Personally, I'm hopeful I'll be able to travel and tour St Petersburg & Moscow at the summer solstice for my first trip. It'd be great if it was 2025. You think a letter to Putin would help?
Me? I know folks don't like to hear this but I have the most loving & generous God! You can't even imagine all the places I've had the joy of visiting, sometimes for work sometimes for pleasure. Ask and you will receive...but mostly, His will not mine. I've lived the last 46 years with that core belief and even the tragedies have worked out okay.
When you visit SPB this summer, you will adore the Cathedral on Spilled Blood. The exterior is mind-blowing, and the interior is a kaleidoscope of edge-to-edge iconography. You'll feel it down to the beds of your toenails.
Also--Ilya Repin's painting in the Russian Museum: Raising of Jairus's Daughter
DJT, JD and SecDef Hegseth have put Europe on notice: that it must be more self-reliant when maintaining its own stability & security on the continent, which means polishing off the tools of statecraft when working w/ its Great Power neighbor, Russia, and not reflexively reaching only for the weapons of war.
It’s peculiar, therefore, that both Napoleonette and Sir Keir will pay DJT visits in the Oval Office this week, one after the other, auguring to convince the U.S. to serve as a backstop for French & UK tripwire troops—er, Reassurance Forces—in various Ukrainian cities. They even expect the U.S. to scramble F-35s from a Romanian airbase, should the Reassurance Forces get in trouble. DJT would do well to have Napoleonette and Sir Keir look at a map. The U.S. is an ocean away, but look at France and the UK’s proximity to Ukraine. Geography is destiny.
When the original template for U.S. security in Europe was hammered out, Europe was smaller. The original template was also negotiated during a different historical era, post-WWII. The inflexibility of those long-ago dynamics obviously do not jibe well today or make pragmatic sense. When the metric is always “80 years ago”—a la “At any other time in the past 80 years it would have been unimaginable that the U.S. president would be pressing for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin while calling Zelensky a dictator” (Axios)—you know that the mind-set has not really aligned w/ 21st Century shifts. Not everything can be explained by Sudetenland or Chamberlain’s appeasement.
Writing in the nytimes, M. Gessen says, “For the first time since WWII, European states are facing an aggressive, expansionist power that is actively waging war.” She means Russia or more accurately “the threat of Putin” and then, more ideologically, what she sees as “the threat of Putinism.” However, her basic sentiment is sketchy enough and lacking in specifics to describe not VVP or Russia really but the “expansionist, aggressive” behaviors of the U.S.-led OTAN on the continent instead: “expansionist” w/ OTAN’s literal sprawl/conquest eastward and “aggressive” most explicitly w/ the bombardment of Belgrade, 1998-1999, plus the color revolutions & regime change ops which followed the atomization of Yugoslavia. Gessen wants to convince readers that Europe dwelled in a pre-Sudetenland state of pure European innocence until “the threat of Putin” or, even more dastardly, until “the threat of Putinism” cropped up, but that is not so.
Russia will emerge from the war in Ukraine as the winner and look unquestionably like the winner, incontrovertibly so, which is an unbearable thorn in Europe’s side. The risk all along for the U.S.-led OTAN and the OTAN-prepped Ukraine was that they would lose badly, hands-down, and have to pick up the pieces afterward, which would include the unforced error—lubricated in the most unctuous hubris—of sparking an unwinnable fight against a nuclear superpower. *Peace* will kick off a nervy period for Europe, because the unfamiliar climate of unadorned peace will deprive them of their most knee-jerk tool of statecraft: war.
We must run blood tests on the infected to contain the spread of Putinism virus. If we pay gazillions to Pfizer right now, we will get this vaccine in two months to vaccinate all Western Europe. Let's start with the Baltics
Gessen also says that DJT's return to the White House signals the "Putinization of America." Sounds like we will all have to wear masks & stand 6-feet apart until Gessen signals the All Clear.
Trump's world has no use for re-treads like Masha and the ilk from NY Times or Washington Post, these are the instruments for signalling to the deep state bot net the latest delusional thinking. He's hoping that these cretins are suitably unemployed, they're certainly unemployable in any capacity that requires reasoning and thinking.
Zelensky is a foreign body in Banderism. A Russian Jew from Krivoy Rog, who still speaks Ukrainian with significant difficulty.
The current regime in Kiev is an unholy alliance between ideological Banderites, plus brainwashed into self-hatred ethnic Russian traitors, plus non-ideological oligarchs looking for mechanisms to keep Moscow away, plus various other grifters. All of that supported by the West in order to destroy Russia. Remove one of the grifters, nothing will change much in terms of the more global motivation for the whole thing, and they cannot have Zelensky Gaddafied given how much of an icon he has become. The only way that happens without Russian involvement is if the whole movement is on the chopping block by the West. But that is impossible, because we are talking about a ~200-year old project. You don't throw away something like that on a whim.
Very serious questions have to be asked here of the Kremlin. Such as why all these people are still alive.
Go back to Stalin's time. Right now there is a Sudoplatov Battalion fighting against the AFU. Where does that name come from?
Well, Pavel Sudoplatov was an NKVD officer from Melitopol tasked with carrying out special missions. He lived to see the collapse of the USSR and wrote an autobiography describing some of what he did.
One of his first major missions was to assassinate Yevhen Konovalets, who was the leader of OUN in the 1930s. That was done in 1938 in Rotterdam. Notice how at that time there was no Ukraine, and most Ukrainian nationalists were actually in Poland (Galicia and Volhynia were Polish territories at the time), and Poland had a much more serious internal problem with Ukrainian nationalism and terrorism than the USSR, where the situation was rather calm (because the Peltiura-Bandera cancer had not spread beyond Galicia yet). Still, Stalin considered it a vital task to have the OUN decapitated.
That continued until Khrushchev's time -- Bandera himself was assassinated in 1959 in Munich.
Now notice a very important difference compared to today -- Bandera and Konovalets had to be disposed of using covert means because:
1) There were no long-range precision weapons at the time
2) They lived inside countries the USSR was not at war with, so even if there were such weapons, they could not be used.
Both of these are not constraints now.
Yet the key Banderites are moving freely inside a territory that is bombed by Russia daily without any real concern about their lives, safe in the knowledge that the Kremlin is not targeting them.
Meanwhile the SBU is actively doing assassinations even in Moscow.
There is a lot there, but I would just like to focus on one particular element.
Over the last few years I have taken it upon myself to learn what I can about Stephan Bandera, and I have come to the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely he was assassinated, by the KGB or anyone else.
Consider the evidence presented to the public.
All we have is the testimony of a defector in the custody of Western intelligence. He claimed while on trial that he shot Bandera with some sort of special weapon, a gun that shot a poison gas that simulated the effects of a heart attack. No such weapon was ever produced and no such weapon has been produced in the 70 years since. How exactly would such a weapon even work and what would be the advantage of using one in this circumstance? If you wanted him dead then just kill him, why try to conceal it?
Yevhen Konovalets, the other OUN leader was killed by a bomb, why use a super secret undetectable "James Bond Q division" weapon (which has never been seen or used since) to kill Bandera?
The most likely explanation is that Bandera died of a regular heart attack and the rest is a classic bit of Cold War black propaganda
That is possible, and 1959 was also quite some time after Khrushchev had amenstied the Banderites.
Doesn't change the fact that Konovalets was taken out under the circumstances I described -- Ukraine did not exist, and if anything, the OUN was more of a threat for Poland at the time Yet Stalin considered it imperative to solve the problem.
The compare-and-contrast with Putin's (in)actions is obvious.
Your description of Zelensky's position is good and the description of the dysfunctional alliance of players upholding Ukraine's gov is fairly accurate as much as I see. In a time and place where much of the conflict is painted in grotesque simplification you have the right nuance.
I would stess the point you made regarding the menagerie of players you describe, the unholy alliance has been brought together to harm Russia. This is a 200 year effort as you mention.
