One of the biggest recent battlefield developments is just how quickly some of Ukraine’s largest urban strongholds are falling after being surrounded and cut off by Russian forces.
Stephen Wertheim, w/ the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ahem, spoke w/ reporter Isaac Chotiner about Project Ukraine’s prospects now that DJT has onboarded.
Wetheim said that DJT’s presence in the halls of power has lifted “a taboo” on seeking a diplomatic settlement to the war: “This is especially appealing at this point,” Wertheim said, “given that it is hard to argue that Ukraine is in an advantageous position.” This convoluted sentence shakes out to mean: Ukraine is losing.
Taboo lifted, Wertheim spilled some tea. He spoke of the “deferential support” which Collective Biden gave to Project Ukraine in support of “the war aims and war termination.” Sounds like a fairly suppressed & hidden aspect to all the chatter about Project Ukraine, among those who ardently supported Ukraine, was that Collective Biden was not doing enough, or not doing it fast enough—not setting up a no-flu-zone, not getting the ATACMS there, not green lighting the cluster munitions.
Wertheim did not candy coat his discontent: “The fact of the matter is that the U.S. and NATO as a whole have not come to the defense of Ukraine when it has been attacked by Russia.” Wertheim presents a Never-Article-5 scenario for Project Ukraine: the U.S. has already shown that it will not send Americans to die for the conflict. Lifting a few more taboos, Wertheim stated that “Europe has a greater interest in defending European countries against Russia than the U.S. does. That would be true,” he emphasized, “if a Democrat had won the 2024 election.”
In other words, what Wertheim is telling us, in a Now-It-Can-Be-Told way, is that it has *always* been the case that Europe should solve security issues on the continent, not the U.S. Moreover, we could *always* have been having this caliber of conversation about Project Ukraine—about the U.S.’s interests there—had political powers, media powers and social powers not put the kibosh on such a thing.
Serious people w/ astute insights to share could have pooled their knowledge, even w/ those who possessed a differing perspective, and engaged in respectful dialogue—as is typical when experts disagree—without ad hominem attacks, like accusations of being a Kremlin Stooge or Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin-in-one.
Everything could have been normal—and we could have enlarged our information space.
Instead, a state-driven superstructure of speech repressions bundled into governmental lies and state-caliber concealment held a boot against the neck of ordinary human discourse. An unmasking occurred when it was possible to talk about Joe’s cognitive decline, after which came the recognition of how vast the conspiracy of concealment of his decline actually was: the number of media leading lights and ruling elites. A further unmasking came w/ DJT’s 2024 electoral win, backed up by his inaugural address and then the raft of Executive Orders he signed. An era of hard talking and bold actions has crushed the secretive anti-speech/anti-expression/anti-ideas state.
Throughout the entire time of the SMO, if not from even further back—Euromaidan in 2014 or the Orange Revolution in 2004—Wertheim cultivated a complex comprehension of Project Ukraine and the U.S.’s role in it in spite of a geopolitical culture in the West which disallowed Asking Difficult Questions. Throughout the embargo of probing Project Ukraine, or interrogating the U.S.’s interests in it, Wertheim nonetheless solidified a very rational, cogent understanding of events, which contravened what the ruling elites insisted was so.
As if liberated by the shock Common Sense Revolution that has swept the States, Wertheim said, “I’m really concerned about the magical thinking that has developed around the NATO commitment—the idea that a mere piece of paper, Article 5, is sufficient to provide deterrence.”
A few months after this war started, I was @ Seattle airport, when the airport radio said in Ukrainian, "Dear Ukrainians, welcome! We are so glad you are here." I nearly dropped my luggage, and it was the first time, I realized the full extent of the US involvement in the war in Ukraine.
Terminal 1 @ JFK has a ginormous Hassidic Jew presence, tons of Tel Aviv arrivals, hundreds of passengers going to Israel or returning--and I have never heard announcements in Hebrew.
And that brings up another, seldom talked about point. On of the goals of involvement in Ukraine is to eventually bring genuine, battle-hardened Nazis to the US. Once they are here, they will of course do exactly the things you'd expect genuine, battle-hardened Nazis to do - create mayhem and terrorism. The point of all that? To smear the American Conservative Right!
Won't be the first time. The US brought in the German & Ukrainian Nazis after WW2, UK took in 8,000, Canada took in 900+, and who knows how many LA countries let in. President Peron sent 44,000 blank Argentinian passports at the end of WW2 to the Nazis to escape.
The reason they can now talk this way is kind of funny. It's because all their best schemes and plans, which of course they had to lie about with the lap dog media, have failed.
I mean a complete, utter, total, failure. Oh dear. Not only that, but more of the useless eater types who they patronize as easy to gaslight have started to figure out what's been going on.
They have made a disastrous mess, and don't want to be blamed.
There's still a sacred cow they can't gore--or a blue & yellow heifer--because they revert in a knee-jerk way to VVP's "imperialistic goals" or his wanting to "reconstitute the Soviet Union"--but they ignore entirely the way the shelling of Donbas escalated so intensely in February 2022, with AFU brigades assembling en masse, using the kind of upgraded artillery launchers that belied an OTAN hand in the escalations, all of it signaling a genocide-on-the-brink.
On the Right Side of History, historians on the right side will write of this.
A lot of us who aren't stuck on main stream media are trying to cut through the propaganda. Russia is looking better and better to many, and the US worse and worse.
Russia is going to be victorious at the end of this, for many reasons. The winners write history.
Hopefully, our higher education in the future will be actual education and not indoctrination.
I need to learn Russian - because at this point with no future for anything in the US except Anarchy and Mushroom clouds, I'd rather live near the Urals where I can eek out some sort of satisfying existence.
Aside from the main topic - I speak four languages, and I can tell you English is the easiest European language. At least the easiest of those I know something about. And English isn't my first language, so it's not favoritism. We are actually very lucky to have it as our lingua franca.
(Ironically, a phrase that comes from French being the lingua "franca" in the Mediterranean and Middle East.)
People like to say that English is boring or "not as beautiful as X" because English is common and widespread, and you mustn't show that you favor what is common. That wouldn't be intellectual and refined. Well, screw that. I've struggled through several languages, I know the structures in Germanic and Romance languages.
For one thing, the verb form in English is the same no matter who it refers to, instead of changing. The only change is that in present form for he/she/it you add -s, but that's it. In past form it's the same for everyone: I went, you went, he went, we went, they went. In Scandinavian languages it's the same, all verb forms are the same for all people and even without the -s, but there you have other complications instead, such as the plural forms varying. In beautiful English, plural forms are easy.
Compare with German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, where verb forms change constantly for each person, in the past, present and future. And then they change AGAIN if the form is conjunctive, the most meaningless verb form of all time and space.
Aside from that, English is also soft and melodious.
(Maybe too soft; English-speakers and Danes have the hardest time learning the pronunciation of e.g. German or French. For the English, because they make every syllable round in their language. For the Danes, because they swallow the last part of every word. Danish babies learn to speak their language later than any other babies in the world.)
Anyhow, for example the Japanese have an easier time learning English than any other European language. And English is far easier than Japanese or Chinese, which goes without saying: They only learn to read a newspaper when they're about 18 years old, after enough memorization of characters, and the memorization never stops. And you can't change those languages to being written with an alphabet; many have tried.
It's one advantage we got from history, as unforgiving as history can otherwise be. We got the best lingua franca.
To my mind, the Chinese and the Russians are the core of our future civilisation. History teachers of the next centuries will explain how those countries stood strong amid the tides of barbaric warmongering.
A major problem with much of the West right now is that many of the oligarchs fund propagandists, and then the oligarchs start to believe the propaganda that they fund. This is the classic echo chamber.
Dick Cheney or one of the former Bush puppet masters said something to this effect. The post-modern, Foucault / Pentecostal world of the West is stuck on this idea that words have some mystical power to shape reality. It extends from the post-structuralists race / gender morons in the Western universities to the strange breed of Pentecostal Christians in the U.S. who believe that they can "speak" things into existence as if they were God.
I was not at all concentrating on the situation in Ukraine pre the SMO. However as soon as it started I realised that there was a concerted effort to spread a propaganda narrative. This caused me to look into matters further. And so I end up posting here.
Great writing! I feel that boot on my neck every day, (I really identify with that characterization) and it’s suffocating me. My understanding has always been that the SMO, from a Russian perspective, is truly existential. Even now as the Russian army is clearly winning the conflict, Gerasimov is saying that Russia must prepare to fight NATO within 10 years. All the belligerents are playing for keeps.
A "Common Sense Revolution" has swept through the US? If the sheeple really ever wanted a genuine NOT selective pick-and-choose "common sense revolution" they'd have taken to the streets en masse and flooded web comment-boards demanding a real representative multi-party democracy of the people for the people - and the eradication of a bought-and-sold mainstream media that still ensures that most people have for example never even heard of pro-People pro-Planet full-spectrum joined-up truth + solution seekers like Jill Stein - and even if they have heard of her they've almost all been easily conditioned by the media / their TVs to ridicule, laugh at or ignore everything she stands for.
I don't know how to articulate the MAGA/Trump movement but some overarching desire to get back to "Making Sense."
When you get past Trump's bluster? He makes "sense". So does Putin.
This shit is gonna get settled when the two Alphas get together. They'll find a way like two male leopards in the Reserve who will walk their boundaries in perfect synch together and then move on to share the greater territorial bounty.
It has to happen soon. Trump cut off foreign aid and he shit canned around 40 of the top State Department globalists. Don't overthink his comments vis a vis Putin. Putin gets him and his need to assuage the MIC owned Senate Pubbies to get his nominations through.
I'm VERY hopeful. We're at the genesis of something really meaningful.
they're good with names, especially in an orwellianic sense
Carnegie has sent his private 'army' to shoot and kill his own employees because they wanted better wages and an 8 hour workday, better not to talk about that, right?
exactly. the more these business moguls are invloved in "philantropy", the more vicious their companies are. or perhaps it's the other way around: because they conduct their corporations with such brutal zeal, they engage in philantropy to redeem themselves.
There are still people here in Scotland who think of Carnegie as a philanthropist who never forgot his roots, when in fact he was just another vicious Capitalist bastard.
It’s just another example of all of America’s wars since 1945. None of them have been threats to the US Homeland. So the average citizen does not really care. Only the people grafting from the war really care. Eventually the US pulls the plug and goes home. The grafters then move onto another war. This is whilst blaming everyone else and claiming that it was not America’s war in the first place. Even when America created it. Same playbook.
It is good that you don't write "collective West," as if it was "the West" starting the war and not Biden, Nuland and Blinken. Biden is as anti-Western as it's possible to be.
The "collective West" label even includes ... eastern Europe. It includes fanatic Polish, Baltic, Czech and Romanian politicians. To make sure that everything is blamed on "the West." That's when you realize that calling it all "the West" is just an agenda being sneaked in.
The most fanatical pro-Ukrainians are social democrat and communist parties. They plaster their "Putler" stickers everywhere on street lights and trash cans in Europe. The main opposition to the war has always been among right-wingers. The only ones who opposed the 2014 coup almost in unison were Europe's nationalist parties - practically none supported the coup. While the Left did.
Then you have some leftists who do oppose Ukraine. (Many under the delusion that conservative Russia is still their beloved Soviet Union, when today the Marxists are in Washington.) They make sure to blame the war not on BIDEN, the one who armed and approved of the attack on Donbass, but on "the West." Clever.
Nothing can stop the Russian forces at this point, and it's time for the Ukraine to surrender...But Zelensky is afraid he'll be assassinated if he doesn't fight to the end...The 100 day plan, as Simplicius points out, is a joke...Putin would be forced out if he even contemplated such a disastrous snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory....
I think Zelensky is finished either way - the second they have an election and he loses I think they would jail him and he would end up Epsteined as a sacrificial goat for all of Ukraine's woes.
He knows too much, about the most hidden, horrid aspects of what went on in Ukraine, in the interest of Western corporations and governments. Not even Israel is sanctuary for him, he is too much of a liability.
Yes, incarcerated among Prigozhin's gangsters whose pals died in Ukraine. When you think about it this way, the Russian moratorium on the death penalty is a feature, not a bug.
Doubt. This Rubicon was crossed long ago. I think Zelensky is only alive because Putin gave his word of honor to Bennett not to kill Zelensky, when Bennett, ex-PM of Israel, flew to Moscow in late Feb-early March 2022, to beg for Zelensky's life. Bennett later had a 5-hr interview, telling how he called Zelensky on his way to the airport to tell the above, and Zelensky, who was hiding in the bunker up till then, got out, and went on TV with "I'm not afraid of anybody" ":-)
I'm an American living in Russia and it never fails to amaze me how the West completely underestimates the truly huge support for Putin at all levels of Russian society, from the grass roots of ordinary people to the professional elite and upper middle class and to the truly powerful. A large majority admiring Putin is one of the genuinely unifying phenomena in Russia that crosses ethnicity, age, and educational and economic status.
So it's extremely difficult to come up with scenarios where such mass approval of Putin could be reversed and thus result in somebody else being elected instead of him to lead the country. But one such scenario would be Putin capitulating to the US and allowing the Ukraine conflict to freeze in a way that leaves nazi Ukraine intact as a military power and threat to Russia. The Russians I know would find that unthinkable, but if Putin did it I think he'd go from hero to zero that same day.
It would still take a long time for the displeasure people would have at him to manifest itself - there's a lot of inertia built into the Russian system, partially as a protection against Western-style superficiality. A six year presidential term is a long time to bear an unpopular leader, as Macron keeps demonstrating. But I believe the next election cycle starting with local and regional elections would see the end of any candidates who did not take a hard line position against the capitulation.
I don't think any Soviet style electoral shenanigans (which have been absent for decades, but people liking their sinecures might be tempted to reach for tools remembered from Soviet times) would work, because veterans who felt betrayed would be muscle to be reckoned with, and they'd be solidly on the side of booting capitulators out the door, if not stringing them up on the nearest tree.
I think GM has a right to express his opinion even if some disagree, otherwise we are no different than MSM that is trying hard to suppress the viewpoints of others.
Putin is free to do grand treason with the West once again, as he has on pretty much every single occasion in the past with the rather minor in the grand scheme of things exceptions of March 2014, Ferbruary 2022 and September 2022, and the dummies in Russia will accept it because they still think he is working in their interests.
If there was more overt political pressure on him inside Russia to defend the country, perhaps he would have. Or he would have been replaced by someone who would.
If Russia does not prosecute this war right to the total elimination of Ukraine as a nation-state then I agree with you 100%.
Does anyone else want a NATO vs. Russia 2.0 war in 2030, this time with nukes, cuz that is what will happen if any peace deal is signed which gives Ukraine the chance to rearm.
Putin has Ukraine on the ropes, keep killing till the job is done. If NATO can't live with that and wants to enter the war - then now is the time for that as well.
you are paranoid, but sometimes paranoids do see danger before the so called normal people.
However, you are definitely wrong to concentrate on Putin.
Gorbachev is the key, extremely naive, he never even understood what he did wrong
Yeltsin the one responsible for dissolution of Soviet Union, has understood, and decided to move aside, and chose Putin to lead Russia
Putin started as almost naive,
continued building Russia as a serious national state, and stood up for Russian national interest, for Russians, citizens of Russia.
Nuclear war is not in the interest of Russians.
The problems Putin has to solve predate his mandate, he has to solve unresolved knots left from Romanov's, Lenin, Stalin, Gorbachev, Yeltsin...
He knows, what you do forget, that there is a finite number of soldiers who could, are able to, are willing to fight against Russian army.
Today, on Russian borders.
Majority are Ukrainians, orthodox Christians, who mostly speak Russian.
They are being manipulated and used in a war against Russia. The masters are paying, Ukrainians are dying, the masters will stop paying if there is no victory, and try to arrange as ceasefire.
The war will end when Ukrainians are defeated as an army, and as a political project, of Ukraine as antiRussia.
If that kind of person was "naive", what does that speak about the quality of Russian institutions?
There are only two options here:
1) Putin was and still is incompetent and unfit for office
2) Putin is a traitor, or if not truly a traitor himself, a prisoner of people who are, and the real power is not in his hands
There is no other option.
Everything else is post-hoc rationalizations and attempts to excuse failure.
The cold hard facts are that during Putin's quarter-century rule:
1) Internally the Russian oligarchic system was cemented in place and right now there is no force on the horizon that has any realistic hope of overturning it and replacing it with something working for the interests of the country.
2) Something else that was cemented was Russia's place as technologically underdeveloped resource appendage, first to the West, now to China, because no investment was made into anything beyond strategic weapons.
3) Combining 1) and 2), the country went back to the 19th century and the achievements of the 20th century have been almost completely erased
4) Ukraine was lost, with the Kremlin not doing anything to oppose the process of Banderization. In fact, even after it started a war, it still isn't doing anything to oppose it inside Ukraine.
5) NATO expanded right to Russia's borders and took over core historic Russian space too
6) Russia lost its influence in Central Asia and Transcaucasia
7) Russia now lost Syria too, its most strategically important, loyal and long-term ally outside of the FSU space.
That is an endless string of strategic defeats, most of them having to do with inaction and incompetence, not with the bad cards Putin was dealt by his predecessors (though he was indeed dealt bad cards too).
On one level if you have someone in power too long a cult of personality can form making change more difficult by the state in the near term. Their people all rise to power which remain after the dear leader passes, reinforcing the friction to change and making it tougher for the new government to initiate reforms.
On a personal level it would be nice to refer to things as Russia does this or that, instead of all the time hearing Putin does this and Putin does that. Yes I know this is a simplification by the west but in their defence Putin has been around for more than 20yrs already.
I think it also builds up unnecessary tension in society to think of what comes after Putin, where this should just be normal transition in other countries. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing for Russia, just sayin.
