To answer the question in my title you need only look at two numbers — 1) Ukraine’s rank in terms of natural resources and 2) the size of Ukraine’s Army in February 2022. Since the end of World War II the West has viewed Ukraine as a critical piece on the global chess board for attacking and defeating Russia. The joint CIA/MI-6 effort to destabilize the Soviet Union, which started in 1947 with the provision of funds, weapons and training to Stefan Bandera’s organization, was crushed by the Soviets by 1952. It was shortly after that, following the death of Stalin in 1953, that Khrushchev gifted Crimea to Ukraine (1954). Was it a reward for Ukrainian assistance in wiping out the CIA-backed OUN uprising?
How is it that on the eve of the Russian Special Military Operation in February 2022 that Ukraine was the poorest country in Europe but was ranked number four in the world in terms of natural resources?
The country [Ukraine] ranks fourth globally in terms of total assessed value of natural resources, with roughly $15 billion in annual output and a potential “assessed value [that] could be as high as $7.5 trillion,” according to the report.
Beyond that, Ukraine is thought to have the largest supply of recoverable rare earth resources in Europe, although much of it is undeveloped. Rare earth minerals (cerium, yttrium, lanthanum and neodymium) and alloys are used in many devices people use every day, such as computer memory, rechargeable batteries, cellphones and much more.
The answer is simple — the Western oligarchs who fund the political leaders of the NATO countries were busy cutting deals with Ukrainian oligarchs to get control of those rare earth minerals and energy resources. Do you think that putting Hunter Biden on the Board of Burisma, along with former CIA Counter Terrorism Chief Cofer Black, was just a coincidence? But note — the plan to pillage Ukraine of its natural wealth did not include a plan to ensure the economic development of the Ukrainian people. Only those closely tied to Western oligarchs would profit.
Simply compare what Russia achieved since Vladimir Putin took the reins of government in August 1999 with Ukraine’s national squalor. Russia is number one in the world in terms of natural resources and Putin put a stop to the oligarchs plan, along with Western partners in the 1990s who gleefully raped Russia for their own enrichment. During the last 23 years Putin has resurrected Russia from the ashes of economic ruin, restored the military, rebuilt infrastructure throughout the 11 time zones that comprise Russia and created a vibrant, modern economy. Oh yeah, almost forgot. Russia’s space program surpasses that of all Western countries, including the United States.
Ukraine by contrast, thanks to a clown parade of incompetent, corrupt leaders, sold their country and their souls to the West. That is why Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe instead of one of the wealthiest.
The West had zero interest in fostering a genuine, legitimate democracy in Ukraine. Ukraine was nothing more than a proxy for weakening Russia and carving it up into pieces the West could readily devour to sustain faltering economies. Prior to the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation, Ukraine was treated as a de facto member of NATO. There were NATO training bases in Ukraine. The U.S. Department of Defense set up dozens of bio-research labs across Ukraine. And NATO and the U.S. European Command conducted annual military training exercises in Ukraine with Ukrainian forces.
The numbers tell the story. Ukraine’s Army (according to data from February 2022) had 700,000 active duty forces and a million men in reserve. That made Ukraine, as a de facto member, the second largest army in NATO. The United States provides the largest share of troops to NATO — 2,307,630. Coming in third, behind Ukraine, is Turkey with 1,069,900. Ukraine’s force is larger than France, Great Britain and Germany combined. We now know that NATO envisaged using Ukraine as the shock troops to weaken Russia so that NATO could finish off Putin and his military.
After 18 months of combat Ukraine has at least 600,000 military casualties (killed and wounded). That represents over 30% of its manpower at the start of the war in February 2022. NATO does not have the stomach, the resources nor the political support in their respective countries to send their troops into the maw of death and destruction that is Ukraine. NATO will not admit it publicly, but without Ukraine and Turkey, it has zero chance of defeating Russia.
“The numbers tell the story. Ukraine’s Army (according to data from February 2022) had 700,000 active duty forces and a million men in reserve”
how did the neocons accomplish the capture of hearts and minds?
sever that, you neuter the neocons ability to raise proxy armies.
also, thank you for your blog.
The common man is the dumbest animal on the planet
It’s very easy to herd them
You perhaps are unaware of the book “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail” (available from https://mpnl.org/Dumbing%20Down%20of%20America.pdf). It documents the enormous effort that has gone on for decades in making sure that the Americans never develop thinking skills that are taken for granted in most countries in the world, including the poorest African countries. The same machinery is now being used to propagate the DIE DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) training. The objective is clear. People capable of thinking for themselves and look after their own well-being cannot be treated as willing slaves. The oligarchs have coveted lording over slave populations through out history. We see this much more clearly than our forefathers. It is up to our generation to make sure that our children and grandchildren do not become parts of such slave colonies. That is the wider, civilizational significance of the Ukraine war
Thanks for the link, sumant. I just read the preface, downloaded and will finish tonight.
I had long ago spotted the broad outlines of what I call ‘controlled demolition’ of the US education system. It seemed to me to originate with John Dewey – an enthusiastic admirer of both Mussolini and Stalin, whom some unironically call ‘the father of US public education’ – and other progressives of the early 20th century. It also appeared that the project was implemented under the auspices of the teachers’ unions, and gained speed after the ‘education crisis’ of the late 1970s that resulted in the establishment of the Dept of Education, which of course only made the ‘crisis’ worse. I’m hoping this book lives up to its title, because I’ve always wanted more detail about precisely how it was done.
I was blessed to attend a quite conservative Jesuit high school during my freshman year, 1974-75, before the order went communist. I’ve always regretted that, due to my parents’ divorce and moving away, I was unable to continue there. On the other hand, had I not been subjected to a year of classic intellectual and academic rigor, then returned abruptly to the fuzzy relativism of public education, it wouldn’t have struck me as forcefully at such an early age how rotten the system really was.
Like the author, I too left the country for a number of years. When I returned in the 1990s, and went ‘back to school’ in my mid-30s to take pre-med courses, I was shocked at how ill-prepared many of my 18-year-old classmates were.
One thing I noticed was that in the ’90s, the education change agents were constantly harping about ‘critical thinking.’ What they meant wasn’t actual critical thinking, but classic postmodern deconstruction, encouraging the belief that there’s no fixed truth or meaning, only competing ‘power relationships.’
Of course since then, the zombification of the American mind has snowballed rather dramatically. Just two years ago, about half of us supported a brazenly illegal mandate of an experimental gene therapy, dishonestly labeled a ‘vaccine’ but already known, at the time of the mandate, not to prevent transmission of the virus it was supposed to protect us from … a virus with an infection fatality rate lower than the forgotten Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968.
If you’ll dutifully submit to the Clot Shot, and worse, insist that everybody else be forced to as well, why, there’s no chance you’re going to notice our leaders criminalizing political opposition, or marching us into WW3 over a place you can’t even find on the map.
There was a book circulating in the 60s, “What Ivan Knows and Johnny Doesn’t”, comparing the Soviet Union’s educational system with that of the USA. By fourth grade, the Soviet student knew 10,000 words, in America, they knew less than 1800. I believe Admiral Rickover (an avid, thoughtful reader) used to mention this particular book.
I assure you, American schools never followed Dewey. There is nothing remotely like Dewey in the American school system. The US has adopted a program of Factory Worker Education, and then done away with its factory workers. I certainly agree that there has been a deliberate plan to dumb down American citizens, but please don’t blame it on Dewey. Notice, btw, that whoever Dewey may or may not have ‘admired,’ Soviet education was the polar opposite of American education, and has consistently produced a citizenry with a very high degree of actual competence in the sciences. The Russian Federation has largely followed the educational system put in place by Lenin and Stalin, and they seem to be able to out-think the US in all categories.
Thanks for this link Sumant. I downloaded it and am reading it. I have been researching this area for some time and it is very useful!
That makes you uncommon? It’s also important not to feel too superior, cause most people are deceived, not stupid. This is the product of America’s last great strength, propaganda.
America’s days as per a century old prediction are numbered. The future will see the rise of another superpower ruling over the world..
Nonsense. You assume politics and economics are synonymous. There always exists a natural tendency toward monopoly power, where economics demands that monopolies, even oligopolies be labeled counter-productive and be legislated against and that a well-oiled (world) economy works best closer to perfect competition than to monopoly power.
Hegemons are monopolists. Why would anyone want to trade one hegemon for another. Totally irrational.
Yep, Billy Graham warned us about the problem but had to end up apologizing or lose his TV ministries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/03/us/billy-graham-apologizes-to-jews-for-his-remarks-on-nixon-tapes.html
The masses are asses
IOW: The wisdom of the masses comes out of their asses.
You overestimate the intelligence of highly educated people and even the so-called “intelligentsia.” They are as easily bamboozled as the average guy on the street, only they base their opinions on “facts.” In Germany during the Nazi reign, Naziism had surprisingly broad support amongst academics.
LOL. How many German academics in 1933-1945 would respond to a pollster: “I do NOT support the Nazis?”
But sometimes, the common man will rise up and say no!
Damn right they’re in a panic. Here the common man rises and videos the meat wagon brigades with cries of ‘beat the sukas’.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/MYwMJvWOqK4P/
It’s over. Just a matter of how long is the countdown.
“It’s very easy to herd them”
The scamdemic proved that to be true. Who remembers the videos of the sheep shuffling forward at the clot shot centres? Not even the sight of medics carrying out victims deterred them.
Mean, as always. They (neocons) know very well what lure to use for a huge semi-educated population mass created over many years through reality shows, cheap political messages that change value perceptions, by throwing sand in the eyes through the promotion of false human rights, let say “gay” among others (of course I have nothing against those people, I hang out with them) that gain more importance than mass war crimes and millions of dead in Iraq, Libya and dozens of other countries, by glorifying the heroism and justice of NATO democracies in all MSM, including dull, but insulting action movies … James Bond, hundreds of Missions with impossible possibilities. And it all started since the end of WWII, and maybe since the intervention in 1918. At the end …what the lure is? It’s a semi-forbidden Nazism/fascism with the “macho” charisma of forbidden fruit, to which psychopaths (mostly tattooed with some “wise” messages urbi et orbi) stick to, eager for hard-core violence, like flies to shit.
Sway them with sentiment not reason
How often does an American say “Thank you for your service” to a veteran in prison or on Skid Row ?
It is all ritual incantation without substance to hum the obligatory prayer of obeisance
Or, alternatively, after receiving a “Thank you for your service” from a poor employee forced to utter such nonsense, an older veteran can say “Oh thank you, but I’m afraid that doesn’t apply to me, for I was a “Baby Killer.” Works every time, mouths agape. This should only be done with older workers, younger folk might not get it.
How often does an American say: “Let’s settle this peacefully and see if we can find a win-win in it.”?
> how did the neocons accomplish the capture of hearts and minds?
The same way they convinced Gorbachev: with a slice of pizza and a soda pop.
China figured this out a long time ago. Consumer goods are based on people’s personal tastes; let market forces run that part of the economy. Meanwhile, the commanding heights of the economy remain under State control and are thus not susceptible to Western takeover.
“China figured this out a long time ago.”
I think the Chinese got it from Lenin. NEP.
Was Raisa his wife who had too much influence according to Politburo critics
“Was Raisa his wife who had too much influence according to Politburo critics”
In meetings Raissa Gorbacheva was often the smartest in the room, and hence as a function of the fears of some in the Politburo, she was the butt of slights which aided The Russian Federation in transcending “The Soviet Union” with the complicity of “The Politburo” who allegedly “ruled The Soviet Union” – well that is what they believed anyway.
An additional reason was the pretence by Mr. Andropov that Mr. Gorbachev was his protege who had no blat in the country, the party and most assuredly not in the Politburo, and so if necessary could be a bridge candidate for General Secretary during the hand-over to younger apparatchiks, which Mr. Andropov understood would aid the transcendence of “The Soviet Union” by The Russian Federation which he understood to be both necessary and unavoidable, partly through experience of being KGB head of station in Budapest in October 1956, and Head of The KBG during the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968,
– (It was the economy stupid) the agricultural and administrative factions attempting to undermine the industrial, intelligence and military factions in the Politburo, in a fit of pique and Brezhnev doctrine, having little if anything to do with Czechoslovakia or “Dubcek/Sloboda-ness” to quote a contemporary slogan –
which they finally partially understood by 1988 or so – ergo after the death of the devious Russian private joker whom many people believed was a grumpy old bastard – Gospodin Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov – and so in petulance subsequently some took Mr. Gorbachev “hostage”.
Quadrupling there salary’s using Biden’s loan guarantees from next to nothing to start with and only using the ‘highly motivated’ AZOV types to try and fight the Donbass militias.
Apparently there joke was they didn’t want to go to Crimea or they’d have to fight the real Russian army.
how did the neocons accomplish the capture of hearts and minds?
Very simple. They appealed to and groomed the most base and crude of human instincts; unfettered ultranationalistic motives, those that have driven ethnic-cleansings, pogroms and genocides for millennia, then conveniently endowed these motives with a western facade of legitimacy by calling it a ‘patriotic fervor’, excusing virtually any and all forms of its excess that had by legal decree, been proudly banned for those in the west itself.
Timothy, they accomplish that by brainwashing and indoctrination, starting from school age. USA is a good example. In Ukraine they did that for the past thirty years, starting with school textbooks, which were full of inverted, re-written “history” – produced and supplied by numerous Soros’s Foundations. And then of course, taking control of the Media. And gradually turning what used to be a close, brotherly nation to Russians into a little rabid anti – Russia; ignorant of their true roots, their history, full of hatred for the so-called “mosckals”, i.e. Russians and gloryfing Stefan Bandera – a murderer and a ghastly nazi collaborator. He is a hero to them.
So, all just as they were taught.. that is how it’s done.
Have you seen some of the grammar and preschool Ukrainian texts?
My God, I don’t think even Third Reich Publishing Inc. went as far as these cretins.
Simple.
In a collapsing economy your choices are emigration or enlistment.
I agree. The numbers do tell the story.