The US has had a major hand in the region since the last year of WWII. The largest CIA foreign operation in its history was run by LtGen Gehlen in what is now Ukraine. His partnership with the US started during WWII with full knowledge and support from Allen Dulles while Dulles was still in the OSS. Dulles later gave OUN leader, Mykola Lebed a job at the CIA publishing house, Prolog, after giving him a fake ID and telling USNIS and Dept of State to ignore Lebed's past. There are 1,000s of FOIA released documents showing the US fostered Ukrainian facism with the aim of hurting Russia (distinct from the Soviets).
That's to say, the US created many of the players now surrounding Zelensky. The US has embedded advisors in all levels of Ukraine's government and the US is paying various contractors (some that I know) through NGOs.
The UK's efforts to harm Russia and play the "Great Game" aimed at hurting Russia go back to the 1800s if not before. The US adopted that perspective if people like Zig Brzenzinski and Robert Kagan are any indication.
I don't think anyone here can actually answer all the specifics you raise though. To do so would require inside knowledge most don't have. There are a lot of questions, good questions, you raise.
Why would Stalin target the OUN as early as it did?
Bandera or the leadership of the OUN was targeting Russians as much as Poles, Romanians, Romani, Hungarians, and Jews from its creation. He and the OUN was an immediate threat to the Poles, hence his trial in Polish court. He admitted to deadly anti-Polish activities. Stalin saw the OUN as a threat to Russia if for no other reason than the OUN positioned themselves as an expansionist (in context of a Ukrainian identity) movement that would ultimately impact Russian territory and upset the balance of power in the region.
Putin has not done a number of things that, from a Western NATO doctrine perspective, would have been done (has been done in other places) had the US been leading the charge against Ukraine. Admittedly, that's speculation since the US didn't lead the effort of kenetic action in Ukraine regardless of what other efforts it has record of leading.
As a Marine Corps officer who was first exposed to US methods of warfare in Yugoslavia, I've seen how the US does things. I'm not saying that as a bid for definative insight. I also have a house in East Ukraine and still have immediate family there and in Central Ukraine. It is to say, my speculation is not uninformed at the same time, it has a particular bias. My church was bombed. People I know were attacked by the current government in Ukraine before 2014. Our family doctor worked part time in one of the biolabs (and wore an ankle bracelet to track her) that many Western pundits say don't exist.
I also adhere to the combat dictum, Don't believe 90% of what you hear and only believe 30% of what you see. That comes from working in the US government as much as anything and watching it lie as a matter of course in an effort to use 5th Gen Warfare concepts. Uncertainty is the norm. I could be wrong.
It seems to me Ukraine is a battlefield in a global contest. Putin is not fighting just in or only for Ukraine. His actions reflect a global contest.
Stalin and Putin are quite different despite Western efforts to peg Putin as a wannabe Stalin. Some of his actions should be contextualized as part of his efforts to increase Russian position globally, which means navigating pressure from countries like China and India. His approach is quite different from Stalin though.
Although you didn't bring it up, looking for common sense in clandestine efforts or geoplolitical endeavors is sometimes a fruitless exercise. It is not always the case, but too often it is. The US currently pays the Taliban it once fought, tried to destabilize Castro by introducing hoof and mouth disease to Cuba and the US tried to blow him up with exploding cigars (very LoonyTuneish), and, per the Church Commission, the US created a poison ice dart gun, and the CIA dropped LSD on an entire city among other bizarre and unethical things. Sometimes subterfuge develops it own logic in a narrow context.
As for who would take out Zelensky? Any great power who thinks he either no longer serves a purpose or impedes their pursuit of their interests. His profile is large. It is not too large for subterfuge though. Can the US openly drone strike him? Not likely. It can pay for a car accident though or make it worthwhile for the British to withdrawl the SAS who supposedly have been guarding him. Some might say the UK is rabidly pro-Zelensky. By all appearances they are. That is good cover though. And such things have happened before. The US removed the Vietnamese president it gave ticket tape parades to and much warmer welcome than it ever did to Zelensky.
It is hard to overstate how much many Ukrainians hate Zelensky. There are plenty who would kill him if they thought they could. There have been efforts. Simply remove protection and local forces, that have been kept at bay by international effort, take over.
Why are these people (the menagerie you describe in your question) still alive. Good question. What is the picture the Kremlin sees? What is the path to the desired outcome? Those questions havent been answered by the people who know. The conflict is messy. The Russians are holding back. So is the US. Nor is either side as indomitable as some claim. There are documents like the 2019 Rand Corporation Report - Extending Russia that define US goals. Ukraine was never intended to win in any tactical or operational way. It was intended to hurt Russia along with events in Syria, Moldova, Georgia, and sanctions.
Anyway, I've gone on too long. You should save this question and bring it up again.
Zelenesky had to be offed in late 2022 the latest, by a Russian missile during one of his evening live streams.
He had done enough to warrant a death sentence already by then, and Putin had to send a message, in the most forceful way possible. Which would be to interrupt Zelensky's live stream with a visit from a friendly bunker buster missile.
The fact that Putin has not done that to this day, given everything that has happened in the 26 months since the end of 2022, now warrants a death sentence for Putin himself, as happened to Nicholas II, to be carried out by the patriotic forces in Russia, if they ever manage to organize themselves and take power as they should be doing right now.
A threat that Putin quite clearly senses, because he has aggressively gone after the Russian patriots, while none of the Banderites in Kiev has been touched.
Zelenski is worth more to the Russians alive than dead. How could Russia remove such a disastrous leader of what became an enemy state? And now why would Russia want to lose such a wealth of information? In the end knowledge is potentially power. it's good for your enemies to know you know the truth so they are off balanced when they speak with their forked tongues.
Well sometimes a public trial and bringing a criminal to justice has more of an effect than just a death that will be forgotten or may create a Marty. Sometimes the real criminals are taken out behind the scenes, leaving the sock puppets only for public consumption.
Imagine you are a Russian soldier on the front lines. You have witnessed the country being sold out by the elites all your life. Including giving up a third of its territory and half its population, which had been fought over for centuries prior to that and won at the cost of tens of millions of lives, without a fight. All so that the elites could steal everything.
Then you witnessed Minsk-1 and Minsk-2, and Istanbul.
Then you hear about "negotiations" every day.
Are you going to fight hard beyond the necessity to survive day-to-day? What for?
Have you ever seen what Russian soldiers returning from the Kherson right bank of the river had to say in the days after November 10 2022? Naturally the Kremlin tried to keep it hushed, but it did leak to Telegram channels.
If you are going to fight a war, you fight a war. Doing a not-war is a sure way to lose both the war and the internal situation.
So far there have been only three serious moves made by the Kremlin, and they all have major question marks about them.
1) Taking Crimea back after the Maidan in February-March 2014. But was that a Kremlin-sanctioned operation or did the GRU go rogue and present the Kremlin with a fait accompli? It is not clear to this day, but given how when Strelkov returned from Crimea and tried to present the Kremlin with a fait accompli in the Donbass too a couple months later, the Kremlin refused to lift a finger to help. Which places doubts about who actually ordered the Crimea operation.
2) Starting the SMO. But that one was botched practically in the first minutes by the absurd rules of engagement imposed on the Russian army and the lack of preparation
3) Annexing the four regions in September 2022. But did that happen on the Kremlin's initiative or the local leaders saw what happened in Kharkov and threatened to make their own deals with Kiev and surrender without a fight unless the Kremlin made a serious commitment? Plus there was a need to save face after the Kharkov fiasco.
And that was it.
There has not been a single serious move since then, it has been all empty threats and bluffs, and endless death and humiliation, resulting in serious degradation of internal morale and international standing.
Even for purely symbolic reasons, taking Zelensky out, and doing it very publicly, after e.g. the Kursk invasion, was an absolute must.
There was a strike on both Zaluzhniyy and Budanov. Both survived, but Zaluzhniyy needed a trepination and barely survived the strike after which he was replaced.
What exactly in this conflict do trust to be confirmed? It's all smoke and mirrors and assumptions with very little information. Soldiers follow orders as they can't see the big picture. They can question what they see Infront of them but not much what they are told to do. By not following orders that's how you create Vlasov and the hivies that helped the Whermacht during WW2 and also how conflicts are loss.
