Things have ebbed again into a slight lull—or at least seeming one—as Iran reportedly stepped back from its intention to launch major strikes, as well as Ukraine’s Kursk adventure having ground to a halt and transitioned into the typical positional warfare.
What saddens me is that the meat being grinded in Kursk is most likely hapless pressganged civilians instead of the nafoid mercs and hohol gestapo who actually deserve to be fabbed. I hope they get the Fabs they so richly deserve.
I doubt itJews are persecuted in Ukraine as any one who knows their history will confirm. The far right brigades have no time for Jews and muslims, it seems neither have you. ,
Jews are no different to any other group. they contain groups like the zionists as wellas other whoare kind, forgiving and charitable, Like any fringe roup they are seen as the problem when in fact they are not the cause. The people who shit the ebd are those that just judge on one thing. Anti semitism like Russophobia is a symptom of an underlying malaise.
ah the tired anti-semitism card. "Jews are no different to any other group" Bullshit, they are tribal to the extreme and view themselves as better than the goy, white anting any country they reside in. Sure some try to fit in with the society they embed in but are quickly brought back in to line with accusations of ' Self Hating Jew'. How many times have they been expelled from nations?
Newsflash, these imposters pretending to be jews, the Euro trash and US jews (ashkeNAZI filth) are not semitic. And as supporters/enablers/perpetrators of genocide of Arabs makes them the anti-Semites.
Ukrainian Jews have recorded a song about “Ukraine is a Jewish land” from the roof of a huge Menorah synagogue in dnepropetrovsk. And don’t forget that the four most sadistic Nazi battalions (including the Azov battalion) were founded and financed by the former president of the Jewish community of Ukraine, Mr. Kolomojsky, to protect his property in Donbas. He also financed the presidential campaign of Mr. Zelensky the “penist” who is also a Jew. And look how the “penist” is effective in eliminating the whole generation of the Ukrainian men. He also sold the Ukrainian lands to BlackRock and similar fascist mega corporations. Perhaps Zelensky still hopes to create a “land without people” for Israel 2.0.
They're still advertising on Fox looking for donations for Holocaust Victims, who would now have to be 80 to 100 years old. The well-fed matron in the ad looks like she could help the cause by missing a few meals.
Not, I repeat Not collecting to kill Gazans, or negotiators, only Holocaust Victims.
That was my inner thought when I watched those chicks walking to death light hearted. Maybe they really believed marching to Moscow. Anyway, kids are the next batch and nobody will notice in the west.
Actually, no. There's elite of the elite, Western Ukrainian brigades with hardcore nationalists, NATO mercs, cream of the crop. Strykers were assigned mostly to them. Even these SS fanboys are not Ukrainian but likely Estonian, their accent is Baltic, as I pointed out in a comment below.
Notice that you don't see regular cannon fodder M113s among the casualties but lots of hi-end fast-attack vehicles. Most of their crews and passengers won't be coming home since Putin noted that exchange fund is full, but new exhibitions in Kubinka will be fantastic.
One of them is Vasilii Daniluk from Ivano-Frankovsk (or however it is written in English). They are not estonian, they are idiots who believe themselves to be ubermenschen by cosplaying monsters. The irony, that those monsters were crushed and destroyed in the same fields, misses them completely.
Nah, the meat sent to Kursk was the highest quality Ukraine has left. That's why all their vehicles are newer and more advanced. Russia captured its first Stryker there.
Well let’s say a sub quality boosted on cheap steroids. What really struck me when I watch those guys is their poor physical condition, the lack of muscular structure, their chubby appearance. Look at the clips from 1942 on Russia soil. As much as I hate nazis I must admit they were fit in a twunk way
Mighty Wurlitzer is now touting the invincible Challenger 2 tanks as well. I'm a bit surprised that Russia has not formally declared war upon Ukraine as a result of this latest stunt - which is a direct invasion of the RF. As I understand it, moving from a 'Special Military Operation' to an actual war allows RF more freedom of action.
Videos from Russian soldiers show motivated troops decently equipped troops full with nazi symbols. Also there are many foreign languages in the comms (Polish, French).
The more of such troops pour into Kursk oblast the better. Much easier to snipe them in this area without many fortifications than to smoke them out in Donbass.
From all I have read and seen it is a mish-mash of hardcore nationalists, some of them well trained some more comfortable with shooting their own in the back if they are not performing, experienced troops drawn from collapsing parts of the front in the East, large numbers of foreign fighters and, yes, some raw recruits, the latter to probably flesh out the infantry. But overall average troop quality seems to be the best they have.
Yes, the usual “let them fight” and “onward, Christian soldiers!”
It’s imperative to remember that the tragic Nazification of Ukraine was the integral step for the implementation of talmudic doctrine of “full-spectrum dominance” concocted by Straussians. The Kagans clan has been active collaborator with banderites (self-proclaimed Ukrainian Nazis) since the 1990s.
There are dozens of Nazi monuments in Canada &the US, which were never touched by the whining profiteers on the fraudulent shoah business.
It is an advantage to send the most fanatical men (Nazi’s) to Kursk. because if they fail, you can sacrifice them as cannon flesh and get rid of them before peace capitulations. CIA, MI6 and the Ukrofuhrer have thought this over very well.
Two other US proxy wars going to hell, one involving Ukraine in Africa
Haiti :Jimmy Barbecue Chérisier How to Boko+ Bonus: Mali Tuareg Ukraine Disaster
New report on the Haiti disaster from the UN news feed Pass Blue
Jimmy Barbecue Chérizier tightens his grip on the capital, despite the UN mission, which, to all appearances, consists of 400 Kenyans only (of the 800 broadcasted as signed up)
None of the other countries, African or Caribbean, have sent ‘policemen behaving like troops’
According to local twitter accounts the Haiti policemen are forever protecting the not so savvy Kenyans unused to this level of resistance/streetwear
The Kenyan police defend themselves via the Miami Herald – they do yet seem to be aware they are fighting a proxy war
Pass Blue also has an interesting article on the Ukraine foreign policy disaster in the Sahel, when various Ukie diplomats boasted about their country’s involvement with a Tuareg movement, Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD) in their ambush on Mali army forces backed up by RF Africa Corps, resulting in 47 deaths for the Malian soldiers, and 84 deaths for the Russian
According to the UN any real involvement is unlikely, so the Ukies were just showing off
And succeeding in shooting themselves in the head, after the long Z campaign to gain African support, and coming just after the Ukraine FM had completed his fourth tour of Africa
The number of internally displaced children in Haiti has increased by an estimated 60 per cent since March – the equivalent of one child every minute – as a result of ongoing violence caused by armed groups. Carlencia, 15 years old, stands in one of the more secluded coutyards of an IDP site in Léogâne. UNICEF/UNI601248/Le Lijour
Haiti’s media-savvy gang leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, controls most of the country’s capital, patrolling blockaded streets with an army of armed deputies, many of them children carrying semiautomatic weapons.
“We live in a country where there is no drinking water, where children can’t go to school and people can’t go around freely,” said Chérizier, according to an English translation done by France 24 in an exclusive report published in July.
The irony of the country’s most-notorious gang leader supposedly protecting children shows how desperate their situation has become in Haiti, said Taz Doriza Phiri, the chief of emergency for Unicef in Haiti. The arrival of a Kenyan-led police force in July in the capital, Port-au-Prince, to take back control of the city from armed gangs is having a limited effect so far. Corruption allegations already surrounding the new Transitional Presidential Council have engendered public skepticism over any ability to restore stability in Haiti.
Heart-rending to read about the day to day plight for children & others swept up in the Haiti maelstrom. The country has an admirable history of having thrown off its colonial overlord--and even forcing Napoleon to change his mind about doubling down on a re-conquest of France's colony.
Pulling his troops out after high losses [50,000+] he set his sights on Austria & then the rest of Europe.
Occupying the west portion of Hispaniola, Haiti was on the resource poor side of the island--mountainous, craggy & practically devoid of soils. Its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, prospered, more naturally blessed w/ geological riches & agricultural opportunities.
Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier is a piece of work, without a doubt. Think of the Kenyan police officers, suddenly plunked down in this misery & mayhem, trying to make heads or tails of matters.
The Biden-Harris admin, global wheeler-dealers that they are, wanted to make a big PR show of working w/ their international partner--Kenya--in stabilizing Port-au-Prince: "See? Look at everything we're doing."
Wasn't that Kamala once Caribbean? Among all the other things she is or was, race or identity salad wise
Performative is correct: the US gvmt was betting on a good look not using white soldiers - but this was confined, once again, to a home audience, to please the Haiti exiled millionaires and other Black Leaders ruling class adjacent or favourable to the US régime etc etc
I do not think anyone much in RoW noticed this very favourably, using the poor to fight the poor half way round the world makes no sense except as exploitation
Karine Jean-Pierre, the Biden-Harris spokesperson, is of Haitian descent
<< using the poor to fight the poor half way round the world...>>
It occurs to me that the Kenyan police officers are serving as tripwire too--so they're doubly hung out to dry.
Haiti is a uniquely complex country w/ a painful history. U.S. politicians are poor decision-makers when it comes to Haiti--they've got a horrible track record, ditto w/ the UN & even UNICEF. All the king's horses could do a better job.
It's a stretch to believe that police officers from 5000 miles away can ameliorate much in Haiti.
Emboldened by OTAN's puffery, Ukraine craves a Walk on the Wild Side in other skirmish sites.
Ukrainian "tools" of global terror, like Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier's child soldiers in Haiti [ see Annexe below ], appear to have no legitimate options for the Good once they agree to do *wet work* for Western imperialists
Putting the Ukraine battlefield in context is essential reminder to those baying for blood whenever S reports from this Kursk op or others, that the war is fought on many fronts, and that the very greatest part is outside this theatre, in the corridors of BRICS, SCO, BRI and so on, and other the other fronts
And where, at the same time, is developing a peace plan slowly gathering enough weight to allow for the consideration that this is not a bipolar war, nor will be a bipolar peace
And that to put the war in a multipolar context is to see that the peace will also be multipolar, and so avoid the worst the US can do to prolong war chaos and suffering, here in the Ukraine, but also in RoW, by narrowing focus to just this one aspect, and to neglect the rest
Otherwise it is just troll versus troll – the bloodthirsty trying to kill eachother
Why dont you start a ”Off-topic-substack” of your own?
Although interesting it is a nuisance to find a long thread with your buddy Cheetah in every article from Simplicius. I would read your findings but not in this context.
The indicators I watch say Russia's economy will grow 5-6% with ever more genuine partners wanting to join the parade/. The just completed Army Security Forum/Trade Fair just ended with perhaps 500 Billion rubles in contracts signed.
Having finished reading, the only additional comment that's important is what Defense Minister Belousov said in his speech at the Army Tech Forum several days ago:
"As all of you know, the event takes place at a time of the special military operation. This is, in fact, the armed confrontation between Russia and the collective West.
"It is driven by a desire of the USA and their allies to sustain their dominance. And to prevent a new multipolar and equal world order.
Yes, we are witnessing the end of the unipolar moment and the beginning of multipolarity, however, it won't be an equal world. The climate crisis which is being accelerated (whether we like it or not) by massive consumer and fancy arms tech growth in the Global Majority (not yet off set by the demise of the West) will disproportionately affect the Global South and the poor and many people may try to migrate to the lucky latitudes. It will not be an equal new world order.
RF invention is not doing anything to slow down the climate crisis and no will it any time soon.
You have no interest in challenging what you've ben told about the West trying to scupper The Rest. Neither have those who believe the globalists are trying to scupper the West.
My ideas are the opposite of colonist and contemptuous. You're living in cloud cuckoo.land.
I live in what is called the RoW, in the heartland to use a phrase, so do not try telling me you lot have sold me a line about the West trying to exploit us -
Your climate change you made for your selves, you both made climate change and you came up with your solution
So go to it, and leave us out of your mess
You are precisely the sort of whitey missionary who lectures us, once it was the Bible now your Bible is climate change or whatever
Go home gringo -
By the way we, as the rest of the rest of world welcome the RF and Chinese
Well stated about the various Bibles we in the West have used to impose colonialism, slavery, and destruction on others. At least in the US there should be no non-profit tax exemption, if only so people can see the true faces of the conquering organizations that go before us.
We've seen millions of these ladies and their men folk preaching the end of the world is nigh, repent and come unto the Lord
This new lot are even more nauseating than the last lot, pretending that their science is the Almighty
The word then as now is self righteous
Then they blame it on you, I mean me, and claim that war is bad - not because it kills people for the love of Christ, but because it accelerates her precious climate change
How delusional does it get? More dumb than this? I guess there are even craziers allowed on the streets up in the north
She once said over on Karl Sanchez's substack where she also proliferates cringey nonsense, that the solution is eco femininism
In the end you just have to laugh - except there are some of us stupid enough still to believe this crap, just like our ancestors were robbed of their thousands of years religious practices by the one word worshipper colonists
The "Climate Crisis" is a PR exercise on behalf of Western billionaires who believe they can control everything with their money, and make more doing it.
I guarantee that YOU can parrot *every single propaganda point" circa "Glowbullshit Warming", and yet ignore ALL the actual science...
Don't forget to belch out, "The Science is Settled". A vote has been taken by all the Scientists whose entire livelihoods depend on Government funding. And they all agree, "keep the funds coming. What was it you want us to say, again...?"
The "climate crisis" is not being accelerated because we humans have no influence over it, unless you are referring to the geo-engineering criss-crossing airplane trails in the sky.
If that's not what you are referring to, then relax because there is no climate crisis caused by CO2, that is just propaganda, just like the Covid scamdemic.
Get a grip on reality man. You have fallen hook line and sinker for the con put about by the Heartland institute (funded by the oil industry) that climate change is a scam like covid was. Some might think the covid measures were deliberate to make opposition to the gathering environmental movement- the lockdowns and jabs certainly weren’t to combat any virus. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/climate-change-hasnt-been-debunked
The Heartland institute does not state that Climate change is not real just that there is no poof that it has been caused by Co2 and especially human produced Co2. They alos repeat wht the IPCC states that there is no coming climate catastrophe, It may be religion that human induced co2 has caused climate change on a Global scal e but it is not Science,
Jo wallers paper itself is riddled with problems. for instance it claims that the edieval warm period was regional as sea levels elsewhere are lower. Yet that is true today. as research on South sea islands shows. The comment section shows that there is dispute about many of his contentions. There are so many problems with the Co2 hypothesis taht we cannot state it is fact. that is science.
As for covid, this was not a scam, it was a new virus that at te start was more deadly. This is true of all new diseases. Medical science andpractices as they learned how the virus affects the body adapted techniques to minimise fatality,
They tried several combinations and different drugs as the corona project shows. Censorship of Covid was done because it harms and kills and is inconsistent with Science. Waller's digs his wn grave when he makses such stupid comments about Covid and one wonders about therr est of his science.
it is indisputable that Covid is deadly, that it is contagious and the ebst remedy is vaccination.
There is also a lot of evidene to the contrary. The amount by which Humans affect the climate is in dispute. There is also no alternative to Fossil fuels, Bjorn Lomberg is corect on that one. One can argue thawithin towns and cities fossil fuels should be minimised for Health reasons, But anyone who reads the violuminous reports of the ICC knows that they differ radically from the press releases. (we willl put aside all the justified accusations that they cherry pick ) .
Any rational person would admit that it is not settled science either. what is wrong given that is that people who have a contrary view are sacked, denied grants and that magazines like Nature refuse to print their articles.
This makes a complete mockery of stating that x is funded by the fossil fuel brigade when they ignore that y is funded by the government whose ageda is zero co2.
Like all "evidence" it depends what you are looking for. I think the earth, the sun, and ultimately the uni/multiverse couldn't care less what you do or think.
STOP THE CLIMATE CRISIS BULLSHIT!!! Anyone who has taken first year chemistry and botany understand this. Although the percentage of students that take courses like this that actually teach something, is dwindling down to almost none... Chip
Doing nothing would have been the intelligent solution. Fear mongering, just like the Climate Profiteers, was the exact opposite of a solution for a drummed up problem.
so they never died from Covid. what was the cause of the glass like images in the x rays. why did people die and why are they still dying. what is the cause of people with long covid? hysteria?
Many of us have our own minds & don't think or do something because 1 source said it.
I know this is a foreign concept for those like you that believe everything the "western exceptionalist experts" proclaim as the current gospel.
You are destined to reap your just rewards for being a compliant, unquestioning puppet of the elites who hate you, viewing you as a useful idiot that you are.
The biggest problem with all that climate buzz is that temperature rise turns arid into green, not desert, like they are predicting. Yes, countries like Russia majorly benefiting from it, but I doubt there will be migration to the north.
There has been some greening, but also some dust bowls, crop failures, devastating floods and fires, some sea level rise and some temperatures too hot to work in.
All this is nothing new. We have always had bad weather and natural disasters. The modest addition of human civilization to Earth's CO2 budget has made little or no difference in the weather, nor is it likely to.
Whenever a country "grows" through war, there is also a bill to pay around the corner. That economy makes no sense. But the new Geist and the bond the Russian people feel with each other is worth so much more. The Russians' craze for the empty, materialistic American lifestyle should have cooled and their naivety regarding the ruling elite of the West should have been blown away.
Then it is a bit ridiculous that Belousov continues to call the War against the US/West a special operation in the same breath as he describes it almost as a total war.
FINALLY, we touch the economy. If you haven't heard in the comments, the US economy is on the brink, but the financial conspiracy holding on, but it can never pay back its debt. Thus the US will go bankrupt and all that involves. Rather THEY DESTROY THE CURRENCY THROUGH WAR. Anyway, Martin Armstrong says they have decided on WAR. He makes sense.
And you will note that everyone on the other side want to make the war bigger, much bigger in Iran, in Gaza, and Netanyahu has already used tactical nukes (Gordon Duff - Veterans Today). Some European official said that the genocide in Gaza would not matter because it would be wiped away by a greater war. NATO's full in and some are now calling the incursion into Kursk a NATO operation as there was so much Polish, French, and English spoke more than Ukrainian. Plan for the lights, gas, and money to go out.
Resetting the balance sheet helps the little people as the "wealth" of the .1% is the combined debt of the rest--wipe out the debt and you wipe out their "wealth."
Russia's problems will bein when the war ends, not during it. One reason Belousov was brought in to enable the defence industry to produce for civilians after the war. All the soldiers demobbed will have to find work too.
Russia's current unemployment rate is @2% and the economy is said to lack 4 Million skilled workers. Genuine Russian GDP will grow between 5-6% this year. The number of people who've applied for residence permits is in the millions, and they're mostly European. A nation will always have problems, an aspect of governance Putin constantly invokes. Closely follow what Russia does for several years as I have, and you'll discover how Russia works.
All that is now, and to a great extent Russia has to tthank Elvira Nabiullina. where are the vacancies , what industry are they in?? Presntly inflation is hih but wages are soaring faser. That will not last. what i cannot understand is why the number of job vacancies has more than doubled in 2 years. i
if we look to just skilled workers it has trebled. i can see the need now in manufacturing arms etc, but where else. I still think that when the SMO ends it will prove troublesome for Russia. Hopefully they will manage.
Russia has a demographic crisis that's existed since WW2 which is the primary reason why it lacks the required workforce, a crisis Putin's tried to fix since he first became Russia's president. Current Russian inflation is low:
"Monthly inflation rate in Russia was 1.14% in July 2024. That is 0.50 more than it was in June 2024 and 0.51 more than in July 2023. At the same time, 2024 year to date inflation rate is 5.05% and year over year inflation rate is 9.13%.
That is the lowest rate in the world currently. As I wrote above, you need to follow Russia closely for many months to gather the info to make proper assessments. In 2018, the economy lacked workers, and that gap continued to grow as Russia's economy expanded. The additional volunteers and the partial mobilization for the SMO also sapped workers worsening the problem. Team Putin which consists of both government and business in this case is working very hard to deal with the issue trough high tech increases in worker productivity which includes the further training of workers so they can evolve along with industry's structure. Here's a recent peek at one part of Russia's economy, https://karlof1.substack.com/p/russia-expands-its-basis-for-greatness
You may e right the bank rate was recently increased to 18%, and Nebulina forecast an inflation rate betwee 6.5-7%.
"The key rate is now at its highest since April 2022. The Bank of Russia raised rates to 20% in an emergency move soon after the Kremlin sent Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
"For inflation to begin decreasing again, monetary policy needs to be tightened further," the bank said in a statement. Its next rate-setting meeting is due on Sept. 13.