I hear you. Putin is one of those very rare cases where the man personally is very modest and wants no cult of personality - you see that in many small and large ways. For example, when you fly into the US as you walk out through customs you'll see portraits of the US President and, in places like California, the governor. You don't see any of that in Russia. There aren't portraits of Putin hanging in schoolrooms and there's no naming of schools or other facilities using his name.
He wants a strong team built where authority and decision making can be distributed out to effective managers. A good example of that is the troika of Russia's superstar finance managers, Elvira Nabiullina, running the central bank, Anton Siluanov, the minister of finance, and Mikahil Mishustin, the prime minister and the genius who modernized the tax service and made it so comfortable and easy to use that many people look to it as their partner and helpful assistant.
Putin also has a years long plan of cleaning out the Soviet deadwood and echoes of Soviet times in federal, regional and local administrations, and instead growing a new crop of young, talented technocrats. He appoints the best he can find as governors (or promotes them from local and regional administrations), and then if they do a good job and show the people skills necessary to get re-elected he promotes them into higher positions. An example is Alexander Novak, the current deputy prime minister for energy. He rose up as a bright, young technocrat from city and state administrations and then was promoted into the federal government in posts as the deputy finance minister and then the energy minister. In the new Mishustin cabinet, four of the six new ministers were former governors. A good example, is Anton Alikhanov, the young, 38 year old, former governor of Kaliningrad oblast, who is now the new minister of industry and trade.
If you look at the steady building of technical expertise in finance, technology, administration along with hands on experience running very large organizations first at the regional level and then at the federal level, Putin has built a very broad and deep team. Without doubt although in Russia's strong presidential system the buck stops with Putin and he makes the final decisions, those decisions are based on what that broad and deep team has already put together and decided. So in that respect what the West is doing by personalizing everything in Russia as "Putin" is just another stupid self-delusion, the West yet again making the mistake of believing their own propaganda for morons.
But all the same Russia's system is a strong presidential system and Putin is an exceptionally capable administrator and exceptionally able leader. So it's true that his views on key matters are essential. In that respect, when the West phrases the matter as "Putin decides..." they're being accurate.
I think what most Russians fear is losing Putin, because he does have a very rare combination of interdisciplinary talents. Mishustin, for example, would be a brilliant leader (he's a very popular speaker) for the country on economic, development, and social matters, but he's not a military man. None of the power ministry men who are good at military matters have the economic and development talent that Mishustin has. It's unclear if Mishustin or any of the other technocrats is deep inside also good at military-strategic thinking, the way Roosevelt was, and could leverage the power ministry men the way Putin has been able to do.
You have nailed Putin. I used to cheer on Trump but now there's something unhealthy about all the GEOTUS memes and I thought so at the time when I'd never miss a rally.
No vanity with Putin although he's single handedly done more for Russia than anyone since Nevsky.
No, right now this is a very good thing, You are just /expecting/ that it might become a problem /if/ he does what /you think/ he will do. AFAIK, you might be right; but this is all hypothetical at this stage. I hope he is too wise, and too patriotic, to swerve that way.
Russia can win the war but still lose the peace. I think the way the empire is going to build its narrative is: evil Putin doesnt want peace. This will work for the brainless western audience, but that's irrelevant. The question is, will it work for the Russian audience as intended? Will it isolate Russia from China?
In my opinion the Russian leadership correctly understood that the main enemy goal was to bog down Russia in Afghanistan 2.0 in order make the human losses unbearable and ultimately break Russia. The choice of a long war was the response which allowed Moscow both clean house and avoid a fatal wear out of the country.
The recent polemy about Mrs. Simonian declarations in favor of an inmediate peace deal could give us a clue about the Kremlin true intentions. Anyone believing Simonian so openly challenging Putin is a mad man. They are just working dialectically, Simonian playing the role of the bad cop in order to ignite public indignation about this perspective BEFORE the western agents actually come up with this idea.
There are chances that the Russian public can stand a new media slandering campaign. It has been tried so many times in the past that the Russian system has become narrative proof now.
There are still some points not fitting. Putin and only Putin refuses to scare the shit out of Britain and America. He is still taking the blows and utter arrogance of Russia's existencial enemies. In addition to this, he knows that the enemy is on the brink of a massive economic and social breakdown, and still nothing is done. A Sino-Russian joint declaration on gold as legal tender, even partially, would 9-11 the US. Finally, the Chinese keep hiding, as if it wasnt their problem. They probably dont want to lose their US bonds and activelly work to contain Russia. A difficult balance to keep indeed.
The Chinese know that, should a nuclear war break out, the US will automatically nuke China along with Russia, regardless of what position of neutrality China adopts. This is, firstly, an established part of the inhuman US nuclear doctrine, to leave no superpower standing. And secondly, a feature of the obsolescent US arsenal: at its core are the Minuteman ICBMs, a 1960's technology. Even with all the retrofits, I doubt these can be retargeted on the spur of the moment, and just have each a hard-coded target and trajectory, apportioned over both Russia and China, so that they can be just launched with a single command, whatever happens..
This is the real reason why China is discouraging Russia from escalation. At the same time, they don't want a situation where Russia starts to lose and is desperate.
You might be right but this would imply that only the US has a nuclear deterrence capability, but not China or Russia since they are pushed to never use it. This is the way, the empire intends to keep attacking Russian and Chinese soil by proxies while preventing them from retaliation even if the US nuclear readiness is more than dubious. This is a recipe for defeat. The Chinese will soon face a major overproduction crisis similar to their building bubble with major social implications. They are even more money driven than the US, a purely materialistic system that is also doomed to collapse. If they lose the American market, thousands of factories will close. Thats Trump's plan. Maybe they just want to put what comes off in order to maximize their profits.
The ‘leaked’ peace plan + armistice, which S details above, looks like so many ‘leaked’ snippets of intel in the Financial Times, Politico or The Economist: self-soothing cope to soothe Western elites who can’t imagine a world where Russia’s interests or preferences can ever matter a fig.
An out-of-sight Greater Paymaster directs the leaks and the content of the leaks--and dominates the news-cycle. This has become especially apparent in the hand-off from Collective Biden to DJT.
The way we know that there is a Greater Paymaster who has the European vassals dancing to his tune is the fact that the vassals are rattled by the reappearance of DJT on the geopolitical stage, especially concerning Project Ukraine. Although Collective Biden was aligned w/ the Greater Paymaster, DJT is not. Under Collective Biden, OTAN & Euro actions dovetailed smoothly--everyone was swimming in the same direction--and the vassals never pranced, even when disadvantageous acts of sabotage happened against them (hello, NordStream) or when it was time to steal the interest off Russia’s frozen assets in the EuroClear Bank. Everybody sallied forth, in agreement, regardless of how skeevy or illegal the acts were.
Clearly, DJT is not part of the Greater Paymaster’s debutante ball.
Our focus--thinking & writing about Project Ukraine--has made obvious that Western intel agencies, aligned w/ the Greater Paymaster, regurgitate incorrect numbers & figures about Project Ukraine, because they are duty-bound to do so, as if by a pinky-swear.
Kiev feeds Western intel agencies fallacious data about the progress of the war, just to keep the narrative juiced. If Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says that Russians are losing 8 times as many men in combat as Ukraine is, well, by gum, then that’s what gets reported in the media of countries aligned w/ the Greater Paymaster, and no one says anything to the contrary.
If a new U.S. president, like DJT, does not swim in the same direction as the Greater Paymaster, then cognitive dissonance sets in, intel gets wonky & vassals prance.
My point: faulty intel is a feature, not a bug of the U.S. system. Accurate & legitimate intel is less likely to launch successive wars, so deception is necessary. Suppressed info & lies grease the wheels forward. This 'leaked' peace plan is cut from the same cloth.
"Western elites who can’t imagine a world where Russia’s interests or preferences can ever matter a fig."
This is one of the prime reasons that Putin and Russia can not even contemplate talks with the West. Even if the "proposed" plan is true, just look at its tone - whilst acknowledging certain concessions to Russia, its overall tone in total can only be considered in the light of a demand from a greater power to a lesser power, not anything close to an equal - a headmaster settling a dispute between two children.
As for Trump and his 100 days plan, I am yet to be convinced that this is anything other than Trump being fully aligned with the "Greater Paymaster" who is using it as a way out of admitting total defeat getting out of the Ukrainian debacle without losing face. The opinions of European and other Western-aligned leaders are merely to fool the global public into believing that Trump is really a force of change on the international stage. Trump's Transition team expressed 'reality' when they admitted publicly that they were "fully aligned" with the Biden team. So this is just another 'head fake' in my opinion.
"...its overall tone in total can only be considered in the light of a demand from a greater power to a lesser power, not anything close to an equal - a headmaster settling a dispute between two children."
With the peace plan's 'finalization' slated for OTAN's annual summit in late June, I can imagine a Middle School lunch table kind of vibe: will the cool kids let Betty sit with them? Or will the cool kids make Betty sit way over there by herself?
These people can entertain themselves with their melodramas. The collective Putin will keep moving forward until their strategic objectives are met, period. There is nothing to discuss.
The mainstream media is full of green/left people. To them the world is divided into good and evil. If the good tells you a story, then it is true! If the evil tells you something, this is false! No matter what the facts are, the important thing is to tell how the facts should be. This would be nice if this were for the internal use of the green sect; sadly, our political elites, the top managers and the top-level public workers, consume this media. On a regular basis our top leaders find themselve in trouble, because they believed in the lies of the media; but they never change the behavior, they go on consuming the mainstream media, not at least, to have the same language as all the other leaders and do not swim against the stream.
No, the media is full of amoral people. It will take time to reorient them to the current revised policy of the Cabal ("forget green and DEI, it's now predatory capitalism and jingoism all the way"), but they will not resist realignment, once it dawns on them that this is now where career and power is. But they were indoctrinated a certain way for a long time, and it will take several years before the updated directives seep in. Especially as they have the superficial appearance of being opposite to the previous iteration.
You are correct RalfB, the media is full of "presstitutes" = amoral, sycophants to power. However your timescale is wrong: it will take them approximately six seconds to reorientate themselves to the way things are going. You can see this already in the media where the Zelensky fans are saying how they knew he would lose.
@Werner Hillinger: if this was true, where are the John Pilgers of today? Why was Chris Hedges booted out of the NY Times ages ago in favour of Zionist bootlickers? I suggest you read some Noam Chomsky or Medialens.
No, to realize how things are turning takes an open mind, and to reorient quickly, intelligence. Both are in short supply in that crowd, so they will have be grabbed close to the bit and hauled around by their handlers, much like you get draft oxen out of the rut. The master handlers are shorthanded and must operate in the shadows, so it will take them awhile.
One really cannot understand the U.S. intelligence agencies without understanding how and by whom they were constructed. The modern CIA / State Department was a project of the Dulles brothers (one CIA director, the other Secretary of State). They were Wall-Street attorneys, and the intelligence agencies are constructed for the purpose of expanding the power and influence of finance capital from Wall Street. They do not serve the president, the U.S. people, NATO, the military, or any such group. They serve a small group of Wall-Street financiers. Just look at the revolving door between the intelligence community and major U.S. multinationals. There is a not a major U.S. company that does not have 3 former CIA, NSA, or FBI people in senior leadership positions. This is the "real deepstate," not a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington looking out for their petty fiefdoms and pensions.
By fighting the bureaucrats, Trump makes the average American think that he is fighting some "deep state." The fact is that through sheer force of personality and reason, Trump is merely realigning the deep-state to focus more on job-creation and wage growth in the U.S. He is not actually dismantling it or any such thing. The resistance that he faces is from those, like Blackrock, who have made heavy bets on international adventures like Ukraine. As these bets wind down, Trump will face less resistance, but the deep-state will go on.
It's no surprise that the "strongholds" are collapsing at an increasing pace, as anyone who isn't a delusional Clown World twat can see the stark facts: there's no reason to "hold out", because no relief is coming, since the AFU are a spent force.
Also how can you hope to survive in these fortifications at this point? FAB, artillery, missile strikes, drones - these are not the well-made forts from the beginning of the conflict so I have no doubt in some ways they are barely better than nothing.
The entire point of the war at this point is to simply gouge as much money out to enrich all the leeches until the inevitable collapse, and the fortifications are just another example of that.
There were plenty of early news reports about how fortifications were paid for, at many times the reasonable price, and then they weren't even built. Now they don't even say.
as soon as I got to the 100 day peace plan...my blood started boiling. It does sound similar to what he's suggesting in Gaza and it makes me hate Trump even more than already. That Gaza thing - as if Hamas is going to go along with that - and now this. Someone needs to try again like butler
No, the difference is that there are vampire masters guiding the thieving savages now, and these are not really "Western". They came into London via Venice, but are not Venetians either.
Evidence suggests the Angles & the Saxons (Germanic tribes) didn't engage in a conquest of the Brittons (Celts?) after the Romans left. The Danes a few centuries afterwards established a kingdom centered on York, until they were somewhat defeated. The Normans, Norsemen who conquered an area of northern France a few centuries prior, of 1066 fame still didn't "kill all the Celts". You seem to think "Germanic tribes"/Franks - Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards etc "took-over" Rome - the history of Europe dwarfs that of the puny British Isles.
Just heard yesterday Trump talking about asking Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians. That was always the plan. He will cut off their aid to force them and he doesn't give a damn about international laws or UN. Ceasefire was just a show for the inauguration. Ever since his campaign, Trump has been saying Israel is too small, it needs to be much bigger. He talks of Gaza as an attractive property not as Palestine.
yeah - he's said it in at least two interviews - an even not just since the inauguartion - he said ' its a nice part of the world ' but if you think about it - who's gonna afford it ? Only them and their buddies. And they already own so much real estate. They're wanting to make it a jewish billionaire resort town. I hope the dear dear people that live in that region - Iran Lebanon and yes, Syria will rise again too I think - I even read that there's a Resistance movement in Jordan now. The people will win against these scum parasites. All of them. Viva Resistance ! !
Syria is now governed by murderous Sunni radicals, and will take part in action against Iran side-by-side with Turkey and Israel, under the air supremacy umbrella of the US.
We have a propensity of "white-washing" those who are useful. The press was doing its best after the departure of "The Assad Regime"..."They may be bastards, but they're our bastards."
Say it isn't so! Another green-haired screeching harpy eager to pounce! Methinks you will find more receptive acolytes amongst the studio audience at The View. Don't waste your time on this channel.
wow - you are so rude. The interent is full of sites that people talk like you. If you would give this site a chance, its pretty itneresting to talk to people without this horrible clever putdown that is so prevalent now. I'm a paid subscriber. I comment here all the time.
he doesn't care. the oligarchs behind the president - any president have reached the point now where they don't care about the population. What we think doesn't matter to them. Biden was unbelievable but now Trump is the same. Domestic policy seems better but nothing else. $500 billion for AI ??? they're printing the money because they dont' give a shit about inflation. Anyway - this war between the oligarchs and the population is nothing new - its just doing its cycling thing. But it may go on for another 200 years - glad I'm only going to be here for another 40 or so
"they're printing the money because they dont' give a shit about inflation."
The banks need inflation. There's not enough money to pay them their interest otherwise, and everything collapses. "Growth" is actually inflation and it is required because all money is debt, and debt needs interest to be paid. Where else does the interest come from? It is simply inflation, renamed as growth. It would be different if debt was *only* used to expand productivity with the purpose of covering the interest (which would then be paid for by additional debt-money anyway), but "productivity" has simply been redefined to accommodate superfluous non-productive debt spending on houses, cars, refrigerators, washing machines, shoes, clothes, etc, and the West doesn't produce much of anything anymore, anyway.
There's going to need to be a lot more inflation, but probably what they'll do soon is to repeat the broken policy of the 00's by cutting interest rates to allow everyone to keep borrowing [including the interest] without needing everything else to inflate to pay it, like wages and prices, until it all turns to crap again.
Rinse, repeat.
Another global "disruption" soon after interest rates reach zero again, to mask the tens of trillions they'll need again, to reset the financial system, again. Last time it was 20 trillion, which wasn't even enough. How much next time? 50 trillion?
The item regarding modernizing the UAF and allowing them to keep their army is probably something that can be negotiated away. If anything it seems like Trump is smart enough that he doesn't want to own this war like Nixon ended up owning Vietnam.
I expect a lot of noise and bluster and for Trump's base to believe anything as usual, but practically it seems like the stage is being set for Ukraine to end up dumped off even worse than Afghanistan was in 2021.
Even now it is an easy sell for Trump to say he has, 'no partners in Europe' given their recalcitrance to do anything even now: the EU is not providing any meaningful help to the UAF beyond footing the bill for salaries and keeping just enough ammunition in UAF hands so that they are not completely defenseless. When was the last time that anyone sent a full echelon of AFVs of any kind to Ukraine?
In fact I think the material situation is so bad that we have seen so few Lancet videos in comparison to the historical average because there is just not anything for them to target anymore that 'regular' drones cannot handle.
I also believe that Kursk is the rotting cancer that is truly killing the UAF in Donbass - either because Zelensky is trying to kill off anyone who can coup him, or because he is just an idiot, the fact now is that whatever bleeding you could staunch in the Donbass cannot be done because it is being obliterated in Kursk.
It is so bad I believe at this point if Russia put together an exploratory force for Odessa Oblast the AUF would be helpless to do anything, and a similar situation of 'fortifications' falling as in the East would be seen there within a month.
My only lingering disappointment right now is that America has not been sufficiently punished - unless the MoD is concerned about securing their armaments long term, I believe the Houthis, North African allies, and their other ME partners/sympathizers should have been armed to the teeth right now.
I am also utterly shocked that the Russians have not developed much in the way of defense against sea-drones or their own versions of it - I believe Iran is probably ahead of them here. A simple solution would be a hedge-hog like gliding platform that goes high over the area of the approaching sea drone and alter its descent based on the movement of the enemy drone. Either an overhead explosion or one within 10m of the drone in the water would be sufficient to take one of Ukraine's naval drones out.