Now, the AFU is conscripting everything on two legs. It’s counteroffensive is undermanned at a stated 67,000 men, with about a third killed. One out of three injured battlefield casualties later die, compared to one out of 10 for the Russians. On all sectors, the AFU is losing about 1000 men a day (if include military personnel killed in bomb strikes in the rear). Larry’s numbers are right on the money.
That cartoon is the best!
All American wars are about money. They always yell about morality, get caught in the lie, and then the Public believes them next time – the stupidity of our species is infuriating.
Not to defend stupid Americans, but they are partially only as stupid as the propaganda being fed to them by the Mockingbird (CIA) media.
That (MSM) is the source of their stupidity.
Indeed it is. I’ve sworn off discussing anything of importance with anyone I don’t know well. Useless in the extreme.
It isn’t about money. It is about power. Money is a tool of power.
The Posts are getting quicker. The Facts are piling up.
Something is going to happen on the large scale soon.
Vote Democrat in 2024
Cackles for Emperor.
Killary for VP.
The Donald for Sec of State
Mop head must remain, just for laughs.
Amtrak runs the campaign. ( what could possible go wrong.)
Let it all hang out America…. cause Ukraine is winning!
Cackles?
cameltoe harremis
V.P. Harris
“Camel Toe,” Kamala Harris. VP
Dumber than Biden 10%, and not as smart as hunter Biden the full 100%.
Everything that can possible go wrong in America is going wrong, all at once and accelerating.
Think about that!
As everything that can go right for Russia and China, is going right. All at once and accelerating.
Kamela makes Dubbya Bush look smart. Biden makes him look like a wise statesman.
300+ million Americans, and that’s what’s running the joint? If ever there was a case that the system’s in need of a service and that elections are rigged…
Looking at the table, Estonia and Finland have a huge proportion of their populations’ are Saturday soldiers. Don’t they have any footy to go to, or is the fishing crap? Maybe it tells us something about Estonian & Finish missus, that the blokes just want to get out of the house on the weekends?
China and Russia have a tough row to hoe ahead but the USA is numero uno in the hole digger’s competition.
Cackles is Hillary Clinton.
Can’t be, she was already mentioned. But she is a cackling demoness, for sure.
Thank goodness someone saw fit to put her stake in the clinton foundation through her heart in 2016.
Hillary Clinton mpboh, was Canckles. A reference to where the two remarkable pillars of fat met her feet.
And not to be confused with “Cankles”.
Something huge has already happened.
Some of us try to understand the whole geopolitical structure, by including the vector of economics into the mix, to get a complete picture. After all, power is for the accumulation of wealth.
This brings us to a momentous event obscured from so many, Janet Yellin’s “presidential” visit to China. The trip initially was for 2 days and was extended to 4 days. No Chinese, nor US media covered any details from the visit such as meetings or joint press releases. It appears that neither party wished for the purpose or results of this visit to be known by the rest of the World. Why? Both parties couldn’t afford the release of the truth.
Well, Janet went to China hat in hand to ask the Chinese to buy a US bond issue to the tune of 1 trillion. The Treasury is broke and the servant of the European Colonialists Yellin, needs funds for the US to continue to try to bring Russsia down. When the interest rate reaches 7% it will be a counter move to make such a war expensive to maintain. Go Powel go.
This moment is when the US Empire died.
This is similar to the Brithish Empire dying after invading Egypt in 1956, in what is known as the Suez Canal crisis.
This is a dangerous time, when desperation of dellusional people, may produce decisions based on dellusion, as in transferring F-16s capable of delivering nuclear ordinance.
Remember what the enemy of humanity Soros said: this is a conflict between two orders. He meant the conflict between the 300 year old Colonial order and the emerging new world order of peace and trade based on Commodities not fiat currency.
Let’s cut the US military budget from 1 trillion to 500 billion and spend the rest fixing America and putting people back to work to improve their lives.
How could Treasury possibly be broke? Congress creates $ at will, no one is needed to buy Treasuries since the Fed can and does do it at will.
A monetary system is an accounting system at root, an accounting system that can’t run out of $.
What we can run out of is stuff to buy, especially since we don’t make enough of anything but bombs anymore…
Nobody needs to buy treasuries? Wow!
This past couple of weeks the dollar took a big hit. People traded in their dollars for bonds.
In theory, the Fed could click on the keyboard as many as $ signs as it wishes.
In practice, the result could be described with one word – hyperinflation. The reason would be simple: there would be too many numbers in computer databases, perceived by the public as “money”, to chase a rapidly shrinking volume of physical goods.
Now, the goverment, in theory (and in practice) could impose price controls, but in a very short amount of time the goods would disappear from the stores’ shelves and the only way to find them would be through the black market at at least 5 times their “official” price.
And, of course, the government could declare severe measures in order to stamp out the black market, but the marketeers don’t really risk anything – at worst, they’ll have to pay a bribe.
You forgot to mention it is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Great article.
Bulgaria is not far behind nor Romania…………huge amounts of EU funds disappear into OCG in these two bantustans
Looking at the spreadsheet: leaving out US, NATO has 5.7 million military personnel. Put them on trains, planes and trucks thru Ukraine to Russia and don’t worry about the ammunition. The Russians will run out killing them. Moscow by October! The above is copy written, so TV Generals don’t think of taking my winning strategic plan!!!
The problem is after decades of low casualty rates against 3rd world goat herders if a western military lost 30k men in a month it would collapse like the US military in Vietnam
The people back home would simply withdraw their support and game over.
But a bunch of foreigners dying at the hands of “evil nazi commie russia”
Well, it’s not their sons being butchered so nobody cares
When the shit hits the fan, all those Rambos wil hit the road.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J_wBx-FBcc
Your winning strategic plan will be stolen it the future by Zap Branningan, and it will win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF3g4Ua5e7k
What happens to the US and NATO nations if they are, finally, unable to defeat Russia and pillage its resources to bolster their failing economies?
Because I do think that’s their plan, to revive their economics by devouring Russia.
But would a western “victory” mean better times for ordinary people in the west or just the politically favored?
Conventionally defeating a nuclear superpower would lead to a worldwide atomic war. Do you really think that Russia, having the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and with more advanced launch platforms (hypersonic missiles) will allow itself to be looted? Remember, you have thousands of Russian intercontinental nuclear missiles pointed directly at the entire US. You don’t plunder a country like Russia that not only has the means to defend itself, but also has the means to bring destruction to the US itself. For the Russian Federation the US is not untouchable. Medvedev and Lavrov have repeatedly spoken about this. It will not be a European war with the participation of the Americans as in the two world wars, because the Russians will launch their missiles towards the USA without hesitation.
The US plundered it pretty successfully during the 90s
Not without help from its russian friends.
Harvard University and its team with Schleifer that US Government sued for $105 million – that was the Chubais Gang
Yeltsin Gang arranged a protection deal with FSB brokered by Berezhovsky who put Putin in place to ensure Yeltsin Clan avoided treason trial
What US did to Russia is the kind of colonialist behaviour they did in China or Hawaii or Cuba or Middle East
Correction
These “russian friends” were mostly jewish..
RE: Paul Greenwood says
19 July 2023 at 07:01
“Yeltsin Gang arranged a protection deal with FSB brokered by Berezhovsky who put Putin in place to ensure Yeltsin Clan avoided treason trial.”
That was Mr. Berezhovsky’s version and after losing the trial against Mr. Abramovich in London and hence becoming liable to other “sharks” through his continuing hazard to the environment with contingent lack of blat, Mr. Berezhovsky retired to his bath akin to a Roman Emperor who was his “role model” from his days outside M.G.U., slit his wrists and died.
There never was a “Yeltsin Gang” except in the imagination of others ,but there was a semblance of negotiation which was never about any treason since Mr. Yeltsin in conjunction with Mr. Zhironovsky never engaged in such activities but jointly protected The Russian Federation at different difficult moments in its lateral changes, which aided the trajectories of others not restricted to Mr. Putin.
The roles assigned to the Yeltsin/Zhirinovsky road show were very tiring and privately acknowledged, but in context Mr. Yeltsin and others recognised that the roles could be misconstrued as you illustrate, and hence the agreement was in order that Mr. Yeltsin and his family would avoid the subsequent trials and tribulations of Mr. Berezhovsky.
It appears that even if you believe you had/have blat with the FSB or others of “significance”, as was normal practice throughout the 1990’s, foreigners were left to arrive at their own speculations as the works of Stephen F. Cohen and others including you, illustrated by your framing possibly based upon the writings of Mr. Mario Puzo.
Perhaps omerta would have been a better choice?
Meaningless comparison. We’re talking medieval period-style looting, like defeating militarily, moving in with troops, and looting resources. What you were talking about is about the collaboration of Russian oligarchs with American interests, however, even in the 90s Russia was still a great nuclear power, but with a surrendering elite. Today Russia is ruled by patriots, not a chance. If you lose a conventional war close to your own doors and feel your existence threatened you can believe that the sarmats will fly, I’ll tell you, it’s not the 90s my friend, but even if we were, even Yeltsin would react nuclearly if he was faced with the provocations that the West is currently carrying out against Russia. Or did you forget the time that Yeltsin’s own submissive yet leader of a major nuclear power reminded Clinton that Russia is an atomic power full of missiles? There was never total control even in the 90s, even the delivery people at the time were still aware of the dissuasive power they had. Better start pressing for the US to stop threatening a nuclear colossus currently run by calculating patriots. Again, this is not the 90s.
“The US plundered it pretty successfully during the 90s”
Whilst The Russian Federation created “bonds” with conservative future due dates since it may not only be for the moment we live, since The US believed it controlled The Russian Federation “sucessfully during the 90s” and even that the US “won” The Cold War”.
According to MSM and the talking heads Russia is one giant gas station pretending to be a nation. If a neighborhood thug can rob a gas station, why is it so difficult for the greatest military machine known to mankind can’t just simply walk in take over a country?
Simple, because Russia isn’t a gas station pretending to be a nation, and the biggest military machine is far from being the greatest.
Unfortunately, this is quite possibly where it will end.
You’re missing the point. It was to be done through regime change and subsequent raping of Russia through a western- friendly puppet government.
I enjoy your analysis Larry but the fact is those in leadership never once for an instant believed they could defeat Russia. They simply believed they could enrich themselves without ever being held accountable, either by their militaries, or their justice institutions or their financial institutions. It is a business model, and since it been around for about 80 years now it is well understood for what it is. The model will come to an end when there is accountability. History suggests that accountability only happens when the junior leadership tries to save its own ass by throwing the senior leadership under the bus.
This accountability model will play out in Europe. It is what Putin meant when he said that there would be new elites.
We’ll have a friendly disagreement (and I appreciate the way you present your arguemnt). Recall all of the comments from Sullivan, Blinken, Milley and Austin. Constantly disparaging Russia’s military competence and capability. They really believed they only needed to apply some pressure and Russia would collapse.
I’m with you Larry. Thoroughly modern Milley today said it’s too early to tell on the counteroffensive, and it will take time for Ukraine to show results. This guy must be delusional. Maybe he was the one who snuck the coke into the WH. He’s got to be high on something, maybe fumes from the BS he’s spouting. He’s definitely confused, maybe somebody put him in a round room and told him to pee in a corner.
Regarding Millie’s comments, he can’t be that stupid, he just can’t be. It had to be something or someone else behind him, or maybe they have the goods. Or maybe he is just holding out for that nice, cushy semi job on some fancy board, and the next administration can pick up when he and his wise guy friends clear out. He is focused on himself not Ukraine.
Every time I think they can’t be that stupid, they prove me wrong. They are like a bunch of lemmings living in an echo chamber, completely isolated from reality. Reality check on Milley being stupid: Col. MacGregor. How is it that he gets it and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs doesn’t? As Forrest Gump said “stupid is as stupid does,” By that measure, Milley’s a complete flippin’ idiot.
No, I believe they found Hunter’s stash. I read he’s living at the White House, probably paying stacks of Benjamins to the “Big Guy,” for rent
You may be correct, but I think it is actually pretty clear that the US miscalculations came from the idea that they could impose sufficient economic and financial “shock and awe” burdens to cause Russia to give in. I think the US viewed the military component as minor.
Huge miscalculation in hindsight (and probably in foresight by anyone with an IQ above that of an orangutan, but I digress).
How quickly everyone forgets that the main weapon the US/NATO relied on was the economic war which was supposed to destroy Russia’s economy and then the military side would be (they thought) easy.
Putin quickly won the economic war and now it is totally ignored in the West.
The US/NATO faith in their economic war was based on the same self-generated and consumed BS as their military assessment.
He won the economic war and is winning the military war because, as you note, he has spent his two decades in power thoroughly rebuilding both Russia’s economy and military and avoiding being drawn into war before he had them strong and resilient. That is a statesman.
In future centuries, Russians will revere Putin as one of their greatest leaders.
“In future centuries, Russians will revere Putin as one of their greatest leaders.”
Bazza, I think they do so already…..and not just the Russians.
many people believed that Ukraine could “win” this war.
and continue to believe .
It´s so incredible.
Lech Walesa, some months ago, said that russian population should be reduced to 60 Mio. (by splitting up the country)
I thought Walesa was more intelligent.
@ Bert Huber
“I thought Walesa was more intelligent.”
Why would you think that when his Solidarity thing was a fiasco from the beginning but he was not too bright to catch it?
Walesa and Zakharchenko were both heroes, by profession and by thought. Both mining electricians and both natural leaders.
The West applauded Walesa and later applauded Zakharchenko’s assassination by banderite nazis, aka Ukraine’s leadership.
The West is populated by schizophrenics, the only rational conclusion.
I had Google Bard comment on my post before posting it..
Sure, I can understand and comment on what’s going on here.
Busby believes that the leaders of the West never believed they could defeat Russia in a military conflict. They only wanted to enrich themselves by exploiting the war. Busby argues that this is a well-established business model that has been around for about 80 years. He believes that the only way to end this model is for the junior leadership to hold the senior leadership accountable.