Annual inflation, the bank's main area of concern, grew to 9.0% as of 22 July from 8.6% in June, the bank said. Inflation stood at 7.4% in 2023, compared with 11.9% in 2022."
So who is right either Reuters are reporting Nebulina wrongly or there is a discrepancy here.
Reuters isn't to be trusted on much of anything. It's important to know that Putin and most of his team are all Inflation Hawks because they all lived through the era of hyperinflation that destroyed Russia's economy during the 1990s and the devastation it visited to average Russians. But that prime rate isn't the only rate that's being provided. Many special rates are there for purchasing housing and for industrial development. When Volker raised the rate to 20% in the late 1970s-early 1980s, it definitely killed a major portion of the US economy because there were no special provisions made to insulate those sectors that were murdered. But the plan was never to save those people. The opposite is Russia's goal. Preferential mortgage rates of 2% are available and another program is at 4%. What Russia doesn't have is a large sector of credit card debt that would be hammered by the 20% rate--Russians save then buy.
> some desperate quid-pro-quo on the U.S. side in exchange for Iran not carrying out the massive strikes, which would humiliate the U.S. and force it into a war on Israel’s behalf which it cannot win, and which would likely end the U.S. empire for good
Why would I take a list of Mossad agents, if I can end Israel's benefactor and then end Israel itself in time? Seems like winning. Taking the list reeks of cowardice imo as the other option is much superior.
Framing it as cowardice VS. Not cowardice is a mistake, as what Iran does in response has nothing to do with bravery but with pragmatism and intelligence.
Isreal obviously wanted Iran to respond with a missile attack, but war should always be waged on one's own terms and not dictated by the enemy, else you give up initiative and tempo.
There is no reason to rush a counter-attack, Iranians aren't Arabs and typically can't be jerked around by their emotions. The whole "cowardice" narrative is driven by rather amateurish western minds.
The *Jerusalem Post Staff* bylined the article in The Jerusalem Post. I catch a whiff of *anonymous sources* here--or worse: a chatbot-generated AI snippet.
Note, too, that the gist of the article flatters the U.S. as a wheeler-dealer able to stave off Gog & Magog by dangling a few bright & shiny objects before the Supreme Leader. There's a west-chauvinistic flavor to this narrative: the heroically mediating U.S. can calm Iran down by feeding it the names of a couple Mossad agents & then everything is cool. Whew
My read - They're going to obliterate Iran. Why do I say so? Because the Brits are on about the Iranians seeking nuclear weapon triggers. (sorry I lost link - it was on Telegram). That means they are doing the propaganda campaign phase of their upcoming air force bombing raids. And people will believe it because of the current context. Anyone vaguely in touch with events is wondering why Iran hasn't retaliated and also wtf they would if they don't have nukes yet and also obviously why the f hasn't Iran got itself a weapon yet. The headline about the US giving up mossad agents to Iran sure is nice to hear but that's not why Iran hasn't attacked. They haven't attacked because they aren't fully suicidal. They would be absolutely obliterated and they know it. All the stuff about how potent and numerous the Iranian and Hezbollah missile arsenals are is poppycock propaganda. The "axis of resistance" is getting its ass kicked much as it pains me to say so-- you think the Kursk raid is a coincidence? The Russians don't even have a functioning modern military compared to NATO (United States). Their top propagandists like the neanderthal cretin Soloviev are shitting themselves and threatening to nuke Europe. They are complete barbarians. It's a disgrace to Russia and the human race that they put that on TV. Loser tough guys.
The US essentially ran a anti-vaccine campaign in the Phillipines and the Middle East in multiple languages to turn Filipinos and the Middle East against the Sinovac vaccine. It succeeded. Not only that, the US was able to ruin the budding relationship between Deuterte and Xi just through shitposting. In addition, US asymmetric propaganda operations have significantly disrupted China's Belt and Road initiative in Africa.
And the hilarious part is China continues to be worried about "escalating" and "US sanctions" while its companies get heavily sanctioned. In addition, it makes the rest of the world look like pansy's since they do not do these campaigns (and if they do them they have literally no impact) as US military runs amok and controls the narrative.
The Russians were caught with their pants down in Kursk, which is unbelievable given they had an open direct border with Ukraine.
Its not about being a tv spectacle. It is about accelerating events.
When one does a surgery on a gangrenous diabetic leg, one does not wait for the situation to worsen. One amputates it, no matter the wailing and gnashing of teeth. One does not negotiate for there is no room to negotiate.
Peace, even a tenous one favors the US Empire. War at every corner, pulling it in every direction will strain its resources. This is the goal
Yeah , I would agree with that. Cup cakes and cuddles would be a nice way to change the world but ...iT an't gonna happen. I'm a good few steps away form the chaos and can readily be accussed of being a voyuer of other's misery but internal change is not gonna happen. BRING IT ON BABY LET THE WHOLE FUCK'N HOUSE BURN. SOONA THE BETTA. Gonna be particularily noice to see Israel slow cooked.-Gotta go clean my screen.
So acclimated to the way the U.S. prosecutes war, when it doesn't just fig-leaf a war through a proxy, our expectation for the pace of warfare is calibrated to the U.S.-style Shock & Awe genre.
If a targeted adversary like Iran does not respond in kind w/ knee-jerk reckless reactivity, then the media consultants spin the narrative: Iran is cowardly. And the narrative, thus spun, becomes its own knife-prick provocation.
Audiences for U.S. wars expect that one genre only. When the targeted adversary does not fulfill the expectation--w/ jazzed-up retaliatory intensity--then the audience experiences let down. [Note: audiences for U.S. wars are not U.S. people only but really, potentially, anyone who peeks in at U.S. wars.]
Regarding Iran's alleged "cowardice" over not launching a major attack on Israel, I don't see it that way either. Looking at it coldly and realistically, why would Iran risk all-out war with Israel and its US vassal over one Palestinian? Yes the strike on Haniyeh in Tehran was a grave affront to Iran, but no Iranian died. Whereas a large scale conflict against the West surely would bring death to many. Better to use the crisis to gain something. Russia, it's said, has sent military hardware to Iran. And if the Iranians extracted some concession from the West to avoid the war, that too is a tick in the plus column.
Of course Iran has to make a big show of outrage and sabre rattling, this is to be expected. And in doing so they will cause many pieces to move on the chessboard, and cost the enemy greatly in economic terms. To me it looks like Iran is ahead right now. That's unlikely to be the case if a major war breaks out.
Iran is doing far more damage to Israel presently than vice versa. Iranian society is fine. Israel is nearly collapsing, with mass outflow of citizens, economy and ports getting crushed, vast expenditures and military casualties / materiel losses.
The prospect for Iran is fine, for Israel it's nigh apocalyptic.
Why not entertain the thought that "Iran is doing fine" is Israeli and British and American rabid neocon propaganda? purpose being to raise the scare level and then attack? They're already out with the stuff about how they're seeking nuclear triggers. And crazy as it sounds the MPox scare is released now simultaneously with Kursk invasion? Really?
Yes that's how I see it as well. Israel is killing itself. Wait them out. Tiny cuts behind the scenes so as to avoid all out war. Israel will lash out again in order to provoke something bigger. As they continue to lash out global sentiment turns against them... Chip
Great stuff, as always from the amazing, thorough Simplicius. First, Iran. Negotiations restart on Thursday. Old Joe put forth a ceasefire plan he said came from Israelis a month or so ago. Hamas accepted it. Israel then added more stipulations. Hamas said no dice. Because of this they're not going to the negotiations but are negotiating through mediators (plus Israel murdered their last two senior negotiators). What the axis wants is a permanent ceasefire and for the genocide in Gaza to end. This takes precedence over revenge, so Iran added the ultimate sweetener: no response if there's a ceasefire and the genocide stops. Hezbollah's and Yemen's position all along has been we stop when the genocide stops. One last chance last for Israel. Agree or get humiliated. As for Russia, what do the Russians want? End the threat on its border. So it makes sense to say give us our four oblasts, you disarm and keep the rest and we're all good. In either case will they take the deals offered? They'd be crazy not to...but I've answered my own question.
Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to Al Aqsa mosque yesterday can't make the ceasefire prospects look better now than his words & deeds ever have. Reuters quoted his speech @ the mosque--calling to "bring Hamas to its knees," auguring for total defeat, intent on purifying Greater Israel of any but a Jewish population.
The crazies are crazy. But military leaders deal with reality. Gallant and the generals have openly ridiculed the idea of victory, not because they're good guys, but because they know they're losing. Likewise US generals and admirals along with the intelligence community know that going to war with Iran is insane. Those who deal with reality know the score. Can they get through to the crazies? Hope so, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Is it also possible that Iran’s strategic patience is simultaneously a product of needing time for preparing a coordinated attack (timing of waves of drones, missiles, etc) and setting up more air defenses obtained from Russia for the inevitable Israeli response?
Is this a comprehensive analysis and presentation of the available information? Yes, I'd say it is.
But at the same time, I'm about sick of this horseshit. Palestinians are still dying en masse, and Iran is okay with having a Mossad team eliminate their honored guest because... they got the Mossad team's contact info? WTF?
And Ukraine not only sends 10k or more soldiers into Kursk, but also shells and attacks the Belgorod region yet again, while Russia does... what? Fights off the invaders? That's the bare minimum. Where's the knockout blow to the energy grid? Where's the dagger strike on the presidental palace/GUR HQ? Why not just just blast this critical railway hub instead of forcing infantry to capture it?
And on and on. Ukraine cuts off Hungary's gas, but Hungary keeps selling Ukraine electricity. Ukraine blew up Nordstream but Germany doesn't say a peep. Ukraine is destroying Romania's and Poland's agricultural base. Etc, etc, etc, etc ad infinitum.
Meanwhile, good luck hearing about the REAL wars going on in Libya, Mali, BF, Sudan (massive loss this week for RSF), Pakistan (esp Gwadar!), India (Kashmir), and Myanmar (I mean holy cow, it's intense with Tatmyadaw losing entire cities and yet crickets).
Frankly, everything feels like a cheap bit of entertainment while "behind the scenes" everything is arranged without anyone's consent or input. Are there no values at stake here?
Is everything just a show? You know, like the Ukrainian and Russian guys working side by side at the Sudzha metering office, which monitors how much money Russia needs to pay Ukraine every month? I feel like I'm losing my brain.
Exactly. I don't know what is really happending but I feel we are not getting closer to the truth here either. For example, SImplitious was talking for months about low Russian casulty counts and a reserve army in the back. Where is that reserve army now if they had to move troops away from the front (no matter how small are the supposed numbers)? All of this coupled with Bangladesh, Iran, lowering US inflation, seems to me that we didn't figure out this 5D chess as well as we initially thought we did.
Reserves were trained and put into border defense positions, and the veterans were shifted to the Western front. They or slightly fresh conscripts would be the ones defending against the Kursk incursion. Which has almost been defeated in detail now.
"Where is that reserve army now if they had to move troops away from the front (no matter how small are the supposed numbers)? "
Russia has a lot of territory to defend, and a direct war with the US and NATO that could happen at any moment. It has large elements of the reserve army positioned for assaults in other sectors, including possibly from Belarus. They're not just sitting around waiting for something to do, you know.
Russia's planning for a suicide attack like Kiev's run into Kursk oblast was to keep enough men in mobile reserve to be able to stop such an attack long enough for more reserves to be brought up. For a mobile reserve they used troops like Alaudinov's force that had just been pulled for repositioning and were available. In addition, the fastest way to get a strong response to Kiev's attack is to pull some additional men, say 20% of the response to Kiev's attack, from front line troops that are just a half hour's to an hour and a half's drive away in Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk.
That's no big deal because all of the active fronts are highly over-provisioned with troops if for no other reason than for the very frequent rotations Russia is doing to a) keep frontline troops fresh and b) to give more men in the steadily expanding army real combat experience, to prepare for the day when maybe an "all in" effort will be required of them.
I don't make the distinction between "regular" troops and conscripts because "conscript" is not an accurate word to describe Russian forces. The 300,000 men who were mobilized in 2022 are all now fully professional, highly experienced warriors. They all came from active reserve forces, which they *voluntarily* signed up to be a part of after their prior military service had ended. So really they're volunteers, the same as if National Guard units were called up it would not be correct to call them "conscripts".
Likewise, the 1000+ men per day who are volunteering and who have made up the great mass of expanded army personnel in the last two years are not "conscripts" either. They're volunteers or recruits.
The only real "conscripts" these days in the Russian army are the 18 year olds who as a matter of universal military service are taken into the army to serve a year of basic training before being released back into the civilian pool. But none of them are anywhere near the war, and certainly not in Kursk.
I hear you though. It’s frustrating. All the while back in the U.S. the campaign (from both sides) is surreal. It’s like a clown show.
The former president is shot at almost died and all the media talk about is how “weird” Vance is or Kamala’s “joy”. It’s theatre of the absurd.
My best guess is the reason why nothing is happening is because of China. They’re not ready and the supporting alternative systems aren’t either so they’re pulling everyone back.
That said, I don’t see anything resolving without a big bang.
I agree with your premise that it's all about China not being quite ready yet. People seem to not want to comprehend that a financial system built over more than 100 years (I am talking about modern Capitalism), with the dollar entrenched as reserve currency for over 50 years, is not going to be replaced overnight by a new system. No matter how cleverly designed, or needed, or wished for.
The true reality behind everything is economical, with the politics playing second or even third fiddle. In the US the reality is obscured by elections where the duopoly pretends to trade insults and voters, already stupefied by steady stream of propaganda and influence peddlers, pretend to care by going to the polls and/or debating on Twitter.
But there are people who know and they write for those who want to learn. I follow naked capitalism because there's often something interesting to read.
But in China, reality plays out differently. In truth the Chinese have no suicidal wish to crash the world economy so they go slowly, while they, together with allies (known and less known) continue to do "stress tests'. The SMO is, in a way a stress test, and we get a whiff of what's actually being tested (Ukraine is just a useful card to play. Entirely disposable of course. I mean, its people are).
the men behind the screen have other worries. The biggest one being that it appears Capitalism itself is NOT passing the stress test, which includes unpayable deficits due to money printing. WE who continue to watch with bemusement always wondered what the limit is per Modern Montary Theory, because there is a limit. Some economists (like Hudson) know more or less where the limit is and it's close.
So desperate minds behind the invisible curtain are pulling this and that lever, doing simulations to see what can give a 'way out'. Some think it's another plague, others think a little WWII might do the trick. Most are modeling furiously to try this r that band-aid.
This buys China time to continue testing while improving their own position. They don't want a complete de-coupling but with a partial de-coupling it's difficult to find where the diving line is.
How's that for a long semi-treatise in response to a single line?
Well, the other side is hardly sitting idle. I agree these are stress tests for capitalism and it seems the globalist cabal are taking action. Currently, they have a mass playground for their machine learning toys in both Ukraine and Gaza strip as these are necessary, one would say indispensable, tools for the future to come. Current elites that have almost all power in the current system won't have their backs covered by masses. No massive army is going to die to protect Wall Street or the City no matter how hard they try with MSM propaganda. So, alternatively, they rely on machines and now they are testing them very successfully both for population control and for mass destruction. This is their once in a millennia opportunity for complete domination, because they finally might be having the access to technology that could enable it. And anyways, they are not trying to save capitalism, they are only trying to save their power, pole positions in the world that is being built as we speak that is more akin to feudalism (or as Varoufakis calls it techno-feudalism). It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense that 3 Ukrainian divers supposedly single-handedly destroyed Nord Stream. You are not supposed to believe it. It is offered to you as fact by the Ministry of Truth so that tomorrow if you veer off in any other direction you can be fact-checked and silenced by ever-tightening internet control system. And internet reality and real reality are becoming so intertwined that being cancelled in the virtual world ahs existential consequences in the real one (most of us depend on digital services for most of our economic and civic activities). And while people are relying on oligarchs like Musk to offer alternatives, they somehow miss to notice that those drones flying over Gaza and Ukraine are Musk’s Starlink powered. That new currency tied to a social media platform (X token) is no freedom, but a “WeChat” not controlled by CCP but by unaccountable globalist offshore elites who care about nothing but their own grab on power. My point being, while China may be waiting and weighing its options, the other side ain't waiting. They are learning and adapting (they even copy China in many aspects). They are also consolidating and fast. This fight is existential for humanity, not only for Russians, Iranians and Palestinians alike. Better not underestimate the opponent.
"they are only trying to save their power... This fight is existential for humanity" - Agree.
The nepotistic (anti-meritocracy) system can only degenerate. And what is the banking cartel and its servant the MIC and other fascist mega-corporations if not the nests of relatives (ethnic solidarity) and opportunists acting under the watchful eye of "security services?" Hopefully, the psychopaths in power can't help but prepare to be hoist on their own petard.
As for AI, its 'intelligence' is still very limited and will likely remain so for a long time.
China does not want complete decoupling but nobody is asking what it wants and are pushing for full decoupling from multiple directions. First the US (with varying degrees of success), then its European vassals (which can probably be forced to entirely decouple since they have shown a brazen disregard for their own economies) and then attacks in Southeast asia and Africa (see this report https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/) with successes. Chinese taking a measured approach is absolute cuckoldry and weakness (just like Russia btw). Rather than responding to total war with total war, they take half measures, tentatively escalating with great fear. It took the Russians how long to supply US enemies with weapons? 30 years? And that's after the US supplying Chechen terrorists, pulling various nations from Russia's orbit (Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine now Armenia and working on Kazakhstan). And Russia just sat on its laurels and did nothing with the only actions being outright military action and half measures in Georgia (never took Tbilisi) and Crimea (instead of finishing the SMO then when the population was far more pro Russian). Instead they waited 10 years before doing anything. Why was there no supplying of Mexican drug cartels to run amok and raid the US? Why was there no supplying of Taliban (as the US did to Russia)? Etc. Its exactly the same mistake that China is making now.
Easier said than done. Was Russia in a position to severely antagonize the hegemon 10 yrs ago? Their economy was able to survive the nuclear option of suspending the Swift banking software ? Russia was spending $ 60 bilions on defense, USA only, sans NATO, more than 1 trillion. Inaction comes from lack of strength...Without full Chinese backup, Russia does not have a chance and China needs more time to de-couple
10 years ago nobody would have expected this, the advances would have been much faster (see the Battle of Slovyansk back then and the DNR forces were poised to enter Marioupol before Putin stopped them), it would have been possible to rapidly conquer a large chunk of Ukraine and Europe/US would not have been expecting it and likely the sanctions would have been the same as they were then.
There were even plans to have an ONR (Odesskaya Narodnaya Respublika) happen but the plans were halted, in favor of 10 years of waffling with Minsk giving Ukraine time to rebuild their army to be very effective, spread propaganda about how Russia is the cause of all its problems and turn the population against Russia.
Some of the worst military planning i've ever seen.
Military, yes, it would have have been easier. Economy is a different animal. Russia was importing most of it's food from West at that time, for example. The Pro west/ Atlanticist gang was quite strong in politics also, Putin did not have Stalin's level of authority ..Ultimately, they were not ready for a full economic blockade.
I agree with Jim above, more or less. I followed the Donbass situation since 2014 fairly closely, including the gnashing of teeth and fury slowly building up in Russia over the constant shelling of Donetsk, not to mention the assassination of capable leaders like Givi and later Zakharcehncko himself. We, who followed all this for years knew of course that Minsk was a ruse by the West to buy time, even as we saw Russia poised to potentially return Donbass to Ukraine with a promise of autonomy. In the meantime, Russia did do a lot for the citizens of Donbass, paying the pensions, providing internet and electricity, arms and strategy and eventually Russian passports.
But here is the thing - it's easy to accuse Russia for waiting too long to do the obvious. What's harder is to develop an understanding about why Russia could not do more than it did. It's not just thet they were neither militarily, nor economically ready for a full confrontation. It's that they had to make sure China will have their back when the time comes. And this was by no means easy to affect. Chinese move slowly - far slower than we are used to in the West. China has a problem with what it considers a break-away province called Taiwan. Crimea was already a big pill to swallow for them but Donbass, connected by land to Ukraine, with each oblast only partly allied with Russia would have been a bridge too far in 2015 or 2016.
Also both Russia and China are sticklers for legal cover, each with their own definition but both putting a stake in the ground of true international law. An outright invasion by Russia prior to 2022 would have been seen as rushing the gates of legality, despite the provovcations by Ukraine. What I am trying to say is that Russia HAD to go through the charade of the Minsk agreements knowing that it was a charade. Even as its citizens were burning with rage over the West's falunting of anything legal and moral.