Also why doesn't Russia have the black sea full of cheap, sail based surveillance drones such as what the US routinely deploys? Some things are going to take time but it is shocking to me that even now Russian innovation is critically lacking in some areas unless the information security is such we just don't know about it.
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On a side note I am wanting to write on this substack platform - how do you get people reading without annoying them with link spam?
First, sea drones. How many have you seen actually get through to Crimea lately? Given that Ukraine has had to fit SAM's to their sea drones to deter the helicopters that were destroying them enroute, I would say that Russia has been very successful in suppressing them. The sea drones would also be a very good target for Lancet, but Lancet may be too expensive in that role. Once Russia retrofits the SAM suppression systems from its Ka-52/Mi-28 to its Mi-8 helicopters, they can resume anti-drone duties.
Side note about surveillance: Russia DOESN'T have the robust, high-bandwidth satellite communications systems that NATO does, to convey information BACK from any mythical fleet of drones TO the large data centre that can crunch the data in real time, which Russia ALSO doesn't have.
Second point, absent a full amphibious assault, to get to Odessa requires crossing the Dniepr at Zaphorizia. Note that Russia HASN"T *reached* the Dniepr for most of its length, and crossing it is a completely different ball game. Ukraine is not yet weak enough for that sort of folly to succeed.
Nothing demonstrates more clearly that the West, and specifically the UK, is running Ukraine than their determination to win a land war by fighting at sea.
That's because we're interested in the Black Sea and Crimea rather than Ukraine.
If Putin at this moment agrees with any peace plan, his own soldiers will kill him, the same goes for Zelensky and his Pappenheimers, and Trump? Trump working his ass off the next four years to change the Mexican Gulf in the Ukrainian Gulf as a memorial.
I don't even think Zelensky can survive an election - once he is gone I cannot help but feel that he will be the chosen scape goat for all of Ukraine's problems, which really wouldn't be that unjust.
the empire's owners put a lot of effort and money to achieve "a nationalistic totalitarian military dictatorship armed to the teeth sitting on Russia’s doorstep." Would you imagine the jewish swine like Kagans, Wolfoiwitz, Feith, and such to part with their monied sponsors all of whom are possessed by the idea of full-spectrum dominance? Look what the 'holobiz survivors" have been doing in Palestine. Look at the jewish joy on creating the largest ever numbers of pediatric amputees in Gaza. The jewish federations of North America (JFNA) and all jewish colleges and holobiz museums "stand with Israel," this genociding fascist state, no matter what.
The destruction of Libya, Iraq, Syria, all according to Oded Yinon plan for ersatz yisrael... Millions of displaced, millions of maimed, and yet their dirty-mouthed rabbis squeal that shoah-business is sacred.
And if "Europe is falling apart, with anti-establishment forces and parties quickly rising to depose the incumbent globalist tyrants," then the zionized disunited states of America have their moral fiber rotten and dissolved. Cowardice is the worst sin indeed. The creation and application of covid-bioweapon worldwide and the Real Holocaust of children and women in Gaza have made the ugly empire naked. The empire's owners are nothing but lazy and thieving scum.
I absorb a lot about the nature, modus operandi and intentions of the globalists. I hear about where they are truly based, ........ city of London for instance, the locations of their financial outposts, ect. The thing that gets them is the same that has always brought down empires; lack of a sufficient military capable of backing up those in charge.
They misread the global tea leaves as in the resurgence of China after being out of the game since the 1830's, the reformation of Russia and all the other movements of all the other factors which naturally occur when people get tired of a Boss that is gradually crumbling. They deluded themselves in thinking that their precious fonte of strength was supreme when all they where imbibing was a fetid cocktail created from distilled horseshit. Their leadership is of a caliber of stupidity right out of tales such as Humpty Dumpty and The Emperor's New Clothes.
On a personal level, I know what it means to change one's life. You need meaningful planning and medical consultation. Realistic planning in terms of changing the diet and get the ass out to do significant exercise, at a pace and on a path of evolution that will not kill you. And finally, you need commitment which is founded on solid common sense and positive dreams on can be attained, God willing. These clowns from the occidental side of things have almost none of this. So, they are done.
Thank you once again Simplicius, best wishes to you.
A wise and insightful commentary. Distilled horseshit is so apt, it brings to mind the concoctions drunk at witches' sabbaths.
The only thing I want to add, is that the City of London is the operating financial base, but the rat holes are under Zurich and other Swiss cities. Switzerland is a giant nuclear shelter for the Talmudist and Mammonist elite. That is why Davos, of all places---within easy commute of the supervising vampire masters, who run that show.
Russia has been on the verge of victory for years now, something tells me that it will be for a couple of more years. Ukraine will be defeated, but it's still a very long way off.
It's a turn of phrase, "something" in English suggests merely intuition, not an empirically based conclusion. As Simplcius states in this post, Russia has no choice but to pursue maximalist goals, and this will take a lot of time. Ukraine is a large country with a lot of resources, foreign backing, and untapped manpower. Those who don't live in Russia look at this as a spectator sport, those who do have a much more realistic view, as life necessitates.
This is what happens when you choose to argue semantics over substance, and you failed to address anything of substance in either of my posts. I'm sorry that this won't go the way you hope and expect it to, but that's true of most things in life.
The substance is, that you are pushing a totally unsupported viewpoint, using semantics instead of facts to give it seeming validity.
On the contrary, the facts of accelerating pace of the fall of strongholds, and of the inability of the AFU to put up lasting resistance even at citadels, indicates that the collapse is near. There are no reserves anymore, and now even the intravenous funding has dried up for the next three months.
'untapped manpower' - which one? Ukrainian scientists, doctors, and teachers are subjected to gang-pressed mobilization to the frontline. Children and teens have been taught to worship Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and Hero of Ukraine (with the Kagans' blessing). The Dnipropetrovsk has the largest in Europe synagogue commissioned by two felons, one of which has also financed the formation of four nazi battalions (including the Azov battalion adored by israeli). Ukrainian jews have recorded a song, from the roof of this monstrous synagogue, that Ukraine is a jewish territory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuQvuKzy7Yc
The Orthodox Church has been harassed by judaized Kievan junta, are you aware of that? BlackRock has acquired large swaths of Ukrainian land, in violation of the Ukrainian Constitution. Do you really believe that Fink, Adelson, Wexner, Pritzker, Spielberg, and similar 'ethnic philanthropists' are interested in improving the lives of the Slavic people in Eastern Europe?
Here is perhaps the place to remind people that in the time it has taken Russia to go from Avdeevka (population 30,000) to the approaches to Pokrovsk (population 50,000), i.e. a distance of about 40 km in the period from October 2023 to late January 2025, so about 16 months, the Red Army from October 1942 to January 1944 went from Stalingrad to Zhytomyr, a distance of over 1,200 km, while recovering Krasnodar and Rostov, the whole of the Donbass, Crimea, almost all of the western RSFSR, much of Belarus, lifting the siege of Leningrad, etc. The red army did so having no nuclear weapons and no capability to strike the enemy much deeper than where some rather short-range planes could fly, and no PGMs.
Russia isn't decimating places that it does not have to. It could have levelled all places of resistance it encounters, but it would then make the cost to rebuild back even higher.
There is a reason why it is called a SMO as opposed to a declaration of War (hence why Kiev has been relatively untouched).
Now if we are talking about NATO, they'll carpet bomb entire towns before the ground troops move in, similarly to what happened in Yugoslavia.
>Russia isn't decimating places that it does not have to. It could have levelled all places of resistance it encounters, but it would then make the cost to rebuild back even higher.
That is absolute idiocy.
Have you looked at what the liberated Donbass towns and villages look like? It is total devastation.
The strikes that are not being carried out but should be and would win the war would not cause large destruction. They are to decapitate leadership and cut off logistics.
Current Kremlin policy is absolutely self-defeating.
NATO will carpet bomb and then move ground troops in.
Russia troops will call in airstrikes, missiles and/or drones when they encounter opposition, but the troops are there and only destroying what is required to be destroyed to achieve their aims. If you look at the places being liberated now, you'll see they bare no resemblance to towns and villages at the beginning (when the Ukrainian army still had plenty of man power, equipment and resolve).
Russia isn't looking to destroy Ukraine or defeat the Ukrainian people, only it's army. If you target the people it will only increase the number of volunteers willing to die as terrorists against Russia. You only have to look at how Israel has fared against Hamas and the Palestinian people to realise that.
If you decapitate the leadership and cut off logistics, what happens? Ukraine will go for a peace agreement, leaving it's army and the infrastructure for it's army to fight another day. Russia knows this and is determined to remove the possibility of a future Ukraine coming back to restart the war - which will happen.
>If you decapitate the leadership and cut off logistics, what happens? Ukraine will go for a peace agreement, leaving it's army and the infrastructure for it's army to fight another day.
No, you move in and control the whole territory, without the slaughter on both sides.
"If you decapitate the leadership and cut off logistics, what happens? Ukraine will go for a peace agreement, leaving it's army and the infrastructure for it's army to fight another day. Russia knows this and is determined to remove the possibility of a future Ukraine coming back to restart the war - which will happen."
If only there were some way to condition a peace deal on the surrender of equipment, like the Germans did in France in 1940.....
It cost them millions of men because they had no means to fight differently.
The current Kremlin does have such means, but refuses to use them.
How many has the current Kremlin policy cost?
Over 100,000 by now.
But all of Ukraine could have been taken with less than 10,000 dead and in less than six months if the Kremlin had not explicitly forbidden the army from striking what it has to hit to win the war quickly and decisively.
Because that would hurt the business interests of the Russian oligarchy, and those come first. Russian soldiers' and civilians' lives are not a concern.
That's primarily because this is not a full-on war by Russian standards. There is a major degree of restraint being applied in the prospect of the operation. That is why it is referred to in Russia as the SMO.
Unlike NATO operations which are essentially focused on hurting and hopefully killing vast numbers of civilians, great pain and precision is being taken to avoid "collateral damage".
If you want to see the True NATO approach to war, you only have to look at Gaza
Same old bloodthirsty medieval warlords they were 1000 years ago.
The ruling caste, unlike ordinary people have not evolved socially or intellectually one iota in all that time.
Russia doesn't just have to crush this outbreak of hostilities. It could have done that right from the get go. But that would have backfired horribly. It has to nullify Ukraine as a fighting force, and that is indeed taking time. Putin knows this and is marshalling his resources for the long fight. That is not to say that victory through a radical collapse of Ukrainian will, cannot come earlier of course, and the signs are positive, but Putin has not banked on this, not since the final betrayal in 2022.
agree, like Syria - win the 'war', but lose the peace. Russia must win both, for the long term or it will be rinse and repeat. Not only Ukr, but NATO/EU/US must lose the will to fight/be a PITA to Russia.
"Not only Ukr, but NATO/EU/US must lose the will to fight/be a PITA to Russia."
This being the heart of the matter. Russia realises this is not about Ukraine - it is about an existential struggle with globalist forces, the whole of the Western alliance. And that is precisely why it will take time - Ukraine is only the first step.
Russia lost the peace in Syria because it refused to win the war.
Idlib was left unfinished under Turkish control, the US was not pushed out of the northeast, and Israel was allowed to bomb anything they wanted with no interference.
Which eventually finished off the country by slowly bleeding it into submission
Notice how Putin is planning not to win the war in Ukraine either.
Which will have the same long-term consequences.
P.S. In the early 1970s Brezhnev credibly threatened the West and Israel with nukes if they moved any further on Syria. And Soviet weaponry supplied to Syria had no restrictions on its use against Israel.
Compare to the situation from the last decade. What is there more to say...
so why is that? explain the reasons to me simply . I currently see the SMO as 'not war', and agree Ru is risk averse as far as casualties (their own and non-combatants), international opinion, and domestic economic reasons.
Regarding Syria, it is very simple -- look at the ethnic composition of Russian oligarchs. It is 80% Jewish. It's in fact a lot worse than it is in the US, and you see how fully captured the US is by Israel.
The USSR wasn't like that.
This is why the USSR supplied Syria with serious weaponry and let them use it to defend against Israel, while Putin effectively facilitated Syria's destruction (this is exactly what happened if you analyze the situation without any preconceived notions about the role Russia played).
Uhm, sorry, but if you believe that Russia lost anything in Syria you are deluded. Everything changed over there since 2015 and now it's major PITA between Turkey/US/Israel. Russia dropped this hot potato immediately when things went south with "thanks God" utterance. If you think that it's somehow a win for Israel/US you really, really don't understand what happened.
Basically, "West" now is on verge of direct hostilities with it's own NATO member
agree it is a mess, but holding ground and 'client' states is always a good thing if you can do it. there may be strategic reasons but if you can keep it then good.
You have some reading comprehension issues since my point was just this, that Russia and Russians rarely make such claims, it's mostly in the English language sphere that excessive triumphalism is extant. Khairullin and Trukhan are good examples of commentators who are simultaneously optimistic and realistic.
I think you missed the part where the TCC now has to go out in groups of 8 people to fend off all the angry citizens, and this is BEFORE the new 18-25 yo mobilization law kicks in.
I didn't miss anything, that's just an anecdotal data point that doesn't mean much on its own. The Ukrainians aren't complete idiots, one of the first things they did at the beginning of the war was to fortify internal law enforcement. These guys are motivated by staying off the front. So look for harsher and harsher totalitarian measures as the war continues on a negative trend for Ukraine. Ukrainians would probably be motivated to protest the war, but the SBU and police are absolutely merciless.
basically you are correct, the end is not as near as most commentators think
The numbers are the problem, not the attitude of TCC, police or SBU.
Three iterations of frontline infantry have been lost, app. half a million men,
fourth iteration, currently being sent to front, consists of forcefully conscripted, and in the future potentially of the 18-25 years old, poorly motivated, and insufficiently trained will have disastrous casualty rate - meaning it will be spent quickly, still it will be at least 250.000 men
next step is the real problem, cannibalising the police force, TCC to create infantry, by SBU as the final arbiter
Then, or more precisely, only then, can a general uprising against the instigators of the war be expected.
And when CIA smells this change in atmosphere, a command will be issued to accept peace at any cost.
This is a moment when Harkov and Odesa can be taken, in this real world, and kept forever as Russian.
My guess has always been 2027. If they cannot agree to terms, then Russia has to continue fighting. It has many hundreds of KM to go until the Dneiper, and then what? Does it occupy Kharkiv? In the big picture of the country, the lines haven't moved much (yes, attrition does this) but it none the less remains that they therefore have hundreds of KMs they have to advance along a 1,000 KM line; vulnerable to drones, artillery, etc. So yes, two more years of fighting is easy to see if the peace plan is rejected.
Indeed, 2027 seems like a realistic timeframe based on current attrition rates. The question is how the US will take the L, hopefully other events will have overtaken the Ukraine war by that time and it will not be such a dramatic event.
This is a SMO and not all out war. Russia is doing all it can to spare their own troups and avoid casualties.
If it was an outright war, there would be no Kiew or Lvov anymore, no train would go, water and electricity would be off etc. So your 'something' is by design, Rusia is not fighting the people but the armies of Ukraine and the NATO support troups.
Plus every military logic will tell you that after a certain point there is a total collapse due to lack of everything plus no will of fighting left among the ordinairy solders, then it is over, suddenly and definitely.
Sure, the fundamentals are inarguable, my point is simply that we should all temper our expectations. Whether you call it a war or an SMO is just a matter of semantics, ostensibly Russia is fighting the way it is because it intends to conquer and keep Ukraine.
No semantics here in any way. Scott Ritter has explained the difference between the SMO and war countless times. It makes a significant difference, if he is right.
Russia is the world biggest country, why would it want to conquer and keep Ukraine?
All they want is to fight the western strategy to break Russia up into pieces and balkanize it into 5 states as the papers are showing.
Russia is fighting for it's right to exist and an security architecture in Europe that makes sure they (the west) will not even thinking about those plans anymore.
I can think of many reasons why Russia would want to conquer Ukraine, including (but not limited to) agricultural and other resources, demographics, righting historical injustices and mistakes, closing the funnel through which Russia has often been attacked from the West, and the importance of quality territory over quantity (much of Russia's large territory is functionally useless). I could be wrong about this, but it's my working theory that Russia always intended to take Ukraine and I'm absolutely fine with it if it's the case.
I have to be honest, I don't like Scott Ritter and don't watch or listen to him, even though I'm sure he often makes good points. It's just that he can be overly emotional and bombastic, plus he doesn't know Russia that well, even if much better than your average English language commentator.
Russia/Putin was OK with Ukraine as a neutral country, like a bridge, connection, getting rich by trading with both EU and Russia.
It could have been a path for Ukraine, but a significant, and vocal, minority with the support of local oligarchs and US/CIA chose different approach.
A conscious decision to remain in the middle, not only neutral, but equally distant from both Russia and the West/EU/US could have been a foundation for better, richer, happier Ukraine.
Russia could accept a younger brother, that remains a brother and goes his way, respecting both common heritage, and older brother's basic interests - security. It would have taken time.
Typical misunderstanding of hockey stick graph. As a layman, you project things in simple, linear way. But this one is slow, then suddenly.
And Russia is not on verge of winning for years. It's was quite obvious that this will be victory no matter what, right from the start, because warring parties are no match. Rest of the fluff was western propaganda
Excellent rundown of the military situation and couldn't agree more relative to the likely Russian response to the faux "Peace Plan." But keep in mind when viewing European politics: they are parliamentary systems. It's not like the US. The Right-wing parties are on a roll in Germany and the UK, as would be expected where the "Left" has sold itself to the globalists. The Right offers the only alternative to business as usual so the angry populace gravitates to them. But even where they are the leading party they are still only a plurality--25% or so of votes at the national level. Yes they will have an impact, but it remains to be seen what impact that will be when it comes to national policy. Also keep in mind, as in the US, their media is compromised--basically a propaganda arm of the Corporatists, and ordinary people are kept in the dark with lies and BS. What's shaking things loose, again as in the US, is their failing economies--which are impossible to paper over.