Here I disagree. Offing Zelensky would mean someone smarter like Budanov or Zaluzhniyy would have taken office. That would have also meant better military decisions made and less political/PR decisions. It would have been worse for Russia.
Russian policy should be exactly the same as the Israeli policy towards Hezbollah. Whenever there is a location on someone high ranking, he is taken out immediately. When he is replaced, the replacement gets the same treatment. Algorithmitcally, with no hesitation.
And note that I am rooting for Hezbollah in that case, but you have to give credit where credit is due. Also, Hezbollah not doing the same on Israeli leadership resulted in them losing the war without ever getting to fight seriously.
No. Israel decapitates the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah because they do not regard them as leaders of legitimate nations or armies. In fact they constantly reinforce that perception of illegitimacy by constantly killing them.
If you start killing presidents then you set a precedent for the rule that presidents may be killed.
Why did the allied powers exile Napoleon Bonaparte (twice) rather than just shooting him or chopping his head off? Because it would have shown that an Emperor can be executed, and executed for actions that many other Kings and Emperors of Europe had also done. Exile was the safer choice.
Personally I think that the attempted assassination of Alexander Dugin and the actual assassination of his daughter Daria Platonova Dugina was the worst mistake the SBU ever made. I have no sympathy for a regime who wants to assassinate philosophers, even nutty mystic ones.
>Israel decapitates the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah because they do not regard them as leaders of legitimate nations or armies. In fact they constantly reinforce that perception of illegitimacy by constantly killing them.
Do you realize that from a Russian perspective Ukraine is a historical anti-Russian aberration that should not exist? Apparently not.
In fact, Putin should have been jailed for treason for the very fact that he officially recognized Poroshenko back in 2014, thus legitimizing the coup.
>If you start killing presidents then you set a precedent for the rule that presidents may be killed.
That ship has long sailed. Or it is not a precedent when the US does it, but everyone else is not allowed that privilege? Well, if that is the case, then Russia is a second-rate power, not a great one.
>Personally I think that the attempted assassination of Alexander Dugin and the actual assassination of his daughter Daria Platonova Dugina was the worst mistake the SBU ever made.
Two years ago, there was a 4 hour interview with Bennett, ex-PM of Israel, who stated that he flew to Moscow when the war began, and begged Putin not to kill Zelensky. Putin gave his word, and Bennett called Zelensky from Moscow, letting him know, and Zelensky got out of his bunker, where he's hiding since the war began, and went on TV proclaiming, "I'm not afraid of anybody." Pathetic.
No, that does not make Putin a man of honor, it makes him a traitor.
How many innocent Russian civilians were slaughtered, entirely deliberately, by Ukrainian munitions, then by NATO missiles and shells, eventually by hand from close range in Kursk too? Many thousands.
Has Putin made any effort to have that blood debt repaid? No.
Well, if the blood debt is not repaid, then anyone can have fun killing Russians anywhere anytime. Because it is an entirely cost-free proposition.
But this is not the Congo or some other third-world shithole with no means to defend itself, it is the country with the most firepower on the planet, which can get anyone anywhere in the world.
If you have that capability, but you refuse to use it to defend your people because that would hurt the interests of your olgiarch buddies, who have spent the last 35 years robbing the country, with your protecting them, then "a man of honor" is the last thing you are.
You are a traitor scumbag who has to die a gruesome death publicly for his betrayal, and be replaced by someone who will defend the country.
Oh, he's "stepping down", is he. He was never President to begin with (his term ran out), so stepping down for security guarantees from the US (and we all know how much THOSE are worth) is like trading Kursk for Crimea. What a fucking joke.
Zelensky's tragedy : "To leave or not to leave, and for how much," brings to mind an old joke, "If you didn't want it the bad way, the good way will be much worse."
A leader from the West *had* to say it: that Russia was *not* in fact going to steamroll revanchisticly into Poland or into the Balts after sacking Ukraine. A leader from the West *had* to make clear that Russia was not so hungry to reassemble the Soviet Union that stopping at only Estonia would constitute nothing more than a piddling little measly snack. Shaking his head dismissively and saying, “No. Not even a little bit,” when asked if he thought Russia would invade Europe via Poland or the Baltic states, DJT knee-capped the dominant lie of the infowar which has boosted Project Ukraine since Day One: that stopping Russia in Ukraine was critical; otherwise they would roll into Berlin.
George Beebe, writing in Compact Magazine, states that “Moscow perceived OTAN’s eastward expansion a security threat, which—in the vacuum of diplomatic efforts to halt it— produced a spiral of action-and-reaction that escalated” ultimately into the SMO.
George Beebe’s realistic appraisal has largely happened *outside* of Regime Media, though, whose narratives unerringly describe Russia’s invasion as “unprovoked,” often portraying the SMO as an off-the-wall incidence of “Putin’s brutal aggression.” Beebe lists a “formidable array of public relations firms and social media influencers working in partnership with Bankhova to make certain that the war in Ukraine is best understood as a modern-day variation of Nazi Germany’s assault on Europe.” Behind the scenes, a network of lobbyists, former government officials and even D.C. law firms have built a powerful messaging machine to help pull the strings on media coverage and policymaking around Project Ukraine. Two agencies that represent the Ukrainian oil & gas industry became de facto emissaries in the Beltway for Kiev’s cause. The Associated Press’s style-book listed status quo language when writing in the media about Project Ukraine, which is why the words “unprovoked” & “appeasement”crop up so often, as does the phrase “brutal aggression.”
As George Beebe put it, “Those suggesting that the war had more complex origins were anathematized as Kremlin apologists.”
DJT forced the infowar into retreat by refusing to play along. SecDef Hegseth did his part in Brussels, as did JD in Munich. Sec Rubio & his team re-normalized diplomacy w/ Russia by working for hours w/ Lavrov & his team in Riyadh. “Those embracing the WWII paradigm for the war have recoiled in horror,” Beebe wrote. EU foreign policy chief Kaja the Callused said, “It’s appeasement”—helpfully using one of the AP’s official style-book words—“it has never worked. The Ukrainians will resist, and we will support them.”
Particularly irksome to Dems & Concern Trolls & EU bureaucrats is the fact that DJT is pointing his foreign policy in a direction other than sustaining a losing endeavor for the embattled & embittered Ukraine. The nytimes Editorial Board weighed in commonsensically: “On the face of it, President Trump is right to try to end a destructive war in Ukraine that is now approaching the three-year mark, and to open talks with Russia. This war has to end, and at this stage it can end expediently only through negotiations.” Odious to the nytimes, however, is the fact that DJT’s approach “is a reversal of the past three years,” as if the course Collective Biden charted, which we would term a ’debacle,’ though the AP stylebook does not list that word, had to be maintained at all costs. “The very act of discussing an end to the war without the presence of Ukraine or any other ally at the table,” according to the nytimes, “violates the fundamental principle the U.S. proclaimed from the outset: “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Rigidly, the nytimes, in its own big blasting infowar fusillade, tries to shackle DJT to principles “the U.S. proclaimed from the outset”—meaning 3 years ago?—as if somehow DJT is not himself an adjudicator of U.S. policies & interests.
It would be nice if the battle maps could have a (smaller) zoomed out version also, so that the casual reader would know where on the front they are. Sure one could always lookup the city names and do it oneself, but that's time consuming, especially with both Russian and Ukrainian names for most or all cities.
So, ok, in your view, what is the current Russian military strategy / military objectives? Like, you're the General Staff and you're presenting to Putin. What are you saying?
You could put it that way. Right now, as in WWI, the military technology of defense has a decisive advantage against the military technology of attack. That's probably a problem for scientists and engineers to solve, not military strategists. The generals and political leadership of WWI were by and large unable to accept that reality and repeatedly wasted enormous resources in "big pushes" that went nowhere. It appears that the Russian leadership of today are sensible enough to not make the same mistake and patient enough to let the win come mostly through attrition.
