4/9/23: Sunday Mailbag Answers Extravaganza
Hello, all. Welcome back to the reader’s mailbag. Grab a drink, strap in, and enjoy the ride. Here are the promised answers to all your pressing questions.
Let’s begin!
1
What should the Fed and government do to avoid a catastrophe?
Well, our first question has nothing to do with the Ukrainian situation, per se. But I might as well answer anyway and see if I can tie into it.
The question is vague in referring to a catastrophe, which I can only assume refers to the monetary/financial breakdown currently going on.
To be honest, there’s not much they can do. I’ve written about previously how the U.S.’s entire monetary system and stability exists on the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of its currency being the world reserve currency.
However, right now we’re experiencing the strongest de-dollarization in history. Every day there’s a new headline about some new deal being struck between major countries to begin trading in native currencies.
The way out of any problem for the U.S. has always been to simply print more money. The reason this hasn’t affected them much is because due to the ‘exorbitant privilege’, the inflation generated by all that printing is ultimately spread around the entire globe evenly, due to the dollar being the global reserve. So, the U.S. can print money forever to pay off its problems, and then every other country is forced to buy those dollars in order to transact in their economies, so those dollars don’t stay ‘on the books’ inside the U.S.
And the biggest, of course, is Saudi Arabia growing increasingly closer to trading its oil in non-dollar currencies as well. Not to mention the already inherent problem, as others have mentioned, of the Triffin paradox.
So, how can U.S. itself avoid fiscal disaster? Well, the only way it can delay it is by ensuring that the rest of Europe falls harder than the U.S., so that by comparison at least U.S. will stay supreme. And it appears to be carrying this plan out fairly well as Germany is slowly de-industrializing and UK/France’s economies are circling the bowl as well.
Of course, what the Fed should do is immediately cease all war funding, cut its massive military budget to a tiny fraction, and this would go a long way towards staving off collapse. But of course, they won’t do that.
Most people aren’t aware of this fact: the huge U.S. ‘GDP’ numbers are always thrown around, you know the $20-25 trillion amount, which always makes the U.S. economy look endless and makes one feel like it can endure any amount of spending. But the GDP number is not the actual governmental budget. The GDP number is just an empty calculation of all transactions that transpired in the country over the course of the year. Every purchase and sale, all the things with no meaning.
The actual, real governmental federal budget as collected from U.S. taxpayer funds in the U.S., as enumerated by the ‘federal revenue’ has been typically in the $3-4 trillion range. And out of that number, we’re now edging towards $1 trillion as just the defense/military budget, alone.
And out of that military budget, as you can see below, the vast majority of it goes on “overseas contingency operations”, which is another way of saying, the upkeep of the U.S. Empire’s infamous 900 global military bases.
So what’s my point? That if the U.S. stopped its blood-thirsty Imperialism/Manifest Destiny/Wolfowitzism, then it would go a long way towards bringing back the economy from the brink of collapse.
But don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Even Desantis appears to be a anti-Russia/China warhawk which means were he to be elected, we’d likely continue the same neocon military adventurism, so there appears no end in sight and the only way U.S. can save its own economic dominance, and therefore its economy, is by somehow stopping China’s rise and the attendant de-dollarization that’s likely to come with that.
2
What exactly is a Russian victory going to look like? How could Russia actually enforce any terms such as demilitarization or denazification on Ukraine without occupying at least all of Ukraine including Kiev? Would the US ever agree to stop funding and equipping even a rump Ukraine? Even if there is a peace deal, won't there always be the threat of NATO/Ukrainian raids in the new territories.
Yes, everything you said is accurate. However, the quickest and most direct path towards these objectives, that doesn’t require the occupation of the entire country, is by Russia dealing a crushing military blow to the main portion of the AFU resulting in its military collapse and surrender.
This could conceivably happen in such a way where ‘patriot’ generals can no longer stand seeing the death of their men, and carry out a military coup over Zelensky’s regime, and then effect an unconditional surrender to Russia.
After the unconditional surrender, Russian ‘peacekeepers’ would takeover and patrol the entire territory of Ukraine without resistance, to quell any insurgencies/guerilla activity.
Although this method itself may not feel likely to some, it still seems the likeliest out of the other choices, to me. Because, as I’ve written about at length before, the total incremental military takeover of a continually resisting Ukraine, would be an incredibly long slog. And despite the bluster you hear from their side—about their refusal to ever surrender, about U.S./EU’s endless funding, about their having a bottomless well of troops to draw from forever—the fact of the matter is, no country can continue indefinitely while suffering the types of losses Ukraine is suffering.
Only days ago, a new spate of articles, such as one by NYTimes, now began spotlighting how ‘difficult’ the recruiting has become for Ukraine. And new videos attest to this as we see increasingly strongarmed tactics being used, like a video from yesterday in the Rive region of Ukraine which reportedly shows 50 cop cars surrounding a village and demanding mass conscription from the male residents:
The fact of the matter is, right now the entire Ukrainian army is subsisting on the morale siphoned from the ostensible support of U.S./NATO, and the belief that an endless flood of the latest, most advanced systems will continue keeping them afloat.
However, as we’ve seen in the recent leaks, the weapons are much less than expected, and supplies are dwindling. So, one scenario could be that, if Russia were to crush the coming large UA offensive(s), destroying a large part of their new Western armaments in the process, and if support continues to wane to the extent that there is no more ‘huge’ shipments of tanks and APCs—which is possible, due to the West depleting what they’re able to give—then the mood and morale could shift very dramatically by the end of this year.
A new Russian offensive that comes after the destroyed UA counter-offensive could be the final nail in the coffin in their morale. So by next year, it’s possible they could face a situation where the top generals are ready to stage a coup and surrender to prevent further slaughter, particularly at the behest of Russian intel mediaries who will offer them amnesty or other perks to lay down their arms.
I’m not saying that’s what will happen necessarily, I’m simply saying as of right now, that type of outcome is more likely than Russia spending 5 years chasing a shrinking UA army towards the Polish border as the ‘Rump State’ continues to carry on. To me it’s more likely that once a certain critical point of losses is reached, compounded by a critical point where it becomes evident that no further amount of Western ‘wunderwaffen’ can save them, then the sentiment will shift rapidly and dramatically.
And as for the question of how does Russia enforce demilitarization/denazification after UA’s surrender? That’s simple: Russia will install a new pro-Russian government, led by someone like Medvedchuk or even Yanukovich, who was rumored to return in the event of a Russian victory (rumored by the Ukrainian side, that is). This new government will obviously replace all ministers and military leaders/generals with those who share the new alignment, and these leaders from the top down will be charged with purging all the ranks of the army of Nazi’s, Russophobes, etc. The new appointed generals will carry out de-militarization as per surrender accords/agreements, and in the future Russian/Belarusian peacekeepers will likely remain at key areas in the country as they do in Syria, Armenia, Abkhazia, etc., to make sure no new resistance elements begin gaining strength, and to further enforce the blockade of any new weapons shipments from the West, etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Wagner too continued to be stationed in the country, for security purposes.
So the ‘Rump State’ will remain, but it will be ruled by someone puppeteered by Russia (or at the least friendly towards them) just as the current state is ruled by a U.S.-puppeteered regime.
But if you want to read more in detail about possible projections of how a continued military campaign towards the West of Ukraine could unfold (should UA refuse to surrender, and continue resisting), and what major challenges it faces, you can read these two previous articles:
3
1. In what sane world does Poland and Ukraine's current kissy-fest square up with the slaughter of Poles by Ukrainian Nazis, and the loss of Polish lands to Ukraine, by USSR edict ?
As to the first question, it’s clear that Poland is just seizing opportunity, and taking advantage of the situation to strengthen its position in a variety of ways. It doesn’t actually care about Ukraine, and most Poles don’t care about Ukrainians, to put it lightly.
Poland sees the writing on the wall, the slow fall of Germany from power, the destabilization of the EU, and there it sees a huge opportunity to become ascendant as perhaps the premiere European power. Everything it is doing is from this perspective.