Far from playing 3-D chess--or even solving a Rubik's Cube w/ their toes--Collective Biden & Joe's Euro vassals always appeared to be engrossed in a game of Solitaire. There was one side: *their* side. One perspective: *their* perspective. They were in a war where the adversary didn't really factor in, except as an easily duped & humiliated foil, because only their interests mattered.
Though 'leaked' now, during DJT's first week in office, this plan is more of the same. It chauvinistically ignores Russia's oft-stated interests and concerns, almost to the point of nullifying Russia altogether: as if Russia has never actually existed as something real in their eyes.
The 'leaked' plan is wholly focused on maintaining 'Ukraine' as an armed-to-the-teeth OTAN-caliber hostile 'cordon sanitaire' between non-war zone Europe--the place where long-range missiles aren't exploding--and Russia--the place where long-range missiles have been exploding and will continue to do so.
Additionally, the 'leaked' plan looks consensus-driven, as if to mirror the bloc--OTAN--which wants very badly to sit sneeringly across the table from the delegation from Russia, rolling their eyes and making sotto voce cheap shots, probably texting insults to each other on OTAN's Slack channel while the Russians speak.
The 'leaked' plan includes many entities in a peace process that is calibrated to the Western calendar: note how matters are to be finalized at OTAN's annual meeting in June, which no doubt will be held in an OTAN capital whose military bases have been supplying the weapons to keep the war alive.
As we're seeing w/ Bibi's 'fragile' peace, there's always some kind of provocation--real or imagined--to get the 2000lb bombs falling once again. No U.S. or OTAN nation can guarantee that *Ukrainian* terrorists won't go rogue and start sabotaging the peace. After the subterfuge & backstabbing of the Minsk Accords, who could ever trust this bunch not to go clandestinely rogue themselves, engaging in acts of barely disguised terrorism--Crocus City, anyone?
Neither the U.S. nor OTAN can make guarantees.
Russia needs to be her own guarantor--with a Victor's Peace militarily.
These arrogant ass clowns treat Russia with even less respect than they treat their own citizens.
I hope Russia slow rolls this thing along until Europe is either brought to its knees or brought to its senses with new leaders. I wish the US would find a way to kill off the CIA and become a peaceful, prosperous country that stayed out of other people's business.
USA has been surviving on exploitation of others for a very long time now and CIA is the main agent of chaos that enables it, so I see no realistic chance of that happening. May be they'll make some superficial changes to fool the people again.
the cia/mossad terrorist establishment serves its "owners." The "owners" have zero loyalty to the US citizenry and its wellbeing. Look at their contemptuous choice of "presidents," from the stupid Bush the lesser and up to the demented Biden "I am a zionist."
What decent government officials would kneel to a foreign criminal (guilty of genocide no less) and give him 59 standing ovations? The unnatural selection of governance by the "owners" made US into a colossus with feet of clay. The country has been devoured, demoralized, and its resources used by parasitic entities interested in squashing any patriotic and dignified opposition to the parasites whether local (the dishonorable MICC) or foreign (aipac).
"Leaked". Interesting concept in what is supposed to be delicate and confidential diplomacy. It strongly suggests that this is fake, the west negotiating with itself again. Or if not fake, then the West cannot be trusted to act in good faith as "leaks" will occur and the negotiations will take place via the media. Either way, the Russians must be looking at all of this as amateur hour.
In fact the peace plan has some legs, albeit some fundamental peices would need negotiating away, ie a large moderised UAF. Sort of defeats one of the main objectives of the SMO - demilitarisation of Ukraine. But again, this sounds like a sop to warhawk factions in the West rather than a serious negotiating stance with Russia. Looks like the objective here is not to get an agreement on these terms with Russia per se, but to persaude the West to enter negotiations on vaguely serious terms and to stop the fighting before the UAF collapses. It does as usual omit any real consideration of what Russia might regard as a minimum having regard to the situation of the ground. Which gets worse every day for Ukraine. So why would Russia stop the shooting now?
The last gasp western hope is that Russia can be persuaded to stop with eastern Ukraine. To this end we have a blanket propaganda rolled out through 'independent' media channels (hello, Alexander) as well as from state sponsored media that Russia will not want to take all Ukraine, could not take all Ukraine, that it would be too this, too that..... blah, as if words were deeds breeding a reality all of their own accord. That after all, has worked so well in the west with its own neutered populations, but the people had to be loved-bombed into chronic invalidity, slogans in place of critical thought, and early senility, first. This hasn't happened in Russia, nor China, for that matter- nor across the global south. The west has destroyed itself through its welfare model, which it intended to pass on to the rest of the word as a dire contagion that would neuter 'everyone' and we would have a great thousand year Reich of peace. Screws could be turned on an enfeebled surf class to ensure that a parasitic film of the enlightened could continue to indulge itself. Looks like that model of social evolution has gone belly up! Quelle surprise.
The welfare model is what has brought the west down. Only a people so addled by their own force fed imbecility could ever have supported Ukraine's punt for Russian blood and treasure which of course it was only too happy to 'share' with those who would ensure it could be pulled off.
Russia knows it has to control the entirety of Ukraine one way or another for this horror to come to an end. The west's addled mouth foaming hatred of Russia, wrote its own epitaph. When will the current Trump bandwagon, fuelled on a new hack word-power come to halt? When it finally runs up against that Russian force of will that is not a matter of words but action, and the Russian willingness to die for the motherland- also proved in action. That is when, and Trump already knows it. Whether the words come from a new mouth or old one, they will meet the same fate. There is no diplomatic end to this, only a military one. Then we will have a grand summit style settlement that will not feature an independent Ukraine at the table because such an entity will not exist. Ukrainians can thank western europe for this. Ukraine will join the EU, alright, via a vast tide of undead refugees who will descend upon it to feast on its remains.
I think of that odious Ben Wallace op-ed in the Telegraoh in which he said, "Just as we remove criminals from society, we should do the same to Russia."
In what world, in what life--?
Ben Wallace writes w/ the kind of Old Testament zeal which those crusading for a 21st Century Amalek exhibit.
>>
You said it best, though: "There is no diplomatic end to this, only a military one."
Ben Wallace, ah yes, he who threw a big sulk when he found out Boris et al could not deliver him the headship of NATO.
He is a classic example of a person who inflated his own self interest into an entire public policy. The defence industry loved him, so deep into its own pocket had he burrowed.... until he found out that the silver shillings buried there were fake, a head-fake and he the victim. Poor Wallace.......
Poor Wallace as in “Alas, poor (Wallace)! I knew him,......: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy” Hamlet- my footnote for victims of western state funded education, not for you, CS.
To reply to your comment, you wonder why he could not have said that himself, why he needed to run it through the mouth of a US source? It is western mirroring propaganda, as the western opinion formers have realised that independent media descriptions of the Ukrainian regime as an illegitimate gangster regime, are beginning to cut ice, terrifyingly, in Ukraine itself.
I don't know if narcissism is his sin. That does not go with brown nosing. I wonder if he is trying to get feel for a return to public office through Reform, or even some bone Trump might throw him in some new Order he fondly thinks Trump might create?
It is back to brown nosing, for Ben, which Trump actually detests with Starmer right up his bum at the moment. Starmer thinks he is making progress up that fundament. That is how stupid and vain Starmer is. But just like the determination to keep calling Russia nothing more than a gas station, western europe is clinging on to belief that all it needs to do, to get its way, is feed Trump's vanity. Trump did not get where he is by being as stupid and naive as the EU bundle of small minded inepts, is determined to believe he is.
Back to Ben, the return of that tried and failed brown nosing is probably why he decided to put his pearly wisdom in a US mouth. If you only have a drill everything needs a hole. Not completely daft, is he, just trapped inside his own world view which is narcissistic of course. :-)
I'm not sure what you mean by the Western welfare model? Are you talking about all the public money funnelled into corporate welfare (thinking 2009 for eg) to ensure political satraps are enriched at the public expense?
The ideal welfare model is predicated on government supplying cheap or free quality education, healthcare, housing and other necessities of life. In this way the cost of labour is kept to a minimum and the workforce becomes better skilled, healthier, socially connected and able to have spare money after expenses to keep the economy flowing. This ultimately creates an advantageous position in international trade vis-à-vis trading partners.
The Western neo-liberal system involves creating privately owned monopolies in critical areas and using that market power to gouge as much as possible profits. This leads to the opposite with more household debt, less disposable income and a declining workforce. I guess in a financialised economy it matters less, until the whole house of cards collapses.
I am referring to a corruption of the very idea of welfare as in 'wellness' which predicates resilience. The entire model has set about demeaning individual effort, self reliance, personal responsibility and hell, hard work, in favour of a welfare sic safety net and a host of regulations designed to overcome any true meritocracy.
As for schooling, the Uk is an excellent example of a paid for superior (well, that is what they intended) education reserved for an entrenched elite and for those few who have clawed their own way up the money ladder, usually through brown nosing, adding nothing of real value to the top tier but feeding its own corruption. The education delivered to the masses 'for free' is woeful, an education in unthinkingness. Health care in the UK is about nurturing chronic sickness and frailty as this is where the profit is. Of course the bigger part government funding plays in all this, the greater the corruption of any true private enterprise and room for change, as we now have corporate 'welfare' with the most successful sic corporations stuck to the government funding teat. It also means centralised control of what might otherwise have passed for free sic enterprise. I could go on and on, but this should be enough for clarity.
I am not saying that other models are better but they are more open to adaptation. It is this inability now to adapt, that has made the western model brittle to the point of breakdown, a fate increasingly manifest in its populations.
I thought the UK had privatised everything. If the education system and health are still in public hands it surely means they are woefully underfunded to the point of being useless.
Using the UK as a case study for the benefits, or otherwise, of welfare isn't really giving a decent welfare system a chance. Look to China where a well intentioned welfare system coupled with a publicly driven industrial policy managed to eradicate nominal poverty and uplift almost 1 billion people into the middle class in around 30 years.
For the last 20 years poverty in the UK has risen dramatically and now stands at 24%! That doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon.
I don't dispute any of that. I was referring really to a corruption that calls itself the western welfare model (oh, the magic of words) to sell itself.
Pity that doesn't go back even further, as the worse time for poverty was in the early 70's, and also does then depend on which definition of poverty you use.
The international definition are those earning less than $5.50 per day (if parents are suffering in poverty, then their children will be, as children don't earn). Using that metric, the highest time was back in the early 70's.
The UK normally uses the calculation of those who earn less than 40% of the median of earnings. So if the country experiences a large number of people coming in, earning 7 figure salaries, then 40% increases which in turn places more people in the 'poverty' bracket, even if their circumstances hasn't changed.
Conservative usually are a low tax party (the last one wasn't), which brings in multi-millionaires to the country. Labour are a high tax party, which usually drives them out (as we are currently seeing, the highest number of millionaires exiting the country). This then will impact the 40% value and increase or decrease the number of people within the definition of poverty.
"UK had privatised everything"?!?! A country with no real army, no real health care, no border real protection, but everything "privatised" and still the public share on GDP is above the 50%? There must be something strange happening. A classic liberal state has public sector of well below 10% of GDP, but a strong army, a good police and secured borders. So what does "neo-liberal" mean?
S mentions the AFU's horrendous losses in the Velikaya Novosyolka salient, and it put me in mind of remarks Patrick Lancaster made about the Kursk region.
Lancaster has been embedded w/ an Akhmat Chechen Special Forces unit in the east Kursk region (the opposite side of the ‘incursion’ territory from Sudzha) and also w/ a regular Russian Army group there.
Quickly, to answer an obviously pressing question: Lancaster *did not* see evidence of DPRK forces in the Kursk region and when he asked his military hosts about such a thing, they also could provide no evidence of the presence of DPRK troops.
Lancaster came upon several settlements just after the AFU-OTAN mercs had been driven out and was able to document civilian corpses—the residents who had been sheltering in storm cellars attached to their houses. Lancaster described the carnage as the aftermath of a grenade being thrown down the cellar stairs to detonate at the bottom.
“It was like a moment frozen in time,” he said. “They all seemed to have died exactly at the same instant.” He claimed it was obvious that the civilians had perished during their period under Ukrainian captivity.
Lancaster has been documenting the war since it started in Donbas in 2014—one of the few English language reporters to do so—and he said the Kursk pocket has been one of the scariest areas he’s ever worked: the omnipresence of drones is sheer madness.
Bare tree branches offer some cover from the surveilling drones, believe it or not, so he said it was safer to get around on foot, hiking from treeline to treeline. Even so, he passed by scores & scores of Ukrainian dead.
Early on, he said, a soldier told him that the only way to survive the war was to make peace w/ the fact that you were actually already dead: your signing up had testified as much. Each day, then, that you did not physically die on the battlefield became yet another blessing.
Thank you for this. As a minor note, Ukrainian homes don't have "storm cellars." They have cellars to store preserved foods. Only in America are storms violent enough to destroy houses and necessitate a place to hide during them.
It's not a matter of the storms being particularly violent, but of homes being particularly flimsy. Sticks braced with chicken wire covered over with tar paper, and I am not exaggerating. As opposed to mostly brick, or at least cinder block-filled concrete frame in Europe and Russia.
Stephen Wertheim, w/ the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ahem, spoke w/ reporter Isaac Chotiner about Project Ukraine’s prospects now that DJT has onboarded.
Wetheim said that DJT’s presence in the halls of power has lifted “a taboo” on seeking a diplomatic settlement to the war: “This is especially appealing at this point,” Wertheim said, “given that it is hard to argue that Ukraine is in an advantageous position.” This convoluted sentence shakes out to mean: Ukraine is losing.
Taboo lifted, Wertheim spilled some tea. He spoke of the “deferential support” which Collective Biden gave to Project Ukraine in support of “the war aims and war termination.” Sounds like a fairly suppressed & hidden aspect to all the chatter about Project Ukraine, among those who ardently supported Ukraine, was that Collective Biden was not doing enough, or not doing it fast enough—not setting up a no-flu-zone, not getting the ATACMS there, not green lighting the cluster munitions.
Wertheim did not candy coat his discontent: “The fact of the matter is that the U.S. and NATO as a whole have not come to the defense of Ukraine when it has been attacked by Russia.” Wertheim presents a Never-Article-5 scenario for Project Ukraine: the U.S. has already shown that it will not send Americans to die for the conflict. Lifting a few more taboos, Wertheim stated that “Europe has a greater interest in defending European countries against Russia than the U.S. does. That would be true,” he emphasized, “if a Democrat had won the 2024 election.”
In other words, what Wertheim is telling us, in a Now-It-Can-Be-Told way, is that it has *always* been the case that Europe should solve security issues on the continent, not the U.S. Moreover, we could *always* have been having this caliber of conversation about Project Ukraine—about the U.S.’s interests there—had political powers, media powers and social powers not put the kibosh on such a thing.
Serious people w/ astute insights to share could have pooled their knowledge, even w/ those who possessed a differing perspective, and engaged in respectful dialogue—as is typical when experts disagree—without ad hominem attacks, like accusations of being a Kremlin Stooge or Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin-in-one.
Everything could have been normal—and we could have enlarged our information space.
Instead, a state-driven superstructure of speech repressions bundled into governmental lies and state-caliber concealment held a boot against the neck of ordinary human discourse. An unmasking occurred when it was possible to talk about Joe’s cognitive decline, after which came the recognition of how vast the conspiracy of concealment of his decline actually was: the number of media leading lights and ruling elites. A further unmasking came w/ DJT’s 2024 electoral win, backed up by his inaugural address and then the raft of Executive Orders he signed. An era of hard talking and bold actions has crushed the secretive anti-speech/anti-expression/anti-ideas state.
Throughout the entire time of the SMO, if not from even further back—Euromaidan in 2014 or the Orange Revolution in 2004—Wertheim cultivated a complex comprehension of Project Ukraine and the U.S.’s role in it in spite of a geopolitical culture in the West which disallowed Asking Difficult Questions. Throughout the embargo of probing Project Ukraine, or interrogating the U.S.’s interests in it, Wertheim nonetheless solidified a very rational, cogent understanding of events, which contravened what the ruling elites insisted was so.
As if liberated by the shock Common Sense Revolution that has swept the States, Wertheim said, “I’m really concerned about the magical thinking that has developed around the NATO commitment—the idea that a mere piece of paper, Article 5, is sufficient to provide deterrence.”
A few months after this war started, I was @ Seattle airport, when the airport radio said in Ukrainian, "Dear Ukrainians, welcome! We are so glad you are here." I nearly dropped my luggage, and it was the first time, I realized the full extent of the US involvement in the war in Ukraine.
Terminal 1 @ JFK has a ginormous Hassidic Jew presence, tons of Tel Aviv arrivals, hundreds of passengers going to Israel or returning--and I have never heard announcements in Hebrew.
And that brings up another, seldom talked about point. On of the goals of involvement in Ukraine is to eventually bring genuine, battle-hardened Nazis to the US. Once they are here, they will of course do exactly the things you'd expect genuine, battle-hardened Nazis to do - create mayhem and terrorism. The point of all that? To smear the American Conservative Right!
Won't be the first time. The US brought in the German & Ukrainian Nazis after WW2, UK took in 8,000, Canada took in 900+, and who knows how many LA countries let in. President Peron sent 44,000 blank Argentinian passports at the end of WW2 to the Nazis to escape.
The reason they can now talk this way is kind of funny. It's because all their best schemes and plans, which of course they had to lie about with the lap dog media, have failed.