Everything you said is right, except the last sentence. The assumption that attrition will eventually "work" I think is incorrect. As Simplicious has pointed out, if aid continue to flow Ukraine has manpower to sustain this for years.
I think there is legitimate battlefield limitations for the Russian army - Kursk is the best example. Its been 6 months and they have still not been able to kick them out. Destroying or routing the AFU there would be an incalculable political victory; yet the RuAF haven't been able to do it, and this is on Ru territory with maximal Ru air support, shortest logistical lines, etc. Yes the AFU is paying a heavy price, but for the moment the dream is still alive for Kiev. And, what happens if Ru ends up agreeing to a ceasefire or armistice, say, in order to hold elections. Will they accept Ukrainian occupation? Kursk has been a debacle tactically for the AFU but politically it has been a victory
1) There is no military strategy other than to keep taking hits and to stall until the West allows the Kremlin to surrender
2) Which is because the political "strategy" is to concede as much as demanded to make yet another deal that will kick the can down the road so that the Russian oligarchy can go back to how things were pre-2022 for another decade perhaps, while the West gathers its strength to finally finish Russia off.
Such a deal will foreclose on any possibility of ever recovering some of the most strategically vital core historic Russian lands (the area between Odessa and Belarus and everything east of it), because it will give the time to raise another generation into vicious hatred of everything Russian, but the people who control the Kremlin do not care. Most of them are not ethnically Russian anyway, or would even be happy to see the country finally destroyed completely (look at the ethnic composition of Russian oligarchs and their openly stated views on certain subjects) and even the Russian ones care primarily about their money, not about such silly abstract things such as geostrategic issues.
Remember that in 2014, when had the Russian army gone in seriously, it would have walked to the Polish border without much difficulty, even in its own substantially diminished at the time state, Putin went for Minsk-1 and then Minsk-2.
Then in 2022 he was ready to hand over everything, and to even put Crimea on the table a decade down the line. Yes, that was part of the Istanbul deal -- potentially handing over Crimea too. Putin and everyone around him should have been in handcuffs in the basement of Lyubyanka, for high treason, the moment that became publicly known.
And no, that is not an exaggeration, it is exactly what was demanded by the existing at the time Russian laws.
Instead he remained in power for another two years and was then reelected with no real opposition. Giving him a carte blanche to do even worse in the next six years with no oversight by anyone.
2) The "internal" West (oligarchs, bankers, liberal media, bribe-takers, etc.)
Rolling across the steppes in 2014, Strelkov-style, leaves these enemies untouched, indeed it would have emboldened them.
Instead, the SMO in Ukraine has become the vehicle for tackling both enemies. Progress is underway:
• "Demilitarization": NATO has been steadily losing equipment, men, money, unity and credibility.
• "Denazification": Russia-hating talking heads are losing credibility: "Russia's economy is in tatters", said Fond o'Lyin (lol), "the ruble is rubble" (lol), "they are fighting with spades" (hypersonic ones, lol), etc. USAID has been 404´d, etc.
• "Resovereignization": Opinion within Russia has been gradually changing from "We invaded Ukraine" to "NATO invaded Russia". The Battle of Kursk (2024 edition) has been a particular catalyst in highlighting that Russia is again forced into its once-per-century fight for liberation and preservation.
• "Perestroika 2.0": The economy has been re-orientated towards domestic production and Asian markets. Russian officials are even pleading to *keep* the US-led sanctions.
Up to 2014, undeniably, the West/Globalists held huge sway over Russia. Putin & Medvedev were wise enough to play along – yes, at great short-term cost. The pendulum is now clearly swinging the other way.
NATO has not been demilitarized at all. Because guess what? Tanks and artillery have no relevance to a NATO-Russia war.
This is where the Substackers and podcasters, in their quest to maximize subscription and ad revenue, have been doing a great service to whoever is pushing for war in the West, because they have made it seem like this is how war is fought and will always be fought.
Which is just silly nonsense.
Even the war between Ukraine and Russia is only fought this way because of the political decisions in the Kremlin. Decisions for which the heads of everyone who made them should literally roll, in public, Saudi Arabian style, because they have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Russian (on both sides) for no reason.
The Kremlin can ensure victory by hitting the targets it has been refusing to hit for three years (command and control centers and logistics nodes), which would take less than 12 hours from the order being issued, perhaps much less than that, then roll it all up to the Polish border, which would take another couple months perhaps.
That it has not happened is entirely because of how f***d up Russian internal politics is.
But a war between NATO and Russia will be something else entirely -- it will be all about navies and air forces, missiles and air defense. There will be no ground forces and small drones involved at all, except for clearing the rubble after it is all over.
Russia has the advantage in air defense and missile tech, but is at disadvantage in forward deployment, and it is at serious disadvantage in everything else in terms of numbers.
Has NATO suffered any attrition on its naval and air force assets? No.
Has Russia suffered air defense and air force attrition? You bet.
So the score here is in NATO's favor.
It is quite astonishing to see the Substackers and podcasters talk about how NATO has been "demilitarized" because they are out of M-777s and their followers just lap it up with nobody asking the question how an actual NATO-Russia war would actually play out...
In terms of solving the internal Russian problems, there is a massive defeat looming. Have you not followed the news? The pro-Western forces are about to get what they wanted -- a deal that formalizes the defeat in the war. Who will have come out on top internally then?
And if sanctions are lifted, what will happen to internal economic development? Western goods and technology will once again flood in and suppress internal development, as was the prevailing condition previously.
wow that last video is very popular - I've seen it all over the place...Even Saker published it today on his ancient youtube channel which has been quiet for years now - https://youtu.be/sZtKKwj4_TM
that link is the video - its the same one as I saw about 10 different places today. I guess guys like dark humour - and the comment section was turned off.
Word salad much?
There is no pea in the shell
Personally, I'm hopeful I'll be able to travel and tour St Petersburg & Moscow at the summer solstice for my first trip. It'd be great if it was 2025. You think a letter to Putin would help?
What a grand travel. Me, a girl can dream; all the best❤️🐈⬛🇷🇺💙
Me? I know folks don't like to hear this but I have the most loving & generous God! You can't even imagine all the places I've had the joy of visiting, sometimes for work sometimes for pleasure. Ask and you will receive...but mostly, His will not mine. I've lived the last 46 years with that core belief and even the tragedies have worked out okay.
Please, no snarky comments about faith. 🙏🏼
Trust in the Lord
When you visit SPB this summer, you will adore the Cathedral on Spilled Blood. The exterior is mind-blowing, and the interior is a kaleidoscope of edge-to-edge iconography. You'll feel it down to the beds of your toenails.
Also--Ilya Repin's painting in the Russian Museum: Raising of Jairus's Daughter
The figures are practically life-sized.
<<
https://rusmuseumvrm.ru/data/collections/painting/19_20/zh_4050/index.php?lang=en
DJT, JD and SecDef Hegseth have put Europe on notice: that it must be more self-reliant when maintaining its own stability & security on the continent, which means polishing off the tools of statecraft when working w/ its Great Power neighbor, Russia, and not reflexively reaching only for the weapons of war.
It’s peculiar, therefore, that both Napoleonette and Sir Keir will pay DJT visits in the Oval Office this week, one after the other, auguring to convince the U.S. to serve as a backstop for French & UK tripwire troops—er, Reassurance Forces—in various Ukrainian cities. They even expect the U.S. to scramble F-35s from a Romanian airbase, should the Reassurance Forces get in trouble. DJT would do well to have Napoleonette and Sir Keir look at a map. The U.S. is an ocean away, but look at France and the UK’s proximity to Ukraine. Geography is destiny.
When the original template for U.S. security in Europe was hammered out, Europe was smaller. The original template was also negotiated during a different historical era, post-WWII. The inflexibility of those long-ago dynamics obviously do not jibe well today or make pragmatic sense. When the metric is always “80 years ago”—a la “At any other time in the past 80 years it would have been unimaginable that the U.S. president would be pressing for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin while calling Zelensky a dictator” (Axios)—you know that the mind-set has not really aligned w/ 21st Century shifts. Not everything can be explained by Sudetenland or Chamberlain’s appeasement.