In regard to Ukraine, it wants to be the country that’s ‘relied on’ by both Ukraine and West, so that it can use that generated goodwill as currency. Certainly, Poland intends to take the Ukrainian lands in the West, and it is using the crisis as a way to pump its own MIC full of Western arms. But more than that, it wants to become the central hub, the omphalos of all of NATO.
Poland has a lot in common with Turkey in that regard. Turkey became a very strategically critical part of NATO because of its position on the Bosporous, a key transit point that holds immense power to thwart entire empires. Similarly, Poland is at a key crux point of Europe, a bastion sitting at the crossroads of the Suwalki corridor by which NATO can gravely threaten Russia’s strategic interests in Kaliningrad, etc.
Poland is milking this status from every conceivable direction to ascend as the next European superpower. Ukraine is nothing more than leverage and a stepping stool to attain this, and even the new lands to be reacquired from Ukraine are nothing more than a piece to the overall plan, but not the end goal itself. The end goal is of far greater import and scale than even the reacquisition of those ancestral lands.
The ultimate end goal is for Poland to use its new geostrategic importance to force NATO into investing everything into Poland to become a bulwark against the Russian specter. This would allow Poland to be flooded with new investments/money for years to build it up, which Poland will then use its new power to begin throwing around its weight geostrategically and economically, with the end goal of perhaps taking over the entire EU (taking Germany’s pole position), and eventually even grander designs. Long-term perhaps, Poland would even strive towards recreating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to slowly grow into a true superpower once more.
After all, top establishment media has been clamoring for it lately. This article is just from days ago:
The fact is, in an era of increasing division and tensions, an era that promises to be ruled by ‘blocs’, it is a natural evolution that the direction of most countries will drift more and more towards the formulation of these ‘blocs’ simply for the sake of survival, or perceived survival, in the face of greater threats. This creates an upward spiral where each other country sees its adversary forming more powerful ‘blocs’, and therefore seeks to form/join its own ‘bloc’ as protection.
So just as Russia’s ‘Union State’ with Belarus grows closer and closer to fruition, which will soon bring the total reunification of the two in the coming years, this creates a major threat on the Polish border, as it is now essentially Russia itself on the Polish border—for instance, just look at the new decision to place Russian nukes there. So this will drive Poland to even greater needs of security, and so it escalates upward.
So yes, I do believe the ultimate long-term goal for Poland is what I outlined, with the coming re-absorption of west Ukraine being just a small first step in the ultimate designs.
2. What odds do you give Zelenski for surviving if/when Russia finishes their SMO? Will he get the Shah treatment sans the cancer, or will it be more convenient for the U.S. to have his bodyguards accidentally shoot him ?
As for Zelensky, I believe the same tried and true tactics of the CIA will likely continue; it’s what they’re comfortable with. I.e. they will probably use him to form a ‘government in exile’ headquartered somewhere outside of Ukraine, and he’ll be pumped up as the chief ‘opposition figure’ to whoever Russia installs as the new “illegitimate president” of rump Ukraine.
With that said, your second option could be possible. U.S. can off him and blame Russia for it to generate max outrage during a key orchestrated falseflag moment. Many previous leaders get kept as assets and reused elsewhere because they have some kind of useful talent, ability, resources/connections—like being a rich business baron, for instance, in the case of Poroshenko, etc.
But Zelensky is really a useless, wretched figure. I’m not sure he has much use for them due to the fact that his ‘optics’ are really bad, as the world can clearly see what kind of burned out drug addict he is. So for instance, it wouldn’t do well for them to recycle him into some sort of EU/UN role, like they do with so many other of these technocrats who have actual oratory skills or at least are presentable in the sense of projecting a certain glossy image, an authoritative presence.
But Zelensky projects none of that, he’ll probably just escape to Israel where his parents are holed up, and fall back on his blow/dope addiction. From time to time, they’ll parade him around the world to give incendiary speeches against Putin/Russia, ship him around on press tours, but ultimately he’ll fall into obscurity and irrelevance.
4
I am astonished at how strong the "liberal" anti-Slavic. anti-Russian movement is in Russia, among Russians. What are the cultural factors and what could Putin do to counter it? I just published an article on liberal political theories and philosophy, because the term has many variations. Go to Search For Truth News on Stack.
In terms of ‘cultural factors’, liberalism in Russia has a long history dating back to basically being copied from the French Revolution of 1789. The entire 1800’s in Russia were marked as a long pitched battle between the new Russian liberal class and the authoritarians and other factions.
This was metaphorically evoked in the classic Russian ‘Fathers and Sons’ novel of the 1860’s, where the ‘Fathers’ is typically interpreted as standing for liberals, battling for control with the ‘Sons’, which are the nihilists.
This culminated through various liberal movements of the 1800’s, marked by people like Chernyshevsky who was amongst the chief influences on Lenin and the later Bolshevik movement. Their aim was typically socialist in nature, and the expansion of rights for citizens, serfs, more democratic control, less authoritarian power for the Tsars, etc.
So basically, the liberalism strain has a long history for Russia dating back to the early 1800’s. Of course, this is classical liberalism, which is not quite the same as modern social neoliberalism.
It’s well known that NGO’s are the chief vessel by which the West spreads its new forms of neoliberalism into Russia. However, the true most potent weapon in their arsenal, and one that is hardest to weed out, is the higher education / university system.
You see, Russia is arguably the most educated country in the world, in terms of pure numbers of people with degrees and tertiary education:
Not to mention one of the highest literacy rates in the world at something like 99.8%. So, this means that a lot of people go through the university system, more than any other country. And the problem is, universities in virtually every country are not only hives of neoliberalism, because academia is generally where liberalism breeds to begin with, it is the hatching laboratory thereof. But, as most know, universities are highly interconnected even trans-nationally due to their nature of openness and the importance of ‘sharing knowledge’ from the standpoint of education and learning.
Universities not only have endless types of exchange programs, where students from various European countries come to Russia and vice versa, but there’s an endless amount of cross-pollination, mutual collaboration between different programs, professors, research centers, etc. It goes on and on.
So my point is that, the higher education / university system is really one of the fundamental societal ‘leaks’ where Western indoctrination is able to flow unhindered into Russia by osmosis; it’s one of the chief portals and conduits for Western ideals, thinking, and ‘progressivism’ hatched in some academic thinktank to rub off on young idealistic and impressionable Russian youth.
And unfortunately, as per your question of how to staunch this, unlike in the arena of NGO’s, where Putin has done a ton of work and has basically crushed them entirely with a series of laws and regulations, such as forcing foreign NGO’s to register as foreign agents and a variety of other implementations. Unlike that—the academia problem is quite intractable by comparison, because there is simply no easy remediable way to excise Western brainwashing without sequestering all Russian higher learning institutions in such a way as to silo them entirely in the manner of North Korea, or something like that. This however would have a deleterious effect which would probably outweigh the benefits.
The bigger issue is the fact that Russian people view themselves as European to the extent that they share similar cultural perspectives, unlike for instance, the Chinese people. So this makes Western ideals of neoliberal progressivism much more easy to rub off on Russians as opposed to Chinese. As an example, Chinese tastes in music are different, whereas Russian pop music in many ways is similar to European pop music. So this makes the Russian audience much more suggestible towards the types of ideals and philosophies being espoused in European music, whereas the Chinese are immune to this, because that music to begin with is not very similar to their tastes.
For instance, take the example of rap and hip hop. Many Russian youths love it and therefore fall victim to the ideals espoused in it, whereas if you played the same Western rap/hip-hop video to someone in China, they would much more likely be repulsed, and therefore the potential cultural ‘influence’ inherent to that particular music/video would have no effect, as the Chinese person would be immune to it. They are simply too culturally different to be affected by the European ‘culture’, while Russians don’t have that advantage; the Russian-European cultures are adjacently related such that it’s very easy for ‘cultural seep’ to influence Russian youth with the types of neoliberalism being propagated in all Western ‘culture’.