I mean a complete, utter, total, failure. Oh dear. Not only that, but more of the useless eater types who they patronize as easy to gaslight have started to figure out what's been going on.
They have made a disastrous mess, and don't want to be blamed.
There's still a sacred cow they can't gore--or a blue & yellow heifer--because they revert in a knee-jerk way to VVP's "imperialistic goals" or his wanting to "reconstitute the Soviet Union"--but they ignore entirely the way the shelling of Donbas escalated so intensely in February 2022, with AFU brigades assembling en masse, using the kind of upgraded artillery launchers that belied an OTAN hand in the escalations, all of it signaling a genocide-on-the-brink.
On the Right Side of History, historians on the right side will write of this.
A lot of us who aren't stuck on main stream media are trying to cut through the propaganda. Russia is looking better and better to many, and the US worse and worse.
Russia is going to be victorious at the end of this, for many reasons. The winners write history.
Hopefully, our higher education in the future will be actual education and not indoctrination.
I need to learn Russian - because at this point with no future for anything in the US except Anarchy and Mushroom clouds, I'd rather live near the Urals where I can eek out some sort of satisfying existence.
I'd love to learn Russian, and to travel there. If I was younger, I would seriously consider moving.
Aside from the main topic - I speak four languages, and I can tell you English is the easiest European language. At least the easiest of those I know something about. And English isn't my first language, so it's not favoritism. We are actually very lucky to have it as our lingua franca.
(Ironically, a phrase that comes from French being the lingua "franca" in the Mediterranean and Middle East.)
People like to say that English is boring or "not as beautiful as X" because English is common and widespread, and you mustn't show that you favor what is common. That wouldn't be intellectual and refined. Well, screw that. I've struggled through several languages, I know the structures in Germanic and Romance languages.
For one thing, the verb form in English is the same no matter who it refers to, instead of changing. The only change is that in present form for he/she/it you add -s, but that's it. In past form it's the same for everyone: I went, you went, he went, we went, they went. In Scandinavian languages it's the same, all verb forms are the same for all people and even without the -s, but there you have other complications instead, such as the plural forms varying. In beautiful English, plural forms are easy.
Compare with German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, where verb forms change constantly for each person, in the past, present and future. And then they change AGAIN if the form is conjunctive, the most meaningless verb form of all time and space.
Aside from that, English is also soft and melodious.
(Maybe too soft; English-speakers and Danes have the hardest time learning the pronunciation of e.g. German or French. For the English, because they make every syllable round in their language. For the Danes, because they swallow the last part of every word. Danish babies learn to speak their language later than any other babies in the world.)
Anyhow, for example the Japanese have an easier time learning English than any other European language. And English is far easier than Japanese or Chinese, which goes without saying: They only learn to read a newspaper when they're about 18 years old, after enough memorization of characters, and the memorization never stops. And you can't change those languages to being written with an alphabet; many have tried.
It's one advantage we got from history, as unforgiving as history can otherwise be. We got the best lingua franca.
If I can do it, anyone can.
To my mind, the Chinese and the Russians are the core of our future civilisation. History teachers of the next centuries will explain how those countries stood strong amid the tides of barbaric warmongering.
I agree wholeheartedly!!
So's China.
A major problem with much of the West right now is that many of the oligarchs fund propagandists, and then the oligarchs start to believe the propaganda that they fund. This is the classic echo chamber.
I don't think so. I believe they think they can "create reality" https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/how-europes-new-political-class-began?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
Dick Cheney or one of the former Bush puppet masters said something to this effect. The post-modern, Foucault / Pentecostal world of the West is stuck on this idea that words have some mystical power to shape reality. It extends from the post-structuralists race / gender morons in the Western universities to the strange breed of Pentecostal Christians in the U.S. who believe that they can "speak" things into existence as if they were God.
Right has nothing to do with it. History is a kind of victor's justice.
I was not at all concentrating on the situation in Ukraine pre the SMO. However as soon as it started I realised that there was a concerted effort to spread a propaganda narrative. This caused me to look into matters further. And so I end up posting here.
One destination, many paths
Great writing! I feel that boot on my neck every day, (I really identify with that characterization) and it’s suffocating me. My understanding has always been that the SMO, from a Russian perspective, is truly existential. Even now as the Russian army is clearly winning the conflict, Gerasimov is saying that Russia must prepare to fight NATO within 10 years. All the belligerents are playing for keeps.
A "Common Sense Revolution" has swept through the US? If the sheeple really ever wanted a genuine NOT selective pick-and-choose "common sense revolution" they'd have taken to the streets en masse and flooded web comment-boards demanding a real representative multi-party democracy of the people for the people - and the eradication of a bought-and-sold mainstream media that still ensures that most people have for example never even heard of pro-People pro-Planet full-spectrum joined-up truth + solution seekers like Jill Stein - and even if they have heard of her they've almost all been easily conditioned by the media / their TVs to ridicule, laugh at or ignore everything she stands for.
Beautifully written and very true.
I don't know how to articulate the MAGA/Trump movement but some overarching desire to get back to "Making Sense."
When you get past Trump's bluster? He makes "sense". So does Putin.
This shit is gonna get settled when the two Alphas get together. They'll find a way like two male leopards in the Reserve who will walk their boundaries in perfect synch together and then move on to share the greater territorial bounty.
It has to happen soon. Trump cut off foreign aid and he shit canned around 40 of the top State Department globalists. Don't overthink his comments vis a vis Putin. Putin gets him and his need to assuage the MIC owned Senate Pubbies to get his nominations through.
I'm VERY hopeful. We're at the genesis of something really meaningful.
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.... hah!
great find.
they're good with names, especially in an orwellianic sense
Carnegie has sent his private 'army' to shoot and kill his own employees because they wanted better wages and an 8 hour workday, better not to talk about that, right?
exactly. the more these business moguls are invloved in "philantropy", the more vicious their companies are. or perhaps it's the other way around: because they conduct their corporations with such brutal zeal, they engage in philantropy to redeem themselves.
https://library.columbia.edu/libraries/rbml/units/carnegie/andrew.html
Their "philanthropy" is just a funding channel for insidious social engineering.
Yes, and a way to get around paying taxes, because you have a "Charitable Foundation".
LOL bingo
There are still people here in Scotland who think of Carnegie as a philanthropist who never forgot his roots, when in fact he was just another vicious Capitalist bastard.
It’s just another example of all of America’s wars since 1945. None of them have been threats to the US Homeland. So the average citizen does not really care. Only the people grafting from the war really care. Eventually the US pulls the plug and goes home. The grafters then move onto another war. This is whilst blaming everyone else and claiming that it was not America’s war in the first place. Even when America created it. Same playbook.
It is good that you don't write "collective West," as if it was "the West" starting the war and not Biden, Nuland and Blinken. Biden is as anti-Western as it's possible to be.
The "collective West" label even includes ... eastern Europe. It includes fanatic Polish, Baltic, Czech and Romanian politicians. To make sure that everything is blamed on "the West." That's when you realize that calling it all "the West" is just an agenda being sneaked in.
The most fanatical pro-Ukrainians are social democrat and communist parties. They plaster their "Putler" stickers everywhere on street lights and trash cans in Europe. The main opposition to the war has always been among right-wingers. The only ones who opposed the 2014 coup almost in unison were Europe's nationalist parties - practically none supported the coup. While the Left did.
Then you have some leftists who do oppose Ukraine. (Many under the delusion that conservative Russia is still their beloved Soviet Union, when today the Marxists are in Washington.) They make sure to blame the war not on BIDEN, the one who armed and approved of the attack on Donbass, but on "the West." Clever.
Good, good, let the THD continue. Give the mutts nothing to work with.
.
Nothing can stop the Russian forces at this point, and it's time for the Ukraine to surrender...But Zelensky is afraid he'll be assassinated if he doesn't fight to the end...The 100 day plan, as Simplicius points out, is a joke...Putin would be forced out if he even contemplated such a disastrous snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory....
I think Zelensky is finished either way - the second they have an election and he loses I think they would jail him and he would end up Epsteined as a sacrificial goat for all of Ukraine's woes.
Like goring the sacred cow, he will have become the blue & yellow heifer
I wonder how much white powder will fall out when they they are done goring him.
It will look like the aftermath of an explosion in a bakery.
And the obituary will say "died in a flour mill accident".
Very true my friend
He'll do a runner to Israel before that.
🎯
Probably London or Cyprus first to get his accounts in order. He is London's boy, after all.
He knows too much, about the most hidden, horrid aspects of what went on in Ukraine, in the interest of Western corporations and governments. Not even Israel is sanctuary for him, he is too much of a liability.
Ironic that Russia is probably the only place where the Piano Man would be relatively safe.
Yes, incarcerated among Prigozhin's gangsters whose pals died in Ukraine. When you think about it this way, the Russian moratorium on the death penalty is a feature, not a bug.
Doubt. This Rubicon was crossed long ago. I think Zelensky is only alive because Putin gave his word of honor to Bennett not to kill Zelensky, when Bennett, ex-PM of Israel, flew to Moscow in late Feb-early March 2022, to beg for Zelensky's life. Bennett later had a 5-hr interview, telling how he called Zelensky on his way to the airport to tell the above, and Zelensky, who was hiding in the bunker up till then, got out, and went on TV with "I'm not afraid of anybody" ":-)
Well he's had 3 years of begging across the globe. Lets see if T-shirt man the green beggar of Ukraine can beg his way out.
Or he will end up like one of those bags of flour. Which seems very likely given his obsession with white powdery objects thus far.
I dunno, Ghani and Saakashvili seem to have survived. Saaksashvili was foolish to return to Georgia, however.
I'm an American living in Russia and it never fails to amaze me how the West completely underestimates the truly huge support for Putin at all levels of Russian society, from the grass roots of ordinary people to the professional elite and upper middle class and to the truly powerful. A large majority admiring Putin is one of the genuinely unifying phenomena in Russia that crosses ethnicity, age, and educational and economic status.
So it's extremely difficult to come up with scenarios where such mass approval of Putin could be reversed and thus result in somebody else being elected instead of him to lead the country. But one such scenario would be Putin capitulating to the US and allowing the Ukraine conflict to freeze in a way that leaves nazi Ukraine intact as a military power and threat to Russia. The Russians I know would find that unthinkable, but if Putin did it I think he'd go from hero to zero that same day.
It would still take a long time for the displeasure people would have at him to manifest itself - there's a lot of inertia built into the Russian system, partially as a protection against Western-style superficiality. A six year presidential term is a long time to bear an unpopular leader, as Macron keeps demonstrating. But I believe the next election cycle starting with local and regional elections would see the end of any candidates who did not take a hard line position against the capitulation.
I don't think any Soviet style electoral shenanigans (which have been absent for decades, but people liking their sinecures might be tempted to reach for tools remembered from Soviet times) would work, because veterans who felt betrayed would be muscle to be reckoned with, and they'd be solidly on the side of booting capitulators out the door, if not stringing them up on the nearest tree.
>the truly huge support for Putin at all levels of Russian society
Right now that is a problem, not a good thing.
In what way is that a problem?
Don't engage with the troll. It usually results in the Great Moron advocating for shooting nukes everywhere.
Just stick with your usual insightful posts (for which, thank you)
I think GM has a right to express his opinion even if some disagree, otherwise we are no different than MSM that is trying hard to suppress the viewpoints of others.
Gisela. No one is even suggesting denying him the right to post.
But equally we are entitled to deride a contributor who mocks Putin for not pre-emptive nuking Warsaw.
It's a problem for the West. That's what I think GM was saying. :)
Putin is free to do grand treason with the West once again, as he has on pretty much every single occasion in the past with the rather minor in the grand scheme of things exceptions of March 2014, Ferbruary 2022 and September 2022, and the dummies in Russia will accept it because they still think he is working in their interests.
If there was more overt political pressure on him inside Russia to defend the country, perhaps he would have. Or he would have been replaced by someone who would.
If Russia does not prosecute this war right to the total elimination of Ukraine as a nation-state then I agree with you 100%.
Does anyone else want a NATO vs. Russia 2.0 war in 2030, this time with nukes, cuz that is what will happen if any peace deal is signed which gives Ukraine the chance to rearm.
Putin has Ukraine on the ropes, keep killing till the job is done. If NATO can't live with that and wants to enter the war - then now is the time for that as well.
GM
you are paranoid, but sometimes paranoids do see danger before the so called normal people.
However, you are definitely wrong to concentrate on Putin.
Gorbachev is the key, extremely naive, he never even understood what he did wrong
Yeltsin the one responsible for dissolution of Soviet Union, has understood, and decided to move aside, and chose Putin to lead Russia
Putin started as almost naive,
continued building Russia as a serious national state, and stood up for Russian national interest, for Russians, citizens of Russia.
Nuclear war is not in the interest of Russians.
The problems Putin has to solve predate his mandate, he has to solve unresolved knots left from Romanov's, Lenin, Stalin, Gorbachev, Yeltsin...
He knows, what you do forget, that there is a finite number of soldiers who could, are able to, are willing to fight against Russian army.
Today, on Russian borders.
Majority are Ukrainians, orthodox Christians, who mostly speak Russian.
They are being manipulated and used in a war against Russia. The masters are paying, Ukrainians are dying, the masters will stop paying if there is no victory, and try to arrange as ceasefire.
The war will end when Ukrainians are defeated as an army, and as a political project, of Ukraine as antiRussia.
>Putin started as almost naive,
That's not an excuse.
Putin was in the KGB, then headed the FSB.
If that kind of person was "naive", what does that speak about the quality of Russian institutions?
There are only two options here:
1) Putin was and still is incompetent and unfit for office
2) Putin is a traitor, or if not truly a traitor himself, a prisoner of people who are, and the real power is not in his hands
There is no other option.
Everything else is post-hoc rationalizations and attempts to excuse failure.
The cold hard facts are that during Putin's quarter-century rule:
1) Internally the Russian oligarchic system was cemented in place and right now there is no force on the horizon that has any realistic hope of overturning it and replacing it with something working for the interests of the country.
2) Something else that was cemented was Russia's place as technologically underdeveloped resource appendage, first to the West, now to China, because no investment was made into anything beyond strategic weapons.
3) Combining 1) and 2), the country went back to the 19th century and the achievements of the 20th century have been almost completely erased
4) Ukraine was lost, with the Kremlin not doing anything to oppose the process of Banderization. In fact, even after it started a war, it still isn't doing anything to oppose it inside Ukraine.
5) NATO expanded right to Russia's borders and took over core historic Russian space too
6) Russia lost its influence in Central Asia and Transcaucasia
7) Russia now lost Syria too, its most strategically important, loyal and long-term ally outside of the FSU space.
That is an endless string of strategic defeats, most of them having to do with inaction and incompetence, not with the bad cards Putin was dealt by his predecessors (though he was indeed dealt bad cards too).
On one level if you have someone in power too long a cult of personality can form making change more difficult by the state in the near term. Their people all rise to power which remain after the dear leader passes, reinforcing the friction to change and making it tougher for the new government to initiate reforms.
On a personal level it would be nice to refer to things as Russia does this or that, instead of all the time hearing Putin does this and Putin does that. Yes I know this is a simplification by the west but in their defence Putin has been around for more than 20yrs already.
I think it also builds up unnecessary tension in society to think of what comes after Putin, where this should just be normal transition in other countries. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing for Russia, just sayin.
I noticed that as well, but that is by design, it's 'Western' indoctrination, to paint Putin as the one and only responsible for the confrontation.
I hear you. Putin is one of those very rare cases where the man personally is very modest and wants no cult of personality - you see that in many small and large ways. For example, when you fly into the US as you walk out through customs you'll see portraits of the US President and, in places like California, the governor. You don't see any of that in Russia. There aren't portraits of Putin hanging in schoolrooms and there's no naming of schools or other facilities using his name.
He wants a strong team built where authority and decision making can be distributed out to effective managers. A good example of that is the troika of Russia's superstar finance managers, Elvira Nabiullina, running the central bank, Anton Siluanov, the minister of finance, and Mikahil Mishustin, the prime minister and the genius who modernized the tax service and made it so comfortable and easy to use that many people look to it as their partner and helpful assistant.
Putin also has a years long plan of cleaning out the Soviet deadwood and echoes of Soviet times in federal, regional and local administrations, and instead growing a new crop of young, talented technocrats. He appoints the best he can find as governors (or promotes them from local and regional administrations), and then if they do a good job and show the people skills necessary to get re-elected he promotes them into higher positions. An example is Alexander Novak, the current deputy prime minister for energy. He rose up as a bright, young technocrat from city and state administrations and then was promoted into the federal government in posts as the deputy finance minister and then the energy minister. In the new Mishustin cabinet, four of the six new ministers were former governors. A good example, is Anton Alikhanov, the young, 38 year old, former governor of Kaliningrad oblast, who is now the new minister of industry and trade.
If you look at the steady building of technical expertise in finance, technology, administration along with hands on experience running very large organizations first at the regional level and then at the federal level, Putin has built a very broad and deep team. Without doubt although in Russia's strong presidential system the buck stops with Putin and he makes the final decisions, those decisions are based on what that broad and deep team has already put together and decided. So in that respect what the West is doing by personalizing everything in Russia as "Putin" is just another stupid self-delusion, the West yet again making the mistake of believing their own propaganda for morons.
But all the same Russia's system is a strong presidential system and Putin is an exceptionally capable administrator and exceptionally able leader. So it's true that his views on key matters are essential. In that respect, when the West phrases the matter as "Putin decides..." they're being accurate.
I think what most Russians fear is losing Putin, because he does have a very rare combination of interdisciplinary talents. Mishustin, for example, would be a brilliant leader (he's a very popular speaker) for the country on economic, development, and social matters, but he's not a military man. None of the power ministry men who are good at military matters have the economic and development talent that Mishustin has. It's unclear if Mishustin or any of the other technocrats is deep inside also good at military-strategic thinking, the way Roosevelt was, and could leverage the power ministry men the way Putin has been able to do.