Writing in the nytimes, M. Gessen says, “For the first time since WWII, European states are facing an aggressive, expansionist power that is actively waging war.” She means Russia or more accurately “the threat of Putin” and then, more ideologically, what she sees as “the threat of Putinism.” However, her basic sentiment is sketchy enough and lacking in specifics to describe not VVP or Russia really but the “expansionist, aggressive” behaviors of the U.S.-led OTAN on the continent instead: “expansionist” w/ OTAN’s literal sprawl/conquest eastward and “aggressive” most explicitly w/ the bombardment of Belgrade, 1998-1999, plus the color revolutions & regime change ops which followed the atomization of Yugoslavia. Gessen wants to convince readers that Europe dwelled in a pre-Sudetenland state of pure European innocence until “the threat of Putin” or, even more dastardly, until “the threat of Putinism” cropped up, but that is not so.
Russia will emerge from the war in Ukraine as the winner and look unquestionably like the winner, incontrovertibly so, which is an unbearable thorn in Europe’s side. The risk all along for the U.S.-led OTAN and the OTAN-prepped Ukraine was that they would lose badly, hands-down, and have to pick up the pieces afterward, which would include the unforced error—lubricated in the most unctuous hubris—of sparking an unwinnable fight against a nuclear superpower. *Peace* will kick off a nervy period for Europe, because the unfamiliar climate of unadorned peace will deprive them of their most knee-jerk tool of statecraft: war.
"The threat of Putin" brings to mind the ghost of Hamlet's father. So dramatic :-)
And the "threat of Putinism" takes in a massively impressionistic corpus of behaviors, not to mention groups of people.
Who will be the arbiter of "Putinism" and its threat--?
We must run blood tests on the infected to contain the spread of Putinism virus. If we pay gazillions to Pfizer right now, we will get this vaccine in two months to vaccinate all Western Europe. Let's start with the Baltics
Gessen also says that DJT's return to the White House signals the "Putinization of America." Sounds like we will all have to wear masks & stand 6-feet apart until Gessen signals the All Clear.
Let's make it 8-feet apart & 6-feet under, to be on a safe side!
LOL (but be vigilant of vaxx pushers and fake deadly viruses)
Trump's world has no use for re-treads like Masha and the ilk from NY Times or Washington Post, these are the instruments for signalling to the deep state bot net the latest delusional thinking. He's hoping that these cretins are suitably unemployed, they're certainly unemployable in any capacity that requires reasoning and thinking.
Serkeeya will get demolished by The Trumpster. The Anglo/French adventure is clearly a tripwire to drag in the US.
Would be better if Pres Trump simply arrests queer stumbler and little micron. Then rendition their sorry asses over to MOCKBa.
The best ending for Zelensky is to disappear into obscurity like most of the members of 1990s boy bands.
All you need to do is rescind his SAS protection and he'll be Gaddafied by the end of the day.
That would be up to his Khazarian puppet masters
Gaddafied by who?
Zelensky is a foreign body in Banderism. A Russian Jew from Krivoy Rog, who still speaks Ukrainian with significant difficulty.
The current regime in Kiev is an unholy alliance between ideological Banderites, plus brainwashed into self-hatred ethnic Russian traitors, plus non-ideological oligarchs looking for mechanisms to keep Moscow away, plus various other grifters. All of that supported by the West in order to destroy Russia. Remove one of the grifters, nothing will change much in terms of the more global motivation for the whole thing, and they cannot have Zelensky Gaddafied given how much of an icon he has become. The only way that happens without Russian involvement is if the whole movement is on the chopping block by the West. But that is impossible, because we are talking about a ~200-year old project. You don't throw away something like that on a whim.
Very serious questions have to be asked here of the Kremlin. Such as why all these people are still alive.
Go back to Stalin's time. Right now there is a Sudoplatov Battalion fighting against the AFU. Where does that name come from?
Well, Pavel Sudoplatov was an NKVD officer from Melitopol tasked with carrying out special missions. He lived to see the collapse of the USSR and wrote an autobiography describing some of what he did.
One of his first major missions was to assassinate Yevhen Konovalets, who was the leader of OUN in the 1930s. That was done in 1938 in Rotterdam. Notice how at that time there was no Ukraine, and most Ukrainian nationalists were actually in Poland (Galicia and Volhynia were Polish territories at the time), and Poland had a much more serious internal problem with Ukrainian nationalism and terrorism than the USSR, where the situation was rather calm (because the Peltiura-Bandera cancer had not spread beyond Galicia yet). Still, Stalin considered it a vital task to have the OUN decapitated.
That continued until Khrushchev's time -- Bandera himself was assassinated in 1959 in Munich.
Now notice a very important difference compared to today -- Bandera and Konovalets had to be disposed of using covert means because:
1) There were no long-range precision weapons at the time
2) They lived inside countries the USSR was not at war with, so even if there were such weapons, they could not be used.
Both of these are not constraints now.
Yet the key Banderites are moving freely inside a territory that is bombed by Russia daily without any real concern about their lives, safe in the knowledge that the Kremlin is not targeting them.
Meanwhile the SBU is actively doing assassinations even in Moscow.
Well, what are we talking about there?
There is a lot there, but I would just like to focus on one particular element.
Over the last few years I have taken it upon myself to learn what I can about Stephan Bandera, and I have come to the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely he was assassinated, by the KGB or anyone else.
Consider the evidence presented to the public.
All we have is the testimony of a defector in the custody of Western intelligence. He claimed while on trial that he shot Bandera with some sort of special weapon, a gun that shot a poison gas that simulated the effects of a heart attack. No such weapon was ever produced and no such weapon has been produced in the 70 years since. How exactly would such a weapon even work and what would be the advantage of using one in this circumstance? If you wanted him dead then just kill him, why try to conceal it?
Yevhen Konovalets, the other OUN leader was killed by a bomb, why use a super secret undetectable "James Bond Q division" weapon (which has never been seen or used since) to kill Bandera?
The most likely explanation is that Bandera died of a regular heart attack and the rest is a classic bit of Cold War black propaganda
That is possible, and 1959 was also quite some time after Khrushchev had amenstied the Banderites.
Doesn't change the fact that Konovalets was taken out under the circumstances I described -- Ukraine did not exist, and if anything, the OUN was more of a threat for Poland at the time Yet Stalin considered it imperative to solve the problem.
The compare-and-contrast with Putin's (in)actions is obvious.
Very good question.
Your description of Zelensky's position is good and the description of the dysfunctional alliance of players upholding Ukraine's gov is fairly accurate as much as I see. In a time and place where much of the conflict is painted in grotesque simplification you have the right nuance.
I would stess the point you made regarding the menagerie of players you describe, the unholy alliance has been brought together to harm Russia. This is a 200 year effort as you mention.
The US has had a major hand in the region since the last year of WWII. The largest CIA foreign operation in its history was run by LtGen Gehlen in what is now Ukraine. His partnership with the US started during WWII with full knowledge and support from Allen Dulles while Dulles was still in the OSS. Dulles later gave OUN leader, Mykola Lebed a job at the CIA publishing house, Prolog, after giving him a fake ID and telling USNIS and Dept of State to ignore Lebed's past. There are 1,000s of FOIA released documents showing the US fostered Ukrainian facism with the aim of hurting Russia (distinct from the Soviets).
That's to say, the US created many of the players now surrounding Zelensky. The US has embedded advisors in all levels of Ukraine's government and the US is paying various contractors (some that I know) through NGOs.
The UK's efforts to harm Russia and play the "Great Game" aimed at hurting Russia go back to the 1800s if not before. The US adopted that perspective if people like Zig Brzenzinski and Robert Kagan are any indication.
I don't think anyone here can actually answer all the specifics you raise though. To do so would require inside knowledge most don't have. There are a lot of questions, good questions, you raise.
Why would Stalin target the OUN as early as it did?