So it's all about timing and luckily for Russia, the idiotized US, controlled by a Deep State that doesn't think too deeply upped the ante all through 2021 until it was impossible to ignore the amassing of troops and materiel by Ukraine. I believe that the 2022 SMO was started just-in-time. Before would have been problematic and waiting any longer was not wise.
Notice BTW how the timing of so many things coincides with the Olympics? Winter especially. Be it Sochi or Beijing. There were reasons for waiting to just after for both cases.
In any case, we in the west are an impatient lot. once we figure out what is going on we want action, pronto. But reality does not always play along with our eager-beaver-ness. Yes, sometimes - often - China does seem to move awful slowly but they do move, and when they do it is with commitment and forthought. Because they play for keeps and they do have 1.4 B inhabitants to keep more or less content to provide their support as their government acts.
PS I also think people should give a little thought to what shadow banking is, it gargantuan global size and what the repercussion can be if it suddenly collapses. Somewhere I have an article on shadow banking (was from the jacobin, I believe). It was a tour-de-force, one that left me kind of depressed after reading. As in "what on earth can we do about that?". I have a vague feeling 9and it's just a feeeling) that somewhere in the economic/financial bowels of bothh China and Russia, there are people whose job it is to find a way out. It's just an image that I have....
You can not believe this - or do you know how they managed this - this is, at very best, to promote US propaganda
The Hungary action or rather non action is EU enforced, you must know that
There's no war in Kashmir - it's a continuing proxy terrorisms/resistances with Pakistan
The RF is - at long last- intervening in Libya, and Sahel, with a view to stabilising both - this is already underway
You seem to be calling down more war to 'stop the horseshit' wars already going on
Iran is not 'ok' - it's going to take it's time and take care to respond, with considerable advice from the RF - the Israel is losing their Gaza war
You are getting like many people on this site - more and more like the Ukrainians, less and less able to think - you used to use sober language now you are using US popcorn slang - like the US doomers
While War is bad, on the broader geopolitical scale attacking US proxies and bases of power weakens their positions. Therefore it is necessary. One must not be held back by sentimentality in these matters unfortunately. Neither Russia nor China nor the Global South can finally be free until the yoke of the Americans is removed.
That would be incredibly difficult for anyone - even Americans - to believe. A person would have to be an imbecile to believe...... Oh, wait, they might try it.
I mean if we consider the fact that the US has the military run propaganda campaigns that are incredibly successful and could probably convince people that the moon is made of cheese, I wouldn't doubt it
I was thinking about that and as I mentioned in my other comment, I don't think it is a joke. I think there really is a Volodymyr Z out there with a shady past and a history of diving that certain someones are sticking up a jacket for.
You summarized my thoughts on the matter in a quite eloquent way.
Either there is cuckoldry of the highest order going on, business does rule all or we are not understanding something - otherwise none of those events you describe make sense.
Which is a big reason why I think that Mr Volodomyr Z did not blow up Nordstream. And if I were to guess Hungary and Slovakia are being forced by EU to sell (perhaps its just self interest, money does not stink). Whereas Poland is deeply resentful of Russia, so it is willing to ignore threats to its agricultural sector from Ukraine.
The interesting thing will be to observe if the narrative vis-a-vis Ukraine will shift (as it did for Iraq) in the coming years after this conflict end and will the West suddenly "discover" that Ukraine is indeed full of nazis and that it did do the things it is accused of and that they ended up growing a monster on their doorstep? Would be quite entertaining.
Important not to use this word "nazis" so indiscriminately.
All the evidence, eg from who supports these terror groups in Ukraine, is that it is jewish oligarchs eg Kolomoisky.
My reading has always been that judaism and nazism are one and the same, and projected onto the Germans, despite there being no evidence whatsoever that any of the atrocities they are accused of ever happened, and instead, were perpetrated, and are being perpetrated, by jews.
I wonder, how do you define "Nazis" or "Nazism"? there seem to be some fog around the actual definition. It's as if we all agree it's something bad but what exactly is this 'something"?
I am just fishing, BTW. Been collecting impressions from various sources and even random people about the meaning of terms.
Actually, it is correct to call Israel a jewish fascist state as envisioned by Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky. The jewish fascism has been in action since 1937.
Mussolini was admired by Jabotinsky (the guiding light for Milejkowsky family since bibi's dad was a secretary for this self-proclaimed jewish terrorist). Jabotinsky wrote in his bio about the decisive influence of Italian fascism on the creation of a jewish state. Mussolini proudly called Jabotinsky a "jewish fascist."
There was never the "holocaust," otherwise, the jewish thugs of the ADL would not assault and harass honest historians and engineers whose research happened to disagree with the ghastly propaganda of the soviet jew Ilya Ehrenburg. The latter brought to American jews the memes about "shrunken heads", "soap" and "gas chambers & ovens." Shame on you for propagandizing the profitable holobiz schema during the real Holocaust of the Palestinian children and women.
Israelis use white phosphorus to burn people alive; they also do carpet bombing of the living quarters to murder as many human beings as possible. And don't forget the unspeakable sadism with which jews treat the Palestinian prisoners of all ages. There is also an Israeli policy of starvation. "Israel's deliberate starvation campaign is intensifying the already indescribable suffering wrought by constant bombing and ground operations."
You should check the name of Filipp Goloshchyokin (born Shay itsikovich, jewish), who was in charge of the Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1930s. This Shay itsikovich (Filipp Goloshchyokin) was personally responsible for the Goloshyokin Genocide that eliminated 40% of all ethnic Kazakhs. "They" do not teach about this in yeshivas, don't they? Filipp Goloshchyokin was also involved in the murder of the Tsar's family (including children).
"Filipp Goloshchyokin is ... the executioner, cruel, with some elements of degeneration. ... He did not count the Kazakhs as people at all." -- Sounds like a portrait of a regular Israeli.
Ever heard about Lehi and Irgun self-proclaimed terrorists? You are either willingly ignorant of jewish history or cognitively blind. Who has attacked your jew Jabotinsky ("jewish fascists," in Mussolini praising words) when he and other jewish thugs have attacked the peaceful villages in Palestine and raped and killed women and children there? Who has attacjked your bloody mass-murderess Rozalia Zalkind and her comrade Bela Cun (Kohn)? Who has attacked your mass-poisoners Sassoons who utilized the British army to protect his opium business in China for the price of the lives of millions of the innocent people? Learn about your Leo Frank (rapist and murder) and Otto Frank (fraudster), and don't forget to learn about Zvi Migdal, the illumination nation of the true judaic character.
Oh, it's you again with some pseudo historians. This is well documented from German nazis memoirs, documents, press, etc. that they treated Jews as existential threat and Slavs as subhumans.
It is welll documented that up to 20 mln Soviet civilians and POWs died during nazi occupation and in concentration camps. You don't need to read Ehrenburg for this.
Ah, also the same bullshit as this Ukrainian so called "Holodomor". That Soviet goverment artifically engineered famine in Ukraine. Now it's genocide of Kazakhs?
The problem is, your yeshivas never talk about victims of jews because it is OK when all "others" are victims of jews.
Even wikipedia has information about the ghastly Goloshyokin Genocide that eliminated 40% of all ethnic Kazakhs. Shaya itsikovich was a true supremacist genocider.
As for Holodomor, the First secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine was certain Lazar Kaganovich (jew), a right hand of Stalin and prominent mass murderer. He lived in comfort in Moscow till the badly demented old age.
The jewish Bolshevik revolution was financed by American and German jews; Jacob Schiff was the most prominent among them. He even boasted openly about his financial support for the jewish terrorists like Leib Bronstein (Trotsky).
Jews have been collaborating with the self-proclaimed Ukrainian Nazis since 1990s. Moreover, there are dozens Nazi memorials in the North America yet your thuggish ADL (created in memory of a rapist and murderer Leo Frank) and all major jewish organization have never issued a peep about these Nazi monuments.
The prez of the jewish community of Ukraine, Mr. Kolomojsky, founded and funded four (4) openly nazi battalions to protect his properties in Donbas. These Nazi "freedom fighters" (adored by global jewry and praised by jews in US and Israel) murdered 16,000 civilians of all ages.
Your cognitive blindness is not just (in your words) "really delusional and pathetic" -- it is amoral.
Yep. I've come to that conclusion. Guess what? The US and Canada are also full of nihilistic capitalists and Nazis. Some of them don't even have the good sense to know what they really are.
This occurred to me in the first days of the war - when I started noticing something was off. No bombing of Kharkov or Kiev? No missile strikes on critical infrastructure? No sabotage of rail lines? I remember speaking to friends and family about this and everyone was perplexed. Our only conclusion was that it was the elites having come to "an agreement" before hand. Perhaps not far off after all.
There has always been talk about "rules of engagement". I think Kursk may have finally broke that bubble. For me, Medvedev is always a good barometer for the direction RF thinking is headed. And to think that Mr. M. was, at one time, a dyed in the wool Atlantacist.
The rules of engagement should've been done with once it was evident that Ukrainian civilians hate Russia. It doesn't matter if you bomb them if they hate you anyway and have access to television. Look what the US did to the Japanese, the Japanese are massive simps for the US. Same with the Germans. Maybe there is something about bombing your opponents into submission after all - Russia tried the "nice guy approach" and instead gets hatred thrown its way.
Its not about being or not being jewish, its about fighting wars properly so your side suffers fewer casualties than the other and achieves maximum objectives.
For example Chinngis Khan used the flood of civilians down roads to hold up Chinese from sending reinforcements. Civilians can be used as a weapon too.
"Ukraine blew up Nordstream but Germany doesn't say a peep. "
I have to push back on this one. I don't think you are being sarcastic and the idea that Ukraine blew up Nordstream is beyond grossly implausible.
What is the scenario being laid out here for public consumption? That a 3-person team with a single diver, using false documents, either locally purchased or moved all their equipment including 100s of kgs of explosives right across Europe, accurately located, dove down to and sabotaged these massive pipelines with multiple explosions from the back of a rented sailboat, then disappeared with all their equipment leaving nothing but a slight forensic trace.
That story is as plausible as it being done by the boy wizard Harry Potter or Poseidon God of the oceans.
Germany isn't retaliating against Ukraine because they know they didn't do it. They can't retaliate against the USA even though they know they did do it. A cover story has to be created to explain why they aren't doing anything about it even though the story is paper thin. This story requires the Germans to do absolutely nothing of any significance.
The Volodymyr Z part of it probably isn't a Lulz troll, there probably is a real person (or constructed persona) with a dubious background and a history of diving with that name who they are making a show of pinning the operation on.
And why aren't the full details being released because of "privacy" reasons? International terrorists don't get their privacy respected by national governments, but special agents do.
So, most of the russian army is in fact engaged in Ukraine, as is most of its air power. An invasion of Russia proper - say what you want about how irrelevant it is - those are Russian civilians who have been displaced and in some cases killed, and those are Russian homes and Russian places of business and infrastructure being destroyed on all those videos we are watching. I honestly expected a massive Russian reaction where an army "out of nowhere" would coalesce on Kursk, and all the reserve air power and what not to be engaged. But instead there is a near-force parity in the area, and air power is being rationed between various fronts
Meanwhile, Putin just says "I'm not your friend anymore" and says peace talks are off the table. Or, "long pause". And we still hear about escalation. What escalation? What exactly can Russia do that isn't nuclear?
Have you seen good estimates of a percentage that is engaged? I've seen 20 percent as an estimate but I have no idea about the accuracy of that number.
We do know that two new Armies have been brought on line since the SMO. They aren't in Ukraine. Same for air power, they are using a small percentage of their air assets.
I'd agree at 20% (30% at the most) for ground troops, hopefully someone can answer exactly. It's definitely not most. Most are kept back in case of any US/NATO madness.
But 'most' military members are getting experience at the front with constant rotations.
I'm really beginning to doubt that Russian leadership truly fears an all-out invasion of Russia. I suspect Russia could easily commit more troops in Ukraine and finish this shit but will not do it. None of their excuses make sense to me, any longer. None of them. The mystery is why Russian elites are hesitating about finishing off what most now call a threadbare, desperate army. Makes no sense.
Look..... I've been around US elites. Most of them are soulless scum. Do I think they would approve an all out invasion of Russia with a large contingent of American troops? No. I don't think they would. I think they fear that the American people would completely balk, especially when thousands and thousands of caskets come home. No. Something else is going on here.
Russia is slow-walking the SMO because Ukraine is just one front in a global war. The euphemism is that this war is "existential." So all Russia can afford to care about, is being victorious. This war is all going to take a long time because world-wide, Russia/China/Iran/South Africa/etc. need to set up the conditions just right. World public opinion has to be coaxed out from under the 7/24 MSM lying propaganda machine. Indian businessmen need convinced their future is with the Eurasian Union, not the West. Persian Gulf sheikhs need to convince themselves that their salvation does not lie in the West. The Global South needs to become stronger economically, security-wise, politically more stable, to create quality systems for health and education, etc. It's a big bill, and for much of the Global South to merely get strong enough to resist the West (including through fifth columns) will take one or even two decades. In the meantime, there are multiple "battlefields" around the world to "shape", to set up in advance so the outcomes will be predetermined. Ukraine will disappear by the end of 2025, and Russia's real problem will be to keep the momentum going after that. IMO, the West is sure to offer a "Minsk 3.0" that Russia will find hard to resist. No point in going into details now, but you can see the stratagem will be tried again. Russia and Ukraine were badly burned by Minsk 1 and Minsk 3, so a post-Ukraine Minsk 3 with a "false reset" will have to be very seductive - and look very different - to get Russian approval. In the meantime, there are battles to be fought and battlefields to shape. Russia wants the "elites" who run the West to continue in their stupid sanctions, stupid arrogance in every direction, stupid and corrupt purchase of military crap, etc.
All these details can be summed up with an old adage, "When your enemy is failing, don't do anything to stop him."
What Russia truly fears is to trigger OTAN's only "winning" option, which is an all in, one last hoorah effort by NATO *air power* (the only area in which they can truly overmatch Russia).
Whilst this would not defeat Russia, it would cause an immense amount of damage and casualties, and likely trigger a nuclear exchange.
The Russian "Boil the Frog" strategy is immensely frustrating to both armchair observers AND OTAN leadership, precisely because they cannot construct a plausible causus belli for using their air power, other than the deep rear AWACS machines.
Excellent observation, and I, for one, enjoy it deeply. Even Russian sympathisers among local commentariat seem to be innately disturbed by the flow, it speaks volumes about how abrasive it is for someone brought up in Western paradigms. Meanwhile for Russians it's the favorite kind of warfare that they can do for years.
Shakespeare would've said so much about hubris and things it's precipitating when Putin is saying "I'm not your friend anymore, peace is now off" and you don't get very, very cold feet.
As for force parity, when judging Russian actions always consider that Russia maintains enough reserve forces to repel this exact scenario, but from all directions and by actual NATO forces. Which would've done worse than Ukies, I reckon.
Strike kiev and places of decision making. As they should have done ages ago. Also, perhaps strike civilian infrastructure - sewage treatment plants, electricity hubs, etc. Cause chaos amongst the civilian population. I doubt that the Russian leadership has the cajones for it though.
All the maps go on about how major supply roads are being captured etc, and basically winning strokes are supply interdiction... BUT, all the bridges crossing the damn Dnipro which feed those roads stand pristine and untouched. Even "threatening" those crossings to at least force AD assets to cover would make sense..
In reality, I think Ukraine actually doesn't give a damn about the Donbass, and is happy to fight this slow grinding action where Russia eventually wins but rules over ruins. Western of the river I think is beyond Russia's reach
I agree. Ukraine would care if the situation came closer to Kiev. For Ukraine the Donbass was written off long ago, but its just a useful way to tie down Russian forces.
To me, the fact that Russia is focusing only on conquest of the Donbass rather than along the entire border of Ukraine (as the Soviets did during the start of Operation Bagration) speaks volumes as to its capabilities. It seems the Soviets were far more capable in a military manner or at least it had fewer traitors and sympathizers amongst its ranks at the time and was not afraid to spit in the Wests face, as current elites seem hesitant to do. Perhaps Stalin's purges weren't just the wishes of a "megalomaniac" but was the elimination of sympathizers and outright traitors that we see now? Something to think about.
Moscow seems to be pursuing an "all of the above" strategy - maintain normal life, grow the economy, fight a "SMO", keep negotiations open, limit "escalation", limit 'unnecessary' destruction in Ukraine, and so on. Its very Putin - likes to keep his options open and very tactical thinking, but has very significant limits strategically. One minute its an existential conflict, the next its Tuesday. I reject most Western characterizations of Russia, but boy some stuff is really hard to ignore.
Indeed. You characterized it very eloquently. Putin was an excellent tactician previously. But it seems like the West has wizened up to his tactics and is outplaying him in his own game. He seems also to be a very short term thinker, I like to compare him to Stalin. Stalin was a very long term thinker and through his policy had established Russian power to this day.
With Putin it is difficult for me to tell - is it cowardice holding him back from going all in? Or is it him being cognizant of the fact that he bit off more than he could chew? Or is it just him being a Soviet intelligentsia?
Indeed, going all in would have negative social and economic reprecussions on Russia but it seems to be the approach Ukraine is taking as is the collective West. Indeed, despite everything Ukrainians are convinced they are winning and their unity and belief in Ukraine is still strong. This is perhaps the biggest blunder on the part of Russian elites. They have not destroyed Ukrainian self identity. That should have been the primary goal. Instead they relied on Soviet legacy of "brother countries" (btw it doesn't affect the youth at all, since they have been actively taught that everything Soviet was bad, Ukrainian contribution to the formation of the USSR was minimized and it characterized as an "occupation")
Very true. Most wars in history are won because of capitulation, rarely due to defeat in detail. I tend to agree that the West is tired of the war and fed up with Zelensky; but look at it another way: the guy gets every call answered, attends every meeting of every Western institution, meets with national leaders whenever he wants, and feels empowered to go around and demand entire national armories - and gets a lot of it. Is he ineffective? No - he is very effective. Are the Ukrainian people and nation the ultimate losers? Absolutely, but nobody seems to care about them. This war will end with a variation of Minsk or Istanbul, and nobody will be happy. Both sides have endured a form of strategic defeat. For example, in the end, ask yourself, will there be more or less NATO stuff pointed at Russia, and will it be closer or further away than Feb 2022? And on the other side, a Russia-China alliance; something that was seen to be avoided at all costs for 50 years, and will result in the end of SWIFT & USD... u get my drift.
what would it take for someone to destroy your identity?
futile.
The rest of your post falls apart in the same way. For example,
"With Putin it is difficult for me to tell - is it cowardice holding him back from going all in?"
Someone that does not meet your unstated criteria for non-cowardice is condemed to cowardice.
"He seems also to be a very short term thinker, I like to compare him to Stalin. Stalin was a very long term thinker and through his policy had established Russian power to this day. "
What is this all about? What are you comparing? No facts only 2 opinions, (neither of which are yours, i would guess). "He seems" what does that mean? "Stalin was a very long term thinker" really?
Give us an example
Very funny, this post of yours.
You get an "E" for effusive and not for excellence.
I don't think Russia has to go even CLOSE to "all in" to collapse the NATO forces in Ukraine, especially at this point. That's what doesn't make sense to me. There are many, many levels of force, I think, between what Russia is now using and "all in".
Putin doesn't just operate within a limited, nationalistic arena of military action. His exercise of political and diplomatic acumen (this mark of a genuine all-too-rare world leader and statesman) points to a profoundly shrewd awareness of juxtaposing the critical and moral perspectives of his BRICS partners and the vital perceptions and judgements of the Global South too. He has to strategically maintain this respect and trust of peer nations by judicious management of tactical crises. About the sagacity and historic patience of Iran, likewise Russia seems to exercise a sophisticated code of reaction covering a vastly more complex big picture strategy than indulging in a heavy-handed, game-based responsiveness.
I'm still completely puzzled as to why those northern border areas weren't fairly heavily protected AND as to why Russia is just now stopping the incursion and hasn't crushed it. I do not think this was some trap, as some indicate. Maybe it was but I just don't believe it. If you ask why Russia hasn't committed significantly more resources to brutally crush this "incursion" by now, you get a seriously angry, insulting response from some pro-Russian "experts" about traps set and unimportant real estate and a bunch of crazies riding around the countryside on very fast scooters.