For instance, here’s how China has combated this cultural seep:
They have banned tattoos and hip-hop from being prominently displayed on television. Yet such a thing wouldn’t work in Russia because the cultures are already so similar, and Russian culture so much more infiltrated and contaminated by the Western ‘values’, that such a ban by Putin would result in too much societal disruption.
However, to further answer your question about what can be done by Putin to counter it. He has worked towards countering it in ‘softer’ ways. For instance, on the same topic of music/culture, Putin has strived to promote more traditional and patriotic artists, over the liberal, anti-Russian ones.
The freak named “Morgenshtern”, for instance, who was Russia’s #1 music artist in popularity and sales was softly ‘pushed out’, forced to flee and now living in Dubai:
While at the same time, Russian patriotic artist ‘Shaman’ is given maximum exposure and platform, including performing next to Putin himself on the Red Square
Putin has long formed programs of promoting traditionalism and families, from paying families to have more children, to organizing singles ‘camps’ where people can go meet other people to hopefully form relationships and procreate.
So there’s a lot of softer actions Russia takes, but it remains a systemic problem in the sense that many Russian businessmen, oligarchs, etc., view integration with Europe as the future, due to the greater business opportunities and profits they can reap. So they will always push for policies resulting in Russia’s ‘liberalization’ in order to create rapprochement or re-integration into Europe.
There is not too much that can be done with this other than continued economic substitutions and re-orienting Russia’s economy towards the East so that perhaps one day these oligarchs are making enough profits from the East to satisfy themselves, and cease their desperate attempts to turn back towards liberal Europe.
Ultimately, it’s hard to judge just how large the liberal contingent is, but it may be overblown by Western sources/media. After all, a recent poll just came out showing Putin’s approval rating still remaining sky high at over 80%. And in fact a new MSM article just two days ago bemoaned how Putin’s approval rating in the U.S. has grown to the highest ever:
Ultimately, I think it shows that what Putin and Russia are currently doing will likely achieve the needed effect: they can sit back and watch liberalism destroy itself, as it appears to be currently doing.
5
How the current situation could fit, if any, in the in-famous Deagel 2025 report appeared few years ago?
I assume you’re referring to the infamous 70% population reduction report for the U.S. and Europe by the year 2025. In some ways the current situation could theoretically fit into that specific timeline very well.
The reason for that is twofold:
Firstly, there’s a U.S. Army internal Fort Benning report from 2017 which I’ve published several times before, which is an analysis of how a U.S. Army BCT (Brigade Combat Team) can successfully combat a Russian equivalent BTG (Battalion Tactical Group).
You can check the link I provided above, and see that it is an official military .mil Fort Benning report. And for some reason, here is what they forecast inside the report, which you can see for yourself:
“It is likely that [U.S. Army] BCTs will have to defeat Russian Army units…in the near future (before 2025).”
So, as far back as 2017, the U.S. Army foresaw having to go to war with Russia by 2025. The likely reason for this is because they knew they themselves were creating the situation in Ukraine that would lead to that. For instance, we now know that the Minsk Accords were done only to buy Ukraine time, as admitted by many Western politicians like the new leak from France’s Hollande, so it was self-evident to them that once the war begins and Russia crushes Ukraine, there may come a time the U.S. might have to step in.
But I found it interesting that the selfsame 2025 date is used by the U.S. Army.
And now, the second thing was only a month or so ago, new headlines reported that the U.S. Army now predicts war with China by….you guessed it, 2025 again.
So, what is it about this 2025 date that the elites appear to be signaling to us as a potential WW3 scenario?
One notion is that, as I’ve stated before, I believe the democrats may have to tone down the war in 2024 in the runup to the elections, and may try to force a new Minsk style peace. However, once the new president is inaugurated in January 2025, he’ll be clear to start massive new provocations against both Russia and China, as his or her term will be secure.
So logically, they could be projecting/gaming a new term president in 2025 restarting the dormant conflicts and a major global war breaking out. This could be added to internal U.S. intel projections that China will be re-armed and ready by that point to take Taiwan, for instance.
Either way, I personally don’t put much stock in “Deagel’s” prediction, as it is merely some random site on the net, and I have no idea why its predictions created such histrionic outcries. My understanding is that it’s not an “official” site of any sort, just a random guy’s blog in a sense.
I’m more tickled by the fact that Deagel appears to mirror a lot of things I said in the recent Russia-Economic article:
Not only does Deagel have the current power rankings of global countries as follows:
But even writes this, in almost perfect concord with what I wrote in my article:
For example, several years ago Dagong, the Chinese ratings agency, published a report analyzing the physical economy of the States comparing it with those of China, Germany and Japan. The conclusion was that the US GDP was something between $5 to $10 trillion instead of $15 trillion as officially reported by the USG. We assume that the official data, especially economic, released by governments is fake, cooked or distorted in some degree. Historically it is well known that the former Soviet Union was making up fake statistics years before its collapse. Western as well as other countries are making up their numbers today to conceal their real state of affairs. We are sure that many people out there can find government statistics in their own countries that by their own personal experience are hard to believe or are so optimistic that may belong to a different country.
But getting back to the question, a series of establishment articles in the past year or so have made great strides in trying to convince us that China will launch its long-awaited Taiwan invasion around the 2025-2027 timeline:
The most important thing to remember is that when the U.S. establishment makes such ‘predictions’, they are generally telegraphing and projecting their own intentions. For instance, if/when U.S. years ago would say that Russia will soon launch its invasion in Ukraine, what they really meant was that “we will soon begin pulling the levers on our side, which will cause Russia to invade Ukraine.”
We know, for instance, that Russia finally chose to invade last year after U.S. simply ordered its Ukrainian puppets to begin massively escalating strikes on Donbass. The war came on exactly the timeline that U.S. engineered.
Thus, these 2025-2027 timelines will happen the same way. China has no reason or even desire to ‘invade Taiwan’ unless absolutely necessary. China is committed to regaining Taiwan in a diplomatic and political fashion, and fully believes that reunification will come in that way. However, China is preparing for war nonetheless because it knows that U.S. will push it into invading Taiwan in the same way they pushed Russia into Ukraine.
And there is a variety of easy ways U.S. will do this. Obviously by beginning to supply major arms to Taiwan, and other provocations. It will get to a point where China will have no choice. The point is that—the timeline belongs entirely to the U.S. establishment, CIA, etc., as it did in the Ukraine war. So if they’re telling us something big will happen in 2025-2027 it’s likely because they’re planning to initiate that ‘something’ in that period.
Do I think a nuclear holocaust will happen that will reduce the world’s population by 70% in 2025-2027? No, probably not. Do I think there’s a chance of that happening? Of course. China has recently announced that it will be tripling/quadrupling its nuclear stockpiles from the current 300+ to over 1000 by 2035. Russia, too, is getting doctrinally closer and closer to using nukes should the U.S. continue to encroach on its red lines in Ukraine.
The chance of some form of nuclear use happening in Ukraine within the next year or two is low but is a non-zero chance, maybe 5-10%, but it is growing.
6
What are the possible replies to Finland joining NATO?
There’s already certain rudimentary/doctrinal, i.e. “automatic” responses that are already taking place, such as the repositioning of certain key strategic systems, like Russian mobile nukes closer to Finland’s border. This video shows one such Yars missile positioning in Vyborg, near the border.
Doctrinally speaking, of course, Russia will also likely now retarget some of its strategic nuclear siloed ICBMs at key facilities in Finland. This is simply an ‘automatic’ decision based on common sense written into the doctrine.
The borders in general will be strengthened with a lot more systems of various kinds, from radar, missiles, and EW jamming. The reason being that now that Finland is ‘NATO’ territory, that means NATO reconnaissance assets will now use Finnish airspace to monitor Russian territory. So they will be countered in kind.