Larry Johnson disagrees with Busby. He believes that the leaders of the West did believe they could defeat Russia. He points to the comments made by Sullivan, Blinken, Milley, and Austin, who all disparaged Russia’s military competence and capability. Johnson believes that these leaders thought that they could apply some pressure to Russia and cause it to collapse.
Sincerely believes that both Busby and Johnson are wrong. He believes that the leaders of the West are only interested in defending American primacy. He argues that this has been the policy of the United States since the founding of the republic. Sincerely believes that Busby is closer to the truth than Johnson, but that neither of them is fully correct.
In my opinion, Busby and Johnson are both partially correct. I agree with Busby that the leaders of the West are motivated by greed. However, I also agree with Johnson that they believe they can defeat Russia. I think that the leaders of the West are overconfident in their own abilities and underestimate the strength of Russia. This is a dangerous combination, and it could lead to a major conflict.
I think that Sincerely is correct to point out that the leaders of the West are also motivated by a desire to defend American primacy. However, I don’t think that this is the only motivation. I believe that greed and overconfidence are also major factors.
The war in Ukraine is a complex conflict with no easy answers. I think that it is important to consider all of the different perspectives in order to develop a better understanding of what is going on.
🙂
I’ve come to conclusion the western “leaders” do think they can defeat Russia. They buy their own psyop.
The question I have, is assuming no-nukes, what would happen if the US really ramped up this war? Is there any real chance the West could really defeat Russia? OK, a million plus troops, but there are also 800+ bases to defend. Yadda yadda. And it seems to me that Russia has assumed this scenario.
There needs to be some sort of revolt in the US. That won’t happen until the veil of secrecy falls.
The dynamic duo of clowns in uniforms is just reading the script, in order to get paid. Jack Devine, on the other hand, is a true believer.
Fully agree. They really are that stupid. Critical analytical skills are not a ticket to ínner sanctum. Rather, such skills are a marker for exclusion as such skills indicate a lack of servillity.
Inbred ‘elites’ trained with each other in same schools, having the same appreticeship programs in ‘safe’ (ie part of the grift) corporations, both public and private, coopting promissing members of the ‘untercklassen’ thru fellowhips and programs like P.D. Soros Fdn, Davos, etc. does not produce critcal thinking practitioners.
Control of schools, (see Sumant above for a link to a important expose’), media and popular entertainment, meaningless political and ‘consumer’theatre promoting the illusion of choice; hmmm, wonder how we got to were we are today? A puzzle!
Has the tipping point, the point of no return been reached?
Interesting timez
You are mentioning the junior leadership, and yes they probably believe it because the senior leadership encourages that belief while they enrich themselves from the failure and shield them from accountability while they profit.
There is other junior leadership, however, and they are the ones senior leadership turns to when it is time to pull the fat from the fire. Churchill, De Gaulle, Putin. Sometimes the junior leadership recognises an existential threat and acts like they did with Ceaușescu in Romania. Or like the Americans did with their King. Or as the Romans did with theirs long before them. Look at all the colonels who took power through military coups in the 20th century and then compare them to the number of generals that did so.
The senior leadership has never believed they could defeat Russia. They merely promote dupes to run things into the ground while they line their own pockets. They do so with the confidence that the turmoil they create will not touch them personally. If it threatens to do so then they replace their dupes with competent junior leadership to pull the fat out of the fire. Ocassionally the ones they appoint recognize that the solution is to remove the senior leadership.
It is important to recognize this because this is how Putin sees things. He is a product of the Soviet system, and while the Bolsheviks were shit in creating viable solutions they were masters at identifying problems. Putin understands the West better than it understands itself.
Of course Biden doesn’t rule the US! Not even his house or the White House. Which makes this US Administration one of the most dangerous ever! Even with the plutocracy behind. On top of that demented Biden has several loose ends to be blackmailed like his son. And I agree that the war was only provoked to destabilize Russian society! But do you think they didn’t want to overthrow Putin? That the idea was just to make money from the war? The plan was to try to overthrow Putin like they overthrew the USSR! Economically. To re-appropriate natural resources as in 90s. Another point is that Putin is a Soviet product but not a Bolshevik product. Stalin destroys Bolshevism in Russia shortly after coming to power! Stalin was a nacionalist dictator. And the Putin who came to power was a man very close to neoliberalism and totally different from the current Putin.
Paolo, I disagree. Putin came to power as a deal between patriots, who were desperate to get Russia out of the gutter where the f*cking West had pushed it, and Yeltsin – for him to leave the post and not to be prosecuted for his treachery. Putin has never been “close to neoliberalism”, but he is definately a liberal (in good old fashion sense) in character, and absolutely NOT, according to the western political trash, a “dictator”. Not by any stretch! West, at the time, was given a chance to atone and start behaving itself with the new Russian leadership, but of course, the scorpion cannot change it’s nature… hence here we are.
This confrontation was only a matter of time and over the years the Russian President had prepared his country well for this moment. He knew it was coming and is totally ready to finish them off. They just need to make one wrong move and because he is dealing with shockingly ignorant, greedy and deranged imbecils, that wrong move is not far away. Up till now, they have been relentlessly escalating and continue to do so. The only thing stopping them from a direct attack is Russian nuclear deterent, but for how long?
This man that Russia is blessed with, is an exceptional strategist, not to mention analyst and a very good judge of people. That is why he is a statesman and not just another one of the politicians. Also, a brilliant MANAGER. But what he is not, is a pushover – he will hit back, and HARD! You people need to stop those madmen who infested your lives and usurped power, those that are hell bent on “destroying Russia”, before they take this world to the point of NO RETURN – that is if you want to have a future. Otherwise, brace yourselves.
I believe that they understood they lacked the ability to overthrow Putin irrespective of their wants. I believe they know if they overthrow Putin they get something even worse. I believe the idea was just to make money from the war and to not be prosecuted for it.
It is why America does not win wars. It is not about winning wars, it is about making money. And they rely on the public to rationalise these failures, all the while the make money. There is no draft, so the price is acceptable to the public. For now.
Same thing happened in the 30s. America & Europe bankrolled the Nazis then switched sides. Russia has seen this playbook before.
Katerina,
I already agree with everything that Katerina wrote. And Let’s see I briefly explain the misunderstanding. The term liberal has two distinct connotations. At the social behavior level – which Katerina called old fashion – against absolutism and at the economic level, against any type of regulation. That caused the crash of 1929. And the term became so toxic that it only reappeared as neoliberalism with the Chicago boys. Who are also opposed to any financial regulation and generated the crash of 2008. After Clinton abolished the Glass-Steagall law. Because neoliberals believe that financial markets regulate everything. Adam Smith’s invisible hand, which is a charade and only generates a jungle in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. People and countries and totally de-industrialized the US. It killed industrial capitalism and the financial capitalism of the rentier Oligarchs appeared. Because investment no longer has social concerns and only looks for quick profits on Wall Street. It kills the distribution of wealth, destroys economies and is always the quickest way back to feudalism. Which is the global financial order we still live in today.
And Putin, when he came to power, had a great ambition for a good relationship with the West. Which I don’t criticize and even agree with. As an european I have always defended a common European home with Russia. And at the level of countries, friendship is different from friendship at the level of people. It is enough for countries to respect the Constitutional Order of each country. The problem is that the international financial order at the beginning of the century and still today is a neoliberal order. And a country to maintain economic relations with the West has to embark on that order! Which implies ceding many areas of activity that should never leave the state to the private sector. Like oil and gas in Russia. Even the weapons. Does Katerina remember the Mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin’s friend? Without developing too much, to say that Putin is today making economic reforms related to domestic production that he could have made earlier. And economically I make a positive assessment of Putin. Russia went to the bottom in the 90’s! And when the century changed, it soon began to be sanctioned. But economically, to cite one example, I have been much closer to Glazyev for many years. Which politically I consider too nationalistic. In short, today I consider that Russia is on the right track. Fot the Russia and the World.
Busby,
Thanks! I agree with much of what Busby writes but the plan has been for years to overthrow Putin! In 2022 they held a summit in Prague with flyers where Russia appeared sliced into 15 or 20 nations. With President Navalny. Guaidó III! And the objective is the same as the failed coups in Venezuela. Natural resources. Like in the 90’s!
“They really believed they only needed to apply some pressure ”
The first two are true believers for sure Larry, but Milley and Uncle Tom Austin always seem very uncomfortable when reciting the scripts, almost as if they know it’s bullshit.
True. They don’t shake their pom poms with the same gusto.
If Busby is referring to the war, they may both be right! Of course the US provoked the war to break Russia as Larry says. But the biggest US intelligence failure was economic and not military. Where they also never thought that the war lasts half the time. According to the current lack of ammunition. It was with the economic sanctions and disinformation campaign that the US hoped to break and isolate Russia’s economy within a few weeks. The petrol pump as hinted at many times! And that’s what they promised the EU! That within a month they would make new contracts with the new Russian gas oligarchs. Like in the 90’s!
At the military level there are several myths also due to the biggest disinformation campaign ever in the “free world”! Especially a huge overvaluation of the AFU that in 8 years never defeated the militias in Donbass! And its greatest value is the self-denial and character of the Slavic people who also have nothing to do with NATO training. The war was only planned to cause Russia maximum pain! Kill as many Russians as possible in a short period of time to act along with the pain of economic sanctions in Russian society! But both plans failed brutally!
And if we still notice today, the AFU is a disaster in offensive maneuvers, which has never trained! Because in war you can only execute what you train a lot and for many years! The UA started by complaining that it was invaded on the 24th of February but the AFU never went to wait for the Russian troops at the border as it would have been natural!? Because they were only trained to stay inside the trenches or in the fortresses built by NATO! Killing Russians! Duck shooting! Defenses in depth with dozens of kilometers of trenches that seen from the air almost look like surgical seams in a human body, they are so impressive. At the same time they took advantage of kilometers of Soviet underground as in Soledar. Many people thought that the defenses in depth in Donbass were totally impregnable. And they were for most armies in Earth!
And what a small Russian expeditionary force that entered the UA, mainly to press for negotiations, managed to accomplish on UA territory will enter in the war manuals forever. Still in the economic mode with BTGs, contrary to the current back to the Divisions. When the current Orwellian dystopia we live in is over.
More easily in the south than in the north, where there are also a lot of propaganda. With many fictitious ambushes and kilometers of burned tanks on the road, many Ukrainians. Lots of staging, where the comedian’s producer knows how to work. The only war in which the AU and the West feel free to fight Russia is in the PR war, on any media platform, such as twitter. But propaganda alone does not win wars. As in Kharkov, a city that Russia also never thought to take with 100k men. Regardless of whether or not Russian intelligence failures. When the world finally will recognizes the extraordinary Kiev’s feint, which trapped thousands of AFU troops for the RAF maneuvered more freely in the Donbass and south! 4 oblasts with an expeditionary force!!!!
I still remember an article by Colonel Jaques Baud at the time, which said that the RU continues to prove that it has mastered the operational art of land warfare since WWII! Who Much is said about battles like Stalingrad, where the Red Army effectively managed to repel the great Nazi war machine mainly with numbers but there is very little debate about how the Red Army liberated half of Europe on the Eastern front! And the Nazi war machine defended as well as it attacked, it truly dominated all times of war. Where Russia has truly honed the operational art of land modern combined arms warfare! And here I completely agree with Martyanov, in terms of the science of war, centuries ahead of the US Forces or NATO. Who only know how to fight with monstrous air supremacy and quick ground assault maneuvers after!
And returning to the AFU, if we remember it was also no coincidence that in the famous – and only – reconquest of AFU territory in Kharkov, with the Russian forces withdrawing, there was always a lot of talk about foreign NATO forces! Because the AFU never trained offensive maneuvers. Or the famous quick maneuvers of NATO. Today also without any chance of success in the counter-offensive against the Russian air force! And even in Kharkov, last year, the AFU ended up in a bag of Russian artillery fire! In case you remember! And once again Russian artillery is the Queen of Russian forces and this war! Undoubtedly! The Queen of an earthly defensive doctrine. It was with artillery that Russia totally destroyed the defenses of the AFU and circumvented the tens of thousands of deaths that the US and NATO dreamed of destabilizing Russia and overthrowing Putin! Plan that totally failed. And God save the Queen as Biden! With NATO today experiencing the biggest panic in its entire history since 1949. NATO does not have the slightest idea how to hold back the Russian counterattack in Ukraine! After being defeated when the UA still had a monstrous army in terms of manpower. With trained men instead boys caught in the street today.
I just wanted to add an unlikely point. I used to watch the Judge Napolitano Show here with a “charismatic” figure that everyone makes fun of because of his Russophobia and illusion, Jack Devine. Which to a point is right. The AFU’s best chance of wearing down Russian forces was never to leave the trenches. Because the death rate on the offensive is usually much higher and faster. So why did the AFU go on the offensive it never coached?
I judge for several reasons. Because the war was scheduled to last a shorter amount of time because the US thought that the Russian economy would collapse soon and because of pressure from the allies to continue to support Ukraine financially! And above all because nobody once again believed in the performance of Russian artillery. Because in principle, those who attack have more casualties. But who doesn’t remember the tragic audios of AFU soldiers in Peski as they were decimated? And the same in Bakhmut! It was hard to imagine an assault force like the Wagner that dislodged the AFU of Soledar and Bakmuth with fewer casualties than the AFU! Which reduced the AFU to two hypotheses. Either they died slower in the trenches or faster on the offensive. And the circumstances, such as the Russian economy not falling and on the contrary being more and more robust, forced the AFU to go on the attack. With casualty rates, as we know perhaps unheard of in the history of modern warfare.
“And the same in Bakhmut! It was hard to imagine an assault force like the Wagner that dislodged the AFU of Soledar and Bakmuth with fewer casualties than the AFU!”
The whole Bakhmut story will have to be revised, because it was dominated by unreliable narator with God complex. Russians had worse casualty ratio there, than in any other place. I’m inclined to believe that Prigozhin intentionally pushed more people into their death, in order to make himself a hero (Ukrainian style). He also blamed those deaths on others. Everything he said should be considered a lie by default.