It all seems very strange and somewhat inexplicable to me. Will it make any difference for NATO's fortunes in Ukraine? No. I'm pretty sure it won't but the entire episode is strange.
1. There's *TOO MUCH* border to protect in any meaningful way. The troops tied up can be gainfully employed doing *anything* other than watching a border. (It sucks being "tripwire" troops, but there you are)
2. Committing more troops means dragging them in from somewhere else. where, once again, they could (should) have better uses.
3. Everything Ukraine throws into Kursk is dead meat and lost materiel, so not pushing back super hard is encouraging Kiev to throw in more of both, which (obviously to most, but counter-intuitively to some) will only hasten Ukraine's downfall.
4. The terrain and size of Kursk Oblast allows Russia to give ground, and set up traps and ambushes for Ukraine to do 3 (above), which plays well in Western media and poorly in Russia, but again actually degrades Kiev faster.
5. It's stupid, strange and inexplicable because "war is a continuation of politics by other means"(Clausewitz) and politicians are driving this stupid mess.
I truly believe this whole rare metals / lithium bit is fake news. Yes, the deposits are there, but nobody actually cares, certainly not enough to fight a war over
Yes, for Russian and not Ukrainian money and oil. This war is being waged so that Russia is up for grabs in the end. And the West are taking their merry time to accomplish that goal. They aren't losing anything. It even helps their economy and dead Ukrainian Slavs are zero expenditure.
Ok, let’s talk about those “places of decision making”. One cannot identify them. FIrst of all, some Zelensky’s palace or bunker is NOT such a place, because Z is a mid level manager in this business. The key decisions are made by some NATO oligarchy. So, would you propose to hit White House with an Iskander missile? Maybe some Ramstein bunker? Of course not, because 1. the occupants of the WH make no decisions, they’re just puppets 2. It would trigger full scale WWIII. 3. This Iskander is needed to support the soldiers on the actual front. 4. It will allow the West to revert from all the deindustrialization and decadency malaise - thing which is helping Russia more than whole armed battalions. And it won’t deter some NATO sponsored terrorists from putting a drone into car trunk and launching this drone against some airfield or factory.
President Putin is doing a remarkable job in long term strategy planning. He’s escalating only when it actually benefits Russia and gives Russia upper hand. Russia confronting NATO is playing the long term game. Probably learned a lot from China - be slow, don’t squander your resources on less important matters, small steps keep enemy unguarded, strong industrial sector is essential to let the army grow and secure supplies. Play weak when you’re strong. Always think decades ahead.
The Kursk invasion is just about a few villages near the border. It doesn’t matter at all - it makes Russia LOOKING weak, while on the ground opposite happens - the enemy is loosing resources and there’s no chance of any long term success here. Yet this incursion gives Russia good reason to continue the war beyond the 4 oblasts. It mobilizes the Russian society. From military and civilian losses perspective, way less costly than Pearl Harbor, yet with the same strong, mobilizing effect, for the society and for the diplomatic corps.
Places of decision making = striking Zelensky's residences, Bankovaya street, the Rada when it is in session (it has long moved out from bunkers and is constantly gathering to make this or that law), hitting SBU headquarters outside the city, etc.
This would be sufficient to cause chaos in the government to paralyze it for some time.
I have two acquaintances, one from the army, one from national guard who did their stint in SMO for 5-6 weeks. They never went back there. And that's like that for most contracted soldiers - they are sitting on their asses in barracks. 20-40% of army is there (just a guess - it's all classified, obviously). Most of the whole thing either doing temporary rotations or waiting.
Then why military keep recruiting? Because they want volunteers and because they want to enlarge military overall.
I have noticed the sway of opinion on this board about the Ukraine conflict based on the latest headline. Russia already knew that there would be an AFU incursion but not where. "Where" doesn't matter when you have such a numerical and qualitative superiority of soldiers and equipment. But what really matters is how to respond to such an incursion. Here's one plan.
1. Let the enemy penetrate deep into your territory and get acurate recon on their positions and lines.
2. Concentrate a counter attack formed by two large battle groups A and B complete with Air Cav and Air Assault in a pincer envelopment of AFU forces starting at the point of initial friction.
3. The point of friction becomes a mobile ligne Maginot. (Rien n'entre et rien sort.)
4. The main object is to cut off the invading AFU force from re-supply. These forces have overextended and will now be short of ammo, food, and fuel.
5. Send a message to the besieged AFU forces that if they surrender they will receive good treatment with a free bottle of vodka, cigarettes, and a double steak BBQ supper in goodwill. Those who do not surrender will die a miserable death while your wives and girlfriends move on to the next guy. You have 60 minutes to respond. Don't let it be your last.
6. Destroy the entire invading AFU force as a warning that this is what happens when the Ukraine command crosses the line.
Russia must act decisively and make a bold stance with no half-measures. (C'est le temps) Salute.
Shutting the Sudzha-entrenched mercs & Ukrainians off from electrical supply--and also those guys dug-in in the *74* villages--would throw a wrench into the works: no way to recharge batteries or communicate
Did Iran really back off? They refused to attend the negotiations on Gaza. Same with Hamas.
So what does that leave them with?
If their side doesn’t attend the negotiations, do nothing while the IDF continues to bomb Gaza then this doesn’t look good.
My guess it’s not the U.S. offer that dissuaded them. It was their friends the convinced them and their preparations that need more time. If they were dissuaded in the first place …
Israel/Bibi will not stop without getting his war and Iran knows that. At least now they know.
The Kursk invasion is a huge success for NATO though, because it established several new precedents that should be absolutely unacceptable to any Russian government that gave a damn about the security of the country rather than the wealth of oligarchs.
What do we have?
1) Russian can be invaded with hundreds of armored vehicles in a large combined arms operation, and there would be no response beyond frantically trying to contain the advance of the attacking army. No nukes on the heads of the ultimate planners of this, and not even an Iskander on Zelensky's bunker. Nothing.
2) ATACMS attacks on the Russian rear and on airfields began. Again, completely inadmissible, because one day those missiles will be carrying nukes and will be flying towards Moscow, but nobody will launch on warning because the system will have been accustomed to not seeing them as threats
3) A strategic Russian airfield was bombed by ten Mugin-5 drones in Nizhny Novgorod region, fully 650 kilometers from the front line, and much further from it than even Moscow is. Worse, it was the most massive drone attack so far, and it wasn't directed just at Nizhny Novgorod, it spread all over central Russia. But once again there was no launch on warning. This is catastrophic -- this is precisely the kind of strike that if normalized, will be a precursor to a decapitating first strike. Because if they launched 200-300 drones yesterday (officially 117 were shot down over pre-war Russia, plus another few dozen before they crossed the border, but in reality even more were launched and were just not counted because EW brought them down somewhere in the woods), what happens if one day they launch 800 towards all the regions in European Russia, air defense depletes itself, then another 200 come after them, but those 200 carry nukes? "Ukraine" has been using drones large enough to carry nukes for quite some time now.
Again, this is absolutely catastrophic strategically, and yet Putin continues to sit on his hands.
Also, the way the Kursk operation unfolded clearly indicates that Putin was looking for a deal. He voiced his conditions in early June, and likely that was not a firm position from which he was never going to back down, concessions were going to be made on it. Then some talks behind the scenes likely happened, and he was once again fooled by the dear partners who launched a surprise attack on Kursk. This is why he was looking so angry and confused.
This is also catastrophic, because even Putin's conditions from early June -- AFU leaves the full administrative borders of the four regions -- are a gigantic strategic defeat for Russia. Nothing short of the total end of Ukrainian statehood suffices as a winning condition, but Putin clearly refuses to mobilize the necessary resources.
And at this point even that will be a defeat, because of the precedents set. How are you going to reestablish deterrence given all the red lines that have been crossed, even if you do take over the whole of Ukraine?
General Moron, you look fairly stupid now with your inaccurate bullshit and dooming, but once the SMO is over you will be beyond redemption and will slither away, never to be heard from again.
Russian oil literally fills the Ukrainian tanks used to kill Russians. Russia has not sanctioned anything might upset his oligarchs cash flow. Putin is not serious about this war and will give it all back to be back in Western graces. Did you read the OG Russian capitulation/peace agreement Boris told Zelensky not to sign?
This is what I fear. I fear that Russian elites really don't give one shit about fascism and genocide and, quite frankly, people's lives.... JUST like US and UK and EU elites.
Let me remind you - in the mid 1980's a kid landed his pleasure craft on Red Square. He was detained by the KGB and later released when no malicious intent was established. However arond 115 officers from various branches along with the Soviet Minister of Defense were arrested and forced to resign - simply for missing the bush plane on radar.
What do we have now? An outright invasion of Russia proper - Gerasimov retains his position. Shoigu continues sitting on the right side of Putin. No Generals "lost their heads" over this.
Moreover, there were persistent rumors of secret negotiations with the US. The video of a recent arrival of some diplomats to New York allegedly for UN talks circulated on the internet, but I am not convinced that talks could not have been held as well. And the US was able to "talk down" the Russians from escalation a few months back as well. The fact that anyone could "talk down" the Russians speaks volumes.
Most of those drone launches you mention happen from within Russian territory - indeed the border is very porous and many DRG units can freely enter and exit Russian territory. Also, many times Ukraine manages to recruit locals for its attacks by promising them money.
During WW2, German DRG units would be dropped onto Soviet territory and would be frequently captured by NKVD/OGPU units that would be already waiting for them. This speaks of excellent intelligence capabilities that the Russians do not have. They were not able to infiltrate Ukrainian command and obtain information of the preparing incursion. Contrast this with numerous Soviet moles within German command and almost total infiltration of German sabotage schools with Soviet instructors.
Oh boy, this exact "bush plane" operation was staged specifically to decapitate the army prior to Gorbachev's reforms, which it would've opposed with passion. The plane was being tracked, but no order to shoot came through. That is exactly why you don't see heads rolling now - unlike then, political and military leadership are on the same team. And so on, you basically keep disproving your own points with your argumentation. Try to compare size of the Soviet wartime army and the current Russian one for instance.
And yet the military and intelligence strongly opposed Gorbachev's reforms and eventually staged a Putsch. The Putsch failed essentially due to Yeltsin's good luck. It was very close to succeeding.
In any case, heads should have rolled for the botched Kharkov defense, Shoigu should've been removed back during Prigo's "March for Justice" and particularly now with Russia having been caught unprepared
The very best comment of them all. There are no more red lines to be broken, either in Russia or Iran. Both act equally thoughtfully but also with the hope that there is logic and pragmatism in the other camp. Putin has been outplayed many times over the past 24 years. And he is equally insulted every time but disciplines himself into calm and well-balanced responses or countermeasures. But there is a big problem with this. Russia is like the nice neighbor with a very large plot full of orange trees and olive groves. Other neighbors send their kids to steal the fruit, some even start digging up the trees while others move their fences onto the property. Russia is acting good-naturedly, thinking that this childishness must stop on its own. He ends up getting stabbed to death one dark night.
Putin's sublime peace signals are only seen as a weakness in the West. Compare with Israel's unreasonable attitude towards Palestine. They get a standing ovation in Congress. No one dares to attack Israel or the United States short of risking annihilation.
In the West, zero respect exists for Russia as a nation and even less for its leadership. Otherwise, we wouldn't see social democratic German leaders expressing themselves like that about Russia. And as a German general grinning at the Kursk operation should render another failed Novichok attack.
This War of Perception is really on Ukraine's side. And the US/West is doing its best to reinforce that opinion among its citizens. The reality is that Russia will win one way or another. Unfortunately, they have a history of huge human and material losses - and it doesn't look like it's going any better this time.
As you so well describe; it would be a huge loss for Russia if the war ends with a Ukraine outside NATO, Crimea and four Oblasts to Russia. In reality a victory but in terms of perception a clear loss in the eyes of the world.
He did in younger version. Sadly US leaders display flagrant impudence and test the patience to the bitter end. The only, even more impudent is Netanyahu.
Gosh, what will they use for the attack? Poles and Baltics? I think you are going to be severely disappointed but, hey, I'm very hesitant to make any firm conclusions.
Don't worry, Steiner to the rescue. It's absolutely FAB ulous, or it's raining FABs.
The hint is go to bunker, there's no negotiations, no matter the wishful/magical thinking. Don't take Putin or Medvedev's words at face value, just adjust reality and distort. Negotiate, with who?
This first goes to Simpliticus.
Take Heart Jimmy
Too much information in this article! ;-) Martynov tried to ban Simplicicius from his own site.
WTF. Add to the discussion or F.O.
Shut the fuck up.
Bedtime for me. Fortunately, Simplicius goes very well with my morning coffee.
What saddens me is that the meat being grinded in Kursk is most likely hapless pressganged civilians instead of the nafoid mercs and hohol gestapo who actually deserve to be fabbed. I hope they get the Fabs they so richly deserve.
but they're such idiots - all those women marching to their deaths will grins on their faces - I guess the propaganda is huge. There's a darling bear sanctuary just outside Kiev - White Rock Bear and Wolf Sanctuary- and I suggested a year ago they move to Russia and this darling woman told me Ukraine is gonna win - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2QhrTK_vWk&pp=ygUxZWxkZXJseSBjaXJjdXMgYmVhciB0YXN0ZXMgZnJlZWRvbSBhZnRlciAyMCB5ZWFycw%3D%3D
Put a jewess in front of any crowd of easily-led women and they will go wherever they are pointed.
I doubt itJews are persecuted in Ukraine as any one who knows their history will confirm. The far right brigades have no time for Jews and muslims, it seems neither have you. ,
Very few have time for the jew. They have shit the bed, for many coming generations.
Jews are no different to any other group. they contain groups like the zionists as wellas other whoare kind, forgiving and charitable, Like any fringe roup they are seen as the problem when in fact they are not the cause. The people who shit the ebd are those that just judge on one thing. Anti semitism like Russophobia is a symptom of an underlying malaise.
ah the tired anti-semitism card. "Jews are no different to any other group" Bullshit, they are tribal to the extreme and view themselves as better than the goy, white anting any country they reside in. Sure some try to fit in with the society they embed in but are quickly brought back in to line with accusations of ' Self Hating Jew'. How many times have they been expelled from nations?
Newsflash, these imposters pretending to be jews, the Euro trash and US jews (ashkeNAZI filth) are not semitic. And as supporters/enablers/perpetrators of genocide of Arabs makes them the anti-Semites.
Seems like gregory is cucked.
Keep defending your chicken swinger tribe
You are the personification of the Jew stand in a lake of blood asking why they persecute me so..
Ukrainian Jews have recorded a song about “Ukraine is a Jewish land” from the roof of a huge Menorah synagogue in dnepropetrovsk. And don’t forget that the four most sadistic Nazi battalions (including the Azov battalion) were founded and financed by the former president of the Jewish community of Ukraine, Mr. Kolomojsky, to protect his property in Donbas. He also financed the presidential campaign of Mr. Zelensky the “penist” who is also a Jew. And look how the “penist” is effective in eliminating the whole generation of the Ukrainian men. He also sold the Ukrainian lands to BlackRock and similar fascist mega corporations. Perhaps Zelensky still hopes to create a “land without people” for Israel 2.0.
Shut up Jew. The penis piano player zelensky is a Jew.
An ashkeNAZI supporting jew.
well he was not until he became president and wanted help from the Americans. Even the Jewish papers admitted that.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/zelenskyy-is-not-a-jewish-hero/
when the Azov was havng their pogroms , he remained silent. Though to be fair so did the EU.
You mean azov that was founded by Jew and just did an Anne frank memorial. The antic that went to occupied Palestine to kiss Jew ass that azov.
What pogroms ? The Jew always cries they are being persecuted but never say why.
Jews control Ukraine. Goes to show how little you know about the reality in Ukraine.
pretty sure that the president of the country has a big say in running it.
They're still advertising on Fox looking for donations for Holocaust Victims, who would now have to be 80 to 100 years old. The well-fed matron in the ad looks like she could help the cause by missing a few meals.
Not, I repeat Not collecting to kill Gazans, or negotiators, only Holocaust Victims.
Soon will come the time when nazis recruit their youth. Adolf will be proud.
That was my inner thought when I watched those chicks walking to death light hearted. Maybe they really believed marching to Moscow. Anyway, kids are the next batch and nobody will notice in the west.
These are Jews. The JewSA is a colony of the Jew. White NS ‘Nazis’ are the solution to the Jew infestation
These are Ukrainians conscripted into the Army. Looks similar to Nazi Reich before demise.
Actually, no. There's elite of the elite, Western Ukrainian brigades with hardcore nationalists, NATO mercs, cream of the crop. Strykers were assigned mostly to them. Even these SS fanboys are not Ukrainian but likely Estonian, their accent is Baltic, as I pointed out in a comment below.
Notice that you don't see regular cannon fodder M113s among the casualties but lots of hi-end fast-attack vehicles. Most of their crews and passengers won't be coming home since Putin noted that exchange fund is full, but new exhibitions in Kubinka will be fantastic.
One of them is Vasilii Daniluk from Ivano-Frankovsk (or however it is written in English). They are not estonian, they are idiots who believe themselves to be ubermenschen by cosplaying monsters. The irony, that those monsters were crushed and destroyed in the same fields, misses them completely.
I stand corrected. These animals are living their best lives for now though, exactly as they dreamed. But not for too long.
Nah, the meat sent to Kursk was the highest quality Ukraine has left. That's why all their vehicles are newer and more advanced. Russia captured its first Stryker there.
Well let’s say a sub quality boosted on cheap steroids. What really struck me when I watch those guys is their poor physical condition, the lack of muscular structure, their chubby appearance. Look at the clips from 1942 on Russia soil. As much as I hate nazis I must admit they were fit in a twunk way
Hitler was the very best at ethnic cleansing Aryans.
Mighty Wurlitzer is now touting the invincible Challenger 2 tanks as well. I'm a bit surprised that Russia has not formally declared war upon Ukraine as a result of this latest stunt - which is a direct invasion of the RF. As I understand it, moving from a 'Special Military Operation' to an actual war allows RF more freedom of action.
Actually from what I heard there are mostly motivated volunteer troops in Kursk incursion.
You heard....in a bathhouse....in D.C. ? From Miss Lindsey?
Line your thoughts properly or otherwise do not bother to answer.
You're giving me orders?
"I heard" is a source? Proper alignment?
Learn to live in Peace and maybe survival is in your future.
Videos from Russian soldiers show motivated troops decently equipped troops full with nazi symbols. Also there are many foreign languages in the comms (Polish, French).
The more of such troops pour into Kursk oblast the better. Much easier to snipe them in this area without many fortifications than to smoke them out in Donbass.
From all I have read and seen it is a mish-mash of hardcore nationalists, some of them well trained some more comfortable with shooting their own in the back if they are not performing, experienced troops drawn from collapsing parts of the front in the East, large numbers of foreign fighters and, yes, some raw recruits, the latter to probably flesh out the infantry. But overall average troop quality seems to be the best they have.
Unfortunately they are not the Jews who started and continue this pointless Brother war
Yes, the usual “let them fight” and “onward, Christian soldiers!”
It’s imperative to remember that the tragic Nazification of Ukraine was the integral step for the implementation of talmudic doctrine of “full-spectrum dominance” concocted by Straussians. The Kagans clan has been active collaborator with banderites (self-proclaimed Ukrainian Nazis) since the 1990s.
There are dozens of Nazi monuments in Canada &the US, which were never touched by the whining profiteers on the fraudulent shoah business.
Victor Nuland was a footwashing Baptist? Now, that's headline news.
The tail of a snake is still a snake..
It is an advantage to send the most fanatical men (Nazi’s) to Kursk. because if they fail, you can sacrifice them as cannon flesh and get rid of them before peace capitulations. CIA, MI6 and the Ukrofuhrer have thought this over very well.