The biggest threat for Finland’s accession into NATO, however, is the plan to block Russian ships, or box Russia in, in the Gulf of Finland. Estonia has already been champing at the bit to do this for a while. A series of articles from earlier this year attest:
At the same time, and just as provocative, Estonian authorities discussed an introduction of a 24 nautical mile coastal zone in the Gulf of Finland to limit the navigation of Russian ships.
Finland and Estonia’s contiguous maritime zones in the gulf are already such that it creates only a tiny passage in the center that is free for ‘international’ travel.
So the main provocations that will happen from here on out will involve joint Finnish-Estonian attempts to blockade Russian shipping from getting to Kaliningrad. This is obviously in the same ‘RAND’-style playbook which they used last year in goading Lithuania into blockading Russian rail access to Kaliningrad. In that case, they backtracked after Russian threats. But the provocations will continue in the future along all these axes.
Unfortunately, there’s not much way for Russia to ‘reply’ here preemptively. Russia has no choice but to simply continue strengthening the areas bordering Finland, along with the previously mentioned doctrinal augmentations.
Apart from this Gulf of Finland scenario and the fact that NATO recon assets will now be able to fly alongside the Finnish-Russian border, there is not much else in near-term threats from Finland joining NATO. It just goes to show, as I wrote earlier, that the current era will be marked by the increasing entrenchment of nations in various ‘blocs’. With the increase of NATO, Russia will be pushed into ever-more fervent pursuits of enlarging and increasing the power of its own blocs.
Ukraine plays into this, as one of the allegedly ‘leaked’ recent Russian peace outlines, showed that on top of demilitarization and denazification, Russia would also require Ukraine to rejoin the CIS. As many know, the CIS is really the spiritual successor to the USSR in the sense that it was signed at the same time as the dissolution of the USSR, and was meant to be a sort of ‘USSR-lite’, more palatable for the now ‘independent’ but still-linked nations.
7
Thanks again Sim for your fine work and very informative articles !! a few questions, for now...
How serious do you think the impact of the Kinzahl hit on the Ukro/Nato C&C bunker near Lviv a while back will be?
It’s difficult to say because there is no way to truly ascertain how factual any of those events were, and what the actual damage dealt was. But if it did actually happen and resulted in the loss of important NATO staff, then I think it certainly will have a major impact in terms of at least how many people NATO covertly keeps in Ukraine. Because in that case it will have been a statement by Russia, a redrawing and emphasis on its red line.
Unfortunately, the type of consequences that would ensue from that will be very difficult for us to truly judge or see, as most of this is very clandestine, ‘behind the scenes’ type stuff.
But part of analysis, of course, is reading between the lines and extrapolating events so we’ll see in the future as more information hopefully becomes available to give us more insight.
Russell Bentley posted this article recently,
and I find the likelihood of a successful Ukro offensive towards the Donetsk or Gorlovka cities to be small, even if the distances from the current frontlines are short. But he does mention the possible accumulation of drones and chemical weapons by the Ukro-Nazis, in the theater, which I find quite disturbing.
Do you think the UkroNazis would really use chemical weapons in a big way, in some coming offensive?
If they did cause lot's of, especially civilian, casualties with them, would there not be serious repercussions from their Nato masters?
I did see that article a week or two ago, and it does make some good points that are hard to argue. There is nothing absolutely fundamentally/principally wrong with the theories, per se.
The only thing is, the 200k+ number for the troops is really high. Today Prigozhin likewise quoted 200-400k, but that’s likely a gross over-estimation.
Many Russian sources have been tracking the developments of these new brigades for months, and have estimated in the 80-120k range at the most. As seen in the new leaks the other day—if they are real—they show only “12 credible brigades” being possible for the new grand counter-offensive. 12 brigades would be at most 60,000 men, and possibly even much less.
It’s impossible for us to know for certain, as deliberate attempts to mislead us with maskirovka could be at play here. But my point is that, if the numbers end up being on the lower end of the scale, then such major breakthroughs, with drone swarms or not, are hard to imagine in heavy population centers of Donetsk, etc.
Russell is clearly personally invested in this because he lives in Donetsk, so it’s natural for him to play up the threat as much as possible out of fear for his own family; that’s understandable.
And yes I reported on the Taiwan drone swarms a week or two ago, but it’s likely not something that will be a game changer in those numbers. As for chemical attacks, I personally doubt they’ll use them ‘en masse’ in the new offensive, particularly since if it’s a lightning fast offensive as they intend it to be, they will have to go through all the zones they are ‘poisoning’ with the chemicals, so they’ll be poisoning themselves.
Also the risk for international outrage is quite high for them to use them en masse; the risk vs. reward is just not good enough as you implied.
Another way of looking at it is, would trying to take Gorlovka or Donetsk give them the type of huge psychological/moral or strategic victory as cutting off Crimea would?
Let’s say, hypothetically, they take Gorlovka and Donetsk. Now what? They are entrenched in two cities where they will now be surrounded in heavy grinding urban combat that will merely attrition their forces. It would be a big psychological victory, I suppose. But a strategic one? How would it bring them closer to actual victory of the entire war for them to bog themselves down in big urban fights in the center of the largest conurbation of the entire Donbass?
To me, there simply isn’t the same strategic pay off as there would be in cutting off all of Crimea for Russia, which would be an absolutely unthinkable and major geopolitical coup de grace. In some ways, Russia would probably love for them to do what Bentley outlines. It will keep Crimea safe forever as Ukraine will waste their entire new reserves by basically smashing their head against the iron door of the highly fortified Donetsk region.
At the end of the day though, is what he outlines possible? In terms of the drones, chem weapons, and assault on Donetsk region. It could be—like I said the reasoning is fairly sound. But like with everything, it’s about weighing the risks/rewards, and to me the risk/reward structure of that is not as enticing as going after Crimea.
The drones are definitely going to be happening, but Russia has been preparing a ton of new EW systems everywhere and UA is having greater and greater difficulty using their drones, so I don’t foresee this being a gamechanger.
Ultimately, Russia has reserves also, if Ukraine redirected their Bakhmut forces to Donetsk/Gorlovka then Russia could easily do the same. Wagner could swing south from Bakhmut and meet the new army there in no time flat.
8
Last time you shared the Mediazona website with the breakdowns of the casualties of the Russians, much appreciated that brought quite some clarity. Is there also something like that for the UkrArmy?
Unfortunately, no. The Russian MoD updates its version of UA losses in their briefings, which the last I recall they state AFU’s killed in action as somewhere around 69,000 or more. But to my knowledge no one has done a chart in the same way, simply because the Russian side doesn’t care as much since they know UA’s casualties are astronomically higher.
It says a lot though, doesn’t it, that the same ‘unbiased’ institutions put that much effort into creating charts for every soldier of Russia’s losses, but don’t do the same for Ukraine. I wonder why.
The closest thing we have, is some experts on Twitter attempted to independently create charts for AFU losses of various armor/vehicle types, but it chiefly uses Oryx’s unreliable data:
Another question that goes back to quite the beginning of the smo, regarding the rougly 30t of radioactive material taken/securing (by the russians) from the zaporizhzhia power plant, was that correct? And were the ukrainiens really insisting of producing some sort of bomb out of that?
Yes, Rafael Grossi, the chief inspector for the international nuclear agency IAEA himself stated this. 30 tons of plutonium and 40 tons of enriched uranium to be exact, for 70t total.
However, whether they would actually be able to produce a bomb out of that is quite questionable, as you need a lot more than just nuclear reactor fuel.
But, it also depends what is meant by a ‘bomb’. For instance, an actual nuclear bomb that creates a fission/fusion reaction takes a lot more effort and I doubt they’d be able to build that in a timely manner.
But there are also ‘dirty bombs’, which is a conventional bomb but uses radioactive material in the effort of spreading it around and simply causing mass radioactive contamination. They could do that easily; it would simply spread the radioactive dust from the plutonium/uranium and contaminate/poison everything, but won’t have the same released ‘nuclear energy’ of a true atomic bomb.