Soledar, by itself, was excellent job. A lot of salo have been salted there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEmFjZBVbI
P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food)
Regardless of Prigozhin Bakmuth either leveled off at once or it was impossible to take without triple or quadruple forces! And I’m talking to the same AFU force. Which changed the force several times. Bakhmut’s take even with 100k Kias if you inflict twice as much on the enemy is out of this world. The fortresses were from the AFU!
You don’t need triple or quadruple forces, if you have quintuple or sextuple firepower advantage. You just need to keep pounding.
Similar thing happened in Marinka (east of Donetsk city). The battle is still going on (and was since the day one), but it did not get much media attention because neither Zelensky nor Prigozhin went there. Marinka and Avdeevka are real fortresses (and Peski, but that one is gone), and more important battles of this war. Bakhmut is more of an idiot/media magnet, which made it a meatgrinder.
Recently Chechens went to Marinka, to see if it can be sped up. They fought there for a short while, probably saw that pushing it hard is not worth the casualties, and moved to some other part of the frontline. If you were to put Prigozhin there, he would surely push people into taking it faster, in order to make himself liberator of Marinka.
It will be interesting to see how the terms of defeat that will eventually need be accepted will be spun as a glorious victory for freedom and democracy. That under the western oligarchic system, that many somehow fail to perceive, though there is neither democracy nor freedom. These are simply spin words to maintain the system of corruption and greed dominated by a rabid billionaire class.
It does intrigue me that no matter how much they have they still want more, our western systems were built on fine sounding principles, however they have been raped and sodomized so thoroughly little remains but the façade spun by their media. We indeed do need a reset, just not the journey into perpetual slavery the billionaire/corporate front group WEF promotes.
Hi Larry,
What you say, above, is complete heresy. You are a heretic(*), must be forced to confess your errors and then be burnt at the stake. That you write clear and objective truths is unimportant.
Dmitry Orlov had a good take on NATO’s recent failure in Vilnius to fully support Ukraine, viz the SMO/war has shown Western weapons to be junk and that, folks, is bad for business. See https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/a59b2ec4-25d0-4e7f-8d54-0e35c5f74462.
Best wishes.
(*) from the Greek hairetikós “able to choose”
All those NATO troops and no ammo. Are troops without ammo really troops? More like sitting ducks. As to the globalist idea of taking resources, it seems Russia has that figured and will end up with whatever is worth having in Ukraine. Meanwhile, re-industrializing of the west is problematic because they can’t get the raw materials they need, even if they print enough money to fiance it all.
Russia has figured out how to make up for fewer men with better arms and production capacity to keep them coming. Looking at the 10 to 1 kill rate, and applying it to relative force strengths, Russia has the advantage. Steel for artillery barrels requires chrome and molybdenum, not available in the US and must be imported. Fancy F-35’s need titanium and other exotic parts, not available and imported. The fancy electronics need critical elements not available either, even if they manage to set up production capacity for the chips, which will take 10 years. Oh, and if Taiwan goes, no chips at all. China on the other hand has production and the raw materials.
NATO, whether they know it or not, is hamstrung by a paucity of a handful of critical items, without which they can’t arm themselves. Rather than panic, they should be shitting themselves hoping Russia doesn’t go ahead and put them out of their misery. It’s like Indian poker. NATO can see Russia has an ace, and Russia can see NATO holding a deuce, and there’s a mirror behind NATO so Russia knows they have the ace. NATO panics seeing the ace, but that’s not even the worst of it, and in that regard, they’re clueless.
tooth to tail ratio of NATO is probably 8:1 (see Larry’s piece on this) given the high maintenance requirements of NATO equipment. Many of these are hidden in contractors; however, its unclear how rapidly these private profiteers can (or would) be able to ramp up if needed, or even show up for a NATO offensive.
That would put NATO (non-US and Turkey) at around 50k total fighting. Ukraine loses that in a month. Reserves would just be meat for the meat grinder.
Additionally, training in NATO is poorer than the active numbers imply, given the lack of functioning armor, ammo, etc. NATO hasn’t held the tank games in many years, and mostly just parades around paved roads in Europe – unlike the SCO tank games (still held).
Good points. Larry, any idea of how many “grunts” there actually are in NATO’s forces? In Canada, for example, 55% are NCO’s and officers, 45% grunts. I suspect NATO is very top-heavy. Lots of bloat everywhere in the MIC.
There aren’t enough privates to go around. I suspect the “practical” tooth-to-tail ratio is much worse.
Good points; the US is looking to incorporate Australia’s resources under a classification as a “domestic” source to US production. Barring outright WWIII, there’s a likely splitting of those countries within the US sphere. Resources could become tight and Europe will miss out completely. So far re-industrializing is talk – capital hasn’t been mobilised and the whole project would take years to decades. I don’t think the degenerate clown show knows how to manage a timetable.
Your figures for U.K. and Germany are paper or ghost soldiers and actually include Navy and Air Force. There are barely 70,000 soldiers and almost no reserves……and few are combat soldiers
As for Khrushchev he was Ukrainian by upbringing if not birth and he never had the transfer to Ukrainian SSR ratified by Politburo so it was not a legal transfer but a gesture. Since Poroschenko revoked treaty with Russia no demarcation of borders of Ukraine exists
The points you make are very clear and evident. The so-called West is a busted flush in collapse and the world watches
US is barely relevant a bit like the High School hoodlum when everyone else has graduated and sees him in the rear-view mirror. Israel and US have had their day
Paul,
You are correct regarding Kruschev’ granting Crimea to Ukraine, no, it wasn’t ratified, beyond that, it was only the administration of Crimea that was given, granted.
Russia never gives away it’s territory.
Krushchev’s son maintained that it was ‘transferred for the purpose of a unified management to build the canal to Crimea’.
The major part of Re-industrialisation most people don’t understand is how it functions in a economic and social system.
Let me explain.
Let’s assume that all the necessary capital is available. Even the machinery is available as are the skills to set up the new industries( see where I’m going each step is progressively difficult) .
Now this nice new spanking Re-industrialised set up is ready. Who is going to work there? Ahh.. See the problem? Where are the skilled people to man the industry? It isn’t Amazon delivery.
Ok! Assume you some how in a period of economic turmoil manage to train the required manpower ( see how impossible it sounds) . What are you going to pay those people? Same wages as being given now? If so why would people work for the new industry? They are in no mood to do charity while they are practically starving.
So assume you get slave labor some how. Once those goods get manufactured who exactly is going to buy them? The same slave labor? At those expensive costs?
Now you understand why starting an industrialization process is a chicken and egg story.
In a hostile world it requires a strong state with complete consensus on the plan. Consensus can be voluntary or forced like in USSR or China. See anything like this happening?
It also requires enduring decades of pain by isolating the country preventing cheap imports and exporting enough to survive to pay for those few essential and unavoidable critical imports. Now those imports should be sourced from competitors willing to tolerate your growth.
Even then you still need to ensure the costly goods are sold in enough numbers to people who are not paid enough ( ha ha try squaring that circle.)
Welcome to the under developed country dilemma. Unless you have la benefactor country willing to help you with money and markets you can’t square the circle. And for that to happen your benefactor should be 20 times bigger or foolish like US was with China. Exceptions like Russia who have the entire resources wealth inside and huge country low population and ability to take severe pain.
This ain’t happening in USA this decade or next.
100% agree, but feel you are too optimistic.
What if the professors who teach the students retired and department closed. Chem Engineering at my local university (top 10) is all biotech – no one does chemical engineering, anymore, those profs retired long ago. The geology department has no one doing petroleum geology – those professors – some friends – are retired or worse. I would go for two generations assuming long-term focused government subsidization, unless one transported a German university department to the US. Then a generation to grow up new students – assuming high schools produce capable STEM graduates – not TikTok Twerk enabled sales clerks.
Rice University still teaches both chemical and energy engineering/petroleum geology disciplines. They should, the schoolhouse is located in the Capital of The U.S. “Oal Bidness.”
Also ownership.
UK Government 1926 facilitated mergers of chemical companies into Brunner Mond to create ICI as Britain’s bellwether industrial giant to reduce dependence on I G Farben
Thatcher let The City and Hanson Trust break it up and sell pieces to foreigners
1926 German banks merged Daimler and Carl Benz into Daimler-Benz
British Governments since 1979 deliberately de-industrialised to break unions and favour FIRE sector
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December.
Either the Ukrainian forces, firing everything the NATO allies can give them — from US cluster munitions to Franco-English Storm Shadow missiles and German Leopard tanks — will gain territory and advantage over the Russians; or else the Kiev regime will be destroyed and must fall back on Lvov while NATO beats its own retreat westward from the Polish and Romanian borders — its military capabilities defeated but its Article Five intact.
“For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December.”
You mean how the much advertised in advance winter, spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer counter offensive never quite materialized?
That December?
That December : US elections incoming.
Kissinger was in China recently. He wanted Xi to talk peace with VVP. The Chinese replied they tried once and were mocked for it by the blob. Then insulted by US economic sanctions more than once …The Chinese polite answer to Kissinger was : “Do your peace yourself”.
The blob can’t : they loose if they do so, so they decided to let Banderistan loose the war instead. So the blob decided to let this war die behind closed doors at Vilnius.
“The press” is already shaping the public opinion with their “morale victory but military defeat” narrative.
Nobody is able to find the morality of creating avoidable endless tombs fields but it don’t matter in lalaland.
Helmer means this Christmas. And has reason.
The dream of the Western elites since 1991 was to steal the raw resources of Russia then financialized and leverage the hell out of it to bail out their ponzi scheme economies. However, the fatal flaw of their plan is that the Western elites are irredeemably corrupt, even if they succeeded in looting Russia, they would never reinvest the wealth back into their own economies, the elites would embezzle every last cent and within 5yrs it would all be gone and they would be right back where they started from, looking at a full scale economic collapse and eyeing a war with China as a next quick fix. thankfully Russia is defeating the Western barbarians but we should be expecting more Western escalations soon. Blackrock investments wont survive if their contracts to pillage the Western regions of Russia are declared null and void and they will lean heavily on their assets in the government to save their skins
Blackrock is already in trouble. ESG is good as dead. See Tom Luongo twitter, yesterday.
Khrushchev did not gift the Crimea to the Ukraine in 1954. he transferred the administration of the peninsula autonomous republic of the RSFSR from that of the RSFSR to that of the UkSSR: both the RSFSR and The Crimea Autonomous Republic were subject republics of the USSR.
When the Ukraine became independent of the USSR, as did at the same time the RSFSR, the “Independent” Ukraine took along with it the territory of the Crimea, which had been ceded to the Russian Empire by the Turkish Sultan in 1783, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire satrap, the Crimea Tatar Khanate, by Prince Grigorii Potemkin. Upon the annexation of the Crimea by Banderastan, the Crimeans, citizens of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, declared their wish no longer to be governed by Kiev. The Crimeans’ wish for self-determination was denied them.
It is causing confusion, this is due to the non-understanding of the forms of administrative subdivisions of the Russian Federation and the USSR by accidentals. Crimea within the USSR was never a full autonomous republic, but rather an autonomous republic within the RFSR. Russia even at the time of the USSR was a federal republic and within it there were several other autonomous republics, but as parts of the RFSR. These republics today remain part of the Russian Federation, they are its constituent units just as they were in Soviet times. If all the autonomous republics of the Russian Federation were alienated as Khrushchev did with Crimea in the Soviet era, Russia would be left without significant and strategic parts of its territory.
So yes, there was an anarchic transfer of territory from Russia to Ukraine by a Ukrainian Soviet (Krushve). Imagine that a Scotsman is the supreme leader of the United Kingdom, then he without the consent of other powers and the English people transfers an important province from England to Scotland. After an eventual dissolution of the United Kingdom, Scotland takes this historically and ethically English territory with it and starts to repress the same English people who live there, what do you say? That the transfer was legitimate because Scotland and England were the same country? By the way, the Ottoman part here does not count, as the question is about the Russian empire, the USSR and the current Russian Federation.
I always feel tempted to add that bit about the Ottoman Sultan ceding the Crimea Khanate to the Russian Empire so as to serve as a historical reminder, because in that very same year when the Crimea Khanate was ceded to the Russian Empire, the Treaty of Paris was signed and the USA became an internationally recognized sovereign state.
Agreed. Crimea’s rights as an autonomous republic have not been widely enough explained in the ‘West’. I think that most Westerners think that Crimea has always been nothing more than a mere territory of Ukraine occupied by ‘ethnic’ Ukrainians. As an autonomous state, Crimea’s own people should have the right to choose whether, and with which country, they wish to federate.
Thank you for that, Moscow Exile. It helps to understand alot.
Adding to that, Crimea was an ‘autonomous republic’, much as were the individual states of Yugoslavia.
As went Slovenia, so went Crimea.
As went Kosovo, so went the Donbass.
No western states’ sleight of hand, word or mind will ever change that. It will only serve to show them up for what they are.
You wrote complete bullshit.
Hello Larry,
Another informative and insightful piece. I wonder if you are familiar with the work of Peter Turchin, an ecologist who turned to studying history, including the development of war. His latest article looks at the casualties of the SMO. You, along with Ray McGovern and Douglas MacGregor, are mentioned in this piece. Here is the website:
https://peterturchin.com/war-in-ukraine-iii-an-interim-assessment/
For whatever reason, the website is not copying for click-to access, but there it is.
This is part of a lengthier discussion of the Osipov Lanchester models,
According to MSM and the talking heads Russia is one giant gas station pretending to be a nation. If a neighborhood thug can rob a gas station, why is it so difficult for the greatest military machine known to mankind can’t just simply walk in take over a country?
Damn Larry… you read my mind. Nobody will say it…but you just did.
“You want to know how Custer felt sir? Well, ask him”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuaSi-H0oGY
You say “Putin put a stop to the oligarchs plan, along with Western partners in the 1990s who gleefully raped Russia for their own enrichment.”