Bandera or the leadership of the OUN was targeting Russians as much as Poles, Romanians, Romani, Hungarians, and Jews from its creation. He and the OUN was an immediate threat to the Poles, hence his trial in Polish court. He admitted to deadly anti-Polish activities. Stalin saw the OUN as a threat to Russia if for no other reason than the OUN positioned themselves as an expansionist (in context of a Ukrainian identity) movement that would ultimately impact Russian territory and upset the balance of power in the region.
Putin has not done a number of things that, from a Western NATO doctrine perspective, would have been done (has been done in other places) had the US been leading the charge against Ukraine. Admittedly, that's speculation since the US didn't lead the effort of kenetic action in Ukraine regardless of what other efforts it has record of leading.
As a Marine Corps officer who was first exposed to US methods of warfare in Yugoslavia, I've seen how the US does things. I'm not saying that as a bid for definative insight. I also have a house in East Ukraine and still have immediate family there and in Central Ukraine. It is to say, my speculation is not uninformed at the same time, it has a particular bias. My church was bombed. People I know were attacked by the current government in Ukraine before 2014. Our family doctor worked part time in one of the biolabs (and wore an ankle bracelet to track her) that many Western pundits say don't exist.
I also adhere to the combat dictum, Don't believe 90% of what you hear and only believe 30% of what you see. That comes from working in the US government as much as anything and watching it lie as a matter of course in an effort to use 5th Gen Warfare concepts. Uncertainty is the norm. I could be wrong.
It seems to me Ukraine is a battlefield in a global contest. Putin is not fighting just in or only for Ukraine. His actions reflect a global contest.
Stalin and Putin are quite different despite Western efforts to peg Putin as a wannabe Stalin. Some of his actions should be contextualized as part of his efforts to increase Russian position globally, which means navigating pressure from countries like China and India. His approach is quite different from Stalin though.
Although you didn't bring it up, looking for common sense in clandestine efforts or geoplolitical endeavors is sometimes a fruitless exercise. It is not always the case, but too often it is. The US currently pays the Taliban it once fought, tried to destabilize Castro by introducing hoof and mouth disease to Cuba and the US tried to blow him up with exploding cigars (very LoonyTuneish), and, per the Church Commission, the US created a poison ice dart gun, and the CIA dropped LSD on an entire city among other bizarre and unethical things. Sometimes subterfuge develops it own logic in a narrow context.
As for who would take out Zelensky? Any great power who thinks he either no longer serves a purpose or impedes their pursuit of their interests. His profile is large. It is not too large for subterfuge though. Can the US openly drone strike him? Not likely. It can pay for a car accident though or make it worthwhile for the British to withdrawl the SAS who supposedly have been guarding him. Some might say the UK is rabidly pro-Zelensky. By all appearances they are. That is good cover though. And such things have happened before. The US removed the Vietnamese president it gave ticket tape parades to and much warmer welcome than it ever did to Zelensky.
It is hard to overstate how much many Ukrainians hate Zelensky. There are plenty who would kill him if they thought they could. There have been efforts. Simply remove protection and local forces, that have been kept at bay by international effort, take over.
Why are these people (the menagerie you describe in your question) still alive. Good question. What is the picture the Kremlin sees? What is the path to the desired outcome? Those questions havent been answered by the people who know. The conflict is messy. The Russians are holding back. So is the US. Nor is either side as indomitable as some claim. There are documents like the 2019 Rand Corporation Report - Extending Russia that define US goals. Ukraine was never intended to win in any tactical or operational way. It was intended to hurt Russia along with events in Syria, Moldova, Georgia, and sanctions.
Anyway, I've gone on too long. You should save this question and bring it up again.
Tears for Fears
Zelenesky had to be offed in late 2022 the latest, by a Russian missile during one of his evening live streams.
He had done enough to warrant a death sentence already by then, and Putin had to send a message, in the most forceful way possible. Which would be to interrupt Zelensky's live stream with a visit from a friendly bunker buster missile.
The fact that Putin has not done that to this day, given everything that has happened in the 26 months since the end of 2022, now warrants a death sentence for Putin himself, as happened to Nicholas II, to be carried out by the patriotic forces in Russia, if they ever manage to organize themselves and take power as they should be doing right now.
A threat that Putin quite clearly senses, because he has aggressively gone after the Russian patriots, while none of the Banderites in Kiev has been touched.
What does that tell us...
Quite simply, he still has control.
And support of the people.
Zelenski is worth more to the Russians alive than dead. How could Russia remove such a disastrous leader of what became an enemy state? And now why would Russia want to lose such a wealth of information? In the end knowledge is potentially power. it's good for your enemies to know you know the truth so they are off balanced when they speak with their forked tongues.
>Zelenski is worth more to the Russians alive than dead.
And the same applies to Budanov, Zaluzhny, Malyuk, and all the other scumbags that have been around Zelensky during the war?
There has not been a single decapitation strike against a well-known publicly prominent Banderite figure. Not a single one.
Yet one of the officially stated goals of the SMO was "denazification".
You can spin tales about how Zelensky is "worth more alive", but when nobody else is touched either, that excuses wears rather thin...
Well sometimes a public trial and bringing a criminal to justice has more of an effect than just a death that will be forgotten or may create a Marty. Sometimes the real criminals are taken out behind the scenes, leaving the sock puppets only for public consumption.
Sometimes you need to send a clear message too.
Imagine you are a Russian soldier on the front lines. You have witnessed the country being sold out by the elites all your life. Including giving up a third of its territory and half its population, which had been fought over for centuries prior to that and won at the cost of tens of millions of lives, without a fight. All so that the elites could steal everything.
Then you witnessed Minsk-1 and Minsk-2, and Istanbul.
Then you hear about "negotiations" every day.
Are you going to fight hard beyond the necessity to survive day-to-day? What for?
Have you ever seen what Russian soldiers returning from the Kherson right bank of the river had to say in the days after November 10 2022? Naturally the Kremlin tried to keep it hushed, but it did leak to Telegram channels.
If you are going to fight a war, you fight a war. Doing a not-war is a sure way to lose both the war and the internal situation.
So far there have been only three serious moves made by the Kremlin, and they all have major question marks about them.
1) Taking Crimea back after the Maidan in February-March 2014. But was that a Kremlin-sanctioned operation or did the GRU go rogue and present the Kremlin with a fait accompli? It is not clear to this day, but given how when Strelkov returned from Crimea and tried to present the Kremlin with a fait accompli in the Donbass too a couple months later, the Kremlin refused to lift a finger to help. Which places doubts about who actually ordered the Crimea operation.
2) Starting the SMO. But that one was botched practically in the first minutes by the absurd rules of engagement imposed on the Russian army and the lack of preparation
3) Annexing the four regions in September 2022. But did that happen on the Kremlin's initiative or the local leaders saw what happened in Kharkov and threatened to make their own deals with Kiev and surrender without a fight unless the Kremlin made a serious commitment? Plus there was a need to save face after the Kharkov fiasco.
And that was it.
There has not been a single serious move since then, it has been all empty threats and bluffs, and endless death and humiliation, resulting in serious degradation of internal morale and international standing.
Even for purely symbolic reasons, taking Zelensky out, and doing it very publicly, after e.g. the Kursk invasion, was an absolute must.
There was a strike on both Zaluzhniyy and Budanov. Both survived, but Zaluzhniyy needed a trepination and barely survived the strike after which he was replaced.
1) We have no confirmation for that, and we see no signs of such damage on Zaluzhny's head.
2) Those strikes were never repeated.
Even after Crocus City Hall, the Kursk invasion, etc.
What exactly in this conflict do trust to be confirmed? It's all smoke and mirrors and assumptions with very little information. Soldiers follow orders as they can't see the big picture. They can question what they see Infront of them but not much what they are told to do. By not following orders that's how you create Vlasov and the hivies that helped the Whermacht during WW2 and also how conflicts are loss.
Here I disagree. Offing Zelensky would mean someone smarter like Budanov or Zaluzhniyy would have taken office. That would have also meant better military decisions made and less political/PR decisions. It would have been worse for Russia.