But with 70tons of material, you can create a gigantic amount of dirty bombs to contaminate/poison massive amounts of people/territory.
Russell Bentley has previously claimed to have secret info that Russian forces actually recovered a full tactical nuclear weapon in the first days of the invasion: VIDEO 1.
One might think it improbable, but several captured UA POWs have seemingly hinted at similar things: VIDEO 2, VIDEO 3.
The much bigger danger and probability, to me, is the AFU carrying out a nuke attack/falseflag not with a direct nuclear weapon but simply by destroying a nuclear power plant, such as the Zaporozhe one, and presumably blaming Russia for it. They’ve obviously already shelled the plant many times, even hitting the containment building where the reactor sits. And some Ukrainian figures outright have called for this exact type of action: VIDEO 4, VIDEO 5.
Also Nuland admitted last year that there were biolabs in ukraine, any details around those?
I hope you don't mind me digging further, what about organ markets and disapearing children, is this all happening in ukraine too still or even more?
Just two days ago actually, Russia presented new testimony of U.S.’s biolabs in Ukraine. Scroll down this Twitter thread you can see many of the documents the Russian side presented:
Along with this RT article about it, where they state that the U.S. has restarted biolab efforts. The Russian side has been steadily releasing tons of evidence to the UN about these, including all the names of the U.S. employees and companies involved. Even though the UN and other Western countries don’t care, and turn a blind eye to it, at least it’s all on record now. And Russia has managed to get China’s interest, as China released several statements urging for the investigation of it.
The above article states that all U.S. biolab activity was paused at the start of the conflict, but recently they have ‘quietly resumed’ their work.
“Now, the project has been resumed with focus on renewal of legislative support, revision of training schedule, as well as conclusion and resumption of construction work,” the Ukrainian-language protocol stated, citing Jacobs/CH2M’s David Smith.
As for the child and organ trafficking, I do think it’s happening en masse. Every month we have new evidence piling up of all sorts of such grisly activities. Presumably you’ve seen this infamous video: VIDEO 1.
And I reported weeks ago how dozens or hundreds of soldier’s bodies were allegedly found in a Polish mine in a border town near Ukraine, many of them appearing to have organs removed. It wasn’t clear if they were Polish mercenaries or Ukrainian soldiers, but they apparently had their organs harvested and were dumped in a mine shaft.
Lastly any links that help explain what was really going on in ukraine in 2004 with the orange revolution? That would be great.
Thank you so much for putting a lot of useful and well researched info into your writings.
As for good links about the Orange Revolution specifically, I don’t know any off the top of my head, but as with last time, I’ll crowd source this info by asking anyone who has a good link to post it in the comments, so hopefully you will get some good suggestions.
9
This is going Nuclear. What thoughts Simp
Simple and elegant, and the question comes right on the heels of Trump’s new urgent post on his ‘Truth Social’ account:
In general, I do think there’s a chance things can go nuclear eventually, but for now the chance remains low. Plenty hardliners in Russian society have called for nukes to be used, and Russia has allegedly modified its doctrine in recent months to make such usage possible in more types of circumstances, for instance a ‘mass casualty event’ of Russian citizens, or an attack on ‘critical Russian infrastructure’. This is clearly meant as a red line warning for Ukraine to not engage in terror strikes deep in Russian territory against critical power plants, defense industries, etc.
Also, there was the following recent report:
A new type of special military operation, which involves, among other things, the use of nuclear missile weapons, was announced and analyzed (download PDF (https://vm.ric.mil.ru/upload/site178/lCmCpEOiWw.pdf)) in the journal "Military Thought" of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation ("for generals, admirals and officers of the Russian Armed Forces). The material was prepared by the first deputy Commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Lieutenant General Fazletdinov and retired Colonel Lumpov.
The article reports that the US military-political course towards the Russian Federation is becoming increasingly aggressive and the US plans to defeat our country in the form of a "strategic (global) multi-sphere operation" - the ultimate goal of which will be the destruction of Russia's deterrent nuclear potential.
"The main instrument of deterrence...there may be (already) an operation of strategic deterrence forces (OSSS) under active development, the content of which may be the operations of all components of the Russian Armed Forces equipped with strategic offensive (nuclear and non–nuclear) weapons," the article says.
In short, it appears to be a presentation of a doctrinal awareness in the Russian general staff, that the U.S. intends to truly cripple Russia and its nuclear deterrent capabilities, and that therefore, this calls for Russia to create new doctrines where the usage of nuclear weapons appear to be more permissible.
From one article which covered this news:
The authors emphasized that the prevention of this aggression seems possible with a "convincing demonstration to the enemy" of the ability of the Russian Federation to ensure the fulfillment of the deterrence criterion at least at one of the stages of the mentioned operation of the North Atlantic Alliance. As Washington loses its leading position on the planet, the aggressiveness of the United States increases, including in relation to Moscow, which the Americans perceive as "the main culprit in the loss of world domination."
So it sounds to me like Russia is developing contingency plans to possibly set off a nuke to show U.S./NATO it’s not joking around. Many people have discussed this recently in the open in Russia, television shows, RYBAR, etc. They would like Russia to set off a tactical nuke at least somewhere unpopulated in the west of Ukraine to send a message.
Whether that’s realistic or not, the point is that clearly the nuclear angle is somewhat escalating. And keep in mind, one of the absolute red lines of a superpower, and Russia in particular, is attacking its nuclear strategic forces. Ukraine already arguably crossed this line by attacking Russia’s Engels and Dyagilevo bases where Tu-95’s and Tu-22M’s are stationed. This is arguably tantamount to launching a strike on a Russian ICBM silo facility.
So, as to the original question, as the conflict heats up I do think the chances of some nuke usage will continue going up. However, you must remember that this doesn’t mean a ‘full nuclear exchange’ and nuclear holocaust. Tactical nuclear weapons are completely different and, while they could lead, to a nuclear exchange theoretically, realistically there’s low chance of that.
In fact, if Russia set off a tactical nuke(s) by way of some short range system, like artillery, etc., the West would not even respond, other than bloviating very loudly—unless of course that nuke was sent to a NATO facility in Poland or something.
But that’s where my final thought leads: right now Ukraine is increasingly transferring its entire war industry to NATO territory. New articles just yesterday showed how the entirety of their tank repair facilities for T-64’s and everything else are shifting to the NATO rear. At some point, if this continues, Russia will have nearly nothing to hit in Ukraine as the AFU will virtually be a ‘cloud’ army, where only the cannon fodder exists in Ukraine itself and the actual underlying infrastructure is entirely located on NATO’s territory.
This could, down the line, lead to Russia being faced with no choice but to hit their facilities in Poland or elsewhere, and maybe even with a nuke to send a very peremptory message.
Likewise, there could be a point where NATO ‘suffocates’ Russia to such a degree, particularly vis a vis some of the things I mentioned earlier like the Finland/Estonia/Lithuania angle, that Russia may feel it’s left with no choice but to fire off a nuke as a very strong warning.
For now, though, the chances remain low. But we’ll see how the conflict continues to play out, if it continues on and NATO keeps doubling down, then the chances will steadily increase.
10
How long can the Collective West keep going on with it domination project? and How far can the Russian go after the much vaunted Spring counter offensive?
Project Ukraine is an imminent failure, Project Taiwan is rejected by the Taiwanese population, the Dollar is being drop left and right As we all know, their Economy is crumbling beyond repair, their industrial base is in no shape that can out match their main adversaries, their military doctrine is not applicable when fighting with a peer, their foreign policy of divide and conquer are being countered by regional player, years of identity war wages on their own population make them weak and vulnerable. Those at the top of the Western system is in hysteria mode, their lackey in the US gov can not even think straight anymore.