There is a very exhaustively documented history of similar plans by Russian oligarchs to loot Russian resources in partnership with Western oligarchs from the times before the Bolshevik revolution in the book “The Great Conspiracy Against Russia” by Michael Sayers and Albert E Kahn (available at https://resistir.info/livros/the_great_conspiracy.pdf)
So the same old oligarchic dynasties are indulging in the family pastime of inflicting their nasty agenda in Ukraine and Russia (actually the whole world). So when you imply that this was something that was going on in the 90’s, that is not quite correct.
Thanks for that link. Looks to be an interesting read.
If you want a fun read, here’s an in-depth piece I wrote in 2014, all about the Bidens and Burisma in the early days. Lots of fun links to many other players… oligarchs, politicians and the like. For instance, Hunter’s buddy Burisma Board member Devon Archer also sat on a board with past CIA deputy director Stephan Kappes — who ran Diamondback Tactical, which sold weapons to mercenaries. And the ex-president of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, sat on the board too — he whom the CIA paid off with $25 million to “look the other way” while we build a secret rendition prison at Stare Kiejkuty to torture people like Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.
Yeah, the Bidens and the CIA smack dab in the middle of Ukraine’s resources and riches, just waiting to take the Ruskies down far enough to get filthy rich.
https://4and20blackbirds.wordpress.com/2014/09/27/on-delivering-democracy-in-ukraine-and-other-such-nonsense/
There are some ridiculous numbers in that table. Of the NATO total of 8m, tiny Finland (pop ~5.5m) provides almost 1m, and even tinier Estonia (pop ~1.3m) provides 250K. In each case, their numbers are almost entirely “reserves”.
In these cases, the reserve/active ratio is a nonsense. Effective reserves are normally derived through active service. Given how small is the active service numbers for both Finland and Estonia, they cannot produce anything like the (effective) reserves they claim. And you can be sure they have nothing like the equipment and munitions to equip those “reserves”.
Great comment 👍
It was shortly after that, following the death of Stalin in 1953, that Khrushchev gifted Crimea to Ukraine (1954). Was it a reward for Ukrainian assistance in wiping out the CIA-backed OUN uprising?
Khrushchev was the one who freed banderist from prison( most of them fled to Natostan) and he was also the one who took Soviet union of gold standard.
Lastly Khrushchev’s cardboard houses forever destroyed the cityscape of Soviet union
I anticipate Americans migrating to Russia will start picking up momentum here shortly. Americans will set up and establish pockets of “American subcultures” inside Russia bringing their skills and abilities with them.
Recommendation: Locate Americans living in Russia and start networking with them to learn the particulars about migrating to Russia. As you leave immigration at the airport in New York or wherever headed to Moscow, turn around and extend your right hand and middle finger and give a proper epithet.
According to some Russian authorities, like Dmitry Orlov, Russia doesn’t accept migrants (illegals). To become a Russian emigrate you have to speak the language, know Russian history, and be trained to operate Russian technology using Russian skills and abilities.
Makes sense. How many Russian physicists made excellent NYC taxicab drivers?
Over 1.2-million Ukrainians have emigrated to Russia since the Ukrainian/Russo “conflict” began. They were Russian enough already.
I have seen RT docs of an American who went to Russia to farm – I think it will depend what the emigre proposes to do and what skills. but they will not be importing taxi cab drivers, i.e., mass immigration to break the strength of labor and drive wages down, aka US or Merkel’s policies.
” Russia doesn’t accept migrants (illegals)”
To be a migrant does not equate with an illegal status. Definitions matter.
There are other real issues with the number of available military personnel of NATO as shown in the chart. Number one: spread of wokism among the ranks and files of NATO which make the bulk of its manpower morally inept and therefore useless for wars. It makes the best of NATO force being mercenaries of mediocre effectiveness yet too expensive to be deployed in real battles against strong peers. Number two: the very deep structural corruption across NATO militaries especially for the US. For example in the NATO-US the cost of manufacturing armaments is exorbitantly high. But in fact most of the manufacturing costs go to corrupt military-industrial complex culprits including an entire army of very well paid retired armchair generals and military analysts/propagandists like we see nowadays express their baloneys about Ukraine defeat of Russia or militarily strangling of China through AUKUS. Number three: the remaining mercenary combat force of NATO, do not receive support from %95 of the people in the west. No matter how brainwashed westerners have become but humans are not stupid. They know they don’t want to get killed because Mr. Klaus Schwab tells them he/she has an excellent futuristic design full of artificial intelligence and constant monitoring so the elite can get to keep their wealth while everybody else roam around like zombies.
The goal of the West is not a military victory over Russia, but the exhaustion of Russia, which will lead to the dissatisfaction of the people and the installation of a new Yeltsin. A leader like Putin is the West’s worst nightmare and they will do anything to install anyone else. Even xenophobes like Navalny, whose political program is “Muslims in Russia are becoming destitute like rats” are acceptable to the West. Such a racist is a democrat and a fighter for human rights in the eyes of the West. Or Prigozhin, a convicted criminal, who became a “freedom fighter” in 24 hours.
As for Ukraine, if anyone is not clear about what has been happening there since 2014 (and earlier), you should definitely watch the first two sequels of Scott Ritter’s fantastic documentary “Agent Zelensky”. It’s still on YouTube, but the deep state is trying to hide it from more viewers.
Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLeBb6hPUC8
Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq-Jab4DUhA&t=461s
Watch on rumble if YoYoTub blocks.
Scott Ritter very factually outlines the 10 tasks Agent Zelenskyy has accomplished for his handler, British MI6 chief Richard Moore.
The corruption, looting, debts, BlackRock, Monsanto are all reported.
The visit to the Pope is revealing – a Russian asked where were the family then? In London, just in case Zelenskyy ever mentioned the word “peace”. That is agent handling, besides of course delivering the best white powder.
Links to view/downlooad on Rumble:
Pt1 https://rumble.com/v2zs3r0-a-scott-ritter-investigation-agent-zelensky-part-1.html
Pt2 – https://rumble.com/v30nd8w-a-scott-ritter-investigation-agent-zelensky-part-2.html
I don’t think they really cared about UKR and it’s resources, since by printing USD they could obtain all the resources they ever needed with toilet paper.
For them, plundering UKR is a side job, as was plundering of RU. Plundering of RU had another goal (other then earning the money), and that is to destabilize central state and use Chechens and similar to break it apart and finish off the only country able to prevent them from completely dominating the world.
However, once they realized that with Putin’s arrival their plans have failed, they have instantly switched to a more confrontational tactic, and firstly tried with Georgia while also cooking UKR and some other places in the mean time.
Yes absolutely. Here in my country Tehran we have a popular drink called Dough made from yogurt, water, and salt that can be satisfying during hot summer days. Anyway there’s a tale about Mullah Nasredin. One day a passerby sees Mullah Nasredin sitting by the shore of the Caspian Sea, silently and gradually pouring spoon full of yogurt into the sea. He asks Mullah what are you doing here? I am making Dough, Mullah replied. Don’t you think this is futile as the sea is too big for that idea, said the onlooker. Yes I know that but just imagine how great it would be if somehow it does happen, said Mullah Nasredin. Just like our modern day Mulla Nasredins in the form of Biden and his team visualize if they could defeat Russia, China and Iran all at once or in domino their world will become so great.
Yes absolutely. Here in my country Tehran we have a popular drink called Dough made from yogurt, water, and salt that can be satisfying during hot summer days. Anyway there’s a tale about Mullah Nasredin. One day a passerby sees Mullah Nasredin sitting by the shore of the Caspian Sea, silently and gradually pouring spoon full of yogurt into the sea. He asks Mullah what are you doing here? I am making Dough, Mullah replied. Don’t you think this is futile as the sea is too big for that idea, said the onlooker. Yes I know that but just imagine how great it would be if somehow it does happen, said Mullah Nasredin. Just like our modern day Mullah Nasredins in the form of Biden and his team visualize if they could defeat Russia, China and Iran all at once or in domino their world will become so great.
Yes absolutely. Here in my country Tehran we have a popular drink called Dough made from yogurt, water, and salt that can be satisfying during hot summer days. Anyway there’s a tale about Mullah Nasredin. One day a passerby sees Mullah Nasredin sitting by the shore of the Caspian Sea, silently and gradually pouring spoon full of yogurt into the sea. He asks Mullah what are you doing here? I am making Dough, Mullah replied. Don’t you think this is futile as the sea is too big for that idea, said the onlooker. Yes I know that but just imagine how great it would be if somehow it does happen, said Mullah. Just like our modern day Mullah Nasredins in the form of Biden and his team visualize if they could defeat Russia, China and Iran all at once or in domino their world will become so great.
Maskazer, your VPN has hiccuped. A good story and analogy, nonetheless.
… sorry about that. Lately, we have some internet problems.
NRTO is a latest incarnation of centuries old attempts of various coalitions to conquer Russia . Nothing to do with freedom, human rights and democracy. Profit is the motive./
Were Russia to take Odessa, which strikes one as an absolute imperative for obvious reasons, must she not take Izmaila on Danube (access to Black Sea) as well ? Access to Black Sea clearly can no longer be tolerated for the Ukraine, AT ALL – from Russia’s standpoint.
Are there complications involved with taking Izmaila?
Would appreciate assessment from experts reading this Website.
Russians don’t take individual cities, but whole regions. Controlling Danube Delta is something that very few experts mention, because it’s still seems very far away. I’m sure that Hungary and Serbia are eager for that to happen.
“I’m sure that Hungary and Serbia are eager for that to happen.”
The capitals of those two are on the Danube and so are the capitals of Slovakia and Austria. Also all four are landlocked.
Russia’s Unified Deep Water System is interesting and at the last meeting of the Caspian nations, Russia proposed widening and deepening the river/canal system connecting the Azov Sea with the Caspian.
If Russia takes the Odesa Oblast and the mouth of the Danube, it becomes one of the Danube nations and would have certain rights and obligations. It is all very interesting.
Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Serbia would have the option, if Russia wants it, to no longer be landlocked with access to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Black Sea and even the Caspian.
I believe if Russia incorporates Odesa in the RF, Europe could be changed in ways no one there expects.
“I’m sure that Hungary and Serbia are eager for that to happen.”
That was frustrated by NATO bombing the Danube downstream from The Iron Gates in 1999 disguising it as part of The War on Serbia.
The real targets were Austria and the recently reconstructed Germany, who were of the the misguided notion that it was agreed that their reconstitution of their pre-1945 spheres of influence Maas/Rhine to the Danube Delta were agreed as part of overall EU/NATO strategy, within which they were engaged since 1995.
The financing was in emulation of the Bismarck/Bleichroder project in facilitation of the Kaiser Reich, the principals being Dresdner Bank and Raiffeisen Bank, with a relatively minor participation by ABM-AMRO which were a small component of its subsequent demise.
1995 was also a seminal year in the development of OBOR with Chinese/Russian Federation partnership, whose previous potential partners with “The Soviet Union” had been Japan, but these options had been set aside in 1973 due to the intervention of the Politburo, and in 1993 due to the context requiring protection of The Russian Federation util at least 1994 but preferably until the Presidential Election of 1996 in Russia.
1995 was also a seminal year for “The United States of America” in assessing possible strategies in hope of increasing their perceived control over the rest of the world, one of which they believed/believe was facilitated by bombing the Danube downstream from The Iron Gates in 1999.
According to a source, after the bombing a representative of “The United States of America” delivered a message to Raiffeisen Bank in person which was approximately – We won the Cold War not you. In future put your development programmes through the EU’s PHARE programme and you’ll will receive some returns on your investments.”
As to other components I will leave you to speculate.
Complications? Like the bio-labs and whatever they have cooked up? The Russians have been pretty quiet about what all the documentation they found covers. If my memory is right, some of it was about targeting Russians specifically based on the more common genetic makeup. Presumably that would affect a lot more than just Russians. Would Ukraine and their handlers do this, sure; that’s why the biolabs were there in the first place.
Of course, we know that’s not true and shame on RFKjr for bringing up the studies.
I guess Russians are reading this blog. 🙂
Some port infrastructure got struck.
After the Finnish-Russian war Hitler stated that we only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would collapse.
Stalin purging generals in the 1930’s also lead to this false belief.
Wehrmacht General Franz Halder wrote in his dairy that the campaign in Russia is over after two weeks dated July 1941.
Four years and 3.5 million losses later, the hammer and sickle was hoisted over the destroyed Reich Chancellery.
Sevastopol not Stalingrad is where it started to turn in CCCP’s favor in WWII.
If the greatest war machine ever assembled couldn’t beat Ivan the Bear then it is doubtful that the rainbow pronoun brigades and their NATOstan rump vassals will.
They just aren’t up to the task.
Nato is trapped in a dead end street.
they have pushed Ukraine into this war, whitout thinking of all the consequences.
They thought they just had to provide weapons, and then Ukraine would win.
but they don´t want do get in, themselves directly.
the only way to change anything would be, when Nato goes full in, directly.
But this would be Word war 3 , with all consequences for everybody.
Russia is sometimes desribed as a bear.
It is not so difficult to have a bear come out of his cave.
but it is impossilbe to have him go back in.
The chart is cheating on the number of military forces. It counts them twice. Once separately by country and then again as NATO. They really are separate forces.
One of the biggest complaints about Ukrainian military training in different NATO countries, on different gear and different equipment unique to that specific country, was that this would restrict those forces to only using equipment and tactics they were trained in.
Each NATO member country’s equipment, which is not uniform throughout NATO, did indeed translate into confusion on the battlefield during the Ukrainian counter offensive. If confusion reigned for Ukraine military forces why wouldn’t the same fate await NATO in a direct confrontation with Russia?
“What could possibly go wrong?”
First rule of western corporate oligarchs and western corporate capitalists — Separate the people from their country.
“. . . the Western oligarchs who fund the political leaders of the NATO countries were busy cutting deals with Ukrainian oligarchs to get control of those rare earth minerals and energy resources.” And have taken the art of raping, plundering, and pillaging a country to all new levels. You used to have to fight a real war for territory to achieve goals as vaulted as this.
Not to mention (oh, let’s do), that all those loans the West has made to Ukraine have to be paid back. There’s a translation for “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” in every language.