You have nailed Putin. I used to cheer on Trump but now there's something unhealthy about all the GEOTUS memes and I thought so at the time when I'd never miss a rally.
No vanity with Putin although he's single handedly done more for Russia than anyone since Nevsky.
No, right now this is a very good thing, You are just /expecting/ that it might become a problem /if/ he does what /you think/ he will do. AFAIK, you might be right; but this is all hypothetical at this stage. I hope he is too wise, and too patriotic, to swerve that way.
Great name Galtsky. 👍
Russia can win the war but still lose the peace. I think the way the empire is going to build its narrative is: evil Putin doesnt want peace. This will work for the brainless western audience, but that's irrelevant. The question is, will it work for the Russian audience as intended? Will it isolate Russia from China?
In my opinion the Russian leadership correctly understood that the main enemy goal was to bog down Russia in Afghanistan 2.0 in order make the human losses unbearable and ultimately break Russia. The choice of a long war was the response which allowed Moscow both clean house and avoid a fatal wear out of the country.
The recent polemy about Mrs. Simonian declarations in favor of an inmediate peace deal could give us a clue about the Kremlin true intentions. Anyone believing Simonian so openly challenging Putin is a mad man. They are just working dialectically, Simonian playing the role of the bad cop in order to ignite public indignation about this perspective BEFORE the western agents actually come up with this idea.
There are chances that the Russian public can stand a new media slandering campaign. It has been tried so many times in the past that the Russian system has become narrative proof now.
There are still some points not fitting. Putin and only Putin refuses to scare the shit out of Britain and America. He is still taking the blows and utter arrogance of Russia's existencial enemies. In addition to this, he knows that the enemy is on the brink of a massive economic and social breakdown, and still nothing is done. A Sino-Russian joint declaration on gold as legal tender, even partially, would 9-11 the US. Finally, the Chinese keep hiding, as if it wasnt their problem. They probably dont want to lose their US bonds and activelly work to contain Russia. A difficult balance to keep indeed.
The Chinese know that, should a nuclear war break out, the US will automatically nuke China along with Russia, regardless of what position of neutrality China adopts. This is, firstly, an established part of the inhuman US nuclear doctrine, to leave no superpower standing. And secondly, a feature of the obsolescent US arsenal: at its core are the Minuteman ICBMs, a 1960's technology. Even with all the retrofits, I doubt these can be retargeted on the spur of the moment, and just have each a hard-coded target and trajectory, apportioned over both Russia and China, so that they can be just launched with a single command, whatever happens..
This is the real reason why China is discouraging Russia from escalation. At the same time, they don't want a situation where Russia starts to lose and is desperate.
You might be right but this would imply that only the US has a nuclear deterrence capability, but not China or Russia since they are pushed to never use it. This is the way, the empire intends to keep attacking Russian and Chinese soil by proxies while preventing them from retaliation even if the US nuclear readiness is more than dubious. This is a recipe for defeat. The Chinese will soon face a major overproduction crisis similar to their building bubble with major social implications. They are even more money driven than the US, a purely materialistic system that is also doomed to collapse. If they lose the American market, thousands of factories will close. Thats Trump's plan. Maybe they just want to put what comes off in order to maximize their profits.
If the USA was the only market in the World I would agree with you, but there are billions of people outside the USA who want Chinese goods.
The Americans overestimate their importance.
100 days to stall. 100 more days to revise.
The ‘leaked’ peace plan + armistice, which S details above, looks like so many ‘leaked’ snippets of intel in the Financial Times, Politico or The Economist: self-soothing cope to soothe Western elites who can’t imagine a world where Russia’s interests or preferences can ever matter a fig.
An out-of-sight Greater Paymaster directs the leaks and the content of the leaks--and dominates the news-cycle. This has become especially apparent in the hand-off from Collective Biden to DJT.
The way we know that there is a Greater Paymaster who has the European vassals dancing to his tune is the fact that the vassals are rattled by the reappearance of DJT on the geopolitical stage, especially concerning Project Ukraine. Although Collective Biden was aligned w/ the Greater Paymaster, DJT is not. Under Collective Biden, OTAN & Euro actions dovetailed smoothly--everyone was swimming in the same direction--and the vassals never pranced, even when disadvantageous acts of sabotage happened against them (hello, NordStream) or when it was time to steal the interest off Russia’s frozen assets in the EuroClear Bank. Everybody sallied forth, in agreement, regardless of how skeevy or illegal the acts were.
Clearly, DJT is not part of the Greater Paymaster’s debutante ball.
Our focus--thinking & writing about Project Ukraine--has made obvious that Western intel agencies, aligned w/ the Greater Paymaster, regurgitate incorrect numbers & figures about Project Ukraine, because they are duty-bound to do so, as if by a pinky-swear.
Kiev feeds Western intel agencies fallacious data about the progress of the war, just to keep the narrative juiced. If Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says that Russians are losing 8 times as many men in combat as Ukraine is, well, by gum, then that’s what gets reported in the media of countries aligned w/ the Greater Paymaster, and no one says anything to the contrary.
If a new U.S. president, like DJT, does not swim in the same direction as the Greater Paymaster, then cognitive dissonance sets in, intel gets wonky & vassals prance.
My point: faulty intel is a feature, not a bug of the U.S. system. Accurate & legitimate intel is less likely to launch successive wars, so deception is necessary. Suppressed info & lies grease the wheels forward. This 'leaked' peace plan is cut from the same cloth.
"Western elites who can’t imagine a world where Russia’s interests or preferences can ever matter a fig."
This is one of the prime reasons that Putin and Russia can not even contemplate talks with the West. Even if the "proposed" plan is true, just look at its tone - whilst acknowledging certain concessions to Russia, its overall tone in total can only be considered in the light of a demand from a greater power to a lesser power, not anything close to an equal - a headmaster settling a dispute between two children.
As for Trump and his 100 days plan, I am yet to be convinced that this is anything other than Trump being fully aligned with the "Greater Paymaster" who is using it as a way out of admitting total defeat getting out of the Ukrainian debacle without losing face. The opinions of European and other Western-aligned leaders are merely to fool the global public into believing that Trump is really a force of change on the international stage. Trump's Transition team expressed 'reality' when they admitted publicly that they were "fully aligned" with the Biden team. So this is just another 'head fake' in my opinion.
But I could well be wrong.
"...its overall tone in total can only be considered in the light of a demand from a greater power to a lesser power, not anything close to an equal - a headmaster settling a dispute between two children."
With the peace plan's 'finalization' slated for OTAN's annual summit in late June, I can imagine a Middle School lunch table kind of vibe: will the cool kids let Betty sit with them? Or will the cool kids make Betty sit way over there by herself?
Actually, she won't be sitting alone. She will be joined by her Chinese, Iranian and swarms of Global South friends.
Where all the natural and unnatural resources are. They seem to forget about that.
These people can entertain themselves with their melodramas. The collective Putin will keep moving forward until their strategic objectives are met, period. There is nothing to discuss.
I love the expression "the collective Putin". I will look for opportunities to use it :-)
The mainstream media is full of green/left people. To them the world is divided into good and evil. If the good tells you a story, then it is true! If the evil tells you something, this is false! No matter what the facts are, the important thing is to tell how the facts should be. This would be nice if this were for the internal use of the green sect; sadly, our political elites, the top managers and the top-level public workers, consume this media. On a regular basis our top leaders find themselve in trouble, because they believed in the lies of the media; but they never change the behavior, they go on consuming the mainstream media, not at least, to have the same language as all the other leaders and do not swim against the stream.
No, the media is full of amoral people. It will take time to reorient them to the current revised policy of the Cabal ("forget green and DEI, it's now predatory capitalism and jingoism all the way"), but they will not resist realignment, once it dawns on them that this is now where career and power is. But they were indoctrinated a certain way for a long time, and it will take several years before the updated directives seep in. Especially as they have the superficial appearance of being opposite to the previous iteration.
You are correct RalfB, the media is full of "presstitutes" = amoral, sycophants to power. However your timescale is wrong: it will take them approximately six seconds to reorientate themselves to the way things are going. You can see this already in the media where the Zelensky fans are saying how they knew he would lose.
@Werner Hillinger: if this was true, where are the John Pilgers of today? Why was Chris Hedges booted out of the NY Times ages ago in favour of Zionist bootlickers? I suggest you read some Noam Chomsky or Medialens.
No, to realize how things are turning takes an open mind, and to reorient quickly, intelligence. Both are in short supply in that crowd, so they will have be grabbed close to the bit and hauled around by their handlers, much like you get draft oxen out of the rut. The master handlers are shorthanded and must operate in the shadows, so it will take them awhile.
Or you could just call it part of the negotiation dance (if it was "leaked) that Putiin and Trump are doing so well.
One really cannot understand the U.S. intelligence agencies without understanding how and by whom they were constructed. The modern CIA / State Department was a project of the Dulles brothers (one CIA director, the other Secretary of State). They were Wall-Street attorneys, and the intelligence agencies are constructed for the purpose of expanding the power and influence of finance capital from Wall Street. They do not serve the president, the U.S. people, NATO, the military, or any such group. They serve a small group of Wall-Street financiers. Just look at the revolving door between the intelligence community and major U.S. multinationals. There is a not a major U.S. company that does not have 3 former CIA, NSA, or FBI people in senior leadership positions. This is the "real deepstate," not a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington looking out for their petty fiefdoms and pensions.
By fighting the bureaucrats, Trump makes the average American think that he is fighting some "deep state." The fact is that through sheer force of personality and reason, Trump is merely realigning the deep-state to focus more on job-creation and wage growth in the U.S. He is not actually dismantling it or any such thing. The resistance that he faces is from those, like Blackrock, who have made heavy bets on international adventures like Ukraine. As these bets wind down, Trump will face less resistance, but the deep-state will go on.
It's no surprise that the "strongholds" are collapsing at an increasing pace, as anyone who isn't a delusional Clown World twat can see the stark facts: there's no reason to "hold out", because no relief is coming, since the AFU are a spent force.
It's like the Hemingway quote:
“How did you go bankrupt?"
"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
Also how can you hope to survive in these fortifications at this point? FAB, artillery, missile strikes, drones - these are not the well-made forts from the beginning of the conflict so I have no doubt in some ways they are barely better than nothing.
and millions of Koreans everywhere in meat wave assaults, with shovels, washing machines, toilets, and 170mm gun tubes
ROFLMAO!!!!
The entire point of the war at this point is to simply gouge as much money out to enrich all the leeches until the inevitable collapse, and the fortifications are just another example of that.
There were plenty of early news reports about how fortifications were paid for, at many times the reasonable price, and then they weren't even built. Now they don't even say.
LOL ♥
as soon as I got to the 100 day peace plan...my blood started boiling. It does sound similar to what he's suggesting in Gaza and it makes me hate Trump even more than already. That Gaza thing - as if Hamas is going to go along with that - and now this. Someone needs to try again like butler
Never heard of an opening position? but yeah sure, assasinate everyone you dont agree with. That will fix it!
Typical zionist beast tactics - if leaders don't agree with you, kill them.
It's the usual way of the west since 1945...I don't know how many but masskilling sems to be in the western DNA.
Our way of coming to existence & living is marked with robbery, deception, occupation, colonialism, annexion and one war after the other.
So suddenly killing has become a bad thing?
In the speeches of the ones who constantly try to brainwash us only, not in their actions.
The Western "elites" appears to be the same collection of thieving savages they were in 1066.
No, the difference is that there are vampire masters guiding the thieving savages now, and these are not really "Western". They came into London via Venice, but are not Venetians either.
yes - basically we're descended from the Germanic tribes and they took over Rome besides killing all the Celts.
Alexander the 'Great' plus the roman empire are not 'the west'?
We Germans were running through the woods with wood sticks when Rome had already had canalisation and an empire ;-)
Rome was the last empire of antiquity; many great empires preceded it.
Evidence suggests the Angles & the Saxons (Germanic tribes) didn't engage in a conquest of the Brittons (Celts?) after the Romans left. The Danes a few centuries afterwards established a kingdom centered on York, until they were somewhat defeated. The Normans, Norsemen who conquered an area of northern France a few centuries prior, of 1066 fame still didn't "kill all the Celts". You seem to think "Germanic tribes"/Franks - Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards etc "took-over" Rome - the history of Europe dwarfs that of the puny British Isles.
I meant the vikings.
Frank,
victory is the goal
robbery, deception, occupation, colonialism, anexation are just the names of the victory when looked from the other side
Just heard yesterday Trump talking about asking Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians. That was always the plan. He will cut off their aid to force them and he doesn't give a damn about international laws or UN. Ceasefire was just a show for the inauguration. Ever since his campaign, Trump has been saying Israel is too small, it needs to be much bigger. He talks of Gaza as an attractive property not as Palestine.
yeah - he's said it in at least two interviews - an even not just since the inauguartion - he said ' its a nice part of the world ' but if you think about it - who's gonna afford it ? Only them and their buddies. And they already own so much real estate. They're wanting to make it a jewish billionaire resort town. I hope the dear dear people that live in that region - Iran Lebanon and yes, Syria will rise again too I think - I even read that there's a Resistance movement in Jordan now. The people will win against these scum parasites. All of them. Viva Resistance ! !
I so wish you are right but I fear they will get coopted, bribed and divided as usual before anything real can emerge.
Organisation and unity will be sabotaged and if it means more killing then so be it - look at the history of resistance.
Syria is now governed by murderous Sunni radicals, and will take part in action against Iran side-by-side with Turkey and Israel, under the air supremacy umbrella of the US.
We have a propensity of "white-washing" those who are useful. The press was doing its best after the departure of "The Assad Regime"..."They may be bastards, but they're our bastards."
That worked so well in Afghanistan...
They are great believers that the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
Turkey using German weapons to arm the resistance... what could possibly go wrong?
Yup...The kids came-up with a good 1 that should be adopted in serious circles - frenemies.
The exclusion of Egypt from the international aid cut was the carrot. Soon we will see what the stick is. Egypt will cave in.
Say it isn't so! Another green-haired screeching harpy eager to pounce! Methinks you will find more receptive acolytes amongst the studio audience at The View. Don't waste your time on this channel.
wow - you are so rude. The interent is full of sites that people talk like you. If you would give this site a chance, its pretty itneresting to talk to people without this horrible clever putdown that is so prevalent now. I'm a paid subscriber. I comment here all the time.
He's going to assassinate himself. His MAGA base are already asking questions.
he doesn't care. the oligarchs behind the president - any president have reached the point now where they don't care about the population. What we think doesn't matter to them. Biden was unbelievable but now Trump is the same. Domestic policy seems better but nothing else. $500 billion for AI ??? they're printing the money because they dont' give a shit about inflation. Anyway - this war between the oligarchs and the population is nothing new - its just doing its cycling thing. But it may go on for another 200 years - glad I'm only going to be here for another 40 or so
"they're printing the money because they dont' give a shit about inflation."
The banks need inflation. There's not enough money to pay them their interest otherwise, and everything collapses. "Growth" is actually inflation and it is required because all money is debt, and debt needs interest to be paid. Where else does the interest come from? It is simply inflation, renamed as growth. It would be different if debt was *only* used to expand productivity with the purpose of covering the interest (which would then be paid for by additional debt-money anyway), but "productivity" has simply been redefined to accommodate superfluous non-productive debt spending on houses, cars, refrigerators, washing machines, shoes, clothes, etc, and the West doesn't produce much of anything anymore, anyway.
There's going to need to be a lot more inflation, but probably what they'll do soon is to repeat the broken policy of the 00's by cutting interest rates to allow everyone to keep borrowing [including the interest] without needing everything else to inflate to pay it, like wages and prices, until it all turns to crap again.
Rinse, repeat.
Another global "disruption" soon after interest rates reach zero again, to mask the tens of trillions they'll need again, to reset the financial system, again. Last time it was 20 trillion, which wasn't even enough. How much next time? 50 trillion?
sounds right to me.
The item regarding modernizing the UAF and allowing them to keep their army is probably something that can be negotiated away. If anything it seems like Trump is smart enough that he doesn't want to own this war like Nixon ended up owning Vietnam.
I expect a lot of noise and bluster and for Trump's base to believe anything as usual, but practically it seems like the stage is being set for Ukraine to end up dumped off even worse than Afghanistan was in 2021.
Even now it is an easy sell for Trump to say he has, 'no partners in Europe' given their recalcitrance to do anything even now: the EU is not providing any meaningful help to the UAF beyond footing the bill for salaries and keeping just enough ammunition in UAF hands so that they are not completely defenseless. When was the last time that anyone sent a full echelon of AFVs of any kind to Ukraine?
In fact I think the material situation is so bad that we have seen so few Lancet videos in comparison to the historical average because there is just not anything for them to target anymore that 'regular' drones cannot handle.
I also believe that Kursk is the rotting cancer that is truly killing the UAF in Donbass - either because Zelensky is trying to kill off anyone who can coup him, or because he is just an idiot, the fact now is that whatever bleeding you could staunch in the Donbass cannot be done because it is being obliterated in Kursk.
It is so bad I believe at this point if Russia put together an exploratory force for Odessa Oblast the AUF would be helpless to do anything, and a similar situation of 'fortifications' falling as in the East would be seen there within a month.
My only lingering disappointment right now is that America has not been sufficiently punished - unless the MoD is concerned about securing their armaments long term, I believe the Houthis, North African allies, and their other ME partners/sympathizers should have been armed to the teeth right now.