Well, you’re certainly right with your description of the West below. It’s hard to say how long they can continue at this rate. One look at their governance/societies makes the situation feel quite dire. Just look at the things currently happening in France, the endless protests and discontent in Netherlands and elsewhere. And how many European governments have crumbled and collapsed in the past year, yet the status quo continues on like a circus on wheels.
The entire collective West appears to only have one policy anymore: War. That’s it. Their leaders seem to discuss nothing other than that.
At the end of the day, though, don’t ever discount or underestimate the human ability to subsist. Human beings can carry on living in far worse conditions than what currently exist in the EU and elsewhere. When you ‘boil the frog’ slowly, you can get humans to accept shockingly destitute conditions. Just look how gleefully many Europeans jumped to orders to stop bathing, showering, heating their homes, etc., all to ‘spite Putin’.
So, despite how bad it may seem, I fear we’re no where even close to the bottom of the barrel that can be reached. The technocrat leaders will continue doing the same thing, the economies of the countries will continue their slow-disintegration, and the people will continue having short memories due to the ‘boiled frog’ effect, and will accept their ever-worsening conditions as normal.
It won’t come to a true head, in my view, until a global financial paradigm truly shifts, and that can only come when much more massive de-dollarization occurs to the point where the dollar is no longer the global reserve. But at the current rate, that likely still has a long way to go.
The problem is, even though there’s economic headwinds, they are somewhat counteracted by the fact that in times of trouble, most people try to take refuge in the most reliable currencies. And so while de-dollarization occurs on one hand in the East, on the other hand in the West more people cling to the ‘safe haven’ of the dollar due to negative trending economic conditions, thus ironically strengthening the dollar. This is why in some ways last year I believe the dollar was even more traded globally than previous years despite ongoing de-dollarization efforts.
So to answer the question, how long can the West go on doing what they’re doing? Probably much longer than we think. Maybe until about 2040-2050. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be greatly curtailed in their actions before then. Just look at what’s happening currently in Africa, as the imperialists get booted out. I just don’t think we’ll see truly major changes until at least the 2040+ era. By then, major realignments will have settled into new historical/generational trends, and burgeoning economic blocs will have had time to stretch their legs and truly develop a new path, their own new supply chains and the attendant relationships, etc.
With that said, we’ll likely never see the true end of the West’s attempts to control the globe. The banking cabal which controls the entire West will not give up their control freely, and so, barring a nuclear war that destroys all of humanity, they will forever continue attempting to subjugate and pillage, I simply think by the aforementioned period, they will have at least been curtailed enough such that they are truly counter-balanced by multipolarity.
11
1 - Insight into what Poland is up to with regard to Ukraine. Your take on what is known, but also your informed predictions on where it might lead.
This question I inadvertently already answered in great length on Question #3 above, so please reference that as I believe it covers it all.
2 - It seems like more than one EU leader is having troubles of one kind or another. Coincidence? Or is there an effort going on behind the scenes to push out leaders unable to further the "agenda"?
While you’re right about behind the scenes efforts, on the other hand many or most of the ones recently pushed out were in fact perfect globalist puppets. For instance, I don’t think Sanna Marin of Finland had any defects in terms of furthering the globalist agenda, she seemed the perfect shill, yet she was pushed out by a more ‘right wing’ candidate as I understand it.
And that is the trend it seems that simply more and more right wing sentiment is taking over, although ostensibly it appears they are no different. For instance, the new Finnish candidate Petteri Orpo is also staunchly pro-Ukraine.
However, one of the things I believe is happening, is that, since the globalists control the candidates so meticulously through their power over the media, they’re able to filter out anyone who is openly pro-Russia, etc. So the people simply end up voting for ‘the lesser of two evils’, i.e. someone who is still a warmonger, yet happens to be a nationalist, patriot, populist, etc.
The other recent example of this is Giorgia Meloni in Italy.
In Europe, presently, you basically cannot be pro-Russia and even be allowed to run. The biggest example of this I know of is Marine Le Pen in France. She was vocally pro-Russia but recently had to temper her convictions to stand a chance in the political scene, now appearing like this:
Basically, I think the people are trying their hardest to vote for someone who represents their interests, but the elites are doing their best to withhold ‘too extreme’ candidates from even participating in the democratic process. So the people end up putting in the ‘next best’ candidate.
With that said, there’s definitely behind the scenes efforts to get rid of anyone who doesn’t tote the line as you said.
12
[Truncated for length] What’s your best evidence that the Russian losses haven’t been anywhere as bad as claimed in the West?
In recent posts, you mentioned audits of Oryx, but didn’t include any links to them – could you post these please? [You mentioned them in the piece where you linked to a pro-AFU youtuber who paid for satellite images of RF tank depots].
I recently asked the Battlegrond Ukraine if they could think of any instances in military history where the ratio of losses on one side were ever in the claimed Ukraine ratio when artillery assets were stacked so heavily in the opposite direction. Of course they couldn’t, but still they plough on.
I didn’t post the main one for a while because the Twitter account which did a lot of audits of Oryx’s work ended up going private. However, just coincidentally he reactivated his account days ago.
As I recall, he’s a U.S. Army veteran, who was an artillery officer. He’s appeared on several of the large war podcasts last year, so if you’re interested you can dig into his work more. But he did a series over the course of months last year auditing chunks of Oryx’s work. It’s spread out so you can search his account for more, but I’ll link you one I could find:
https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1510054419299065859
And even though I’ve written on this before, I’ll re-state the major issues with Oryx’s list:
Tons of outright misattributions from unclear photos.
Tons of found photoshopped material. I.e. actual photos where you can see a Russian tank where a soldier standing in front of it was photoshopped out to make the tank look “abandoned”.
Tons of random photos of perfectly fine tanks which were taken by civilians driving by, which are then marked as ‘abandoned’ even though they’re not.
Tons of tanks in general marked as destroyed/abandoned when in reality Russia recovered them soon after the photo was taken.
Ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the armor losses are from LDPR, yet still calling them ‘Russian losses’. Sure, it’s technically all ‘Russia’ now, but 1) it’s disingenuous to call them losses of the actual Russian army and 2) when LDPR forces lost them, they were not part of Russia, as most of the losses occurred before September 2022, which is when Putin signed LDPR into law.
Ignoring the fact that even in the case of ‘captured’ tanks, Russia subsequently recaptured many of them. In fact there’s a few stories of tanks which switched hands 4 different times. Russia captured hundreds of Ukrainian tanks throughout the conflict, including a few large bases which alone had hundreds of pieces of armor, that’s not even counting all the battlefield captures.
I have a video on my channel of a Kherson armor depot captured by Russia that has over 200 armor pieces—tanks, artillery, and some APCs alone. I have to find it as Bitchute has a terrible search ability, if I find it I’ll post it.There are confirmed “double dips” in Oryx’s numbers where the same tank is listed as both destroyed and captured because one set of photos will show it as disabled so it’s put into the destroyed category. Then the next day, Ukraine recovers the tank and some other unit shows it in a photo as a ‘captured’ tank so now it’s jotted down in the ‘captured’ column, and voila—you now have 2x the tank losses. Repeat ad infinitum.
Huge amounts of the ‘destroyed tanks’ were actually recovered. For instance in the Ugledar losses they showed a bunch of Russian tanks implied to be ‘lost’, but later footage from the Russian side showed those tanks as having been recovered.
Hundreds of tanks are listed as “unknown”. If you actually click on their picture, most of them have no evidence whatsoever they are Russian tanks. We’re just supposed to take UA’s “word” on it. In reality the vast majority of them are likely Ukrainian. There’s over 300-350 in this category, which alone represents more than 15-20% of all claimed Russian tank losses.
Many tanks caught as Ukrainian but having spray painted a “Z” on it. I have a few confirmed videos of these on my bitchute channel. However, we can assume there’s way more of this as Ukraine had intelligence programs and departments specifically for inflating Russian losses and creating such fakes, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a huge portion of the losses on Oryx’s list actually fall into this category.