Once again, the West has bought themselves a country.
Or they think they have.
Can’t wait to see the look on Western capitalist oligarch’s faces when Russia takes all of Ukraine and the West has nobody to foreclose upon, and all those debts become uncollectible, and go unpaid.
To echo Dick Cheney, will debt still mean nothing then? I hear the United States is paying the Taliban to get the military gear they left behind back. How many times do you pay for the same thing twice?
Evacuating something like 50-percent of Ukrainian citizens from their own country, and making them refuges, made millions homeless. The Ukrainians remaining face forced conscription to the meat grinder. Add the approximately 300,000 Ukrainians already KIA.
Sounds like the West has been terraforming Ukraine for “Greater” Russia from the very beginning.
The Greeks booted all Ukrainian refugees from their hotels in time for the tourist season. While I compliment the Greeks for having their priorities straight, one has to wonder what happened to all those Ukrainians.
Or not.
Great points!!
“why spend a trillion or more dollars making nuclear weapons, and creating all that additional radioactive pollution, if you can’t use the weapons?”
As a blackmail tool both externally and internally, since fear by others is a principal “support” in sustaining the self-misrepresented coercive social relations – “The United States of America”.
The trillion or more dollars is the “insurance” premium.
Is it worth it?
Presidential decree 355 of The Russian Federation signed into law by Mr. Putin on 2nd June 2020 may illuminate in conjunction with the utilities of “comfort blankets” perceived in cultures of “The United States of America” not excluding “happiness is a warm gun when I hold you in my arms”.
Among the reasons for cluster bombs is to create buffer zones simultaneously with aide-memoires to encourage the others, less expensive and more flexible than building walls like some of ghetto dispositions.
At the end of Scott Ritter’s Agent Zelenskyy Part 2, he makes a remark :
“What to do with Zelenskyy who knows too much and wants too much”.
What indeed!
There is a major effort underway to actually partition the Russian Federation.
National minorities of Russian Federation discuss its deimperialization in Prague
https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/07/25/national-minorities-of-russian-federation-discuss-its-deimperialization-in-prague/
The sheer hypocrisy, and unlimited megalomania is astounding!
Some writers appeal to so-called “free” peoples of Europe to dissolve every nation-state in the name of religion. This is exactly the same tactic of these and the EU Pan-Europe of the Regions.
The modern nation-state is under assault, actually since 1783, and from within – entire agro-industrial economies are being bulldozed – look at the Netherlands and Germany just for example.
It looks like the Empire has decided to end the Nation State completely, and actually target Number 1 is the USA which is on it’s knees. China and Russia are target Number 2, while all of Europe is simply roadkill.
Failed states are not mistakes; failed states are the goal.
Follow the oil (and gas). There was a lot going on in the Middle East just a few short months prior to announcing Ukraine to join NATO, triggering the invasion. Just a few short weeks ago now those prewar events have culminated in a complete restructuring of the oil world in the eastern hemisphere. China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and parts of UAE and certainly Venezuela have all signed on to the mother of all oil and gas deals. Read Simon Watkins articles in oilprice.com. He writes some very detailed articles on what is going on in this new arrangement.
Admiral William Crowe , defence boss under Reagan and Bush Sr, told me, in 2003 that “If we lost the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, we’d see Depression Era economic conditions in the West within 6 months.”. Guess who controls the Persian Gulf now ? Effectively Russia. I ain’t joking and the press buried it deeper than any other story of this century.
Small wonder when Biden made his slip of the tongue, he supplanted “Iraq” for Ukraine. The loss of Iraqi oil fields to Russia probably is on his mind a lot.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Three-New-China-Russia-Iran-and-Iraq-Agreements-Confirm-The-New-Oil-Market-Order.html
The CIA’s very first regime change was against Iran’s Mossadeq who had ordered Britain’s oil outfit there nationalized.
So the US goes off the reservation for British interests.
From there to today’s CIA is a glide path to leaking like a sieve.
And Russia is raising the tempo in Syria against the Empire of lies……..
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/pentagon-says-significant-escalation-russian-jets-endangering-lives-us-pilots-over-syria
BTW, a guarantor for Russia is for Mr Kinzhal to leave his business card on the flight deck of an Empire’s carrier.
“Was it a reward for Ukrainian assistance in wiping out the CIA-backed OUN uprising?”
Partly.
The primary reason was to enhance the re-emerging restructured Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic and integrate it back into “The Soviet Union” after the death of Mr. Stalin, in hope of starting to remove some of the hatred built up during the 1930’s in Ukraine which in part encouraged/facilitated the collaboration of some Belarussians and even more Ukrainians with the Third Reich in securing the territories “conquered” in the western zones of “The Soviet Union” including independent complicity in ethnic cleansings, but like the CIA after them The Third Reich fucked it up courtesy of General Plan Ost.
“The joint CIA/MI-6 effort to destabilize the Soviet Union, which started in 1947 with the provision of funds, weapons and training to Stefan Bandera’s organization, was crushed by the Soviets by 1952.”
You are mistaken – it was never smashed but some of the co-ordinators acting for and on behalf of “The Soviet Union”, primarily based in Riga were initially of that opinion.
To some degree it was tactically withdrawn for potential future and current usage elsewhere including but not restricted to Europe and “Latin America”, hence the perceived “need” to transfer Crimea, and some of the present purposes of the Special Military Operation.
The “martyrdom” of Mr. Bandera in 1959 was a co-operation which included but was not limited to factions within “Ukrainian nationalists”, since Mr. Bandera had lost the confidence of and utility to, others by not becoming a “Quiet Ukrainian”.
“WHY NATO WAS OBSESSED WITH UKRAINE AND IS NOW IN A PANIC”.
“War” has never been restricted to things that go bang.
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57689.htm
According to this US analyst, who is new for me, and seems so far to have been the most accurate in his prospects, and, as I advanced in my last “analisis” in this blog, NATO first, and then the EU will fall as a result of the crushing defeat in Ukraine.
https://t.me/elespiadeltelon/2394
What calls me attention are the parts that most concern me, as a EU citizen…..
“Germany is on a trajectory of becoming a failed state, and as it goes, so will go the incoherent iron and clay mixture of the so-called European Union.”(…)
(…)Either way, the decline of the empire will be radically accelerated; NATO will almost immediately cease to function as a credible military/political alliance; the EU will dissolve as a monetary/political “union”; the demise of the global dollar system will rapidly gain momentum”.
It is not that the EU´s survival in its current form ( a bunch of anglosaxon foreign agets at the helm and europarliamentaries sold to the AngloSaxon multinationals´lobbyists….) is one of my interests, but, as the sudden ( since the prospect is of around 2-5 years, depending o ntrayectories and velocities…) dinamitation of the economic and politic alliance could wipe out my savings in a not so convenient moment, I am thibking of whom is the most beneffited here.
After all, the estrategic purposes for the US in that RAND Corp. paper written before the provocation started have been fullfilled along the two last financial crisis created ad highly likely for this purpose. controbuting to the last one the “Covid pandemic” and then the Ukraine war.
https://t.me/rocknrollgeopolitics/7611
But, which country had to pay a huge fine for getting out of the EU and found its economy in tatters, being as it is the very core of the casino financail capitalism?
Right, the same which is advertising for recruiting foreign agents in Russia and has invested so much in the Ukraine, has gone to great fatigues to waste any intent of negotiations, has highly likely intervened directly in the terrorist attacks against vital European infrastructure, and would beneffit a lot by ruining the EU as an economic competitor while in such scenario trying to rebuilt an advanced to the East ( as the economic growth is there….) mini-empire with the willing participation of the Eastern hyenas of Poland and The Baltics…
As it has happened in the past, along the Spanish Civil Waer and the two geat Europan wars, Perfidious Albion has a great part in the third European debacle for which I expect, that although ruined, at least I can witness a fair trial on.
If Germany falls, as this author evisions, I guess the people of Germany, if they have blood in their veins, should hang the current foreign agents in charge…by the feet…head down……
I read this past day that Annalena 360º turn Baerbock spends around 70000 euro in estheticists only….Then she +, being as she claims “a green” has nothing to say about the recent association by Monsanto and Bayer for monopolizing the fertilizers and agrobusiness in Europe…
Recall here that the so called “Toxic Syndrome” which affected some dozen thousands of Spanish people in the 80s, was highly likely due to a tomato fertilizer produced by a German giant which in certain doses and time of exposition turns into bioweapon…
This people are decide to terminate us one way or the other with their “vaccines” or through food….I have no doubt….
Also, and as a final note, I fear that the current “offensive” against national agriculture i ncertain European countries ( not in France….) is to bebeffit this new American-German agro-consorcio…
The thing is that we lose any soverignty, political, economic, energetic, sanitary, alimentary….
Not bioweapon but chemical weapon…to be precise…..the cauee of the “Toxic Syndrome”.
If anyone is interested I remite to Andreas Faber-Kaiser work on the issue.
According to testimonies by military doctors, a cause was found and then a cure, then it was decided ( wherever, as it seems that the medical expedientes were brought to the US at certain moment and with the courrier came the order of closing any investigation…) to let the toxic procceed so that “someone”could be able to test the weapon…..Many got disabled, as it is happening now with the “vaccines”….
( Von der Leyen and Breton are two fo the many I would wish to see hung…by the feet…. for this genocide….before I leave this world….)
” I am thibking of whom is the most beneffited here.”
A useful substitute for “thinking”, which some analysts and strategists refer to as “bubbling” akin to a possible resort by an infant after feeding and burping.
An iteration of “Cui bono” for spectators, even when most is used as a modifier, not for analysts, whom after validation by/in co-operation with strategists in minimising GIGO ponder – how phenomena can serve our purpose?
“I advanced in my last “analisis” in this blog”
You and many others including but not limited to “The Saker” and “this US analyst” whom you cite as “seems so far to have been the most accurate in his prospects”, are not analysts since they lacked/lack facility not restricted to analytical methods, including by being immersed in the past facilitated by the practice of “Cui bono ?” in an environment where lateral change is a constant whose variables include, but are not limited to trajectories and velocities.
“I advanced in my last “analisis” in this blog, NATO first”
Although encouraged within some social environments to be held as appropriate behaviour in all cases as one vector of control – the concept of “emotional wisdom” refers, in many contexts resort to emotionalism is one of the greatest weakness that you, “BLAME-E” and many others display through this “blog”, including those who believe they are analysts and may have been offered such designation by amateur intelligence agencies such as “The C.I.A.” since those of an emotional disposition tend to be easier to convince to proselytise “the party line”, thereby becoming complicit in the transcendence of “The C.I.A.”
You may choose to interpret/speculate that my responses are based on emotionalism instead of understanding that since lateral change is a constant, context is a variable, and hence framing and register change with context.
Enjoy your journey.
Yeah, I am emotional in this one, although not so much as the first times we met over there at The Saker or Mr. Flores´blog.
You know, it is hard to not be emotional when you are watching people dying and getting seriously sick becuse of the somehow mandatory vaccines through three years and when you see your country sold to the best postor and all what you have achieved by working hard in danger of being wiped out by the financial mafia of Davos and their puppets at the EU and NATO.
Obviously, as long as we age we get increasingly less emotional, and I have always suppossed you to be quite older than me, if not because of your knowledge on past eras of the USSR, Europe and the world….
Also, being part of an elite with “facility and blat”, you highly likely do not have your savings at danger, as I do….
Could you give some financial advice?
Enjoy your journey.
P.S: Putin, in his last adreess to the RFSC. as of today, remarked some of the points/conclusions made by the above “analyst”…Could it be to misslead the opponents?
I do not know what does he mean by the territories gifted by Stalin to Poland…
What to make of the visit by Kissinger to China and the warm welcome he has had there?
RE : Ghost of Mozgovoy says
21 July 2023 at 12:19
“Could you give some financial advice?”
Don’t depend on money – depend on people.
Don’t depend on money- depend on co-operative collectives of which you are a part. (That was partly why de facto there was limited disasters in the former “Soviet Union” from say 1982 onwards, unperceived by believers in GOSPLAN, “Gross Domestic Product” and matters de jure, unacquainted with “Russia” culture and Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg).
Remember that criticism could be co-operation not necessarily an attack.
Remember that over-dependence upon and desire of things is one of the greatest weaknesses. (Good you cut down on your cake intake)
Understand and practice the real definition of “blat” not the attempted “American” one of zero sum game (The ideological base of “Capitalism”)
All part of what’s it all about Alfie, is it just for the reason we live, and why it is not just for the moment we live?
Part of why the ongoing transcendence of coercive social relations self-misrepresented as “The United States of America” by The Russian Federation, and its facilitation through chosen trajectories and modulated velocities from 1969 onwards, when “The United States of America” and others believed it was a hegemon on the basis of “We the people hold these truths to be self-evident”.
Most importantly like Mr. Gogol, Mr. Bulgakov, and Mr. Dean Freidman remember:
“We should thank our lucky stars
That we’re not as smart as we like to think we are”
Enjoy the comedy; learn to laugh but not too often, since The Great Dictator led to lethal underestimations through resort to “emotionalism”.
“I do not know what does he mean by the territories gifted by Stalin to Poland…”
Mr. Putin never has one meaning since he knows that words are catalysts of connotation and that connotations will differ.
In respect of the historic memories in Poland some connotations probably catalysed were:
Forget this A.K. shit still spewed out by your government in attempts of keeping them in power.
The Soviet Union liberated you in 1945 whilst “The United States of America” from 1919 onwards used you as food sources and human shields.
“I do not know what does he mean by the territories gifted by Stalin to Poland…”
Primarily the former East Prussia with the exception of present day Kaliningrad and German Silesia, probably with a little “joke” in the tail since Poland and Lithuania financed by others in times of “perceived trouble” early 1993, presented an offer to The Russian Federation to purchase Kalinigradsky Oblast using the sale of Alaska as a negotiating precedent.
“I have always suppossed you to be quite older than me, if not because of your knowledge on past eras of the USSR, Europe and the world….”