You take them out too.
Russian policy should be exactly the same as the Israeli policy towards Hezbollah. Whenever there is a location on someone high ranking, he is taken out immediately. When he is replaced, the replacement gets the same treatment. Algorithmitcally, with no hesitation.
And note that I am rooting for Hezbollah in that case, but you have to give credit where credit is due. Also, Hezbollah not doing the same on Israeli leadership resulted in them losing the war without ever getting to fight seriously.
No. Israel decapitates the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah because they do not regard them as leaders of legitimate nations or armies. In fact they constantly reinforce that perception of illegitimacy by constantly killing them.
If you start killing presidents then you set a precedent for the rule that presidents may be killed.
Why did the allied powers exile Napoleon Bonaparte (twice) rather than just shooting him or chopping his head off? Because it would have shown that an Emperor can be executed, and executed for actions that many other Kings and Emperors of Europe had also done. Exile was the safer choice.
Personally I think that the attempted assassination of Alexander Dugin and the actual assassination of his daughter Daria Platonova Dugina was the worst mistake the SBU ever made. I have no sympathy for a regime who wants to assassinate philosophers, even nutty mystic ones.
>Israel decapitates the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah because they do not regard them as leaders of legitimate nations or armies. In fact they constantly reinforce that perception of illegitimacy by constantly killing them.
Do you realize that from a Russian perspective Ukraine is a historical anti-Russian aberration that should not exist? Apparently not.
In fact, Putin should have been jailed for treason for the very fact that he officially recognized Poroshenko back in 2014, thus legitimizing the coup.
>If you start killing presidents then you set a precedent for the rule that presidents may be killed.
That ship has long sailed. Or it is not a precedent when the US does it, but everyone else is not allowed that privilege? Well, if that is the case, then Russia is a second-rate power, not a great one.
>Personally I think that the attempted assassination of Alexander Dugin and the actual assassination of his daughter Daria Platonova Dugina was the worst mistake the SBU ever made.
Why a "worst mistake"?
Did anyone pay for it? No.
Does anyone even remember it now? Hardly anyone.
Two years ago, there was a 4 hour interview with Bennett, ex-PM of Israel, who stated that he flew to Moscow when the war began, and begged Putin not to kill Zelensky. Putin gave his word, and Bennett called Zelensky from Moscow, letting him know, and Zelensky got out of his bunker, where he's hiding since the war began, and went on TV proclaiming, "I'm not afraid of anybody." Pathetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYcdaUYqQEA
1) Do you think I would be posting the things I am without knowing that story very well?
2) That story only makes things worse for Putin
3) Even if there are guarantees for Zelensky’s head, why has absolutely nobody else been taken out either?
1. I don't know you from Adam, hence your "posting etiquette" is unfamiliar to me :-)
2. It makes Putin a man of honor, since each of us is worth only as much as our word.
3. Whoever takes Zelensky out, Putin still will be blamed for it
No, that does not make Putin a man of honor, it makes him a traitor.
How many innocent Russian civilians were slaughtered, entirely deliberately, by Ukrainian munitions, then by NATO missiles and shells, eventually by hand from close range in Kursk too? Many thousands.
Has Putin made any effort to have that blood debt repaid? No.
Well, if the blood debt is not repaid, then anyone can have fun killing Russians anywhere anytime. Because it is an entirely cost-free proposition.
But this is not the Congo or some other third-world shithole with no means to defend itself, it is the country with the most firepower on the planet, which can get anyone anywhere in the world.
If you have that capability, but you refuse to use it to defend your people because that would hurt the interests of your olgiarch buddies, who have spent the last 35 years robbing the country, with your protecting them, then "a man of honor" is the last thing you are.
You are a traitor scumbag who has to die a gruesome death publicly for his betrayal, and be replaced by someone who will defend the country.
Not without first confiscation of his ill-begotten wealth.
Oh, he's "stepping down", is he. He was never President to begin with (his term ran out), so stepping down for security guarantees from the US (and we all know how much THOSE are worth) is like trading Kursk for Crimea. What a fucking joke.
One can't make this stuff up. It's unpossible.
Khazarian drama queen, penis piano player masquerading as an Ukrainian and snake oil salesman is getting desperate ...
Manchurian candidate
The piano lid finally slams on Zelensky's member, metaphorically speaking.
Maybe some hot faggot sex or line snorting with Trudeau omn Monday will accelerate his decision ?
If Zelya moves into the Élysée Palace, he'll have light evening's entertainment w/ Brigitte & Emmanuel. Maybe they have a piano--?
Moulin Rouge needs badly queers on high heels
Could additionally play duets--?
Plenty of arrangements exist for À quatre mains--piano four hands. Could be revamped for piano trois membres--?
You folks are truly rude. But nonetheless entertaining.
Just two organs
Only if he wears the right socks.
I know people are going to talk about the strategic analysis.
But the ending to that final video just killed me 💀
I wasn't much intimidated by the interrogators, but the bunch that showed up at the end scared the hell out of me!
It appeared on "Vineyard Saker" YT channel, hat tip
Zelensky's tragedy : "To leave or not to leave, and for how much," brings to mind an old joke, "If you didn't want it the bad way, the good way will be much worse."
A leader from the West *had* to say it: that Russia was *not* in fact going to steamroll revanchisticly into Poland or into the Balts after sacking Ukraine. A leader from the West *had* to make clear that Russia was not so hungry to reassemble the Soviet Union that stopping at only Estonia would constitute nothing more than a piddling little measly snack. Shaking his head dismissively and saying, “No. Not even a little bit,” when asked if he thought Russia would invade Europe via Poland or the Baltic states, DJT knee-capped the dominant lie of the infowar which has boosted Project Ukraine since Day One: that stopping Russia in Ukraine was critical; otherwise they would roll into Berlin.
George Beebe, writing in Compact Magazine, states that “Moscow perceived OTAN’s eastward expansion a security threat, which—in the vacuum of diplomatic efforts to halt it— produced a spiral of action-and-reaction that escalated” ultimately into the SMO.
George Beebe’s realistic appraisal has largely happened *outside* of Regime Media, though, whose narratives unerringly describe Russia’s invasion as “unprovoked,” often portraying the SMO as an off-the-wall incidence of “Putin’s brutal aggression.” Beebe lists a “formidable array of public relations firms and social media influencers working in partnership with Bankhova to make certain that the war in Ukraine is best understood as a modern-day variation of Nazi Germany’s assault on Europe.” Behind the scenes, a network of lobbyists, former government officials and even D.C. law firms have built a powerful messaging machine to help pull the strings on media coverage and policymaking around Project Ukraine. Two agencies that represent the Ukrainian oil & gas industry became de facto emissaries in the Beltway for Kiev’s cause. The Associated Press’s style-book listed status quo language when writing in the media about Project Ukraine, which is why the words “unprovoked” & “appeasement”crop up so often, as does the phrase “brutal aggression.”
As George Beebe put it, “Those suggesting that the war had more complex origins were anathematized as Kremlin apologists.”
DJT forced the infowar into retreat by refusing to play along. SecDef Hegseth did his part in Brussels, as did JD in Munich. Sec Rubio & his team re-normalized diplomacy w/ Russia by working for hours w/ Lavrov & his team in Riyadh. “Those embracing the WWII paradigm for the war have recoiled in horror,” Beebe wrote. EU foreign policy chief Kaja the Callused said, “It’s appeasement”—helpfully using one of the AP’s official style-book words—“it has never worked. The Ukrainians will resist, and we will support them.”