Here’s an example I just happened to see in passing yesterday. A T-64 placed under T-90. And guess whose T-64 that is? Likely LDPR’s or some volunteer battalion.
As for losses, I recently posted about how a very meticulous audit of Russian tank storage inventories proved Oryx’s numbers to be fraudulent as the numbers of tanks found being taken out of storage by way of satellite photos pales in comparison to what should be the case if Russia actually lost the amount Oryx claims.
And your comment on losses/artillery disparity is correct. No matter what the comical loss ratios the UA side claims, at the end of the day we know that POWs scales with losses. And POWs, as I recently explained in a past report, are the only metric that give us insight into the real loss ratios because POW is the only metric officially reported at one point or another by both sides. And not surprisingly, Ukraine had about 500-600 Russian POWs at a point when Russia had a confirmed 3000-5000, which quickly ballooned to 8000-10,000 (since this was right before the Mariupol/Azovstal situation where Russia took a total of ~5,000 POWs from Illich factory surrender, Azovstal surrender, and general Mariupol fights).
So, someone explain to me, how can you have a 5:1 or 10:1 POW disparity, yet the kill ratio favors your side? It’s simply impossible. The POW case proves without a shadow of a doubt what the real loss ratios are.
And as for your last comment about O’brien’s ‘timely break’, it’s no surprise. His analysis is disastrously flawed and premised on a self-feeding echochamber of establishment propaganda. I foresee he’ll be taking a lot of such ‘long breaks’ soon, and more likely a permanent one after UA’s offensive collapses next month.
13
As the economies of real production win on the battlefield against the collective west's casino economies what are the probabilities of a split and isolation of the collective west. And can this model survive without the other 85%'s resources?
That’s a good question, because no, I don’t think they can survive as Europe literally has no natural resources of their own at all—at least not commensurate with the types of populations and comfort levels they’re used to maintaining. So depending on what we mean by ‘survive’, will they physically survive, sure. But will Europe likely go through a dark age of mass depopulation and end up being powerless rump states by 2100? There’s a good chance of that.
One could argue: “But Europe has huge human capital and intellectual/innovation capacities. It’s been strong for hundreds of years, yadda yadda.”
While much of that was once true, look at what’s happening to Europe just in terms of the unchecked immigration as per the infamous Coudenhove-Kalergi plan. By 2050-2100 Europe will likely be unrecognizable and have no further ability to ‘innovate’ itself out of the box. Unless, of course, major tectonic changes take place where true populist revolutions overthrow all technocrats, destroy the EU and seize control. That’s always possible, and could reverse the course in large part. But the cabal has its clamps set pretty tight, so it’s hard to imagine that happening in a widespread way, though I’d like to think eventually it will happen, just not fast enough to keep Europe competitive with the rest of the sane, developing world.
A good analysis of such far-off projections I’ve posted before is this, which projects that in the future, only the resource rich nations will be superpowers or relevant at all: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/future-superpowers/
It makes a good argument for Russia being the world’s superpower by the year 2100.
Europe’s favorite plunder yard, Africa, is now being overtaken by China and Russia. So once Eurasia is closed off to the Western/Atlanticist powers, and then Africa, too, is locked away, what will they be left with? Who else is left to plunder for critical natural resources? South America will likely be the only place left but SA is also waking up recently, so the outlook is not good for the robber cartel.
And since the world appears to be steering more and more towards ‘bloc-ism’, then the ‘isolation’ part of your question becomes a very real scenario. Particularly because, most of the ascendant powers like India, China, Turkey, etc., have all called for increased expansion of things like expansion of seats and voting powers, for instance at the UNSC and other global institutions up to now dominated by Old Europe. This will lead to further and further powerlessness and impotence of the globalist cabal, as they will gradually lose more of their ability to browbeat, strongarm, and coerce lesser powers into accepting the short end.
With that said, China, Russia, et al, will remain open to working with Europe forever, but only on a new set of equal terms. And I think the trend in the next 10 years will see increased revolt against American hegemony in Europe. Just today, for instance, was this article:
Where Macron said:
PARIS, April 9. /tass/. Europe has become more dependent on the US in recent years, but it should strengthen its strategic autonomy and not depend on the dollar's extraterritoriality. This was stated by French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with the newspaperLes Echos, published on Sunday.
I think this will continue with European leaders. However, eventually as China et al continue to cinch up the actual productive zones of the world, Europe will be so detrimentally isolated that they’ll be faced with either dumping the U.S. or desperately igniting WW3 in order to use the old trick of destroying all competitors’ economies and industrial capacities to knock them down a few notches below that of Europe.
So that’s why as we slow march towards 2030 and beyond I see increased risk of a global war occurring for this very reason, the desperate, cornered position of the Atlanticist West.
14
When discussing NATO and Ukraine (or other places) the counter argument of "There are other ways to project military power" is often used in response to a statement that NATO is not crazy enough to have a full-on clash with Russia, so Russia is not to be worried about the NATO expansion. Generally, I feel that the counter argument does have a right ring to it because any military force, even if not actively used at the moment, creates deterrence which affects the politics, economics etc. In terms of specific examples for such a deterrence, I can think of a situation where Ukraine is in NATO, and certain factions in Ukraine (or the entire Ukraine’s government) continue putting pressure on its Russian-speaking population and Russia cannot do anything about it militarily because of Article 5. Or for example Kiev cannot control, very conveniently, some groups that are blowing things up in Russia proper and still Russia cannot do much because Ukraine is in NATO. However, I am not educated/smart enough to work out more examples. What is the full spectrum of ways to project a military power without going full on (or nuclear war)? Or maybe you have seen articles/books where the "other ways to project military power" would be studied, classified, and discussed with examples? Could you refer me to those? Application to potential scenarios in Ukraine would be a huge bonus. Thanks much in advance!
A lot of what you’re referring to is called hybrid/asymmetrical warfare or 4GW / 5GW, which stands for 5th Generation Warfare. You can read this link and get more info on it if interested. I’ll also ask anyone who knows any particularly good books or sources on Hybrid/5GW warfare specifically to post them in the comments, so look out for that.
Also, there’s the concept of Soft Power, which is defined as the ability to attain one’s geopolitical goals but without using direct military means, instead using things like persuasion, diplomacy, etc.
In terms of projecting specifically military power without actually using it, obviously the king of that is the nuclear weapon, as it is a weapon primarily of deterrence. That means the simple fact of you having it, and your adversary knowing you have it, greatly affects and influences their decision making and ability to do things to you.
Hypersonic weapons, without needing to be nuclear, can also have this power, simply because there is no real defense against them.
But the other biggest recent example of more subtle ways of projecting hybrid and asymmetrical power are the following two examples I’ll give: the first is Russia’s activities in Africa. There they are using Wagner mercenary troops which allows them to function with an inbuilt plausible deniability, which means they can in some ways take direct actions without Russia being overtly blamed for it. And they are greatly undermining France and other Western nations there, and did the same thing in Syria, where Wagner was used to directly attack American-linked assets (i.e. groups like Maghawir al-Thawra) in ways that would have been too provocative for Russia proper to attack. In essence, using irregular military non-state actors, as they’re called.
Another example of how Russia projects hybrid power is something that was interestingly revealed in the latest leaks from a few days ago. There was a small tidbit most people missed, which stated as per U.S. intel reports that basically Israel refuses to give Ukraine any anti-air or offensive weaponry because it fears Russia stopping Israel’s attacks on Syria. I.e. if Israel angers Russia, then Russia can provide Syria with much more serious AD capabilities that would nullify Israel’s strikes.
So by hanging that sword over Israel’s head, Russia is projecting military power by virtue of that unspoken threat, and causing a deterrence action in Israel.
Russia currently utilizes a large amount of such different ‘levers’ in Ukraine alone, that we don’t think about on a daily basis. For instance, Russia allows Ukraine to still have the ‘Grain Deal’, where it allows them a grain corridor and other trade to still come into Odessa, this is in exchange for certain concessions with the West, where in secret backdoor deals, the West promises to limit certain types of support to Ukraine.