Two other US proxy wars going to hell, one involving Ukraine in Africa
Haiti :Jimmy Barbecue Chérisier How to Boko+ Bonus: Mali Tuareg Ukraine Disaster
New report on the Haiti disaster from the UN news feed Pass Blue
Jimmy Barbecue Chérizier tightens his grip on the capital, despite the UN mission, which, to all appearances, consists of 400 Kenyans only (of the 800 broadcasted as signed up)
None of the other countries, African or Caribbean, have sent ‘policemen behaving like troops’
According to local twitter accounts the Haiti policemen are forever protecting the not so savvy Kenyans unused to this level of resistance/streetwear
The Kenyan police defend themselves via the Miami Herald – they do yet seem to be aware they are fighting a proxy war
Pass Blue also has an interesting article on the Ukraine foreign policy disaster in the Sahel, when various Ukie diplomats boasted about their country’s involvement with a Tuareg movement, Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD) in their ambush on Mali army forces backed up by RF Africa Corps, resulting in 47 deaths for the Malian soldiers, and 84 deaths for the Russian
According to the UN any real involvement is unlikely, so the Ukies were just showing off
And succeeding in shooting themselves in the head, after the long Z campaign to gain African support, and coming just after the Ukraine FM had completed his fourth tour of Africa
Annexe
Port-au-Prince
https://www.passblue.com/2024/08/14/the-forgotten-crisis-of-haitis-children/
https://x.com/MSSMHaiti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3opm5FwVe8
https://nitter.poast.org/windyphele
The number of internally displaced children in Haiti has increased by an estimated 60 per cent since March – the equivalent of one child every minute – as a result of ongoing violence caused by armed groups. Carlencia, 15 years old, stands in one of the more secluded coutyards of an IDP site in Léogâne. UNICEF/UNI601248/Le Lijour
Haiti’s media-savvy gang leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, controls most of the country’s capital, patrolling blockaded streets with an army of armed deputies, many of them children carrying semiautomatic weapons.
“We live in a country where there is no drinking water, where children can’t go to school and people can’t go around freely,” said Chérizier, according to an English translation done by France 24 in an exclusive report published in July.
The irony of the country’s most-notorious gang leader supposedly protecting children shows how desperate their situation has become in Haiti, said Taz Doriza Phiri, the chief of emergency for Unicef in Haiti. The arrival of a Kenyan-led police force in July in the capital, Port-au-Prince, to take back control of the city from armed gangs is having a limited effect so far. Corruption allegations already surrounding the new Transitional Presidential Council have engendered public skepticism over any ability to restore stability in Haiti.
Mali/Africa
https://www.passblue.com/2024/08/13/is-africa-becoming-a-new-battlefront-in-the-russia-ukraine-war/
https://mfa.gov.ua/en/events/chetverte-afrikanske-turne-dmitra-kulebi
Thx for these links
Heart-rending to read about the day to day plight for children & others swept up in the Haiti maelstrom. The country has an admirable history of having thrown off its colonial overlord--and even forcing Napoleon to change his mind about doubling down on a re-conquest of France's colony.
Pulling his troops out after high losses [50,000+] he set his sights on Austria & then the rest of Europe.
Occupying the west portion of Hispaniola, Haiti was on the resource poor side of the island--mountainous, craggy & practically devoid of soils. Its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, prospered, more naturally blessed w/ geological riches & agricultural opportunities.
Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier is a piece of work, without a doubt. Think of the Kenyan police officers, suddenly plunked down in this misery & mayhem, trying to make heads or tails of matters.
They are riding the struggle bus, no question
Certainly the Kenyans are out of their depth - close to criminal to use such not trained in the kind of vicious urban warfare against armed reistance
They should be back defending their own President against his people!
The Biden-Harris admin, global wheeler-dealers that they are, wanted to make a big PR show of working w/ their international partner--Kenya--in stabilizing Port-au-Prince: "See? Look at everything we're doing."
Performative.
Wasn't that Kamala once Caribbean? Among all the other things she is or was, race or identity salad wise
Performative is correct: the US gvmt was betting on a good look not using white soldiers - but this was confined, once again, to a home audience, to please the Haiti exiled millionaires and other Black Leaders ruling class adjacent or favourable to the US régime etc etc
I do not think anyone much in RoW noticed this very favourably, using the poor to fight the poor half way round the world makes no sense except as exploitation
Yep: the Salad-Tosser-in-Chief's dad is Jamaican.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the Biden-Harris spokesperson, is of Haitian descent
<< using the poor to fight the poor half way round the world...>>
It occurs to me that the Kenyan police officers are serving as tripwire too--so they're doubly hung out to dry.
Haiti is a uniquely complex country w/ a painful history. U.S. politicians are poor decision-makers when it comes to Haiti--they've got a horrible track record, ditto w/ the UN & even UNICEF. All the king's horses could do a better job.
It's a stretch to believe that police officers from 5000 miles away can ameliorate much in Haiti.
'They should be back defending their own President against his people!'
You mean that Kenyan-born homosexual muslim who is married to trans Big Mike - illegitimate former President Obama ;) ;D
Haitians are 65 iq sub humans the Jew uses to poison white nations. Even the Dominican Republic deports them
I doubt anyone in the world can beat you in low IQ and Nazi crap. If your conspiracy junk were true, the Jews must have created you.
lol. Facts don’t matter just your little feelings?
Ukraine playing the Stolen Valor card in Mali...
Emboldened by OTAN's puffery, Ukraine craves a Walk on the Wild Side in other skirmish sites.
Ukrainian "tools" of global terror, like Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier's child soldiers in Haiti [ see Annexe below ], appear to have no legitimate options for the Good once they agree to do *wet work* for Western imperialists
It looks like curtains for the Ukraine in Africa - and of course a big boost for the RF - they left 84 dead in support of the Mali Army
So they are fighting for the right cause, all of Africa can see this
The RF left it all on the field, as the athletes say
Actions, not words
Speaks volumes
This is a major victory in showing real solidarity, even if they were defeated and died
Mali will place a respectful monument, a quiet place for reflection
Putting the Ukraine battlefield in context is essential reminder to those baying for blood whenever S reports from this Kursk op or others, that the war is fought on many fronts, and that the very greatest part is outside this theatre, in the corridors of BRICS, SCO, BRI and so on, and other the other fronts
And where, at the same time, is developing a peace plan slowly gathering enough weight to allow for the consideration that this is not a bipolar war, nor will be a bipolar peace
And that to put the war in a multipolar context is to see that the peace will also be multipolar, and so avoid the worst the US can do to prolong war chaos and suffering, here in the Ukraine, but also in RoW, by narrowing focus to just this one aspect, and to neglect the rest
Otherwise it is just troll versus troll – the bloodthirsty trying to kill eachother
Next up – The Arctic Front!
Why dont you start a ”Off-topic-substack” of your own?
Although interesting it is a nuisance to find a long thread with your buddy Cheetah in every article from Simplicius. I would read your findings but not in this context.
Little Mikey, who is Cheetah? Is your dyslexia playing up again?
No Cheetah here....dyslexic? Projection?
The indicators I watch say Russia's economy will grow 5-6% with ever more genuine partners wanting to join the parade/. The just completed Army Security Forum/Trade Fair just ended with perhaps 500 Billion rubles in contracts signed.
Having finished reading, the only additional comment that's important is what Defense Minister Belousov said in his speech at the Army Tech Forum several days ago:
"As all of you know, the event takes place at a time of the special military operation. This is, in fact, the armed confrontation between Russia and the collective West.
"It is driven by a desire of the USA and their allies to sustain their dominance. And to prevent a new multipolar and equal world order.
"In this regard, this confrontation affects the interest of every country." https://karlof1.substack.com/p/putin-and-belousov-address-the-2024
It doesn't get more specific than that.
One of my treasured readers shared this article with me that provided my research many further leads, https://monthlyreview.org/2024/07/01/imperialism-in-the-indo-pacific-an-introduction/
Karl---I read your post on the Army Fair - very interesting live sales and testing of RF armaments! As VVP underlined
Pity the US can not do the same with the F16's (the Abrams, the....etc etc) still nowhere to be seen
Now they are too valuable to use or lose
It was held at Patriot Park where all the SMO trophies are displayed. I hope to visit it some day.
Ha!
Yes, we are witnessing the end of the unipolar moment and the beginning of multipolarity, however, it won't be an equal world. The climate crisis which is being accelerated (whether we like it or not) by massive consumer and fancy arms tech growth in the Global Majority (not yet off set by the demise of the West) will disproportionately affect the Global South and the poor and many people may try to migrate to the lucky latitudes. It will not be an equal new world order.
https://jowaller.substack.com/p/burning-fossil-fuels-is-the-plan?utm_source=publication-search
The Global South will not try and migrate to the North
They are doing better and better with increasing intervention from the RF and from China
You pander outdated ideas and attitudes which are colonialist and contemptuous
RF invention is not doing anything to slow down the climate crisis and no will it any time soon.
You have no interest in challenging what you've ben told about the West trying to scupper The Rest. Neither have those who believe the globalists are trying to scupper the West.
My ideas are the opposite of colonist and contemptuous. You're living in cloud cuckoo.land.
I live in what is called the RoW, in the heartland to use a phrase, so do not try telling me you lot have sold me a line about the West trying to exploit us -
Your climate change you made for your selves, you both made climate change and you came up with your solution
So go to it, and leave us out of your mess
You are precisely the sort of whitey missionary who lectures us, once it was the Bible now your Bible is climate change or whatever
Go home gringo -
By the way we, as the rest of the rest of world welcome the RF and Chinese
Whatever you keep repeating; the climate crisis is happening.
Who cares - you do?
If so - Do something about it, instead of lecturing those who had nothing to do with bringin about your crisis
Instead of whining
Fuck off and start your own substack instead of hijacking this one. This is about Russia/SMO/ etc, not bullshit climate crisis.
Well stated about the various Bibles we in the West have used to impose colonialism, slavery, and destruction on others. At least in the US there should be no non-profit tax exemption, if only so people can see the true faces of the conquering organizations that go before us.
We've seen millions of these ladies and their men folk preaching the end of the world is nigh, repent and come unto the Lord
This new lot are even more nauseating than the last lot, pretending that their science is the Almighty
The word then as now is self righteous
Then they blame it on you, I mean me, and claim that war is bad - not because it kills people for the love of Christ, but because it accelerates her precious climate change
How delusional does it get? More dumb than this? I guess there are even craziers allowed on the streets up in the north
She once said over on Karl Sanchez's substack where she also proliferates cringey nonsense, that the solution is eco femininism
In the end you just have to laugh - except there are some of us stupid enough still to believe this crap, just like our ancestors were robbed of their thousands of years religious practices by the one word worshipper colonists
So says the climate change brainwashed, virtue signaling, western exceptionalist cuckoo.
The "Climate Crisis" is a PR exercise on behalf of Western billionaires who believe they can control everything with their money, and make more doing it.
I guarantee that YOU can parrot *every single propaganda point" circa "Glowbullshit Warming", and yet ignore ALL the actual science...
Trump says the climate crisis is a con invented by China to scupper the West.
You say the climate crisis is a con invented by the West to scupper the Rest.
Major victory for the oil industry in the West and the Rest.
I do not say CC is a con
I say you are
The CC thingy was created by you, the West, you are responsible for your mess- so you clear it up
There is no climate crisis.
Don’t be so absurd https://jowaller.substack.com/p/climate-change-hasnt-been-debunked?utm_source=publication-search
It's your climate change crisis - you broke it you fix it
Don't forget to belch out, "The Science is Settled". A vote has been taken by all the Scientists whose entire livelihoods depend on Government funding. And they all agree, "keep the funds coming. What was it you want us to say, again...?"
ACTUAL SCIENCE debunked human influences on climate from day 1.
PROPAGANDA on the other hand, continues to this day, promoted by easily deceived shills, exactly like YOU.
The "climate crisis" is not being accelerated because we humans have no influence over it, unless you are referring to the geo-engineering criss-crossing airplane trails in the sky.
If that's not what you are referring to, then relax because there is no climate crisis caused by CO2, that is just propaganda, just like the Covid scamdemic.
Get a grip on reality man. You have fallen hook line and sinker for the con put about by the Heartland institute (funded by the oil industry) that climate change is a scam like covid was. Some might think the covid measures were deliberate to make opposition to the gathering environmental movement- the lockdowns and jabs certainly weren’t to combat any virus. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/climate-change-hasnt-been-debunked
The Heartland institute does not state that Climate change is not real just that there is no poof that it has been caused by Co2 and especially human produced Co2. They alos repeat wht the IPCC states that there is no coming climate catastrophe, It may be religion that human induced co2 has caused climate change on a Global scal e but it is not Science,
Jo wallers paper itself is riddled with problems. for instance it claims that the edieval warm period was regional as sea levels elsewhere are lower. Yet that is true today. as research on South sea islands shows. The comment section shows that there is dispute about many of his contentions. There are so many problems with the Co2 hypothesis taht we cannot state it is fact. that is science.
As for covid, this was not a scam, it was a new virus that at te start was more deadly. This is true of all new diseases. Medical science andpractices as they learned how the virus affects the body adapted techniques to minimise fatality,
They tried several combinations and different drugs as the corona project shows. Censorship of Covid was done because it harms and kills and is inconsistent with Science. Waller's digs his wn grave when he makses such stupid comments about Covid and one wonders about therr est of his science.
it is indisputable that Covid is deadly, that it is contagious and the ebst remedy is vaccination.
Best remedy is vaccination? You got to be taking the piss?
so what is your alternative I would love to hear it?
I use climate change for short - I will in future call it anthropogenic climate change. And there is lots of evidence.
There is also a lot of evidene to the contrary. The amount by which Humans affect the climate is in dispute. There is also no alternative to Fossil fuels, Bjorn Lomberg is corect on that one. One can argue thawithin towns and cities fossil fuels should be minimised for Health reasons, But anyone who reads the violuminous reports of the ICC knows that they differ radically from the press releases. (we willl put aside all the justified accusations that they cherry pick ) .
Any rational person would admit that it is not settled science either. what is wrong given that is that people who have a contrary view are sacked, denied grants and that magazines like Nature refuse to print their articles.
This makes a complete mockery of stating that x is funded by the fossil fuel brigade when they ignore that y is funded by the government whose ageda is zero co2.
Like all "evidence" it depends what you are looking for. I think the earth, the sun, and ultimately the uni/multiverse couldn't care less what you do or think.
No there is not.
6CO2 + 6H2O + SUNLIGHT ---> C6H12O6 + 6O2
CO2 is plant food!!!
STOP THE CLIMATE CRISIS BULLSHIT!!! Anyone who has taken first year chemistry and botany understand this. Although the percentage of students that take courses like this that actually teach something, is dwindling down to almost none... Chip
Right on Climate.
Wrong, very wrong on Covid.
It wasn't a vaccine, just a dangerous palliative.
Doing nothing would have been the intelligent solution. Fear mongering, just like the Climate Profiteers, was the exact opposite of a solution for a drummed up problem.
What year did they ban reading "Chicken Little ?"
so they never died from Covid. what was the cause of the glass like images in the x rays. why did people die and why are they still dying. what is the cause of people with long covid? hysteria?
You are the deluded one here Waller. best get in to your bunker, put on a gas mask ans protect yourself from carbon emissions.
You are just like Musk - thinking that co2 in the atmosphere is a problem for human respiration. You’re on the side of the billionaires here grr.
No, YOU are on the side of billionaires here.
You've fallen hook line and sinker for THEIR con, and you proudly flout your ignorance, so they can reap billions more.
Way to go, you stormtrooper you....
Many of us have our own minds & don't think or do something because 1 source said it.
I know this is a foreign concept for those like you that believe everything the "western exceptionalist experts" proclaim as the current gospel.
You are destined to reap your just rewards for being a compliant, unquestioning puppet of the elites who hate you, viewing you as a useful idiot that you are.
Here’s how the Heartland Institute pulled it off https://jowaller.substack.com/p/what-is-the-heartland-institute?utm_source=publication-search
Give it up mate, less and less people believe this shit any more.
Yes I know more and more people fall for Musk and Trumps nonsense.
Please don't feed the troll
"It will not be an equal new world order."
It never was and it never will be.
That's the reality of it.
"Nothing changes unless I change" as some wise soul has said.
The biggest problem with all that climate buzz is that temperature rise turns arid into green, not desert, like they are predicting. Yes, countries like Russia majorly benefiting from it, but I doubt there will be migration to the north.
There has been some greening, but also some dust bowls, crop failures, devastating floods and fires, some sea level rise and some temperatures too hot to work in.
All this is nothing new. We have always had bad weather and natural disasters. The modest addition of human civilization to Earth's CO2 budget has made little or no difference in the weather, nor is it likely to.
THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS PERIOD FULL STOP!!!! CO2 is plant food!!!! Chip
Drunk on climate change brainwashing.
That you people fall for anything the "globalist brainwashed western experts" say, continues to amaze me.
You deserve the fate that awaits you for being so wilfully blind & compliant.
So cute that you "worry about the poor, dumb global south".
They have a far better future than any sheep residing in the "west" does.
Quite right to underline this forceful and forthright speech from Belousov
Whenever a country "grows" through war, there is also a bill to pay around the corner. That economy makes no sense. But the new Geist and the bond the Russian people feel with each other is worth so much more. The Russians' craze for the empty, materialistic American lifestyle should have cooled and their naivety regarding the ruling elite of the West should have been blown away.
Then it is a bit ridiculous that Belousov continues to call the War against the US/West a special operation in the same breath as he describes it almost as a total war.
FINALLY, we touch the economy. If you haven't heard in the comments, the US economy is on the brink, but the financial conspiracy holding on, but it can never pay back its debt. Thus the US will go bankrupt and all that involves. Rather THEY DESTROY THE CURRENCY THROUGH WAR. Anyway, Martin Armstrong says they have decided on WAR. He makes sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPFviQhpqw4
And you will note that everyone on the other side want to make the war bigger, much bigger in Iran, in Gaza, and Netanyahu has already used tactical nukes (Gordon Duff - Veterans Today). Some European official said that the genocide in Gaza would not matter because it would be wiped away by a greater war. NATO's full in and some are now calling the incursion into Kursk a NATO operation as there was so much Polish, French, and English spoke more than Ukrainian. Plan for the lights, gas, and money to go out.
Yes. They need a Reset. And the deplorables, the people, we all, will pay it with our future. Pity, we dont have a Bastille Day in the West.
Resetting the balance sheet helps the little people as the "wealth" of the .1% is the combined debt of the rest--wipe out the debt and you wipe out their "wealth."
Russia's problems will bein when the war ends, not during it. One reason Belousov was brought in to enable the defence industry to produce for civilians after the war. All the soldiers demobbed will have to find work too.
Russia's current unemployment rate is @2% and the economy is said to lack 4 Million skilled workers. Genuine Russian GDP will grow between 5-6% this year. The number of people who've applied for residence permits is in the millions, and they're mostly European. A nation will always have problems, an aspect of governance Putin constantly invokes. Closely follow what Russia does for several years as I have, and you'll discover how Russia works.
All that is now, and to a great extent Russia has to tthank Elvira Nabiullina. where are the vacancies , what industry are they in?? Presntly inflation is hih but wages are soaring faser. That will not last. what i cannot understand is why the number of job vacancies has more than doubled in 2 years. i
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1258245/number-of-job-vacancies-by-industry-russia/
if we look to just skilled workers it has trebled. i can see the need now in manufacturing arms etc, but where else. I still think that when the SMO ends it will prove troublesome for Russia. Hopefully they will manage.
Russia has a demographic crisis that's existed since WW2 which is the primary reason why it lacks the required workforce, a crisis Putin's tried to fix since he first became Russia's president. Current Russian inflation is low:
"Monthly inflation rate in Russia was 1.14% in July 2024. That is 0.50 more than it was in June 2024 and 0.51 more than in July 2023. At the same time, 2024 year to date inflation rate is 5.05% and year over year inflation rate is 9.13%.
"In 2024 Russia ranks #1 in the world by yearly inflation rate." https://www.statbureau.org/en/russia/inflation?ysclid=lzvq0z3x1z795832996#google_vignette
That is the lowest rate in the world currently. As I wrote above, you need to follow Russia closely for many months to gather the info to make proper assessments. In 2018, the economy lacked workers, and that gap continued to grow as Russia's economy expanded. The additional volunteers and the partial mobilization for the SMO also sapped workers worsening the problem. Team Putin which consists of both government and business in this case is working very hard to deal with the issue trough high tech increases in worker productivity which includes the further training of workers so they can evolve along with industry's structure. Here's a recent peek at one part of Russia's economy, https://karlof1.substack.com/p/russia-expands-its-basis-for-greatness
Here's yet another peek at part of the equation, https://karlof1.substack.com/p/unsanctionable-russian-education
And here's one that ties most everything together, https://karlof1.substack.com/p/putin-strategic-development-and-national
My substack is filled with many such reports all of which are open to the public, you don't need to subscribe or pay a fee.
You may e right the bank rate was recently increased to 18%, and Nebulina forecast an inflation rate betwee 6.5-7%.