I am also utterly shocked that the Russians have not developed much in the way of defense against sea-drones or their own versions of it - I believe Iran is probably ahead of them here. A simple solution would be a hedge-hog like gliding platform that goes high over the area of the approaching sea drone and alter its descent based on the movement of the enemy drone. Either an overhead explosion or one within 10m of the drone in the water would be sufficient to take one of Ukraine's naval drones out.
Also why doesn't Russia have the black sea full of cheap, sail based surveillance drones such as what the US routinely deploys? Some things are going to take time but it is shocking to me that even now Russian innovation is critically lacking in some areas unless the information security is such we just don't know about it.
--
On a side note I am wanting to write on this substack platform - how do you get people reading without annoying them with link spam?
Stay intelligent with your comments. The say 'for more intelligent commentary go here..."
Two points.
First, sea drones. How many have you seen actually get through to Crimea lately? Given that Ukraine has had to fit SAM's to their sea drones to deter the helicopters that were destroying them enroute, I would say that Russia has been very successful in suppressing them. The sea drones would also be a very good target for Lancet, but Lancet may be too expensive in that role. Once Russia retrofits the SAM suppression systems from its Ka-52/Mi-28 to its Mi-8 helicopters, they can resume anti-drone duties.
Side note about surveillance: Russia DOESN'T have the robust, high-bandwidth satellite communications systems that NATO does, to convey information BACK from any mythical fleet of drones TO the large data centre that can crunch the data in real time, which Russia ALSO doesn't have.
Second point, absent a full amphibious assault, to get to Odessa requires crossing the Dniepr at Zaphorizia. Note that Russia HASN"T *reached* the Dniepr for most of its length, and crossing it is a completely different ball game. Ukraine is not yet weak enough for that sort of folly to succeed.
Nothing demonstrates more clearly that the West, and specifically the UK, is running Ukraine than their determination to win a land war by fighting at sea.
That's because we're interested in the Black Sea and Crimea rather than Ukraine.
If Putin at this moment agrees with any peace plan, his own soldiers will kill him, the same goes for Zelensky and his Pappenheimers, and Trump? Trump working his ass off the next four years to change the Mexican Gulf in the Ukrainian Gulf as a memorial.
I don't even think Zelensky can survive an election - once he is gone I cannot help but feel that he will be the chosen scape goat for all of Ukraine's problems, which really wouldn't be that unjust.
As usual, however, the true instigator will face no responsibility.
All that Zelensky has to do is put a peace plan up for a plebiscite and the people of Ukraine will vote for peace and he will be done with it....
the empire's owners put a lot of effort and money to achieve "a nationalistic totalitarian military dictatorship armed to the teeth sitting on Russia’s doorstep." Would you imagine the jewish swine like Kagans, Wolfoiwitz, Feith, and such to part with their monied sponsors all of whom are possessed by the idea of full-spectrum dominance? Look what the 'holobiz survivors" have been doing in Palestine. Look at the jewish joy on creating the largest ever numbers of pediatric amputees in Gaza. The jewish federations of North America (JFNA) and all jewish colleges and holobiz museums "stand with Israel," this genociding fascist state, no matter what.
The destruction of Libya, Iraq, Syria, all according to Oded Yinon plan for ersatz yisrael... Millions of displaced, millions of maimed, and yet their dirty-mouthed rabbis squeal that shoah-business is sacred.
And if "Europe is falling apart, with anti-establishment forces and parties quickly rising to depose the incumbent globalist tyrants," then the zionized disunited states of America have their moral fiber rotten and dissolved. Cowardice is the worst sin indeed. The creation and application of covid-bioweapon worldwide and the Real Holocaust of children and women in Gaza have made the ugly empire naked. The empire's owners are nothing but lazy and thieving scum.
Hello all.
I absorb a lot about the nature, modus operandi and intentions of the globalists. I hear about where they are truly based, ........ city of London for instance, the locations of their financial outposts, ect. The thing that gets them is the same that has always brought down empires; lack of a sufficient military capable of backing up those in charge.
They misread the global tea leaves as in the resurgence of China after being out of the game since the 1830's, the reformation of Russia and all the other movements of all the other factors which naturally occur when people get tired of a Boss that is gradually crumbling. They deluded themselves in thinking that their precious fonte of strength was supreme when all they where imbibing was a fetid cocktail created from distilled horseshit. Their leadership is of a caliber of stupidity right out of tales such as Humpty Dumpty and The Emperor's New Clothes.
On a personal level, I know what it means to change one's life. You need meaningful planning and medical consultation. Realistic planning in terms of changing the diet and get the ass out to do significant exercise, at a pace and on a path of evolution that will not kill you. And finally, you need commitment which is founded on solid common sense and positive dreams on can be attained, God willing. These clowns from the occidental side of things have almost none of this. So, they are done.
Thank you once again Simplicius, best wishes to you.
A wise and insightful commentary. Distilled horseshit is so apt, it brings to mind the concoctions drunk at witches' sabbaths.
The only thing I want to add, is that the City of London is the operating financial base, but the rat holes are under Zurich and other Swiss cities. Switzerland is a giant nuclear shelter for the Talmudist and Mammonist elite. That is why Davos, of all places---within easy commute of the supervising vampire masters, who run that show.
“Distilled horseshit” LOL !
Russia has been on the verge of victory for years now, something tells me that it will be for a couple of more years. Ukraine will be defeated, but it's still a very long way off.
"...something tells me that it will be for a couple of more years..."
Please share your esoteric knowledge. Who, or what is that 'something'?
It's a turn of phrase, "something" in English suggests merely intuition, not an empirically based conclusion. As Simplcius states in this post, Russia has no choice but to pursue maximalist goals, and this will take a lot of time. Ukraine is a large country with a lot of resources, foreign backing, and untapped manpower. Those who don't live in Russia look at this as a spectator sport, those who do have a much more realistic view, as life necessitates.
Wow, just wow. Thanks for the English lesson lol
This is what happens when you choose to argue semantics over substance, and you failed to address anything of substance in either of my posts. I'm sorry that this won't go the way you hope and expect it to, but that's true of most things in life.
Yawn.
The substance is, that you are pushing a totally unsupported viewpoint, using semantics instead of facts to give it seeming validity.
On the contrary, the facts of accelerating pace of the fall of strongholds, and of the inability of the AFU to put up lasting resistance even at citadels, indicates that the collapse is near. There are no reserves anymore, and now even the intravenous funding has dried up for the next three months.
"Ukraine is a large country with a lot of resources, foreign backing, and untapped manpower" - A helluva lot less in those 3 areas than you think.
'untapped manpower' - which one? Ukrainian scientists, doctors, and teachers are subjected to gang-pressed mobilization to the frontline. Children and teens have been taught to worship Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and Hero of Ukraine (with the Kagans' blessing). The Dnipropetrovsk has the largest in Europe synagogue commissioned by two felons, one of which has also financed the formation of four nazi battalions (including the Azov battalion adored by israeli). Ukrainian jews have recorded a song, from the roof of this monstrous synagogue, that Ukraine is a jewish territory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuQvuKzy7Yc
The Orthodox Church has been harassed by judaized Kievan junta, are you aware of that? BlackRock has acquired large swaths of Ukrainian land, in violation of the Ukrainian Constitution. Do you really believe that Fink, Adelson, Wexner, Pritzker, Spielberg, and similar 'ethnic philanthropists' are interested in improving the lives of the Slavic people in Eastern Europe?
https://www.mintpressnews.com/blackmail-jeffrey-epstein-trump-mentor-reagan-era/260760/
Here is perhaps the place to remind people that in the time it has taken Russia to go from Avdeevka (population 30,000) to the approaches to Pokrovsk (population 50,000), i.e. a distance of about 40 km in the period from October 2023 to late January 2025, so about 16 months, the Red Army from October 1942 to January 1944 went from Stalingrad to Zhytomyr, a distance of over 1,200 km, while recovering Krasnodar and Rostov, the whole of the Donbass, Crimea, almost all of the western RSFSR, much of Belarus, lifting the siege of Leningrad, etc. The red army did so having no nuclear weapons and no capability to strike the enemy much deeper than where some rather short-range planes could fly, and no PGMs.
I'll bite!
Russia isn't decimating places that it does not have to. It could have levelled all places of resistance it encounters, but it would then make the cost to rebuild back even higher.
There is a reason why it is called a SMO as opposed to a declaration of War (hence why Kiev has been relatively untouched).
Now if we are talking about NATO, they'll carpet bomb entire towns before the ground troops move in, similarly to what happened in Yugoslavia.
>Russia isn't decimating places that it does not have to. It could have levelled all places of resistance it encounters, but it would then make the cost to rebuild back even higher.
That is absolute idiocy.
Have you looked at what the liberated Donbass towns and villages look like? It is total devastation.
The strikes that are not being carried out but should be and would win the war would not cause large destruction. They are to decapitate leadership and cut off logistics.
Current Kremlin policy is absolutely self-defeating.
NATO will carpet bomb and then move ground troops in.
Russia troops will call in airstrikes, missiles and/or drones when they encounter opposition, but the troops are there and only destroying what is required to be destroyed to achieve their aims. If you look at the places being liberated now, you'll see they bare no resemblance to towns and villages at the beginning (when the Ukrainian army still had plenty of man power, equipment and resolve).
Russia isn't looking to destroy Ukraine or defeat the Ukrainian people, only it's army. If you target the people it will only increase the number of volunteers willing to die as terrorists against Russia. You only have to look at how Israel has fared against Hamas and the Palestinian people to realise that.
If you decapitate the leadership and cut off logistics, what happens? Ukraine will go for a peace agreement, leaving it's army and the infrastructure for it's army to fight another day. Russia knows this and is determined to remove the possibility of a future Ukraine coming back to restart the war - which will happen.
>If you decapitate the leadership and cut off logistics, what happens? Ukraine will go for a peace agreement, leaving it's army and the infrastructure for it's army to fight another day.
No, you move in and control the whole territory, without the slaughter on both sides.
"If you decapitate the leadership and cut off logistics, what happens? Ukraine will go for a peace agreement, leaving it's army and the infrastructure for it's army to fight another day. Russia knows this and is determined to remove the possibility of a future Ukraine coming back to restart the war - which will happen."
If only there were some way to condition a peace deal on the surrender of equipment, like the Germans did in France in 1940.....
Russians are not jews.
That is correct.
The Jews and the Americans are allowed to fight wars to win.
Russians are allowed only to die in the trenches. No winning for them.
Now who is responsible for that?
Oh GM, your still here.
And how many men did it cost them?
Hmm.
It cost them millions of men because they had no means to fight differently.
The current Kremlin does have such means, but refuses to use them.
How many has the current Kremlin policy cost?
Over 100,000 by now.
But all of Ukraine could have been taken with less than 10,000 dead and in less than six months if the Kremlin had not explicitly forbidden the army from striking what it has to hit to win the war quickly and decisively.
Because that would hurt the business interests of the Russian oligarchy, and those come first. Russian soldiers' and civilians' lives are not a concern.
There are others internationally that RU does not wish to offend.
That's primarily because this is not a full-on war by Russian standards. There is a major degree of restraint being applied in the prospect of the operation. That is why it is referred to in Russia as the SMO.
Unlike NATO operations which are essentially focused on hurting and hopefully killing vast numbers of civilians, great pain and precision is being taken to avoid "collateral damage".
If you want to see the True NATO approach to war, you only have to look at Gaza
Same old bloodthirsty medieval warlords they were 1000 years ago.
The ruling caste, unlike ordinary people have not evolved socially or intellectually one iota in all that time.
Apes with guns.
You just described a significant % of the USA! (repeat twice) populace.
WTF is your point?
Russia doesn't just have to crush this outbreak of hostilities. It could have done that right from the get go. But that would have backfired horribly. It has to nullify Ukraine as a fighting force, and that is indeed taking time. Putin knows this and is marshalling his resources for the long fight. That is not to say that victory through a radical collapse of Ukrainian will, cannot come earlier of course, and the signs are positive, but Putin has not banked on this, not since the final betrayal in 2022.
agree, like Syria - win the 'war', but lose the peace. Russia must win both, for the long term or it will be rinse and repeat. Not only Ukr, but NATO/EU/US must lose the will to fight/be a PITA to Russia.
"Not only Ukr, but NATO/EU/US must lose the will to fight/be a PITA to Russia."
This being the heart of the matter. Russia realises this is not about Ukraine - it is about an existential struggle with globalist forces, the whole of the Western alliance. And that is precisely why it will take time - Ukraine is only the first step.
I expect the active war to continue until EU/USA agrees to comprehensive rebalancing of military power in Eastern Europe, so possibly two years...
Russia lost the peace in Syria because it refused to win the war.
Idlib was left unfinished under Turkish control, the US was not pushed out of the northeast, and Israel was allowed to bomb anything they wanted with no interference.
Which eventually finished off the country by slowly bleeding it into submission
Notice how Putin is planning not to win the war in Ukraine either.
Which will have the same long-term consequences.
P.S. In the early 1970s Brezhnev credibly threatened the West and Israel with nukes if they moved any further on Syria. And Soviet weaponry supplied to Syria had no restrictions on its use against Israel.
Compare to the situation from the last decade. What is there more to say...
so why is that? explain the reasons to me simply . I currently see the SMO as 'not war', and agree Ru is risk averse as far as casualties (their own and non-combatants), international opinion, and domestic economic reasons.
Regarding Syria, it is very simple -- look at the ethnic composition of Russian oligarchs. It is 80% Jewish. It's in fact a lot worse than it is in the US, and you see how fully captured the US is by Israel.
The USSR wasn't like that.
This is why the USSR supplied Syria with serious weaponry and let them use it to defend against Israel, while Putin effectively facilitated Syria's destruction (this is exactly what happened if you analyze the situation without any preconceived notions about the role Russia played).
Uhm, sorry, but if you believe that Russia lost anything in Syria you are deluded. Everything changed over there since 2015 and now it's major PITA between Turkey/US/Israel. Russia dropped this hot potato immediately when things went south with "thanks God" utterance. If you think that it's somehow a win for Israel/US you really, really don't understand what happened.
Basically, "West" now is on verge of direct hostilities with it's own NATO member
agree it is a mess, but holding ground and 'client' states is always a good thing if you can do it. there may be strategic reasons but if you can keep it then good.
When exactly did you hear Russia say they were on the verge of victory? This just reflects the poor choices you've made when consuming information.
You have some reading comprehension issues since my point was just this, that Russia and Russians rarely make such claims, it's mostly in the English language sphere that excessive triumphalism is extant. Khairullin and Trukhan are good examples of commentators who are simultaneously optimistic and realistic.
I think you missed the part where the TCC now has to go out in groups of 8 people to fend off all the angry citizens, and this is BEFORE the new 18-25 yo mobilization law kicks in.
I didn't miss anything, that's just an anecdotal data point that doesn't mean much on its own. The Ukrainians aren't complete idiots, one of the first things they did at the beginning of the war was to fortify internal law enforcement. These guys are motivated by staying off the front. So look for harsher and harsher totalitarian measures as the war continues on a negative trend for Ukraine. Ukrainians would probably be motivated to protest the war, but the SBU and police are absolutely merciless.
Royotoyo,
basically you are correct, the end is not as near as most commentators think
The numbers are the problem, not the attitude of TCC, police or SBU.
Three iterations of frontline infantry have been lost, app. half a million men,
fourth iteration, currently being sent to front, consists of forcefully conscripted, and in the future potentially of the 18-25 years old, poorly motivated, and insufficiently trained will have disastrous casualty rate - meaning it will be spent quickly, still it will be at least 250.000 men
next step is the real problem, cannibalising the police force, TCC to create infantry, by SBU as the final arbiter
Then, or more precisely, only then, can a general uprising against the instigators of the war be expected.
And when CIA smells this change in atmosphere, a command will be issued to accept peace at any cost.
This is a moment when Harkov and Odesa can be taken, in this real world, and kept forever as Russian.
My guess has always been 2027. If they cannot agree to terms, then Russia has to continue fighting. It has many hundreds of KM to go until the Dneiper, and then what? Does it occupy Kharkiv? In the big picture of the country, the lines haven't moved much (yes, attrition does this) but it none the less remains that they therefore have hundreds of KMs they have to advance along a 1,000 KM line; vulnerable to drones, artillery, etc. So yes, two more years of fighting is easy to see if the peace plan is rejected.
Indeed, 2027 seems like a realistic timeframe based on current attrition rates. The question is how the US will take the L, hopefully other events will have overtaken the Ukraine war by that time and it will not be such a dramatic event.
This is a SMO and not all out war. Russia is doing all it can to spare their own troups and avoid casualties.
If it was an outright war, there would be no Kiew or Lvov anymore, no train would go, water and electricity would be off etc. So your 'something' is by design, Rusia is not fighting the people but the armies of Ukraine and the NATO support troups.
Plus every military logic will tell you that after a certain point there is a total collapse due to lack of everything plus no will of fighting left among the ordinairy solders, then it is over, suddenly and definitely.
Sure, the fundamentals are inarguable, my point is simply that we should all temper our expectations. Whether you call it a war or an SMO is just a matter of semantics, ostensibly Russia is fighting the way it is because it intends to conquer and keep Ukraine.
No semantics here in any way. Scott Ritter has explained the difference between the SMO and war countless times. It makes a significant difference, if he is right.
Russia is the world biggest country, why would it want to conquer and keep Ukraine?
All they want is to fight the western strategy to break Russia up into pieces and balkanize it into 5 states as the papers are showing.
Russia is fighting for it's right to exist and an security architecture in Europe that makes sure they (the west) will not even thinking about those plans anymore.
I can think of many reasons why Russia would want to conquer Ukraine, including (but not limited to) agricultural and other resources, demographics, righting historical injustices and mistakes, closing the funnel through which Russia has often been attacked from the West, and the importance of quality territory over quantity (much of Russia's large territory is functionally useless). I could be wrong about this, but it's my working theory that Russia always intended to take Ukraine and I'm absolutely fine with it if it's the case.