Particularly irksome to Dems & Concern Trolls & EU bureaucrats is the fact that DJT is pointing his foreign policy in a direction other than sustaining a losing endeavor for the embattled & embittered Ukraine. The nytimes Editorial Board weighed in commonsensically: “On the face of it, President Trump is right to try to end a destructive war in Ukraine that is now approaching the three-year mark, and to open talks with Russia. This war has to end, and at this stage it can end expediently only through negotiations.” Odious to the nytimes, however, is the fact that DJT’s approach “is a reversal of the past three years,” as if the course Collective Biden charted, which we would term a ’debacle,’ though the AP stylebook does not list that word, had to be maintained at all costs. “The very act of discussing an end to the war without the presence of Ukraine or any other ally at the table,” according to the nytimes, “violates the fundamental principle the U.S. proclaimed from the outset: “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Rigidly, the nytimes, in its own big blasting infowar fusillade, tries to shackle DJT to principles “the U.S. proclaimed from the outset”—meaning 3 years ago?—as if somehow DJT is not himself an adjudicator of U.S. policies & interests.
Macron was my favourite, delicious. Thanks for that!
I vote for Goring, errr Olaf...
It would be nice if the battle maps could have a (smaller) zoomed out version also, so that the casual reader would know where on the front they are. Sure one could always lookup the city names and do it oneself, but that's time consuming, especially with both Russian and Ukrainian names for most or all cities.
Great writeup nevertheless.
EU waiting for the final curtain to fall and at the grand finale Pyrrhus making his performance. The King had no clothes but no balls either.
So, ok, in your view, what is the current Russian military strategy / military objectives? Like, you're the General Staff and you're presenting to Putin. What are you saying?
"In a static war of attrition without manoeuvre what do we need strategy or specific military objectives for ?"
That's obviously a somewhat facetious answer. But also a somewhat defensible one, I think.
Western Front all over again then
You could put it that way. Right now, as in WWI, the military technology of defense has a decisive advantage against the military technology of attack. That's probably a problem for scientists and engineers to solve, not military strategists. The generals and political leadership of WWI were by and large unable to accept that reality and repeatedly wasted enormous resources in "big pushes" that went nowhere. It appears that the Russian leadership of today are sensible enough to not make the same mistake and patient enough to let the win come mostly through attrition.
Everything you said is right, except the last sentence. The assumption that attrition will eventually "work" I think is incorrect. As Simplicious has pointed out, if aid continue to flow Ukraine has manpower to sustain this for years.
I think there is legitimate battlefield limitations for the Russian army - Kursk is the best example. Its been 6 months and they have still not been able to kick them out. Destroying or routing the AFU there would be an incalculable political victory; yet the RuAF haven't been able to do it, and this is on Ru territory with maximal Ru air support, shortest logistical lines, etc. Yes the AFU is paying a heavy price, but for the moment the dream is still alive for Kiev. And, what happens if Ru ends up agreeing to a ceasefire or armistice, say, in order to hold elections. Will they accept Ukrainian occupation? Kursk has been a debacle tactically for the AFU but politically it has been a victory
I can supply some actual answers:
1) There is no military strategy other than to keep taking hits and to stall until the West allows the Kremlin to surrender
2) Which is because the political "strategy" is to concede as much as demanded to make yet another deal that will kick the can down the road so that the Russian oligarchy can go back to how things were pre-2022 for another decade perhaps, while the West gathers its strength to finally finish Russia off.
Such a deal will foreclose on any possibility of ever recovering some of the most strategically vital core historic Russian lands (the area between Odessa and Belarus and everything east of it), because it will give the time to raise another generation into vicious hatred of everything Russian, but the people who control the Kremlin do not care. Most of them are not ethnically Russian anyway, or would even be happy to see the country finally destroyed completely (look at the ethnic composition of Russian oligarchs and their openly stated views on certain subjects) and even the Russian ones care primarily about their money, not about such silly abstract things such as geostrategic issues.
Remember that in 2014, when had the Russian army gone in seriously, it would have walked to the Polish border without much difficulty, even in its own substantially diminished at the time state, Putin went for Minsk-1 and then Minsk-2.
Then in 2022 he was ready to hand over everything, and to even put Crimea on the table a decade down the line. Yes, that was part of the Istanbul deal -- potentially handing over Crimea too. Putin and everyone around him should have been in handcuffs in the basement of Lyubyanka, for high treason, the moment that became publicly known.
And no, that is not an exaggeration, it is exactly what was demanded by the existing at the time Russian laws.
Instead he remained in power for another two years and was then reelected with no real opposition. Giving him a carte blanche to do even worse in the next six years with no oversight by anyone.
These comments stimulate useful discussion.
Recall that Russia has two main enemies:
1) The "external" West (NATO, etc),
2) The "internal" West (oligarchs, bankers, liberal media, bribe-takers, etc.)
Rolling across the steppes in 2014, Strelkov-style, leaves these enemies untouched, indeed it would have emboldened them.
Instead, the SMO in Ukraine has become the vehicle for tackling both enemies. Progress is underway:
• "Demilitarization": NATO has been steadily losing equipment, men, money, unity and credibility.
• "Denazification": Russia-hating talking heads are losing credibility: "Russia's economy is in tatters", said Fond o'Lyin (lol), "the ruble is rubble" (lol), "they are fighting with spades" (hypersonic ones, lol), etc. USAID has been 404´d, etc.
• "Resovereignization": Opinion within Russia has been gradually changing from "We invaded Ukraine" to "NATO invaded Russia". The Battle of Kursk (2024 edition) has been a particular catalyst in highlighting that Russia is again forced into its once-per-century fight for liberation and preservation.
• "Perestroika 2.0": The economy has been re-orientated towards domestic production and Asian markets. Russian officials are even pleading to *keep* the US-led sanctions.
Up to 2014, undeniably, the West/Globalists held huge sway over Russia. Putin & Medvedev were wise enough to play along – yes, at great short-term cost. The pendulum is now clearly swinging the other way.
Hopium.
NATO has not been demilitarized at all. Because guess what? Tanks and artillery have no relevance to a NATO-Russia war.
This is where the Substackers and podcasters, in their quest to maximize subscription and ad revenue, have been doing a great service to whoever is pushing for war in the West, because they have made it seem like this is how war is fought and will always be fought.
Which is just silly nonsense.
Even the war between Ukraine and Russia is only fought this way because of the political decisions in the Kremlin. Decisions for which the heads of everyone who made them should literally roll, in public, Saudi Arabian style, because they have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Russian (on both sides) for no reason.
The Kremlin can ensure victory by hitting the targets it has been refusing to hit for three years (command and control centers and logistics nodes), which would take less than 12 hours from the order being issued, perhaps much less than that, then roll it all up to the Polish border, which would take another couple months perhaps.
That it has not happened is entirely because of how f***d up Russian internal politics is.
But a war between NATO and Russia will be something else entirely -- it will be all about navies and air forces, missiles and air defense. There will be no ground forces and small drones involved at all, except for clearing the rubble after it is all over.
Russia has the advantage in air defense and missile tech, but is at disadvantage in forward deployment, and it is at serious disadvantage in everything else in terms of numbers.
Has NATO suffered any attrition on its naval and air force assets? No.
Has Russia suffered air defense and air force attrition? You bet.
So the score here is in NATO's favor.
It is quite astonishing to see the Substackers and podcasters talk about how NATO has been "demilitarized" because they are out of M-777s and their followers just lap it up with nobody asking the question how an actual NATO-Russia war would actually play out...
In terms of solving the internal Russian problems, there is a massive defeat looming. Have you not followed the news? The pro-Western forces are about to get what they wanted -- a deal that formalizes the defeat in the war. Who will have come out on top internally then?
And if sanctions are lifted, what will happen to internal economic development? Western goods and technology will once again flood in and suppress internal development, as was the prevailing condition previously.
wow that last video is very popular - I've seen it all over the place...Even Saker published it today on his ancient youtube channel which has been quiet for years now - https://youtu.be/sZtKKwj4_TM
I surely miss him.
What, I better get over there! I, Miss, him, as…well. Thank you.❤️🐈⬛🇷🇺💙
that link is the video - its the same one as I saw about 10 different places today. I guess guys like dark humour - and the comment section was turned off.
As a Canadian, I am disappointed they left Zelly's #1 fanboy, Trudeau, out at the end.
Trudeau is not the first line. Canada is the 51st state already in many ways, or part of the UK even more so.