalation with a concrete result, because retreating empty-handed would have been a ruinous outcome for the Kremlin’s prestige, and for the country’s military and diplomatic apparatus. Russia had three options: pressing Kyiv to federalize through the implementation of the Minsk agreements, pushing the West to end NATO’s expansion, and recognizing the Donbas republics. Having failed to achieve the two main goals, Russia resorted to the third option.”
F&L, So far, what Vladimir Putin has said he will do, he has over his long career. Its strange all this projection instead of just listening to what is said. Perhaps the west is so used to politicians being incompetent tools that never say what they mean and mean what they say they have lost the capability for understanding or practicing diplomacy.
Russia put in writing they want their security needs recognized in writing and there is no where for them to back up. I read that as they will take the planet to full scale nuclear war if that is what it takes. Now if I had a Carnegie grant I could expand this to a book.
I think you are not far off the mark. Not one bit. I’m hoping, because there are people I love living in various places including Russia, that something has been settled in a deal between Biden and Putin — Joe gets to stare down the evil Rooskie President and get reelected and in return Putin will be allowed to disarm Ukraine incrementally and solve his security problems as the attention shifts elsewhere. Similar to Kennedy and Krushchev in Cuban crisis. No one in the west particularly had to know about the missiles in Turkey being removed as quid pro quo. The Soviets had iron control over their media back then. You could argue control over American media now is at least as rigid – see the Military officers and CIA chiefs acting as “objective consultants” on all the TV channels. It’s doable in my estimatation.
Ahhh – but how can Russia make an agreement with the non-agreement capable Americans, much less whoever is the Grima Wormtongue controlling Biden’s voice (Blinken, Kagan? Sullivan? What a savory group).
In regards to the issue of European dependence on Russian NatGas, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility (if the EU and particularly Germany ratchet up the sanctions racket) that Russia would, without any warning, simply shut off the valves to the pipelines supplying gas to EU countries. It would be characteristic Russian behavior to do this and announce it at the same time. It would make the point to the EU as to which side their bread is buttered on.
Might be of interest: Moon of Alabama reports today that no Russian troops have yet entered the Donbas; also that yesterday Mr. Putin said he hadn’t given an order to do so. [My apologies if reported above: didn’t read through the large number of posts.]
If this holds, might be an opportunity to freeze the situation, via UN peacekeeping forces (Blue Helmets). India would be a good choice if it agreed to with Russia in advance: Near great-power. Troops inured to Himalayan cold. Neither side likely to cross. Reaction to Russian motion in UN Security Council would be indicative of whether any peaceful solution with the West is possible, or if war is likely eventually.
There are lot of incentives for India if the primary confrontation over the next few decades is not the one between NATO and Russia. If you can believe it, they’re building frigates in Russia using Ukrainian turbines. However the fate of Ukraine is to be a de-industrialized DMZ at best, so there is nothing to be gained by playing peacemaker.
India has lost enough too many as pawns in the European wars, so this will find no takers. And more pertinently, India has been starting down a Chinese buildup of troops in the Ladakh frontier in the Himalayas over the last two years.
But the bigger question is this. Now we are all supposed to feel loyalty to NATO first and not even our nations? How does NATO being a club of white countries with a joker or two in the pack square with the woke agenda the same people are pushing domestically? Isn’t NATO white privelege??
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10547573/Ukraine-strikes-Kievs-troops-shoot-five-helicopters-Putins-forces-losses.html
My contacts in Ukraine report explosions in Karkhiv and Kyiv and the Antonov Airport has been combat assaulted by Russ paras. Just protecting our folk, see …
Part of great chasm between information on Russia, in general, that we in the West obtain from various news sources [and from all manner of Western think tanks, pundits, journals, public lectures, scholars, etc.], and in particular, on current matter is a function of practically none of us in US, and also in western Europe, being able to speak Russian. Me included.
How great therefore is our, and my: overall ignorance of Russian economy, politics, of that nation’s social structure, its contributions to the arts, and to civilization? . . .to its view of its own security needs?
I can’t speak or write Russian, nor German, Greek, Latin, French; only English and some Spanish.
For my entire adult life and as a child in school then as adolescent and young man in college, my overarching goal was to try to understand the world around me as best I could. . . . even with above limitations of not having the [basically economic] luxury to learn all those languages.
Last night I spoke with a now retired professor of mine from 1970s; he’s in his 80s now; back in the day he was professor of middle east studies and politics and also taught the Arabic language; his family, Orthodox Christian, from Lebanon.
He told me he is finishing a book on the more than 1,000 year history between Russia and Syria, vis-a-vis Christianity.
He said a focus of book involves Kiev, if I recall what he said correctly, having been Metropolitan for the church for the city of Moscow, which Metropolitan, subsequently relocated to Moscow.
Jim, he said, when Putin spoke yesterday about the Russia/Ukraine as one nation, this fact is among many that underscores their cultural and familial connections going back ages.
The professor said he began researching this topic in earnest when Russia agreed to Syria’s request in 2015 to assist them militarily. . . and that Christian connection between those countries have long historical antecedents.
I can’t remember exact date, but I believe it was somewhere early in the Trump presidency, then FBI Director James Comey was testifying before congress.
Comey as I recall was asked about Russia, and it was obvious Comey really knew nothing, not even anything of the most basic substance.