"The key rate is now at its highest since April 2022. The Bank of Russia raised rates to 20% in an emergency move soon after the Kremlin sent Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
"For inflation to begin decreasing again, monetary policy needs to be tightened further," the bank said in a statement. Its next rate-setting meeting is due on Sept. 13.
Annual inflation, the bank's main area of concern, grew to 9.0% as of 22 July from 8.6% in June, the bank said. Inflation stood at 7.4% in 2023, compared with 11.9% in 2022."
So who is right either Reuters are reporting Nebulina wrongly or there is a discrepancy here.
Reuters isn't to be trusted on much of anything. It's important to know that Putin and most of his team are all Inflation Hawks because they all lived through the era of hyperinflation that destroyed Russia's economy during the 1990s and the devastation it visited to average Russians. But that prime rate isn't the only rate that's being provided. Many special rates are there for purchasing housing and for industrial development. When Volker raised the rate to 20% in the late 1970s-early 1980s, it definitely killed a major portion of the US economy because there were no special provisions made to insulate those sectors that were murdered. But the plan was never to save those people. The opposite is Russia's goal. Preferential mortgage rates of 2% are available and another program is at 4%. What Russia doesn't have is a large sector of credit card debt that would be hammered by the 20% rate--Russians save then buy.
Gregory. Russia may have substantial military exports after the war.
> some desperate quid-pro-quo on the U.S. side in exchange for Iran not carrying out the massive strikes, which would humiliate the U.S. and force it into a war on Israel’s behalf which it cannot win, and which would likely end the U.S. empire for good
Why would I take a list of Mossad agents, if I can end Israel's benefactor and then end Israel itself in time? Seems like winning. Taking the list reeks of cowardice imo as the other option is much superior.
Framing it as cowardice VS. Not cowardice is a mistake, as what Iran does in response has nothing to do with bravery but with pragmatism and intelligence.
Isreal obviously wanted Iran to respond with a missile attack, but war should always be waged on one's own terms and not dictated by the enemy, else you give up initiative and tempo.
There is no reason to rush a counter-attack, Iranians aren't Arabs and typically can't be jerked around by their emotions. The whole "cowardice" narrative is driven by rather amateurish western minds.
The *Jerusalem Post Staff* bylined the article in The Jerusalem Post. I catch a whiff of *anonymous sources* here--or worse: a chatbot-generated AI snippet.
Note, too, that the gist of the article flatters the U.S. as a wheeler-dealer able to stave off Gog & Magog by dangling a few bright & shiny objects before the Supreme Leader. There's a west-chauvinistic flavor to this narrative: the heroically mediating U.S. can calm Iran down by feeding it the names of a couple Mossad agents & then everything is cool. Whew
Exactly - just as the US is now trying to take credit for India peace intervention in Ukraine
The Iranis will have listened to RF and China, and thanked Kim for his offers of arms
Not to the despicable and eternal enemy
> The Iranis will have listened to RF and China, and thanked Kim for his offers of arms
1. Iranis ➙ Iranians 😉
2. Don't forget Pakistan's offer of its Shaheen nuclear missiles.
Iranis is an old Indian English colloquialism, from the time when many called them Persians
My read - They're going to obliterate Iran. Why do I say so? Because the Brits are on about the Iranians seeking nuclear weapon triggers. (sorry I lost link - it was on Telegram). That means they are doing the propaganda campaign phase of their upcoming air force bombing raids. And people will believe it because of the current context. Anyone vaguely in touch with events is wondering why Iran hasn't retaliated and also wtf they would if they don't have nukes yet and also obviously why the f hasn't Iran got itself a weapon yet. The headline about the US giving up mossad agents to Iran sure is nice to hear but that's not why Iran hasn't attacked. They haven't attacked because they aren't fully suicidal. They would be absolutely obliterated and they know it. All the stuff about how potent and numerous the Iranian and Hezbollah missile arsenals are is poppycock propaganda. The "axis of resistance" is getting its ass kicked much as it pains me to say so-- you think the Kursk raid is a coincidence? The Russians don't even have a functioning modern military compared to NATO (United States). Their top propagandists like the neanderthal cretin Soloviev are shitting themselves and threatening to nuke Europe. They are complete barbarians. It's a disgrace to Russia and the human race that they put that on TV. Loser tough guys.
Your post is a reminder that the Israelis' IQ is 92 and the Ukrainians' IQ is 91.
Both Israel and Ukraine are intellectually behind all highly developed countries. Supremacist lunacy comes for a price.
Anna. You appear to live in a world where things are as you would like them to be, not as they are.
The more I am seeing events on the ground, the more I get convinced that you are right even though I am sympathetic to Russia and China.
See this:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
The US essentially ran a anti-vaccine campaign in the Phillipines and the Middle East in multiple languages to turn Filipinos and the Middle East against the Sinovac vaccine. It succeeded. Not only that, the US was able to ruin the budding relationship between Deuterte and Xi just through shitposting. In addition, US asymmetric propaganda operations have significantly disrupted China's Belt and Road initiative in Africa.
And the hilarious part is China continues to be worried about "escalating" and "US sanctions" while its companies get heavily sanctioned. In addition, it makes the rest of the world look like pansy's since they do not do these campaigns (and if they do them they have literally no impact) as US military runs amok and controls the narrative.
The Russians were caught with their pants down in Kursk, which is unbelievable given they had an open direct border with Ukraine.
Isn't Iran in the SCO? Not sure she is as friendless as she was.
Thank you - all these blood thirsty spectators treating war as their private tv circus is ....stiing in their comfrtable... complaining...
'amateur western minds' - I'd add cowardly hypocritical and despicable
Its not about being a tv spectacle. It is about accelerating events.
When one does a surgery on a gangrenous diabetic leg, one does not wait for the situation to worsen. One amputates it, no matter the wailing and gnashing of teeth. One does not negotiate for there is no room to negotiate.
Peace, even a tenous one favors the US Empire. War at every corner, pulling it in every direction will strain its resources. This is the goal
Civitates Foederatae Delenda Est
Yeah , I would agree with that. Cup cakes and cuddles would be a nice way to change the world but ...iT an't gonna happen. I'm a good few steps away form the chaos and can readily be accussed of being a voyuer of other's misery but internal change is not gonna happen. BRING IT ON BABY LET THE WHOLE FUCK'N HOUSE BURN. SOONA THE BETTA. Gonna be particularily noice to see Israel slow cooked.-Gotta go clean my screen.
So acclimated to the way the U.S. prosecutes war, when it doesn't just fig-leaf a war through a proxy, our expectation for the pace of warfare is calibrated to the U.S.-style Shock & Awe genre.
If a targeted adversary like Iran does not respond in kind w/ knee-jerk reckless reactivity, then the media consultants spin the narrative: Iran is cowardly. And the narrative, thus spun, becomes its own knife-prick provocation.
Audiences for U.S. wars expect that one genre only. When the targeted adversary does not fulfill the expectation--w/ jazzed-up retaliatory intensity--then the audience experiences let down. [Note: audiences for U.S. wars are not U.S. people only but really, potentially, anyone who peeks in at U.S. wars.]
Someone's been reading Sun Tsu.
well said.
persia has been here for centuries.
it is one of the cornerstones of multipolarity.
that is more important than bombing tel-aviv while tel-aviv and washington are in the process of destroying themselves.
it's the long game.
Well said Robert.
The Iranians see their friends getting stronger and their enemies getting weaker and say to themselves "what's the rush?"
💯 %
Regarding Iran's alleged "cowardice" over not launching a major attack on Israel, I don't see it that way either. Looking at it coldly and realistically, why would Iran risk all-out war with Israel and its US vassal over one Palestinian? Yes the strike on Haniyeh in Tehran was a grave affront to Iran, but no Iranian died. Whereas a large scale conflict against the West surely would bring death to many. Better to use the crisis to gain something. Russia, it's said, has sent military hardware to Iran. And if the Iranians extracted some concession from the West to avoid the war, that too is a tick in the plus column.
Of course Iran has to make a big show of outrage and sabre rattling, this is to be expected. And in doing so they will cause many pieces to move on the chessboard, and cost the enemy greatly in economic terms. To me it looks like Iran is ahead right now. That's unlikely to be the case if a major war breaks out.
yah Iran is doing so great that the entire western half of the country lost electricity yesterday. 5d chess, y'all.
Iran is doing far more damage to Israel presently than vice versa. Iranian society is fine. Israel is nearly collapsing, with mass outflow of citizens, economy and ports getting crushed, vast expenditures and military casualties / materiel losses.
The prospect for Iran is fine, for Israel it's nigh apocalyptic.
And Hezbollah is destroying military infrastructure in the north with its missiles.
So in comes the Mpox
Why not entertain the thought that "Iran is doing fine" is Israeli and British and American rabid neocon propaganda? purpose being to raise the scare level and then attack? They're already out with the stuff about how they're seeking nuclear triggers. And crazy as it sounds the MPox scare is released now simultaneously with Kursk invasion? Really?
Sam, you lost with fauci and your love life zelensky xiden. Try again in 2024.
Probably more jewish viruses planted, as they have done before.
based on your criteria the US is in the Tiddlywinks phase of its existence
Yes that's how I see it as well. Israel is killing itself. Wait them out. Tiny cuts behind the scenes so as to avoid all out war. Israel will lash out again in order to provoke something bigger. As they continue to lash out global sentiment turns against them... Chip
Send Nazie pelosie to fight on the front lines for Biden's Ukraine
One look at that face, and the Russians will flee in terror.
Great stuff, as always from the amazing, thorough Simplicius. First, Iran. Negotiations restart on Thursday. Old Joe put forth a ceasefire plan he said came from Israelis a month or so ago. Hamas accepted it. Israel then added more stipulations. Hamas said no dice. Because of this they're not going to the negotiations but are negotiating through mediators (plus Israel murdered their last two senior negotiators). What the axis wants is a permanent ceasefire and for the genocide in Gaza to end. This takes precedence over revenge, so Iran added the ultimate sweetener: no response if there's a ceasefire and the genocide stops. Hezbollah's and Yemen's position all along has been we stop when the genocide stops. One last chance last for Israel. Agree or get humiliated. As for Russia, what do the Russians want? End the threat on its border. So it makes sense to say give us our four oblasts, you disarm and keep the rest and we're all good. In either case will they take the deals offered? They'd be crazy not to...but I've answered my own question.
Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to Al Aqsa mosque yesterday can't make the ceasefire prospects look better now than his words & deeds ever have. Reuters quoted his speech @ the mosque--calling to "bring Hamas to its knees," auguring for total defeat, intent on purifying Greater Israel of any but a Jewish population.
Bibi & Smotrich boost Ben-Gvir's maximalist stance.
Iran's *strategic patience* may present Israel w/ a legitimately sincere "last chance."
The country is falling apart around Israel's leaders, but they do not seem capable of recognizing a "last chance" for a last chance.
The crazies are crazy. But military leaders deal with reality. Gallant and the generals have openly ridiculed the idea of victory, not because they're good guys, but because they know they're losing. Likewise US generals and admirals along with the intelligence community know that going to war with Iran is insane. Those who deal with reality know the score. Can they get through to the crazies? Hope so, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Is it also possible that Iran’s strategic patience is simultaneously a product of needing time for preparing a coordinated attack (timing of waves of drones, missiles, etc) and setting up more air defenses obtained from Russia for the inevitable Israeli response?
Is this a comprehensive analysis and presentation of the available information? Yes, I'd say it is.
But at the same time, I'm about sick of this horseshit. Palestinians are still dying en masse, and Iran is okay with having a Mossad team eliminate their honored guest because... they got the Mossad team's contact info? WTF?
And Ukraine not only sends 10k or more soldiers into Kursk, but also shells and attacks the Belgorod region yet again, while Russia does... what? Fights off the invaders? That's the bare minimum. Where's the knockout blow to the energy grid? Where's the dagger strike on the presidental palace/GUR HQ? Why not just just blast this critical railway hub instead of forcing infantry to capture it?
And on and on. Ukraine cuts off Hungary's gas, but Hungary keeps selling Ukraine electricity. Ukraine blew up Nordstream but Germany doesn't say a peep. Ukraine is destroying Romania's and Poland's agricultural base. Etc, etc, etc, etc ad infinitum.
Meanwhile, good luck hearing about the REAL wars going on in Libya, Mali, BF, Sudan (massive loss this week for RSF), Pakistan (esp Gwadar!), India (Kashmir), and Myanmar (I mean holy cow, it's intense with Tatmyadaw losing entire cities and yet crickets).
Frankly, everything feels like a cheap bit of entertainment while "behind the scenes" everything is arranged without anyone's consent or input. Are there no values at stake here?
Is everything just a show? You know, like the Ukrainian and Russian guys working side by side at the Sudzha metering office, which monitors how much money Russia needs to pay Ukraine every month? I feel like I'm losing my brain.
Exactly. I don't know what is really happending but I feel we are not getting closer to the truth here either. For example, SImplitious was talking for months about low Russian casulty counts and a reserve army in the back. Where is that reserve army now if they had to move troops away from the front (no matter how small are the supposed numbers)? All of this coupled with Bangladesh, Iran, lowering US inflation, seems to me that we didn't figure out this 5D chess as well as we initially thought we did.
Reserves were trained and put into border defense positions, and the veterans were shifted to the Western front. They or slightly fresh conscripts would be the ones defending against the Kursk incursion. Which has almost been defeated in detail now.
Kursk is an example of the "cockroach-syndrome."
Cockroaches do not stay in formation when attacking, they scatter and hide.
You have to go after each one individually.
Try this for some perspective: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=project+great
:)
Yep. Makes absolutely no sense.
"Where is that reserve army now if they had to move troops away from the front (no matter how small are the supposed numbers)? "
Russia has a lot of territory to defend, and a direct war with the US and NATO that could happen at any moment. It has large elements of the reserve army positioned for assaults in other sectors, including possibly from Belarus. They're not just sitting around waiting for something to do, you know.
Russia's planning for a suicide attack like Kiev's run into Kursk oblast was to keep enough men in mobile reserve to be able to stop such an attack long enough for more reserves to be brought up. For a mobile reserve they used troops like Alaudinov's force that had just been pulled for repositioning and were available. In addition, the fastest way to get a strong response to Kiev's attack is to pull some additional men, say 20% of the response to Kiev's attack, from front line troops that are just a half hour's to an hour and a half's drive away in Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk.
That's no big deal because all of the active fronts are highly over-provisioned with troops if for no other reason than for the very frequent rotations Russia is doing to a) keep frontline troops fresh and b) to give more men in the steadily expanding army real combat experience, to prepare for the day when maybe an "all in" effort will be required of them.
I don't make the distinction between "regular" troops and conscripts because "conscript" is not an accurate word to describe Russian forces. The 300,000 men who were mobilized in 2022 are all now fully professional, highly experienced warriors. They all came from active reserve forces, which they *voluntarily* signed up to be a part of after their prior military service had ended. So really they're volunteers, the same as if National Guard units were called up it would not be correct to call them "conscripts".
Likewise, the 1000+ men per day who are volunteering and who have made up the great mass of expanded army personnel in the last two years are not "conscripts" either. They're volunteers or recruits.
The only real "conscripts" these days in the Russian army are the 18 year olds who as a matter of universal military service are taken into the army to serve a year of basic training before being released back into the civilian pool. But none of them are anywhere near the war, and certainly not in Kursk.
Well if you put it that way 😀
I hear you though. It’s frustrating. All the while back in the U.S. the campaign (from both sides) is surreal. It’s like a clown show.
The former president is shot at almost died and all the media talk about is how “weird” Vance is or Kamala’s “joy”. It’s theatre of the absurd.
My best guess is the reason why nothing is happening is because of China. They’re not ready and the supporting alternative systems aren’t either so they’re pulling everyone back.
That said, I don’t see anything resolving without a big bang.
I once read an apt description of current events worldwide: "upside down clown world". Every year I am more convinced this is the case.
We all know that what's seen is theatre.
The real rulership is from the City of London's Square Mile.
The rest is for entertainment only.
Ready, ready….or ready as in convinced?
Both. Sort of.
Systems and alternatives are not ready (but moving fast - we only see the tip of the iceberg) and they’re hoping they won’t need the big smash.
They’ll find out soon it can’t be avoided.
I agree with your premise that it's all about China not being quite ready yet. People seem to not want to comprehend that a financial system built over more than 100 years (I am talking about modern Capitalism), with the dollar entrenched as reserve currency for over 50 years, is not going to be replaced overnight by a new system. No matter how cleverly designed, or needed, or wished for.
The true reality behind everything is economical, with the politics playing second or even third fiddle. In the US the reality is obscured by elections where the duopoly pretends to trade insults and voters, already stupefied by steady stream of propaganda and influence peddlers, pretend to care by going to the polls and/or debating on Twitter.
But there are people who know and they write for those who want to learn. I follow naked capitalism because there's often something interesting to read.
But in China, reality plays out differently. In truth the Chinese have no suicidal wish to crash the world economy so they go slowly, while they, together with allies (known and less known) continue to do "stress tests'. The SMO is, in a way a stress test, and we get a whiff of what's actually being tested (Ukraine is just a useful card to play. Entirely disposable of course. I mean, its people are).
the men behind the screen have other worries. The biggest one being that it appears Capitalism itself is NOT passing the stress test, which includes unpayable deficits due to money printing. WE who continue to watch with bemusement always wondered what the limit is per Modern Montary Theory, because there is a limit. Some economists (like Hudson) know more or less where the limit is and it's close.
So desperate minds behind the invisible curtain are pulling this and that lever, doing simulations to see what can give a 'way out'. Some think it's another plague, others think a little WWII might do the trick. Most are modeling furiously to try this r that band-aid.
This buys China time to continue testing while improving their own position. They don't want a complete de-coupling but with a partial de-coupling it's difficult to find where the diving line is.
How's that for a long semi-treatise in response to a single line?
It's quite good. Make it into a full substack essay
Well, the other side is hardly sitting idle. I agree these are stress tests for capitalism and it seems the globalist cabal are taking action. Currently, they have a mass playground for their machine learning toys in both Ukraine and Gaza strip as these are necessary, one would say indispensable, tools for the future to come. Current elites that have almost all power in the current system won't have their backs covered by masses. No massive army is going to die to protect Wall Street or the City no matter how hard they try with MSM propaganda. So, alternatively, they rely on machines and now they are testing them very successfully both for population control and for mass destruction. This is their once in a millennia opportunity for complete domination, because they finally might be having the access to technology that could enable it. And anyways, they are not trying to save capitalism, they are only trying to save their power, pole positions in the world that is being built as we speak that is more akin to feudalism (or as Varoufakis calls it techno-feudalism). It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense that 3 Ukrainian divers supposedly single-handedly destroyed Nord Stream. You are not supposed to believe it. It is offered to you as fact by the Ministry of Truth so that tomorrow if you veer off in any other direction you can be fact-checked and silenced by ever-tightening internet control system. And internet reality and real reality are becoming so intertwined that being cancelled in the virtual world ahs existential consequences in the real one (most of us depend on digital services for most of our economic and civic activities). And while people are relying on oligarchs like Musk to offer alternatives, they somehow miss to notice that those drones flying over Gaza and Ukraine are Musk’s Starlink powered. That new currency tied to a social media platform (X token) is no freedom, but a “WeChat” not controlled by CCP but by unaccountable globalist offshore elites who care about nothing but their own grab on power. My point being, while China may be waiting and weighing its options, the other side ain't waiting. They are learning and adapting (they even copy China in many aspects). They are also consolidating and fast. This fight is existential for humanity, not only for Russians, Iranians and Palestinians alike. Better not underestimate the opponent.
"they are only trying to save their power... This fight is existential for humanity" - Agree.
The nepotistic (anti-meritocracy) system can only degenerate. And what is the banking cartel and its servant the MIC and other fascist mega-corporations if not the nests of relatives (ethnic solidarity) and opportunists acting under the watchful eye of "security services?" Hopefully, the psychopaths in power can't help but prepare to be hoist on their own petard.
As for AI, its 'intelligence' is still very limited and will likely remain so for a long time.