There is rumor that this also goes for the railways, and is the chief reason why Russia has not taken out the bridges over the Dnieper, which have 12+ railways on them. And on top of that, the various oil and gas pipelines, which continue to operate through Ukraine, such as the Druzhba pipeline which still carries oil to Poland, Hungary, and central Europe by way of Ukraine.
There are various deals and levers in place with all of these assets which allows Russia to project certain power and influence without military might.
The other major way of doing it is by way of influencing other friendly nations in your ‘bloc’ or alliance to do things in exchange for certain concessions. Russia is greatly influential in the Middle East and Asia, for instance. So there is an implied threat and deterrence for many countries where Russia could influence its Middle Eastern/Asian partners to take certain actions that would bring harm to a given country’s economy.
And lastly, the specter of arms sales to places that are very inconvenient. For instance, as the world’s second largest arms supplier, Russia can threaten to sell arms to many enemies of the U.S. and create deterrence by basically threatening a very dangerous situation, in the same way as the Israel example given above. As an example, Russia could shut the U.S. and Israel up very quickly by threatening to provide major arms to Iran, or North Korea, etc. So it hangs such threats over their heads as a way of creating balance and compromise in keeping the U.S. from taking certain actions or encroaching on Russia’s red lines, etc.
15
Holding many variables constant and leaving aside personal preferences for either side, I am of the opinion that it would be much better for us (the USA) if Russia "won". It seems to me that it would be very dangerous for "us", if Russia lost. I don't expect the fools who cornered Russia into this war to see that, but it is clear to me that a Russia that loses or appears to be losing would be extremely dangerous.
I don’t see a question here, but I’ll put it up anyway simply to say I agree with your sentiment, as it appears self-evident to me and many people.
All I’ll add is that, I don’t think Russia losing would be most dangerous to the U.S. from the standpoint of a caged animal vindictively attacking the U.S. in retaliation. But rather, I believe that such a circumstance would be much worse for the U.S. simply because it would be a major victory for the warmongers and neocons in control of the country, and therefore would empower them to further continue destroying both the U.S. and the rest of the world with their twisted neo-imperialistic lust.
But if the neocons lose by the fact of Russia winning, that could lead to a final disempowerment and overthrow of their rule, as it would look like a catastrophic foreign policy and malfeasance in hindsight, and could usher in a new age of more sound, reasonable U.S. rulership and policies, at least eventually.
In short, Russia losing “enables” all the worst elements of the U.S. deepstate/MIC superstructure. While Russia winning could sap and gut them and go a long way towards helping restore any semblance of true ‘democracy’ or real leadership/representation in the U.S. as the deepstate’s failures could lead to its undoing.
16
Will Russia take Odessa this year or next? Will any part of Ukraine remain independent at the point Russia decides to end the conflict?
In my opinion Russia is not going to negotiate with the West and the battle will determine the border.
Firstly, in case you’re interested in a real deep-dive, I’ll paste two previous articles where I covered that in great depth:
and
Now, to directly answer your questions. Will they take Odessa this year? Almost certainly no. Next year is a possibility, although unless the entire AFU collapses from attrition, I would personally estimate an even slightly longer timeline, whereby Odessa could be taken maybe by 2025.
The reason is, you see how long the slow trudge takes. We’re almost halfway through this year already and we’re still in Bakhmut. Once it falls, the remainder of the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk agglomeration could take well into next year to liberate, particularly given that there are usually long pauses for rearmament/refitting of major combat groups in between large battles. I could see Kramatorsk-Slavyansk taking to the end of this year at the earliest, and maybe even up to middle of next year at the latest.
So imagine if that happens, we’ll be in 2024 and still not even close to getting to the West side of the Dnieper, let alone taking Odessa. So I believe that’s still a very long way off. However, it could happen much faster if the key turning point battles of the middle of this year, which will certainly go down, result in the AFU having its back broken. This could greatly accelerate the downfall, but it will all depend how hard the newly built up Russian mobilized force hits the AFU, and how well the new Russian mass-production arms industry ramp-up equips the Russian forces with adequate state of the art guided weapons, drones, etc.
As to the second part of your question, read the two articles I posted to get a much deeper dive of that as well, as I go into detail about how much of Ukraine will remain, etc. And also, look at Question #2 at the beginning of this mailbag, as I also went into detail on this very topic as well.
But to reiterate it, I do believe Russia will leave Kiev and Western Ukraine, but under a Russia-friendly leader installed by Russia. However, as I also wrote earlier, one of the alleged ‘leaked’ settlement documents for a potential Russian peace plan, states that, on top of unconditional surrender bringing full demilitarization and denazification, Russia would also require Ukraine to rejoin the CIS. And since the CIS is basically the undisclosed successor to the USSR, I believe that ultimately, in a far, far long term future, Russia does plan to regain the former ‘Russian Empire’, which will include the full absorption of Ukraine in a similar statute as the current Belarus ‘Union State’ process that will soon bring Belarus under de facto Russian rule.
But keep in mind, this is a much longer term plan some Russian politicians like Zhirinovsky have hinted at. Russia is not in a ‘rush’, no pun intended’, to do this, and will likely be happy to achieve it by 2050-2070 or even 2100. For now, it will suffice simply to have Ukraine as a rump state ruled by a Russian-friendly or outright pro-Russian candidate, with Russian peacekeepers monitoring the country to enforce full demilitarization rules, and prevent any NATO/Western arms from slipping in across the border with the intention of arming any underground guerilla insurgency, etc.
I’ll post the well-known graphic again, but basically I believe the top option of ‘decisive victory’ is what Russia will achieve:
Phew! For those that made it through them all, congrats. That was a doozy of over 13,000 words, but it was worth it because your incisive questions were well thought out and hard-hitting.
It was a ton of information but I hope you all can find something useful in it. For those that appreciate the work I put in for you all, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly or yearly pledge, so you can join those intrepid pledgers in asking a question on the next one. I’m still trying to fully transition to doing this full time, and these long articles are very time-intensive, so I appreciate each and every paid subscription for those that choose to support my work.
And as always, if you’re unable to commit to a monthly pledge but still want to help out, there’s always my: Tip Jar
Thanks again and see you on the next one.
Always enjoy your writings:
- Subscription; I subbed but accidentally to Dark Fatura. I assume its all the same to you!
- EU largely subsists and survives on the legacy of its post WW2 growth. There was a time when Europe was a titan of innovation and industry; led by Germany. That time has passed; it is impossible to build anything in Europe anymore. I go often and all over - and I love it. Its a beautiful continent with amazing food, culture, people. But its just that; a museum and a restaurant. Politically, ideologically and culturally, their primary objectives are around conservation, environmentalism, and social issues. Not development, technology and whatnot. This is an important distinction but nontrivial. Look at Musk building his factory in Germany; supposedly with massive political support it still took him years to get done, wheras the same facility (much larger) in China took just a few months from start to finish. In my own line of work, when I'll send an enquiry out to vendors say in China, the US, and the EU, I get replies back in 1) 1-4h 2) 1-4 days and 3) maybe a week or two, if they ever respond
The US is a little different owing to its republican nature and states doing their own thing. But the more the federal government encroaches on state's rights, with things like the EPA and whatnot, the harder it becomes to do anything. Again, Musk has alluded to this that any large scale construction project is more or less illegal now. This has consequences but that take 10-30 years to wash out.
Russia is not without problems but fundamentally is on better grounds. Building alliances with like minded nations - those interested in development, industry and so on - is the key to success. Right now the biggest players in that game are India, China, and to varying extents other Southeast Asian states + Africa and Latin America. We are either in the midst of the great rebalancing, or the great unravelling. Time will tell
Whether you are a Believer or not, I hope everyone had a lovely Easter. And if you are not a Believer you might want to think about becoming one because it is a great way to fight back. Of course providing it comes from the heart!