I was struck at the time — how could it be that someone, so hell-bent on destroying Trump, using a narrative filled with prejudice and bigotry of Russia and Russians, be serious. . . given he sounded, to me at least, like an ignorant hack, in front of Congress.
But alas, his audience, Congress, also suffers this great ignorance. . . and I doubt any or hardly any of them even noticed.
At the time of Maidan, late 2013 and early 2014, I was assigned to write a paper for possible publication and so spent much time observing all of what was happening.
This included speaking with US experts including those in academia.
I found it peculiar that NPR was not interested in reporting on the fact Kiev policemen, [Berkut] being shot and killed — that NPR did not find this important enough to report on.
I heard Nuland’s “F**K the EU’ statement to Pyatt practically in real time, and the report to the EU that in fact snipers were killing protesters and police, and the snipers were affiliated with the new, provisional government. . . and that the EU was not interested in this, it would seem, very important fact.
I read of it, the day Burisma announced appointment of Hunter Biden to its board, in early May, 2014.
And I observed no one in power in my country seemed to find any of that relevant.
When the Odessa massacre happened, . . . again, no big deal.
I found it quite interesting that, during Putin’s 11 p.m. Moscow-time speech to the nation, Feb. 21, 2022, announcing recognition of the two Donbas republics, that Putin specifically included that massacre, in which people were burnt alive — that he mentioned this, almost in anger.
Essentially, he said “we know” who did this and that they would be captured and brought to justice.
Yesterday, he clarified that the borders of these newly independent states are those that on which those regions declared themselves in 2014.
This area is greater then the area currently held.
Be that as it may. . . . when I asked my former professor last night about my impression, during Maidan — that US Russian History professors I’d communicated with — that it seemed to me they had one foot in academia and one foot in the state department, as it were; and this seemed to “color” their expertise — the professor laughed heartily.
PS
This is Harvard University 2022:
Laurence Tribe, law professor: “Led by Fox News Channels’ Tucker Carlson, the GOP’s Trump wing appears to be throwing its weight behind Putin. . . If Putin opts to wage war on our ally, Ukraine, such ‘aid and comfort’ to an ‘enemy’ would appear to become ‘treason’ as defined by Article III of the US Constitution.”
Tribe has both feet in INSANITY.
Why is this scum teaching our nation’s people? Why is Tribe anywhere near education, why isn’t this deplorable human being not in an insane asylum, where he can get the care he desperately needs?
The Tribes of the world pretend to represent the working class; they are the Useful Idiots that want to imprison anyone at odds with their actual service to the rich and powerful.
We have a country full of Tribes — charlatans masquerading as education leaders.
They are vicious, unhinged, dangerous executioners. A great plague on our country and to our civilization.
-30-
Good Post…JIM
Interesting to Read..Thanks
JT
Well, now that the usurper regime (and its poodles) has found out with definitude that it can’t play the bully on the world stage, they will probably turn to kicking their dog to vent their pique. In case you haven’t guessed, We the People are the dog.
They have made quite a start with this over the last several years or so, but after Turdeau and his handler, Chrystia Freeland (ironically named), the Ukrainian nazi, have flexed on the freedom lovers in their country, getting the Canadian Enabling Act at least temporarily in place (with the expressed ambition to make it permanent), I predict that the dog kicking throughout the West will accelerate. Blame has to be shifted somewhere since the saber-rattling ploy has blown up in Their faces, and YTs with traditional values are going to be pushed forward into the crosshairs. We will perform the function of substitutes for the EVUL ROOSKIES, aligned as we are with all of the wrong values, and obvious wreckers of The Great Woke Paradise that we – clearly – are.
Brace for impact.
SO,,Reports At This Moment,,The Invasion is Beginning ,,on Ukraine..After Many Hours Of Cyber Warfare To nshut Defense and Ofnse Systems Down,,As It Now Approaches Dawn,,Now over there,,I Imagine A DDAY Type Invasion,,But Mostly With Air Assaults..and The Book from the 101st,, Im Sure Pat Is Considering the Possilbily on That..I Believe IT will Be ddiirectly INTO KIEV..
That Is PUTINS FOCUS,,LASERED IN..His PASSION….His Moment to MAKE RIGHT..The Injustice He Believes To Have BEEN Done,,And HIS Sincere Belief,
That It IS HIS DESTINY,,And MOMENT Toi Right That Wrong..For RUSSIA
IMPERIAL RUSSIA,,Before The REVOLUTION..And That EAGLE FAAG That PAT OSTED..Was BANNED FOR many Years, By The Communist..Until Recently..Today ..I Studied The Whole Long History of That FLAG,,Where and HOW U Was Created and Began,,
In KIEV,,,,1400 To 1600,,By The Royal Dynasty There..
Now..I Watch,,and Believe That,,Is PUTINS MOTIVE..
TARGET KIEV..
Maybe Putin made a bad move …
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10547573/Ukraine-strikes-Kievs-troops-shoot-five-helicopters-Putins-forces-losses.html
Slava Ukraina!
Origion,,Greece,,And The BYZENTINE,,Empire.
into The Areas Of Ukraine..Then Into Ukraine later On
Mostly KIEV,,Through Royal Marriages.Much Like Euroe Has Done,,
we should Hope and Pray,,Sincerely…There Is NOT One Mishap The Brings NATO Into
This WAR.,And Armageddon It Will ONLY take ONE Excuse,,..
JT
I Anticipate Paratroopers any time..into KIEV..
I HJust Surrenders,,