China does not want complete decoupling but nobody is asking what it wants and are pushing for full decoupling from multiple directions. First the US (with varying degrees of success), then its European vassals (which can probably be forced to entirely decouple since they have shown a brazen disregard for their own economies) and then attacks in Southeast asia and Africa (see this report https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/) with successes. Chinese taking a measured approach is absolute cuckoldry and weakness (just like Russia btw). Rather than responding to total war with total war, they take half measures, tentatively escalating with great fear. It took the Russians how long to supply US enemies with weapons? 30 years? And that's after the US supplying Chechen terrorists, pulling various nations from Russia's orbit (Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine now Armenia and working on Kazakhstan). And Russia just sat on its laurels and did nothing with the only actions being outright military action and half measures in Georgia (never took Tbilisi) and Crimea (instead of finishing the SMO then when the population was far more pro Russian). Instead they waited 10 years before doing anything. Why was there no supplying of Mexican drug cartels to run amok and raid the US? Why was there no supplying of Taliban (as the US did to Russia)? Etc. Its exactly the same mistake that China is making now.
Easier said than done. Was Russia in a position to severely antagonize the hegemon 10 yrs ago? Their economy was able to survive the nuclear option of suspending the Swift banking software ? Russia was spending $ 60 bilions on defense, USA only, sans NATO, more than 1 trillion. Inaction comes from lack of strength...Without full Chinese backup, Russia does not have a chance and China needs more time to de-couple
10 years ago nobody would have expected this, the advances would have been much faster (see the Battle of Slovyansk back then and the DNR forces were poised to enter Marioupol before Putin stopped them), it would have been possible to rapidly conquer a large chunk of Ukraine and Europe/US would not have been expecting it and likely the sanctions would have been the same as they were then.
There were even plans to have an ONR (Odesskaya Narodnaya Respublika) happen but the plans were halted, in favor of 10 years of waffling with Minsk giving Ukraine time to rebuild their army to be very effective, spread propaganda about how Russia is the cause of all its problems and turn the population against Russia.
Some of the worst military planning i've ever seen.
Military, yes, it would have have been easier. Economy is a different animal. Russia was importing most of it's food from West at that time, for example. The Pro west/ Atlanticist gang was quite strong in politics also, Putin did not have Stalin's level of authority ..Ultimately, they were not ready for a full economic blockade.
I agree with Jim above, more or less. I followed the Donbass situation since 2014 fairly closely, including the gnashing of teeth and fury slowly building up in Russia over the constant shelling of Donetsk, not to mention the assassination of capable leaders like Givi and later Zakharcehncko himself. We, who followed all this for years knew of course that Minsk was a ruse by the West to buy time, even as we saw Russia poised to potentially return Donbass to Ukraine with a promise of autonomy. In the meantime, Russia did do a lot for the citizens of Donbass, paying the pensions, providing internet and electricity, arms and strategy and eventually Russian passports.
But here is the thing - it's easy to accuse Russia for waiting too long to do the obvious. What's harder is to develop an understanding about why Russia could not do more than it did. It's not just thet they were neither militarily, nor economically ready for a full confrontation. It's that they had to make sure China will have their back when the time comes. And this was by no means easy to affect. Chinese move slowly - far slower than we are used to in the West. China has a problem with what it considers a break-away province called Taiwan. Crimea was already a big pill to swallow for them but Donbass, connected by land to Ukraine, with each oblast only partly allied with Russia would have been a bridge too far in 2015 or 2016.
Also both Russia and China are sticklers for legal cover, each with their own definition but both putting a stake in the ground of true international law. An outright invasion by Russia prior to 2022 would have been seen as rushing the gates of legality, despite the provovcations by Ukraine. What I am trying to say is that Russia HAD to go through the charade of the Minsk agreements knowing that it was a charade. Even as its citizens were burning with rage over the West's falunting of anything legal and moral.
So it's all about timing and luckily for Russia, the idiotized US, controlled by a Deep State that doesn't think too deeply upped the ante all through 2021 until it was impossible to ignore the amassing of troops and materiel by Ukraine. I believe that the 2022 SMO was started just-in-time. Before would have been problematic and waiting any longer was not wise.
Notice BTW how the timing of so many things coincides with the Olympics? Winter especially. Be it Sochi or Beijing. There were reasons for waiting to just after for both cases.
In any case, we in the west are an impatient lot. once we figure out what is going on we want action, pronto. But reality does not always play along with our eager-beaver-ness. Yes, sometimes - often - China does seem to move awful slowly but they do move, and when they do it is with commitment and forthought. Because they play for keeps and they do have 1.4 B inhabitants to keep more or less content to provide their support as their government acts.
PS I also think people should give a little thought to what shadow banking is, it gargantuan global size and what the repercussion can be if it suddenly collapses. Somewhere I have an article on shadow banking (was from the jacobin, I believe). It was a tour-de-force, one that left me kind of depressed after reading. As in "what on earth can we do about that?". I have a vague feeling 9and it's just a feeeling) that somewhere in the economic/financial bowels of bothh China and Russia, there are people whose job it is to find a way out. It's just an image that I have....
Economically yup there’s lithium in Ukraine. Already a coup in Bolivia over its Lithium.
Ukraine blew up Nordstream??
You can not believe this - or do you know how they managed this - this is, at very best, to promote US propaganda
The Hungary action or rather non action is EU enforced, you must know that
There's no war in Kashmir - it's a continuing proxy terrorisms/resistances with Pakistan
The RF is - at long last- intervening in Libya, and Sahel, with a view to stabilising both - this is already underway
You seem to be calling down more war to 'stop the horseshit' wars already going on
Iran is not 'ok' - it's going to take it's time and take care to respond, with considerable advice from the RF - the Israel is losing their Gaza war
You are getting like many people on this site - more and more like the Ukrainians, less and less able to think - you used to use sober language now you are using US popcorn slang - like the US doomers
While War is bad, on the broader geopolitical scale attacking US proxies and bases of power weakens their positions. Therefore it is necessary. One must not be held back by sentimentality in these matters unfortunately. Neither Russia nor China nor the Global South can finally be free until the yoke of the Americans is removed.
amatuer scuba diver:
Vlodomyr Z(elensky)
:)
This is just the US trying to scapegoat the Ukraine and soften up US public for 'ukraine is evil we did not knwo we were duped'
That would be incredibly difficult for anyone - even Americans - to believe. A person would have to be an imbecile to believe...... Oh, wait, they might try it.
Exactly - you understand - this is a boy's own wonderland of stupid stories and fantasies they all live in
I mean if we consider the fact that the US has the military run propaganda campaigns that are incredibly successful and could probably convince people that the moon is made of cheese, I wouldn't doubt it
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
Consider this - people still listen to and believe US media after the whole Iraq WMD fiasco
All very true. It's springtime in America for our nihilistic authoritarian elites.
I was thinking about that and as I mentioned in my other comment, I don't think it is a joke. I think there really is a Volodymyr Z out there with a shady past and a history of diving that certain someones are sticking up a jacket for.
You summarized my thoughts on the matter in a quite eloquent way.
Either there is cuckoldry of the highest order going on, business does rule all or we are not understanding something - otherwise none of those events you describe make sense.
Which is a big reason why I think that Mr Volodomyr Z did not blow up Nordstream. And if I were to guess Hungary and Slovakia are being forced by EU to sell (perhaps its just self interest, money does not stink). Whereas Poland is deeply resentful of Russia, so it is willing to ignore threats to its agricultural sector from Ukraine.
The interesting thing will be to observe if the narrative vis-a-vis Ukraine will shift (as it did for Iraq) in the coming years after this conflict end and will the West suddenly "discover" that Ukraine is indeed full of nazis and that it did do the things it is accused of and that they ended up growing a monster on their doorstep? Would be quite entertaining.
Important not to use this word "nazis" so indiscriminately.
All the evidence, eg from who supports these terror groups in Ukraine, is that it is jewish oligarchs eg Kolomoisky.
My reading has always been that judaism and nazism are one and the same, and projected onto the Germans, despite there being no evidence whatsoever that any of the atrocities they are accused of ever happened, and instead, were perpetrated, and are being perpetrated, by jews.
I wonder, how do you define "Nazis" or "Nazism"? there seem to be some fog around the actual definition. It's as if we all agree it's something bad but what exactly is this 'something"?
I am just fishing, BTW. Been collecting impressions from various sources and even random people about the meaning of terms.
You know perfectly well how to define the Nazis - go back to the original use and leave it at that - they did the work of definition for you
Whoever else uses the word to refer to anything else is being either foolish or flippant, or cosplay ing (which is both)
So you're saying that almost 20 million Soviet civilians and POWs never died in concentration camps and never killed by Germans?
Read thoughts and memoirs of Reich politics and generals before and during the war. Nazi press. Archives. Soviet archives.
Undoubtebly modern Israel looks like a nazi state. However hearing the bullshit that genocide of Eastern Slavs and Jews never happened is amusing.
Actually, it is correct to call Israel a jewish fascist state as envisioned by Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky. The jewish fascism has been in action since 1937.
Mussolini was admired by Jabotinsky (the guiding light for Milejkowsky family since bibi's dad was a secretary for this self-proclaimed jewish terrorist). Jabotinsky wrote in his bio about the decisive influence of Italian fascism on the creation of a jewish state. Mussolini proudly called Jabotinsky a "jewish fascist."
There was never the "holocaust," otherwise, the jewish thugs of the ADL would not assault and harass honest historians and engineers whose research happened to disagree with the ghastly propaganda of the soviet jew Ilya Ehrenburg. The latter brought to American jews the memes about "shrunken heads", "soap" and "gas chambers & ovens." Shame on you for propagandizing the profitable holobiz schema during the real Holocaust of the Palestinian children and women.
Israelis use white phosphorus to burn people alive; they also do carpet bombing of the living quarters to murder as many human beings as possible. And don't forget the unspeakable sadism with which jews treat the Palestinian prisoners of all ages. There is also an Israeli policy of starvation. "Israel's deliberate starvation campaign is intensifying the already indescribable suffering wrought by constant bombing and ground operations."
You should check the name of Filipp Goloshchyokin (born Shay itsikovich, jewish), who was in charge of the Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1930s. This Shay itsikovich (Filipp Goloshchyokin) was personally responsible for the Goloshyokin Genocide that eliminated 40% of all ethnic Kazakhs. "They" do not teach about this in yeshivas, don't they? Filipp Goloshchyokin was also involved in the murder of the Tsar's family (including children).
"Filipp Goloshchyokin is ... the executioner, cruel, with some elements of degeneration. ... He did not count the Kazakhs as people at all." -- Sounds like a portrait of a regular Israeli.
1. Haifa Massacre 1937
2. Jerusalem Massacre 1937
3. Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939
4. Haifa Massacre 1939
5. Haifa Massacre 1947
6. Abbasiya Massacre 1947
7. Al-Khisas Massacre1947
8. Bab al-Amud Massacre
9. Jerusalem Massacre 1947
10. Sheikh Burek Massacre1947
11. Jaffa Massacre 1948
12. Deir Yassin Massacre
13. Tantura Massacre 1948
14. Khan Yunis Massacre 1956
15. Jerusalem Massacre 1967
16. Bahro Al Baquar 1972
17. Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982
18. Al Aqsa Mosque Massacre 1990
19. Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994
20. Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002
21. Gaza Massacre 2008-09
22. Gaza Massacre 2012
23. Gaza Massacre 2014
24. Gaza Massacre- 2018-19
25. Gaza Massacre2021
26. Gaza Massacre 2023 is still ongoing...
I think I spot an anti jew / Israel , who blames everything on Jews/israel but not why they retaliate only when attacked .
Ever heard about Lehi and Irgun self-proclaimed terrorists? You are either willingly ignorant of jewish history or cognitively blind. Who has attacked your jew Jabotinsky ("jewish fascists," in Mussolini praising words) when he and other jewish thugs have attacked the peaceful villages in Palestine and raped and killed women and children there? Who has attacjked your bloody mass-murderess Rozalia Zalkind and her comrade Bela Cun (Kohn)? Who has attacked your mass-poisoners Sassoons who utilized the British army to protect his opium business in China for the price of the lives of millions of the innocent people? Learn about your Leo Frank (rapist and murder) and Otto Frank (fraudster), and don't forget to learn about Zvi Migdal, the illumination nation of the true judaic character.
look under your bed, and you will find a trotskyist like one of the fat Kagans.
It is truly remarkable how tights has been jewish collaboration with self-proclaimed Ukrainian Nazis since 1990s. See PNAC and Dobriansky.
The piggish monstrosity Nuland-Kagan even had the leader of the Ukrainian Nazi Party as a commandant of her putsch in Kiev in 2014.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-lawmaker-speaker-was-involved-in-2014-killings/4299820.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/27/ukraine-opposition-parubiy/5844437/
Mazel Tov on the eternal union of zionists and banderites.
Oh, it's you again with some pseudo historians. This is well documented from German nazis memoirs, documents, press, etc. that they treated Jews as existential threat and Slavs as subhumans.
It is welll documented that up to 20 mln Soviet civilians and POWs died during nazi occupation and in concentration camps. You don't need to read Ehrenburg for this.
Ah, also the same bullshit as this Ukrainian so called "Holodomor". That Soviet goverment artifically engineered famine in Ukraine. Now it's genocide of Kazakhs?
You are really delusional and pathetic.
The problem is, your yeshivas never talk about victims of jews because it is OK when all "others" are victims of jews.
Even wikipedia has information about the ghastly Goloshyokin Genocide that eliminated 40% of all ethnic Kazakhs. Shaya itsikovich was a true supremacist genocider.
As for Holodomor, the First secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine was certain Lazar Kaganovich (jew), a right hand of Stalin and prominent mass murderer. He lived in comfort in Moscow till the badly demented old age.
The jewish Bolshevik revolution was financed by American and German jews; Jacob Schiff was the most prominent among them. He even boasted openly about his financial support for the jewish terrorists like Leib Bronstein (Trotsky).
Jews have been collaborating with the self-proclaimed Ukrainian Nazis since 1990s. Moreover, there are dozens Nazi memorials in the North America yet your thuggish ADL (created in memory of a rapist and murderer Leo Frank) and all major jewish organization have never issued a peep about these Nazi monuments.
The prez of the jewish community of Ukraine, Mr. Kolomojsky, founded and funded four (4) openly nazi battalions to protect his properties in Donbas. These Nazi "freedom fighters" (adored by global jewry and praised by jews in US and Israel) murdered 16,000 civilians of all ages.
Your cognitive blindness is not just (in your words) "really delusional and pathetic" -- it is amoral.
"Ukraine is indeed full of nazis "
...and so is europe.
there is a lot of "old money" still being used to support the nazis.
Yep. I've come to that conclusion. Guess what? The US and Canada are also full of nihilistic capitalists and Nazis. Some of them don't even have the good sense to know what they really are.
There are dozens of monuments to Nazi collaborators in Canada and the US. The ADL and Holobiz Museums have been conspicuously silent about these monuments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monuments_in_the_United_States_to_Nazi_collaborators
Good points.
The same thing occurred to me wrt blowing up the Pokhrovsk railway hub.
If its so important, a few Iskanders would do the job admirably, and repeat as necessary.
No need for infantry to get involved.
This occurred to me in the first days of the war - when I started noticing something was off. No bombing of Kharkov or Kiev? No missile strikes on critical infrastructure? No sabotage of rail lines? I remember speaking to friends and family about this and everyone was perplexed. Our only conclusion was that it was the elites having come to "an agreement" before hand. Perhaps not far off after all.
There has always been talk about "rules of engagement". I think Kursk may have finally broke that bubble. For me, Medvedev is always a good barometer for the direction RF thinking is headed. And to think that Mr. M. was, at one time, a dyed in the wool Atlantacist.
The rules of engagement should've been done with once it was evident that Ukrainian civilians hate Russia. It doesn't matter if you bomb them if they hate you anyway and have access to television. Look what the US did to the Japanese, the Japanese are massive simps for the US. Same with the Germans. Maybe there is something about bombing your opponents into submission after all - Russia tried the "nice guy approach" and instead gets hatred thrown its way.
Don't mistake Russians for Jews, please.
Its not about being or not being jewish, its about fighting wars properly so your side suffers fewer casualties than the other and achieves maximum objectives.
For example Chinngis Khan used the flood of civilians down roads to hold up Chinese from sending reinforcements. Civilians can be used as a weapon too.
"Ukraine blew up Nordstream but Germany doesn't say a peep. "
I have to push back on this one. I don't think you are being sarcastic and the idea that Ukraine blew up Nordstream is beyond grossly implausible.
What is the scenario being laid out here for public consumption? That a 3-person team with a single diver, using false documents, either locally purchased or moved all their equipment including 100s of kgs of explosives right across Europe, accurately located, dove down to and sabotaged these massive pipelines with multiple explosions from the back of a rented sailboat, then disappeared with all their equipment leaving nothing but a slight forensic trace.
That story is as plausible as it being done by the boy wizard Harry Potter or Poseidon God of the oceans.
Germany isn't retaliating against Ukraine because they know they didn't do it. They can't retaliate against the USA even though they know they did do it. A cover story has to be created to explain why they aren't doing anything about it even though the story is paper thin. This story requires the Germans to do absolutely nothing of any significance.
The Volodymyr Z part of it probably isn't a Lulz troll, there probably is a real person (or constructed persona) with a dubious background and a history of diving with that name who they are making a show of pinning the operation on.
And why aren't the full details being released because of "privacy" reasons? International terrorists don't get their privacy respected by national governments, but special agents do.
As opposed to having a full out regional and perhaps world war?
I will take you being frustrated instead of that.
So, most of the russian army is in fact engaged in Ukraine, as is most of its air power. An invasion of Russia proper - say what you want about how irrelevant it is - those are Russian civilians who have been displaced and in some cases killed, and those are Russian homes and Russian places of business and infrastructure being destroyed on all those videos we are watching. I honestly expected a massive Russian reaction where an army "out of nowhere" would coalesce on Kursk, and all the reserve air power and what not to be engaged. But instead there is a near-force parity in the area, and air power is being rationed between various fronts
Meanwhile, Putin just says "I'm not your friend anymore" and says peace talks are off the table. Or, "long pause". And we still hear about escalation. What escalation? What exactly can Russia do that isn't nuclear?
"most of the russian army is in fact engaged in Ukraine,"
No, not most.
Have you seen good estimates of a percentage that is engaged? I've seen 20 percent as an estimate but I have no idea about the accuracy of that number.
We do know that two new Armies have been brought on line since the SMO. They aren't in Ukraine. Same for air power, they are using a small percentage of their air assets.
I'd agree at 20% (30% at the most) for ground troops, hopefully someone can answer exactly. It's definitely not most. Most are kept back in case of any US/NATO madness.
But 'most' military members are getting experience at the front with constant rotations.
I'm really beginning to doubt that Russian leadership truly fears an all-out invasion of Russia. I suspect Russia could easily commit more troops in Ukraine and finish this shit but will not do it. None of their excuses make sense to me, any longer. None of them. The mystery is why Russian elites are hesitating about finishing off what most now call a threadbare, desperate army. Makes no sense.
They would be right to fear it, as it would ensue in millions of Russian deaths once again. However they would prevail in the end but at a great cost.
They are dealing with the most vicious scum on the planet.
Look..... I've been around US elites. Most of them are soulless scum. Do I think they would approve an all out invasion of Russia with a large contingent of American troops? No. I don't think they would. I think they fear that the American people would completely balk, especially when thousands and thousands of caskets come home. No. Something else is going on here.
Because this threadbare army, for one, is a constant attrition of NATO funds and equipment. Better to have it wasted on them than remaining in Europe.
Russia is slow-walking the SMO because Ukraine is just one front in a global war. The euphemism is that this war is "existential." So all Russia can afford to care about, is being victorious. This war is all going to take a long time because world-wide, Russia/China/Iran/South Africa/etc. need to set up the conditions just right. World public opinion has to be coaxed out from under the 7/24 MSM lying propaganda machine. Indian businessmen need convinced their future is with the Eurasian Union, not the West. Persian Gulf sheikhs need to convince themselves that their salvation does not lie in the West. The Global South needs to become stronger economically, security-wise, politically more stable, to create quality systems for health and education, etc. It's a big bill, and for much of the Global South to merely get strong enough to resist the West (including through fifth columns) will take one or even two decades. In the meantime, there are multiple "battlefields" around the world to "shape", to set up in advance so the outcomes will be predetermined. Ukraine will disappear by the end of 2025, and Russia's real problem will be to keep the momentum going after that. IMO, the West is sure to offer a "Minsk 3.0" that Russia will find hard to resist. No point in going into details now, but you can see the stratagem will be tried again. Russia and Ukraine were badly burned by Minsk 1 and Minsk 3, so a post-Ukraine Minsk 3 with a "false reset" will have to be very seductive - and look very different - to get Russian approval. In the meantime, there are battles to be fought and battlefields to shape. Russia wants the "elites" who run the West to continue in their stupid sanctions, stupid arrogance in every direction, stupid and corrupt purchase of military crap, etc.