That is wise and a step in transcending the fear driven “youth culture/infantilism” of “The United States of America” facilitating its transcendence from the present proper designation of “The Alienated States of America”.
RE : Ghost of Mozgovoy says
21 July 2023 at 12:19
“Could you give some financial advice?”
Don’t depend on money – depend on people.
Don’t depend on money- depend on co-operative collectives of which you are a part. (That was partly why de facto there was limited disasters in the former “Soviet Union” from say 1982 onwards, unperceived by believers in GOSPLAN, “Gross Domestic Product” and matters de jure, unacquainted with “Russia” culture and Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg).
Remember that criticism could be co-operation not necessarily an attack.
Remember that over-dependence upon and desire of things is one of the greatest weaknesses. (Good you cut down on your cake intake)
Understand and practice the real definition of “blat” not the attempted “American” one of zero sum game (The ideological base of “Capitalism”)
All part of what’s it all about Alfie, is it just for the reason we live, and why it is not just for the moment we live?
Part of why the ongoing transcendence of coercive social relations self-misrepresented as “The United States of America” by The Russian Federation, and its facilitation through chosen trajectories and modulated velocities from 1969 onwards, when “The United States of America” and others believed it was a hegemon on the basis of “We the people hold these truths to be self-evident”.
Most importantly like Mr. Gogol, Mr. Bulgakov, and Mr. Dean Freidman remember:
“We should thank our lucky stars
That we’re not as smart as we like to think we are”
Enjoy the comedy; learn to laugh but not too often, since The Great Dictator led to lethal underestimations through resort to “emotionalism”.
“I do not know what does he mean by the territories gifted by Stalin to Poland…”
Mr. Putin never has one meaning since he knows that words are catalysts of connotation and that connotations will differ.
In respect of the historic memories in Poland some connotations probably catalysed were:
Forget this A.K. shit still spewed out by your government in attempts of keeping them in power.
The Soviet Union liberated you in 1945 whilst “The United States of America” from 1919 onwards used you as food sources and human shields.
“I do not know what does he mean by the territories gifted by Stalin to Poland…”
Primarily the former East Prussia with the exception of present day Kaliningrad and German Silesia, probably with a little “joke” in the tail since Poland and Lithuania financed by others in times of “perceived trouble” early 1993, presented an offer to The Russian Federation to purchase Kalinigradsky Oblast using the sale of Alaska as a negotiating precedent.
“I have always suppossed you to be quite older than me, if not because of your knowledge on past eras of the USSR, Europe and the world….”
That is wise and a step in transcending the fear driven “youth culture/infantilism” of “The United States of America” facilitating its transcendence from the present proper designation of “The Alienated States of America”.
RE: AnotherMirror says
21 July 2023 at 14:19
“Most importantly like Mr. Gogol, Mr. Bulgakov, and Mr. Dean Freidman remember:
“We should thank our lucky stars
That we’re not as smart as we like to think we are”
Enjoy the comedy; learn to laugh but not too often, since The Great Dictator led to lethal underestimations through resort to “emotionalism”.
It is “freely” available even in this blog, the one about Mr. Nikita Sergeivich Krushchev and his part-time job as a builder of appartment buildings with thin walls throughout “The Soviet Union”, which may be an interpretation of a production of Mr. William Taubman performed in flashing lights due to deficits of brown coal at the “power station”.
Mr. Stephen F. Cohen is dead now and may not add additional punchlines to routines, and Mr. John Mearsheimer’s contributions may be descending, other nonsense includes but is not limited to:
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/07/21/from-stalinism-to-the-most-avoidable-war-in-history/
Remember the line that Mr. Shakespeare may have written if he had thought of it :
“All the world is a stage”…upon which most of the performances are comedies.
As you may have recognised the population of MirrorGazers is increasing creating a more stable market for mirrors which facilitates opportunities of re-directing foci not only to festering A.K. shit.
Enjoy your journey.
Maybe the west felt envy on the old
mighty Soviet Union, who only most working class communists appreciated, as even the 3rld world.
But the anti-Soviets wanted an own version of the SSSR,but anti-Soviet,
and here Ukraine offered her serv-ices, but to take a leap from bott-om to the top, is dangerous, but desperate people…
There was never a political civilian structure in Ukraine, just oligarcs as
Timoshenka, but Janukovitj was elected quite correct, maybe a beginning for to sustain a demo-cratic tradition.
Instead the Maidan, disaster, and all of those “commendante”, guys, “freicorpsleaders” as in Kosovo, fistfighting in the parlament, no one can trust, a big mistake of the EU, that’s the worst disappoint-ment, a political crash, but EU, the main suspect, they couldn’t protect us, nor Ukraine, from war. A shooting war, and a high inflation, billions to defense, an energy crisis,
and high interest rates, people fear can they keep their houses… and then the climate crisis…
I’m beginning to think the Plan that Backfired was this :
Western financial elites really, seriously, thought sanctions would bring down the Kremlin by April 2022 at the latest. They thought they had a handle, which they judged they had in the RCB bank, which EAEU Glazyev very strongly warned about well before the SMO. The sanctions did some damage, but the RF was prepared.
This means the real purpose of the huge Ukrainian military was to roll to Moscow, Donbass being merely in the way, as Kremlin political chaos was expected, “to restore order”. The UN would certainly have made the UAF a “Peacekeeping Mission”.
This puts Prigozhin’s (The assistant Cook) theatrics in perspective – that was supposed to go live well before 2023.
This Plan was kept on the boil for 8 years with Minsk as cover – it turned out to be overcooked. As they say too many chef’s spoil the broth. No field cantine cook would dare serve this swill now to a decimated UAF. It seems UAF Gen. Zaluzhny smelt something foul in the cantine.
In other words when Merkel and Hollande openly admitted Minsk (UN Resolution 2202) was a time holder, they actually thought they would have had Moscow under their control by then.
Instead what have they gotten – sorry, handed to their successor administrations – a real stinking molasses.
“Was it a reward for Ukrainian assistance in wiping out the CIA-backed OUN uprising?”
Possibly, but I would not discount a wish to balance Ukraine SSR etnicities, at least from an administrative viewpoint… If it was that, it clearly blew out badly; but to be honest, it was difficult to foresee it in 1954
It’s only fair to mention the Soviets had long been trying to undermine countries in Europe and had grab even more Eastern European countries than the traitors Churchill and FDR gave him.
Those damn commies!
Indeed!
Who needs natural resources when you can engage in wholesale theft from Baby Huey!
https://www.rt.com/russia/579897-europes-black-hole-ukraine/
I guess Putin can go ahead and dismantle Wagner. He got the go ahead from George Clooney. The arrogance of these pretenders!
https://www.rt.com/news/579953-clooney-prendergast-wagner-group/
The sources for the claim that Ukraine “ranks fourth globally in terms of total assessed value of natural resources, according to the report” are fantasy. You cited a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) blog article. CBC has no experience in mineral evaluation. The “report” was not a report, but an article in foreignpolicy.com (https://archive.is/iu9Zp) which did NOT make the claimed statement (which is implausible). We previously saw fantastic claims about supposed mineral resources in Afghanistan promoted by U.S. intelligence agencies in order to sucker in political support from people concerned about resources for what was an ideological project. The same is true of Ukraine. Yes, eastern Ukraine has useful natural gas and coal resources, but I haven’t seen any data from mineral industry supporting the claim that its resources are particular unique, let alone “fourth” in the world. The resources in eastern Ukraine are only important to one group: the Ukro nationalists in western Ukraine who want title to those resources together with ethnic cleansing of the longstanding ethnic Russians who live in eastern Ukraine.
Russian RT features an article about the ‘Drok’ (dragon), a mobile self-propelled mortar.
https://russian.rt.com/russia/article/1176047-drok-minomet-taifun
“Highly mobile artillery weapons”: the Russian Armed Forces began to receive the latest Drok mortars
The Russian army received the first experimental batch of new 2S41 Drok mobile mortars. It is reported by Rostec. The self-propelled gun is an 82-mm combat module mounted on the chassis of the Typhoon-VDV armored car. Its advantages include mobility, rate of fire, a high level of automation and crew security. According to experts, “Drok” fully meets the requirements of modern combat.
The Russian Armed Forces received the first experimental batch of new 2S41 Drok self-propelled mortars, which are not inferior in terms of the totality of characteristics to their foreign counterparts. This was reported on the Rostec website.
“One of the main advantages of the Drok is its high rate of fire: more than ten rounds per minute, while the ammunition load holds more than 40 minutes. In addition, the mortar has good anti-bullet and anti-mine protection and has maneuverability that allows you to quickly get away from enemy fire, ”the press service of the state corporation quotes the industrial director of the arms, ammunition and special chemistry cluster of Rostec Bekhan Ozdoev.
According to the top manager, Drok is designed to destroy manpower and lightly armored enemy vehicles. The mortar is also capable of “blinding” enemy observation posts, creating smoke screens and illuminating territories.
Mobility and rate of fire
“Drok” is an 82-mm mortar module based on the Typhoon-VDV armored car with a 4 × 4 wheel formula. The product was created by the Burevestnik Central Research Institute (Nizhny Novgorod) for the needs of artillery units of the airborne troops and is part of the “flower” artillery family, which includes self-propelled guns “Magnolia” and “Phlox”.
Drok is equipped with mechanized guidance drives, a modern fire control system and digital equipment that provides the crew with the ability to work independently and secure information interaction with control vehicles.
“The effective firing range of the 2S41 is more than 1.5 times higher than that of the standard 2B14 Tray mortars. In addition, the Drok is equipped with a remote-controlled weapon station with a circular rotation machine gun and an optoelectronic sight, as well as an additional 2B24 wearable mortar, which can be used on foot outside the vehicle, ”the Rostec website notes.
According to Rosoboronexport (part of Rostec), the Drok gun is capable of firing not only along a hinged trajectory, but also with direct fire. All operations in preparation for firing are carried out inside the fighting compartment, and many of them are automated. The self-propelled gun can hit the enemy with various types of ammunition, including new mines with increased power and range.
“Six smoke grenades are installed on the roof of the car on both sides to protect against laser missiles,” the Rosoboronexport website says.
The maximum firing range of the Drok is 6 km, the chassis load capacity is 2.5 tons, the ammunition load is up to 64 minutes, the crew is four people.
Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that the Drok would receive unique characteristics in terms of firepower and firing range. Thus, the self-propelled gun will significantly increase the firepower of the airborne assault units of the Airborne Forces.
“The new highly mobile airborne artillery weapon will fire conventional and new — with increased firing range and power — mines from the fighting compartment of the vehicle, which provides for the possibility of carrying out a mortar and firing from the ground,” the military department website says.
According to experts interviewed by RT, the specialists of the Burevestnik Central Research Institute chose a successful wheeled platform to accommodate an 82-mm mortar and equipment to ensure its efficient operation.
The Typhoon-VDV has a cruising range of at least 800 km, a maximum speed of 100 km/h, and an engine power of 350 hp. With. The machine has a high cross-country ability. It is able to overcome the ascent or descent at an angle of at least 30 degrees, a moat about 0.5 m wide and force water barriers at least 1.5 m deep.
The protection of the crew of the Typhoon-Airborne Forces was also performed at a decent level. The armored car is equipped with a load-bearing armored hull, which is characterized by increased rigidity and strength. He is able to save the crew from being hit by small arms, shell fragments, as well as from explosive devices. To protect against an explosion with a power of up to 8 kg in TNT equivalent, Typhoon-VDV received energy-absorbing seats and a V-shaped bottom.
“Wandering Mortar”
As military expert Viktor Litovkin noted in an interview with RT, based on the declared characteristics, it is appropriate to conclude that Drok fully complies with the requirements of a modern theater of operations (TVD), including automation of control processes, quick bringing to combat readiness and high mobility.
“Based on the information that we have, we can conclude that the Drok should become an effective weapon in its class. It is highly mobile, can quickly move from one point to another, which is very important, especially in the context of counter-battery combat. In addition, Drok is equipped with navigation aids, topographic location and a communication system that allows you to receive external target designation, ”said Litovkin.
As Dmitry Kornev, founder of the Military Russia portal, explained in a RT commentary, the Russian army needs a large number of self-propelled automated mortars like the Drok.
“Numerous footage from the area of the special operation shows various variations of installing mortars on transport platforms. Often these works are carried out in an artisanal way, that is, the guns are attached either by the crew itself or by the repair unit. The so-called nomadic mortars are being created, which allow the mortars to go to the firing line and leave it as quickly as possible, ”Kornev noted.
So, at the end of May, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation published footage of the use of an automatic 82-mm mortar 2B9 “Vasilek” , mounted on the platform of a light army tractor MT-LB. This decision allowed the Russian military to significantly increase the mobility and stealth of the gun.
“We decided to put a mortar on the MT-LB tractor, because it increases mobility and reduces reaction time. The general concept of “roaming mortars” is widespread, and we did not go far from this topic … We get a command, we get a target – we advance to a firing position, ”the press service of the military department quotes a senior gunner with the call sign Tokha.
Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation demonstrated footage of the combat use of the 120-mm Sani mortar on military equipment and shelters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The gun and all shooting devices were installed in the back of a truck.
“Mobile groups of artillerymen mounted the gun on the base of a highly passable truck to reduce the time of folding and inflicting fire damage … Upon completion of aimed firing, the mortar was rolled up within a minute. The calculation changed its position and started firing from a new firing point, ”the military department said.
According to Kornev, the NWO has clearly demonstrated the importance of increasing the mobility of mortars, as well as their inclusion in the contour of a single information space, which will reduce the time spent in the range of UAVs and enemy artillery. The implementation of such solutions will significantly increase the survivability and combat effectiveness of 82- and 120-mm gun crews.
“Our industry produces mortars that are reliable and accurate with competent adjustment of fire. However, the classic use of these weapons with manual unloading from a car and assembly on the ground carries quite serious risks for calculation due to the abundance of the same UAVs in the sky, ”Kornev emphasized.
According to the expert, the army needs mortars on armored mobile platforms with equipment for data exchange and processing. However, such complexes can be produced in high-quality execution only by the industry.