I have to be honest, I don't like Scott Ritter and don't watch or listen to him, even though I'm sure he often makes good points. It's just that he can be overly emotional and bombastic, plus he doesn't know Russia that well, even if much better than your average English language commentator.
Russia/Putin was OK with Ukraine as a neutral country, like a bridge, connection, getting rich by trading with both EU and Russia.
It could have been a path for Ukraine, but a significant, and vocal, minority with the support of local oligarchs and US/CIA chose different approach.
A conscious decision to remain in the middle, not only neutral, but equally distant from both Russia and the West/EU/US could have been a foundation for better, richer, happier Ukraine.
Russia could accept a younger brother, that remains a brother and goes his way, respecting both common heritage, and older brother's basic interests - security. It would have taken time.
But becoming an enemy means war.
First comes SMO, maybe real-war later knowing it could be with NATO.
Typical misunderstanding of hockey stick graph. As a layman, you project things in simple, linear way. But this one is slow, then suddenly.
And Russia is not on verge of winning for years. It's was quite obvious that this will be victory no matter what, right from the start, because warring parties are no match. Rest of the fluff was western propaganda
Excellent rundown of the military situation and couldn't agree more relative to the likely Russian response to the faux "Peace Plan." But keep in mind when viewing European politics: they are parliamentary systems. It's not like the US. The Right-wing parties are on a roll in Germany and the UK, as would be expected where the "Left" has sold itself to the globalists. The Right offers the only alternative to business as usual so the angry populace gravitates to them. But even where they are the leading party they are still only a plurality--25% or so of votes at the national level. Yes they will have an impact, but it remains to be seen what impact that will be when it comes to national policy. Also keep in mind, as in the US, their media is compromised--basically a propaganda arm of the Corporatists, and ordinary people are kept in the dark with lies and BS. What's shaking things loose, again as in the US, is their failing economies--which are impossible to paper over.
Far from playing 3-D chess--or even solving a Rubik's Cube w/ their toes--Collective Biden & Joe's Euro vassals always appeared to be engrossed in a game of Solitaire. There was one side: *their* side. One perspective: *their* perspective. They were in a war where the adversary didn't really factor in, except as an easily duped & humiliated foil, because only their interests mattered.
Though 'leaked' now, during DJT's first week in office, this plan is more of the same. It chauvinistically ignores Russia's oft-stated interests and concerns, almost to the point of nullifying Russia altogether: as if Russia has never actually existed as something real in their eyes.
The 'leaked' plan is wholly focused on maintaining 'Ukraine' as an armed-to-the-teeth OTAN-caliber hostile 'cordon sanitaire' between non-war zone Europe--the place where long-range missiles aren't exploding--and Russia--the place where long-range missiles have been exploding and will continue to do so.
Additionally, the 'leaked' plan looks consensus-driven, as if to mirror the bloc--OTAN--which wants very badly to sit sneeringly across the table from the delegation from Russia, rolling their eyes and making sotto voce cheap shots, probably texting insults to each other on OTAN's Slack channel while the Russians speak.
The 'leaked' plan includes many entities in a peace process that is calibrated to the Western calendar: note how matters are to be finalized at OTAN's annual meeting in June, which no doubt will be held in an OTAN capital whose military bases have been supplying the weapons to keep the war alive.
As we're seeing w/ Bibi's 'fragile' peace, there's always some kind of provocation--real or imagined--to get the 2000lb bombs falling once again. No U.S. or OTAN nation can guarantee that *Ukrainian* terrorists won't go rogue and start sabotaging the peace. After the subterfuge & backstabbing of the Minsk Accords, who could ever trust this bunch not to go clandestinely rogue themselves, engaging in acts of barely disguised terrorism--Crocus City, anyone?
Neither the U.S. nor OTAN can make guarantees.
Russia needs to be her own guarantor--with a Victor's Peace militarily.
These arrogant ass clowns treat Russia with even less respect than they treat their own citizens.
I hope Russia slow rolls this thing along until Europe is either brought to its knees or brought to its senses with new leaders. I wish the US would find a way to kill off the CIA and become a peaceful, prosperous country that stayed out of other people's business.
USA has been surviving on exploitation of others for a very long time now and CIA is the main agent of chaos that enables it, so I see no realistic chance of that happening. May be they'll make some superficial changes to fool the people again.
Much the same as their progenitors on the island off the West Coast of Eurasia.
I just love blackpills--"nothing ever changes" 🤣
He didn't say that - stop hallucinatory-pilling yourself.
the cia/mossad terrorist establishment serves its "owners." The "owners" have zero loyalty to the US citizenry and its wellbeing. Look at their contemptuous choice of "presidents," from the stupid Bush the lesser and up to the demented Biden "I am a zionist."
What decent government officials would kneel to a foreign criminal (guilty of genocide no less) and give him 59 standing ovations? The unnatural selection of governance by the "owners" made US into a colossus with feet of clay. The country has been devoured, demoralized, and its resources used by parasitic entities interested in squashing any patriotic and dignified opposition to the parasites whether local (the dishonorable MICC) or foreign (aipac).
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride !
"Leaked". Interesting concept in what is supposed to be delicate and confidential diplomacy. It strongly suggests that this is fake, the west negotiating with itself again. Or if not fake, then the West cannot be trusted to act in good faith as "leaks" will occur and the negotiations will take place via the media. Either way, the Russians must be looking at all of this as amateur hour.
In fact the peace plan has some legs, albeit some fundamental peices would need negotiating away, ie a large moderised UAF. Sort of defeats one of the main objectives of the SMO - demilitarisation of Ukraine. But again, this sounds like a sop to warhawk factions in the West rather than a serious negotiating stance with Russia. Looks like the objective here is not to get an agreement on these terms with Russia per se, but to persaude the West to enter negotiations on vaguely serious terms and to stop the fighting before the UAF collapses. It does as usual omit any real consideration of what Russia might regard as a minimum having regard to the situation of the ground. Which gets worse every day for Ukraine. So why would Russia stop the shooting now?
You sum it up nicely.
They pretend that they do not know what to do with Ukrainian army.
But would like to keep it.
Would like to keep trained and motivated antiRussian soldiers available.
If Ukrainian army is demobilised, given options; to study, open small businesses, emigrate..to the west, to Russia, to organize politically
some will start questioning the wisdom, the motivation of people who led Ukraine into war
and will understand that Ukrainians were used in a war against Russia
This will not make Ukraine proRUssIan, but in a way more proUkrainian, and antiwestern
Demilitarisation would be the final defeat of Ukrainian proxy war project.
If Ukrainian army is not dissolved, there will be a serious risk of a second war,
in a decade or two with a reconstituted Ukrainian army.
The last gasp western hope is that Russia can be persuaded to stop with eastern Ukraine. To this end we have a blanket propaganda rolled out through 'independent' media channels (hello, Alexander) as well as from state sponsored media that Russia will not want to take all Ukraine, could not take all Ukraine, that it would be too this, too that..... blah, as if words were deeds breeding a reality all of their own accord. That after all, has worked so well in the west with its own neutered populations, but the people had to be loved-bombed into chronic invalidity, slogans in place of critical thought, and early senility, first. This hasn't happened in Russia, nor China, for that matter- nor across the global south. The west has destroyed itself through its welfare model, which it intended to pass on to the rest of the word as a dire contagion that would neuter 'everyone' and we would have a great thousand year Reich of peace. Screws could be turned on an enfeebled surf class to ensure that a parasitic film of the enlightened could continue to indulge itself. Looks like that model of social evolution has gone belly up! Quelle surprise.
The welfare model is what has brought the west down. Only a people so addled by their own force fed imbecility could ever have supported Ukraine's punt for Russian blood and treasure which of course it was only too happy to 'share' with those who would ensure it could be pulled off.
Russia knows it has to control the entirety of Ukraine one way or another for this horror to come to an end. The west's addled mouth foaming hatred of Russia, wrote its own epitaph. When will the current Trump bandwagon, fuelled on a new hack word-power come to halt? When it finally runs up against that Russian force of will that is not a matter of words but action, and the Russian willingness to die for the motherland- also proved in action. That is when, and Trump already knows it. Whether the words come from a new mouth or old one, they will meet the same fate. There is no diplomatic end to this, only a military one. Then we will have a grand summit style settlement that will not feature an independent Ukraine at the table because such an entity will not exist. Ukrainians can thank western europe for this. Ukraine will join the EU, alright, via a vast tide of undead refugees who will descend upon it to feast on its remains.
I think of that odious Ben Wallace op-ed in the Telegraoh in which he said, "Just as we remove criminals from society, we should do the same to Russia."
In what world, in what life--?
Ben Wallace writes w/ the kind of Old Testament zeal which those crusading for a 21st Century Amalek exhibit.
>>
You said it best, though: "There is no diplomatic end to this, only a military one."
Ben Wallace, ah yes, he who threw a big sulk when he found out Boris et al could not deliver him the headship of NATO.
He is a classic example of a person who inflated his own self interest into an entire public policy. The defence industry loved him, so deep into its own pocket had he burrowed.... until he found out that the silver shillings buried there were fake, a head-fake and he the victim. Poor Wallace.......
In Ben's op-ed for the Telegraph he quoted an American official telling him recently that "Putin is a gangsta thug with a gas station."
Gosh, Ben, I'm sure you're not hearing this for the first time--!?
Besides which, if an 'American official' said it, then of course it must be true.
Poor Wallace as in “Alas, poor (Wallace)! I knew him,......: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy” Hamlet- my footnote for victims of western state funded education, not for you, CS.
To reply to your comment, you wonder why he could not have said that himself, why he needed to run it through the mouth of a US source? It is western mirroring propaganda, as the western opinion formers have realised that independent media descriptions of the Ukrainian regime as an illegitimate gangster regime, are beginning to cut ice, terrifyingly, in Ukraine itself.
"Putin is a gangsta thug with a gas station."
And what does a gas station do?
A service for society. Unlike America:
An Arms depot Masquerading as a country.
As for Britain, a little waterlogged island of the coast of Europe
that the Romans spent over 4 Centuries trying to civilise.
And failed!
Idiot.
Dumb-dumb. Expand your response to 2 words & make it doubly convincing. Seee?
No narcissist survives a head-on collision with reality intact.
I don't know if narcissism is his sin. That does not go with brown nosing. I wonder if he is trying to get feel for a return to public office through Reform, or even some bone Trump might throw him in some new Order he fondly thinks Trump might create?
It is back to brown nosing, for Ben, which Trump actually detests with Starmer right up his bum at the moment. Starmer thinks he is making progress up that fundament. That is how stupid and vain Starmer is. But just like the determination to keep calling Russia nothing more than a gas station, western europe is clinging on to belief that all it needs to do, to get its way, is feed Trump's vanity. Trump did not get where he is by being as stupid and naive as the EU bundle of small minded inepts, is determined to believe he is.
Back to Ben, the return of that tried and failed brown nosing is probably why he decided to put his pearly wisdom in a US mouth. If you only have a drill everything needs a hole. Not completely daft, is he, just trapped inside his own world view which is narcissistic of course. :-)
Ben Wallace is just another old inbred Norman Landowner with a bought army commission.
What was know in the trade, according to an old ex-army pal as a "F***ing Rupert". 🤣
My condolences to Scotland for the production of this scum, ben Wallace.
I'm not sure what you mean by the Western welfare model? Are you talking about all the public money funnelled into corporate welfare (thinking 2009 for eg) to ensure political satraps are enriched at the public expense?
The ideal welfare model is predicated on government supplying cheap or free quality education, healthcare, housing and other necessities of life. In this way the cost of labour is kept to a minimum and the workforce becomes better skilled, healthier, socially connected and able to have spare money after expenses to keep the economy flowing. This ultimately creates an advantageous position in international trade vis-à-vis trading partners.
The Western neo-liberal system involves creating privately owned monopolies in critical areas and using that market power to gouge as much as possible profits. This leads to the opposite with more household debt, less disposable income and a declining workforce. I guess in a financialised economy it matters less, until the whole house of cards collapses.
I am referring to a corruption of the very idea of welfare as in 'wellness' which predicates resilience. The entire model has set about demeaning individual effort, self reliance, personal responsibility and hell, hard work, in favour of a welfare sic safety net and a host of regulations designed to overcome any true meritocracy.
As for schooling, the Uk is an excellent example of a paid for superior (well, that is what they intended) education reserved for an entrenched elite and for those few who have clawed their own way up the money ladder, usually through brown nosing, adding nothing of real value to the top tier but feeding its own corruption. The education delivered to the masses 'for free' is woeful, an education in unthinkingness. Health care in the UK is about nurturing chronic sickness and frailty as this is where the profit is. Of course the bigger part government funding plays in all this, the greater the corruption of any true private enterprise and room for change, as we now have corporate 'welfare' with the most successful sic corporations stuck to the government funding teat. It also means centralised control of what might otherwise have passed for free sic enterprise. I could go on and on, but this should be enough for clarity.
I am not saying that other models are better but they are more open to adaptation. It is this inability now to adapt, that has made the western model brittle to the point of breakdown, a fate increasingly manifest in its populations.
I thought the UK had privatised everything. If the education system and health are still in public hands it surely means they are woefully underfunded to the point of being useless.
Using the UK as a case study for the benefits, or otherwise, of welfare isn't really giving a decent welfare system a chance. Look to China where a well intentioned welfare system coupled with a publicly driven industrial policy managed to eradicate nominal poverty and uplift almost 1 billion people into the middle class in around 30 years.
For the last 20 years poverty in the UK has risen dramatically and now stands at 24%! That doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon.
I don't dispute any of that. I was referring really to a corruption that calls itself the western welfare model (oh, the magic of words) to sell itself.
With the new labour government in power for the next 4.5 years, expect the poverty percentage to increase. Drastically!
I really don't think it matters too much. The biggest increase in poverty was under Thatcher, and the last time it was falling was under Blair.
https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk
Pity that doesn't go back even further, as the worse time for poverty was in the early 70's, and also does then depend on which definition of poverty you use.
The international definition are those earning less than $5.50 per day (if parents are suffering in poverty, then their children will be, as children don't earn). Using that metric, the highest time was back in the early 70's.
The UK normally uses the calculation of those who earn less than 40% of the median of earnings. So if the country experiences a large number of people coming in, earning 7 figure salaries, then 40% increases which in turn places more people in the 'poverty' bracket, even if their circumstances hasn't changed.
Conservative usually are a low tax party (the last one wasn't), which brings in multi-millionaires to the country. Labour are a high tax party, which usually drives them out (as we are currently seeing, the highest number of millionaires exiting the country). This then will impact the 40% value and increase or decrease the number of people within the definition of poverty.
"UK had privatised everything"?!?! A country with no real army, no real health care, no border real protection, but everything "privatised" and still the public share on GDP is above the 50%? There must be something strange happening. A classic liberal state has public sector of well below 10% of GDP, but a strong army, a good police and secured borders. So what does "neo-liberal" mean?
A neo-liberal state has no protection from foreign control through capital markets.
Much as I like Simplicius, this is a far deeper and broader analysis than the article itself. My hat is off to you.
I heard that 300 Yukies died in just the southern part of Velyka Novosilka; so, there must have been some fighting! Or, is this report false?
Or they died on the road while trying to escape the trap on foot along the river, after they "heroically" waited too long for orderly withdrawal.
S mentions the AFU's horrendous losses in the Velikaya Novosyolka salient, and it put me in mind of remarks Patrick Lancaster made about the Kursk region.
Lancaster has been embedded w/ an Akhmat Chechen Special Forces unit in the east Kursk region (the opposite side of the ‘incursion’ territory from Sudzha) and also w/ a regular Russian Army group there.
Quickly, to answer an obviously pressing question: Lancaster *did not* see evidence of DPRK forces in the Kursk region and when he asked his military hosts about such a thing, they also could provide no evidence of the presence of DPRK troops.
Lancaster came upon several settlements just after the AFU-OTAN mercs had been driven out and was able to document civilian corpses—the residents who had been sheltering in storm cellars attached to their houses. Lancaster described the carnage as the aftermath of a grenade being thrown down the cellar stairs to detonate at the bottom.
“It was like a moment frozen in time,” he said. “They all seemed to have died exactly at the same instant.” He claimed it was obvious that the civilians had perished during their period under Ukrainian captivity.
Lancaster has been documenting the war since it started in Donbas in 2014—one of the few English language reporters to do so—and he said the Kursk pocket has been one of the scariest areas he’s ever worked: the omnipresence of drones is sheer madness.
Bare tree branches offer some cover from the surveilling drones, believe it or not, so he said it was safer to get around on foot, hiking from treeline to treeline. Even so, he passed by scores & scores of Ukrainian dead.
Early on, he said, a soldier told him that the only way to survive the war was to make peace w/ the fact that you were actually already dead: your signing up had testified as much. Each day, then, that you did not physically die on the battlefield became yet another blessing.
Thank you for this. As a minor note, Ukrainian homes don't have "storm cellars." They have cellars to store preserved foods. Only in America are storms violent enough to destroy houses and necessitate a place to hide during them.
Lancaster was reporting from Kursk--so Russia, not Ukraine. He used the term "storm cellar" descriptively.
Seriously? LOL!!! that is what you think cellars here in North America are for-- that is hilarious
I use mine to hold sex-slaves captive!
If it's Friday night, you'll know where I & the gooombas will be after fish-dinner!
It's not a matter of the storms being particularly violent, but of homes being particularly flimsy. Sticks braced with chicken wire covered over with tar paper, and I am not exaggerating. As opposed to mostly brick, or at least cinder block-filled concrete frame in Europe and Russia.
Patrick is doing fantastic work under extremely dangerous conditions. I admire his bravery and the principles he operates by as a journalist.