All these details can be summed up with an old adage, "When your enemy is failing, don't do anything to stop him."
I know.
What Russia truly fears is to trigger OTAN's only "winning" option, which is an all in, one last hoorah effort by NATO *air power* (the only area in which they can truly overmatch Russia).
Whilst this would not defeat Russia, it would cause an immense amount of damage and casualties, and likely trigger a nuclear exchange.
The Russian "Boil the Frog" strategy is immensely frustrating to both armchair observers AND OTAN leadership, precisely because they cannot construct a plausible causus belli for using their air power, other than the deep rear AWACS machines.
Excellent observation, and I, for one, enjoy it deeply. Even Russian sympathisers among local commentariat seem to be innately disturbed by the flow, it speaks volumes about how abrasive it is for someone brought up in Western paradigms. Meanwhile for Russians it's the favorite kind of warfare that they can do for years.
Shakespeare would've said so much about hubris and things it's precipitating when Putin is saying "I'm not your friend anymore, peace is now off" and you don't get very, very cold feet.
As for force parity, when judging Russian actions always consider that Russia maintains enough reserve forces to repel this exact scenario, but from all directions and by actual NATO forces. Which would've done worse than Ukies, I reckon.
Strike kiev and places of decision making. As they should have done ages ago. Also, perhaps strike civilian infrastructure - sewage treatment plants, electricity hubs, etc. Cause chaos amongst the civilian population. I doubt that the Russian leadership has the cajones for it though.
All the maps go on about how major supply roads are being captured etc, and basically winning strokes are supply interdiction... BUT, all the bridges crossing the damn Dnipro which feed those roads stand pristine and untouched. Even "threatening" those crossings to at least force AD assets to cover would make sense..
In reality, I think Ukraine actually doesn't give a damn about the Donbass, and is happy to fight this slow grinding action where Russia eventually wins but rules over ruins. Western of the river I think is beyond Russia's reach
I am absolutely certain that no money changed hands and all that happened were some MOUs were signed.
I agree. Ukraine would care if the situation came closer to Kiev. For Ukraine the Donbass was written off long ago, but its just a useful way to tie down Russian forces.
To me, the fact that Russia is focusing only on conquest of the Donbass rather than along the entire border of Ukraine (as the Soviets did during the start of Operation Bagration) speaks volumes as to its capabilities. It seems the Soviets were far more capable in a military manner or at least it had fewer traitors and sympathizers amongst its ranks at the time and was not afraid to spit in the Wests face, as current elites seem hesitant to do. Perhaps Stalin's purges weren't just the wishes of a "megalomaniac" but was the elimination of sympathizers and outright traitors that we see now? Something to think about.
Moscow seems to be pursuing an "all of the above" strategy - maintain normal life, grow the economy, fight a "SMO", keep negotiations open, limit "escalation", limit 'unnecessary' destruction in Ukraine, and so on. Its very Putin - likes to keep his options open and very tactical thinking, but has very significant limits strategically. One minute its an existential conflict, the next its Tuesday. I reject most Western characterizations of Russia, but boy some stuff is really hard to ignore.
Indeed. You characterized it very eloquently. Putin was an excellent tactician previously. But it seems like the West has wizened up to his tactics and is outplaying him in his own game. He seems also to be a very short term thinker, I like to compare him to Stalin. Stalin was a very long term thinker and through his policy had established Russian power to this day.
With Putin it is difficult for me to tell - is it cowardice holding him back from going all in? Or is it him being cognizant of the fact that he bit off more than he could chew? Or is it just him being a Soviet intelligentsia?
Indeed, going all in would have negative social and economic reprecussions on Russia but it seems to be the approach Ukraine is taking as is the collective West. Indeed, despite everything Ukrainians are convinced they are winning and their unity and belief in Ukraine is still strong. This is perhaps the biggest blunder on the part of Russian elites. They have not destroyed Ukrainian self identity. That should have been the primary goal. Instead they relied on Soviet legacy of "brother countries" (btw it doesn't affect the youth at all, since they have been actively taught that everything Soviet was bad, Ukrainian contribution to the formation of the USSR was minimized and it characterized as an "occupation")
Very true. Most wars in history are won because of capitulation, rarely due to defeat in detail. I tend to agree that the West is tired of the war and fed up with Zelensky; but look at it another way: the guy gets every call answered, attends every meeting of every Western institution, meets with national leaders whenever he wants, and feels empowered to go around and demand entire national armories - and gets a lot of it. Is he ineffective? No - he is very effective. Are the Ukrainian people and nation the ultimate losers? Absolutely, but nobody seems to care about them. This war will end with a variation of Minsk or Istanbul, and nobody will be happy. Both sides have endured a form of strategic defeat. For example, in the end, ask yourself, will there be more or less NATO stuff pointed at Russia, and will it be closer or further away than Feb 2022? And on the other side, a Russia-China alliance; something that was seen to be avoided at all costs for 50 years, and will result in the end of SWIFT & USD... u get my drift.
immature innuendo
why should destroying the UA identity critical?
is it working for Bibi the butcher?
is it working for the UA attempts against RU?
what would it take for someone to destroy your identity?
futile.
The rest of your post falls apart in the same way. For example,
"With Putin it is difficult for me to tell - is it cowardice holding him back from going all in?"
Someone that does not meet your unstated criteria for non-cowardice is condemed to cowardice.
"He seems also to be a very short term thinker, I like to compare him to Stalin. Stalin was a very long term thinker and through his policy had established Russian power to this day. "
What is this all about? What are you comparing? No facts only 2 opinions, (neither of which are yours, i would guess). "He seems" what does that mean? "Stalin was a very long term thinker" really?
Give us an example
Very funny, this post of yours.
You get an "E" for effusive and not for excellence.
I don't think Russia has to go even CLOSE to "all in" to collapse the NATO forces in Ukraine, especially at this point. That's what doesn't make sense to me. There are many, many levels of force, I think, between what Russia is now using and "all in".
Putin doesn't just operate within a limited, nationalistic arena of military action. His exercise of political and diplomatic acumen (this mark of a genuine all-too-rare world leader and statesman) points to a profoundly shrewd awareness of juxtaposing the critical and moral perspectives of his BRICS partners and the vital perceptions and judgements of the Global South too. He has to strategically maintain this respect and trust of peer nations by judicious management of tactical crises. About the sagacity and historic patience of Iran, likewise Russia seems to exercise a sophisticated code of reaction covering a vastly more complex big picture strategy than indulging in a heavy-handed, game-based responsiveness.
I'm still completely puzzled as to why those northern border areas weren't fairly heavily protected AND as to why Russia is just now stopping the incursion and hasn't crushed it. I do not think this was some trap, as some indicate. Maybe it was but I just don't believe it. If you ask why Russia hasn't committed significantly more resources to brutally crush this "incursion" by now, you get a seriously angry, insulting response from some pro-Russian "experts" about traps set and unimportant real estate and a bunch of crazies riding around the countryside on very fast scooters.
It all seems very strange and somewhat inexplicable to me. Will it make any difference for NATO's fortunes in Ukraine? No. I'm pretty sure it won't but the entire episode is strange.
1. There's *TOO MUCH* border to protect in any meaningful way. The troops tied up can be gainfully employed doing *anything* other than watching a border. (It sucks being "tripwire" troops, but there you are)
2. Committing more troops means dragging them in from somewhere else. where, once again, they could (should) have better uses.
3. Everything Ukraine throws into Kursk is dead meat and lost materiel, so not pushing back super hard is encouraging Kiev to throw in more of both, which (obviously to most, but counter-intuitively to some) will only hasten Ukraine's downfall.
4. The terrain and size of Kursk Oblast allows Russia to give ground, and set up traps and ambushes for Ukraine to do 3 (above), which plays well in Western media and poorly in Russia, but again actually degrades Kiev faster.
5. It's stupid, strange and inexplicable because "war is a continuation of politics by other means"(Clausewitz) and politicians are driving this stupid mess.
Lots and lots of Russians would agree with you about Stalin, including my Russian wife.
Ukraine not interested in the Donbass??? A large part of rare metals and Lithium is there.
I truly believe this whole rare metals / lithium bit is fake news. Yes, the deposits are there, but nobody actually cares, certainly not enough to fight a war over
Yes, for Russian and not Ukrainian money and oil. This war is being waged so that Russia is up for grabs in the end. And the West are taking their merry time to accomplish that goal. They aren't losing anything. It even helps their economy and dead Ukrainian Slavs are zero expenditure.
It's not really a case of no balls. It could be a case of big balls.
What does one gain by striking Kiev?
Does one think that the decision-making is done there?
Kiev needs to exist in order to give the new UA govt a place to sit, in due time.
Kiev also holds an very very important place in russian history.
Katekon. :)
Ok, let’s talk about those “places of decision making”. One cannot identify them. FIrst of all, some Zelensky’s palace or bunker is NOT such a place, because Z is a mid level manager in this business. The key decisions are made by some NATO oligarchy. So, would you propose to hit White House with an Iskander missile? Maybe some Ramstein bunker? Of course not, because 1. the occupants of the WH make no decisions, they’re just puppets 2. It would trigger full scale WWIII. 3. This Iskander is needed to support the soldiers on the actual front. 4. It will allow the West to revert from all the deindustrialization and decadency malaise - thing which is helping Russia more than whole armed battalions. And it won’t deter some NATO sponsored terrorists from putting a drone into car trunk and launching this drone against some airfield or factory.
President Putin is doing a remarkable job in long term strategy planning. He’s escalating only when it actually benefits Russia and gives Russia upper hand. Russia confronting NATO is playing the long term game. Probably learned a lot from China - be slow, don’t squander your resources on less important matters, small steps keep enemy unguarded, strong industrial sector is essential to let the army grow and secure supplies. Play weak when you’re strong. Always think decades ahead.
The Kursk invasion is just about a few villages near the border. It doesn’t matter at all - it makes Russia LOOKING weak, while on the ground opposite happens - the enemy is loosing resources and there’s no chance of any long term success here. Yet this incursion gives Russia good reason to continue the war beyond the 4 oblasts. It mobilizes the Russian society. From military and civilian losses perspective, way less costly than Pearl Harbor, yet with the same strong, mobilizing effect, for the society and for the diplomatic corps.
Places of decision making = striking Zelensky's residences, Bankovaya street, the Rada when it is in session (it has long moved out from bunkers and is constantly gathering to make this or that law), hitting SBU headquarters outside the city, etc.
This would be sufficient to cause chaos in the government to paralyze it for some time.
I have two acquaintances, one from the army, one from national guard who did their stint in SMO for 5-6 weeks. They never went back there. And that's like that for most contracted soldiers - they are sitting on their asses in barracks. 20-40% of army is there (just a guess - it's all classified, obviously). Most of the whole thing either doing temporary rotations or waiting.
Then why military keep recruiting? Because they want volunteers and because they want to enlarge military overall.
I have noticed the sway of opinion on this board about the Ukraine conflict based on the latest headline. Russia already knew that there would be an AFU incursion but not where. "Where" doesn't matter when you have such a numerical and qualitative superiority of soldiers and equipment. But what really matters is how to respond to such an incursion. Here's one plan.
1. Let the enemy penetrate deep into your territory and get acurate recon on their positions and lines.
2. Concentrate a counter attack formed by two large battle groups A and B complete with Air Cav and Air Assault in a pincer envelopment of AFU forces starting at the point of initial friction.
3. The point of friction becomes a mobile ligne Maginot. (Rien n'entre et rien sort.)
4. The main object is to cut off the invading AFU force from re-supply. These forces have overextended and will now be short of ammo, food, and fuel.
5. Send a message to the besieged AFU forces that if they surrender they will receive good treatment with a free bottle of vodka, cigarettes, and a double steak BBQ supper in goodwill. Those who do not surrender will die a miserable death while your wives and girlfriends move on to the next guy. You have 60 minutes to respond. Don't let it be your last.
6. Destroy the entire invading AFU force as a warning that this is what happens when the Ukraine command crosses the line.
Russia must act decisively and make a bold stance with no half-measures. (C'est le temps) Salute.
Shutting the Sudzha-entrenched mercs & Ukrainians off from electrical supply--and also those guys dug-in in the *74* villages--would throw a wrench into the works: no way to recharge batteries or communicate
Did Iran really back off? They refused to attend the negotiations on Gaza. Same with Hamas.
So what does that leave them with?
If their side doesn’t attend the negotiations, do nothing while the IDF continues to bomb Gaza then this doesn’t look good.
My guess it’s not the U.S. offer that dissuaded them. It was their friends the convinced them and their preparations that need more time. If they were dissuaded in the first place …
Israel/Bibi will not stop without getting his war and Iran knows that. At least now they know.
The Kursk invasion is a huge success for NATO though, because it established several new precedents that should be absolutely unacceptable to any Russian government that gave a damn about the security of the country rather than the wealth of oligarchs.
What do we have?
1) Russian can be invaded with hundreds of armored vehicles in a large combined arms operation, and there would be no response beyond frantically trying to contain the advance of the attacking army. No nukes on the heads of the ultimate planners of this, and not even an Iskander on Zelensky's bunker. Nothing.
2) ATACMS attacks on the Russian rear and on airfields began. Again, completely inadmissible, because one day those missiles will be carrying nukes and will be flying towards Moscow, but nobody will launch on warning because the system will have been accustomed to not seeing them as threats
3) A strategic Russian airfield was bombed by ten Mugin-5 drones in Nizhny Novgorod region, fully 650 kilometers from the front line, and much further from it than even Moscow is. Worse, it was the most massive drone attack so far, and it wasn't directed just at Nizhny Novgorod, it spread all over central Russia. But once again there was no launch on warning. This is catastrophic -- this is precisely the kind of strike that if normalized, will be a precursor to a decapitating first strike. Because if they launched 200-300 drones yesterday (officially 117 were shot down over pre-war Russia, plus another few dozen before they crossed the border, but in reality even more were launched and were just not counted because EW brought them down somewhere in the woods), what happens if one day they launch 800 towards all the regions in European Russia, air defense depletes itself, then another 200 come after them, but those 200 carry nukes? "Ukraine" has been using drones large enough to carry nukes for quite some time now.
Again, this is absolutely catastrophic strategically, and yet Putin continues to sit on his hands.
Also, the way the Kursk operation unfolded clearly indicates that Putin was looking for a deal. He voiced his conditions in early June, and likely that was not a firm position from which he was never going to back down, concessions were going to be made on it. Then some talks behind the scenes likely happened, and he was once again fooled by the dear partners who launched a surprise attack on Kursk. This is why he was looking so angry and confused.
This is also catastrophic, because even Putin's conditions from early June -- AFU leaves the full administrative borders of the four regions -- are a gigantic strategic defeat for Russia. Nothing short of the total end of Ukrainian statehood suffices as a winning condition, but Putin clearly refuses to mobilize the necessary resources.
And at this point even that will be a defeat, because of the precedents set. How are you going to reestablish deterrence given all the red lines that have been crossed, even if you do take over the whole of Ukraine?
General Moron, you look fairly stupid now with your inaccurate bullshit and dooming, but once the SMO is over you will be beyond redemption and will slither away, never to be heard from again.
have you realized that I have almost totally disarmed NATO and the warmongers without a WW3? What have you done lately? Free assange? I did that too.
GM.You sound like, you disappointed again, watch the Olympic opening ceremony, that should give you some goosebumps .
Russian oil literally fills the Ukrainian tanks used to kill Russians. Russia has not sanctioned anything might upset his oligarchs cash flow. Putin is not serious about this war and will give it all back to be back in Western graces. Did you read the OG Russian capitulation/peace agreement Boris told Zelensky not to sign?
This is what I fear. I fear that Russian elites really don't give one shit about fascism and genocide and, quite frankly, people's lives.... JUST like US and UK and EU elites.
Exactly
It is a turf war between rival mafia clans.
Exactly.
Let me remind you - in the mid 1980's a kid landed his pleasure craft on Red Square. He was detained by the KGB and later released when no malicious intent was established. However arond 115 officers from various branches along with the Soviet Minister of Defense were arrested and forced to resign - simply for missing the bush plane on radar.
What do we have now? An outright invasion of Russia proper - Gerasimov retains his position. Shoigu continues sitting on the right side of Putin. No Generals "lost their heads" over this.
Moreover, there were persistent rumors of secret negotiations with the US. The video of a recent arrival of some diplomats to New York allegedly for UN talks circulated on the internet, but I am not convinced that talks could not have been held as well. And the US was able to "talk down" the Russians from escalation a few months back as well. The fact that anyone could "talk down" the Russians speaks volumes.
Most of those drone launches you mention happen from within Russian territory - indeed the border is very porous and many DRG units can freely enter and exit Russian territory. Also, many times Ukraine manages to recruit locals for its attacks by promising them money.
During WW2, German DRG units would be dropped onto Soviet territory and would be frequently captured by NKVD/OGPU units that would be already waiting for them. This speaks of excellent intelligence capabilities that the Russians do not have. They were not able to infiltrate Ukrainian command and obtain information of the preparing incursion. Contrast this with numerous Soviet moles within German command and almost total infiltration of German sabotage schools with Soviet instructors.
Oh boy, this exact "bush plane" operation was staged specifically to decapitate the army prior to Gorbachev's reforms, which it would've opposed with passion. The plane was being tracked, but no order to shoot came through. That is exactly why you don't see heads rolling now - unlike then, political and military leadership are on the same team. And so on, you basically keep disproving your own points with your argumentation. Try to compare size of the Soviet wartime army and the current Russian one for instance.
And yet the military and intelligence strongly opposed Gorbachev's reforms and eventually staged a Putsch. The Putsch failed essentially due to Yeltsin's good luck. It was very close to succeeding.
In any case, heads should have rolled for the botched Kharkov defense, Shoigu should've been removed back during Prigo's "March for Justice" and particularly now with Russia having been caught unprepared
Sorry are you comparing the Soviet Union of the 80s to the Russia of today? Apples vs Oranges 🙄
so many words
so little thought
GM(SM)
Hey GM!
The very best comment of them all. There are no more red lines to be broken, either in Russia or Iran. Both act equally thoughtfully but also with the hope that there is logic and pragmatism in the other camp. Putin has been outplayed many times over the past 24 years. And he is equally insulted every time but disciplines himself into calm and well-balanced responses or countermeasures. But there is a big problem with this. Russia is like the nice neighbor with a very large plot full of orange trees and olive groves. Other neighbors send their kids to steal the fruit, some even start digging up the trees while others move their fences onto the property. Russia is acting good-naturedly, thinking that this childishness must stop on its own. He ends up getting stabbed to death one dark night.
Putin's sublime peace signals are only seen as a weakness in the West. Compare with Israel's unreasonable attitude towards Palestine. They get a standing ovation in Congress. No one dares to attack Israel or the United States short of risking annihilation.
In the West, zero respect exists for Russia as a nation and even less for its leadership. Otherwise, we wouldn't see social democratic German leaders expressing themselves like that about Russia. And as a German general grinning at the Kursk operation should render another failed Novichok attack.
This War of Perception is really on Ukraine's side. And the US/West is doing its best to reinforce that opinion among its citizens. The reality is that Russia will win one way or another. Unfortunately, they have a history of huge human and material losses - and it doesn't look like it's going any better this time.
As you so well describe; it would be a huge loss for Russia if the war ends with a Ukraine outside NATO, Crimea and four Oblasts to Russia. In reality a victory but in terms of perception a clear loss in the eyes of the world.
Even North Korea has more respect than Russia. Mealy mouthed Putin does not inspire any respect or fear in opponents.
He did in younger version. Sadly US leaders display flagrant impudence and test the patience to the bitter end. The only, even more impudent is Netanyahu.
You go, grrrl!
Absolutely nailing it with your astute ignorance...
Gosh, what will they use for the attack? Poles and Baltics? I think you are going to be severely disappointed but, hey, I'm very hesitant to make any firm conclusions.
Don't worry, Steiner to the rescue. It's absolutely FAB ulous, or it's raining FABs.
The hint is go to bunker, there's no negotiations, no matter the wishful/magical thinking. Don't take Putin or Medvedev's words at face value, just adjust reality and distort. Negotiate, with who?
All right, who's doing the Neutron Dance?