A similar opinion is shared by Litovkin. Moreover, according to the expert, the technical solutions used in the Drok can be adapted for 120-mm mortars.
The mass production of self-propelled mortars will require quite serious financial costs and industry efforts, but all these measures will be fully justified, the expert is convinced.
Larry,
you are under-selling your country’s Space Program. You have to take into account all of the different private entities, not just NASA. As an example, Elon Musk’s space program is likely the world’s most active one and it is not anyone else’s but USA’s. I suspect they get a lot of government funding or how else are they able to push on with their giant Mars rocket. I would not think that they make a huge amount of money from launching their space based internet satellites and so that would not on its own pay for all the new development being done.
Four years later, he was injured on a reporter’s assignment in the Georgia war. He was on the road professionally on many front lines. In Libya, he was even taken hostage. In Syria, he reported from the toughest fronts, including Ukraine.
Now, in an interview with Scott Ritter, ex-US Marine and former UN weapons inspector, he gave his opinion on Tuesday about the renewed Ukrainian attack on the Crimean bridge. Russia had then launched retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian facilities where the drone attacks on Russia were prepared.
Kots is not satisfied with this and would like to see a Russian offensive rather than defensive. As for the war going forward, he does not believe it will end quickly – unlike Scott Ritter. Why and how he comes to his conclusions and demands, you can see in the video.
https://test.rtde.tech/kurzclips/video/175664-russischer-kriegsreporter-ohne-russische-offensive/
Putin is currently in a defensive crisis.
His failure to attend the BRICS summit is a major embarrassment for him.
South Africa is not sovereign.
Putin is currently in a defensive crisis. His failure to attend the BRICS summit is a major embarrassment for him. South Africa is not sovereign. Just one kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would collapse.
I often see comments from people that West has de-industrialised and all is lost. I just don’t see that once manufacturing has been lost that it cannot be regained. For start, there is still some heavy industry in place and situation can be improved by having a long term government policy to support local manufacturing. It will require that taxation and trade policies are adjusted to allow for a level of protection of domestic manufacturing activity. After all, we are in situation that we have simply because of policies of free trade that removed all import duties with the notional aim of improving efficiency and lower prices by shifting manufacturing to low labor cost countries. Lower prices are all well and good but if most of one’s population is unemployed, who has the money to buy those lower cost imported products? I am not advocating for full on trade barriers but some more reasonable level of import duties would help balance trade and domestic economic activity.
The heart of the problem lies in those 2 words “long term.” Re-industrializing will take decades, and a lot of money. We don’t have the time, and only printed and borrowed money. It’s like saying all a heroin addict has to do is quit, and he’ll be fine. The underlying systemic issues that got us to this point are all still in place, and our main enemy is time due to the inertia of this mess we have.
It’s a Catch-22: we’re not self-sufficient and need resources that we don’t have, and need to import, in order to work our way out of the mess. It’s going to be a long, tough process with a significant hit to standard of living, quality of life, and life expectancy. We have to work this out the hard way. It’s a “worse before better” solution, and that’s why we keep kicking it down the road. Now we’re at a dead end.
Money will come from people that want to invest. It does not need to be government money but it does require government to say “OK, we need to take a pause on our commitments to WTO else we will have an existential crisis”. A dollar from government as encouragement to invest will attract 100 dollars of private money. It may take time but there is no alternative. It will still take less time than it did first time around. If nothing else, it needs appropriate government policy.
Adding, if I may to Moscow Exile’s excellent post above…
In the chaotic days as the USSR collapsed…
On Jan 20, 1991, Crimeans were asked by referendum as follows:
“Are you in favour of the restoration of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Crimea as a citizen of the Soviet Union and as a member of the Union Treaty?”
93.6% voted “Yes”, and the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR ratified the referendum on Feb 12, 1991. Thus, Crimea’ legal status became equal to any other SSR under Moscow’s rule.
On Mar 17, 1991 Moscow held a pan-USSR referendum on the preservation of the SU. Ukraine SSR voted 75% to remain as part of the USSR (most of the other SSRs voted similarly). So, as of Mar 17, 1991, Crimea and Ukraine were separate SSRs enjoying equal legal status within the USSR.
As the chaos grew after the coup d’etat in Moscow, Ukraine declared itself an independent state on Sept 4, 1991. In other words, Crimea was not a part of Ukraine at the time Ukraine declared itself an independent state, and Ukraine had no legal claim on it.
6 mos later, on Feb 26, 1992, the Crimean Parliament declared the “Republic of Crimea” as an independent state, and the newly independent Ukrainian Rada recognized its neighbour as a sovereign state days later. On May 5, 1992, the Republic of Crimea adopted its 1st constitution as a sovereign state.
It had a short life. Three years later, on Mar 17, 1995 Kiev sent troops into Crimea and removed and exiled its president, Yuri Mechkov. Its troops took over the government buildings and annexed the Crimean Republic, ending its independence. Despite the violent street protests that ensued, UA’s troops prevailed as the Russian military’s Crimean contingent stayed in its barracks.
Crimea was ruled by decree from Kiev until Oct 1995 when its parliament drew up a new Crimean constitution, defining its limited level of autonomy within Ukraine. Much debate and negotiation followed, but the Crimean parliament ratified the resulting constitution on Oct 21 1998 and the Ukrainian Rada ratified it 2 mos later, on Dec 23, 1998.
These events, and the concerns about Ukraine’s Russian-speaking areas, led up to the Friendship Treaty of May 31, 1997 between Russia & Ukraine, in which Ukraine’s borders were guaranteed in exchange for a guarantee of “the protection of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious origin of the national minorities” and long term Russian leases on its naval facilities in Crimea.
Parenthetically, throughout the above twists ‘n turns Simferopol remained an extra-territorial Russian city just as Kaliningrad had.
They were never concerned about defeating Russia militarily. They always knew there was no military defeat with a nuclear power.
The idea was “sanctions from Hell”, global world in lockstep, following them, economic destruction & internal disintegration. That’s still their “hopium” for why they continue. “Ok… so maybe 2022 & 2023 may have been an erroneous goal, but surely by the end of 2023-2024 Russia will implode and then we gottem for sure!! More weapons now!!”…
Facts & figures never mattered prior to SMO and still doesn’t.
They’re in total shock they haven’t “isolated” Russia internationally, after all, who dares to go against “the rules based order”??
So, double down and threaten EVERYONE!
The article by Sussman that you linked to is one of the best I’ve read about the US-CIA-Nazi collaboration since WW2. I’m now wondering if the US support for Israel all these years was meant as a cover for its pro-Nazi sympathies. Biden is blowing the lid off that cover with his open hostility towards Israel and his open support of Ukrainian Nazis.
Nice concise article. I bookmarked it because when one of my Ukraine flag wearing cousins, friends or neighbors brings up the subject of the war, it gets nowhere. This is an excellent “primer” article for the sheeple that don’t seek truth but just feed off whatever random meme a friend sent on Facebook. In the news consuming community you have truth seekers, or just “feeders” who believe anything and never leave Facebook. They even install handles on the backs of their cellphones, you know the type, largely female. I like depth, but short concise pieces like this is what the news market needs to be flooded with to counteract all the propaganda.
The Yalta summit 1945, was not a treason, of Churchill and FDR, an ugly myth, it was about who had committed most forces to crush Germany, that was Stalin and the Red army. The west promised a 2nd front from 1942,that never came, so 1944 the right moment, ” not too early – not too late “, what resulted in the 1945 post war agreement, so they must pay the price, nothing special, not a treason, their own bad planning, they were cry-babies.
Did Churchill gave away Greece to Stalin, no…the other way around, but he deserted the partisans, and Britain was fighting there, in Athen, Janu-ary 1945, before the war was over.
During the Tehran summit late 1943, Churchill suggested that an inva-sion from the Balkans was a good idea, but FDR and Stalin wanted the war to stop asap, so FDR promised the D-Day, but Stalin wasn’t satisfied with only that, so he demanded: Give me a name of that D-Day
commanding general ! The answer was: Ike Eisenhower, OK, and by that the D-Day was decided. Eisenhower was then invited to the Red Square, in June 1945, for the celebrations.
Whatever is left of Ukraine will be in better hands being overseen by Russia than being controlled by the US. The Orthodox Church might have to give a dispensation for a generation or two to allow Ukrainian men to have 2-3 wives. Unfortunately the surviving men will mostly be the “low-T” types. Full disclosure: I would have dressed up like a lady and tried to escape to Poland rather than be conscripted to die in the meat grinder. Maybe the average IQ will rise a few points, since the dim rah-rah Ukraine guys were, sadly, killed.
Good piece here that i came by via Bernhard at MOA:
How the empire ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.
https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/the-jig-is-up
Poland is itching for war, and the Russian Duma Defense Committee chair hints that the true role of PMC Wagner in Belarus is to recapture the Suwalki Gap.
There is short video somewhere with English subtitles.
Apparently PMC Wagner has been re-positioned with a new role.
Russian State Duma deputy Andrey Kartapolov said that Wagner’s men were sent to Belarus in case Russia needs the Suwalki Gap
https://global.espreso.tv/wagners-troops-in-belarus-will-be-needed-to-take-the-suwalki-gap-russias-state-duma-deputy
This is all over media. Another reason for NATO panic??
On the BRICS:
What kind of an association is this, having to arrest each other on behalf of a foreign power they actually want to replace? 🍺
I would suggest that there is something far more sinister afoot with Putin’s sudden withdrawal from the BRICS summit…….
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-pulls-out-attending-brics-summit-over-arrest-warrant-dilemma
It appears there were several consultations between Pretoria and Moscow, which I take to have been in quick succession since on Monday Putin was still saying he would attend the summit.
Do not underestimate the new depths that the Empire of Lies will plumb to get its way!
The fall of Ukraine will probably precipitate a severe depression for Wall Street plutocrats. We may even witness suicides like those of ’29.
Slava Z
🇷🇺🇺🇦 From July 20, all ships in the Odessa region and the remaining coast of Ukraine will be considered as military targets.
Official statement of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
In connection with the termination of the Black Sea Initiative and the curtailment of the maritime humanitarian corridor, from 00:00 Moscow time on July 20, 2023, all ships en route to Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea will be considered as potential carriers of military cargo.
Accordingly, the flag countries of such vessels will be considered involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kyiv regime.
In addition, a number of sea areas in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the international waters of the Black Sea have been declared temporarily dangerous for navigation. Relevant informational warnings about the withdrawal of safety guarantees to seafarers have been issued in accordance with the established procedure.
This is really good news.
Hopefully, the glacé gloves will now be discarded. The time is ripe.
Meanwhile back on the battlefield, General Armageddon’s long awaited offensive is well underway comprising some 160,000 troops headed for Kharkov………..
https://warnews247-gr.translate.goog/ektakto-mi-anaschesimi-rosiki-epithesi-proelasi-160-000-roson-stratioton-pros-charkovo-perasan-ton-potamo-zerebets-sbaralia-oi-oukranikes-amynes-sto-koupiansk/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB
…… with heavy support from T-14 Amata tanks……
https://warnews247-gr.translate.goog/ektakto-atsalini-grothia-sto-ntonetsk-megalos-arithmos-rosikon-t-14-armata-eplixan-aifnidiastika-oukranikes-theseis-epivevaiosi-warnews247/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB
It appears that Moscow has decided to permanently close Ukraine’s Black Sea ports for the duration of the SMO……..
https://warnews247-gr.translate.goog/i-cheiroteri-epithesi-mechri-tora-flegetai-i-odissos-protofanis-entasis-mazikoi-vomvardismoi-gemise-pyravlous-i-othoni-ton-oukranon-elegkton-aeramynas/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB
Lancet: No KI but high-tech software – the latest
https://t.me/VladimirTupin/32856
Martyanov :
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/07/on-lighter-note.html
The text: US military drone after flying over Russian destroyer, returned to base with installed Yandex Browser, Mail.ru agent, State Services app, subscription to Besogon.TV and uninstallable browser Amigo. During viewing files which had been saved to this drones memory somebody screamed 1 x bet every four minutes.
Drone’s text: just kill me.
That’s the power of Russian EW–they install so much shit on your hard-drives (or SSD) that your equipment breaks down. There, I disclosed Russia’s secret deadly technology;))
EW just ain’t what it used to be!
What’s your source for 600,000 Ukrainian casualaties (killed and wounded)?
A huge explosion rocked Johannesburg, where the BRICS summit is scheduled to take place in August
The same is in store for Germany, should it spin.
Amateurs. USA have explosions every other day.
Putin is under enormous pressure – he has to send shitty Genräle into the desert – even best friends because of excessive demands
Reliably protect the Crimean bridge can only change the “guard”
The Russian Guard is obviously unable to protect and defend the strategic passage through the Kerch Strait from the sea direction
Sergey Ischenko
Do you know who and when promised us all this so confidently and without the slightest doubt about the reality of their own plans? Just four years ago, on March 26, 2019, the Director of the Russian Guard, General of the Army Viktor Solotov , expressed such exuberance to the RIA Novosti agency.
And after only three and a half years, Ukrainian saboteurs convincingly proved to General Zolotov for the first time that he was at least overconfident. On October 8, 2022, at 6:05 a.m., a huge explosion on the Crimean Bridge destroyed two wagons and detonated tank cars on the railroad section of this crossing, which is strategic for all of Russia.
Read also
In response to the Crimean Bridge, Ukraine may be divided along the Dnieper River. If the political will were there
In response to the Crimean Bridge, Ukraine can be divided along the Dnieper River. If the political will were there
A Ukrainian terrorist attack could be followed by attacks on bridges and public administration facilities
The second proof of exactly the s
https://svpressa-ru.translate.goog/war21/article/380473/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Putin must now quickly clean up this mess,
otherwise his reputation will go down.
Kerch is not strategic – no mil. stuff transported for quite a while.
Hint- the land-bridge.
So, a pure terrorist attack, no mil. significance. Pure British SBS MO, plenty of practice at that in hapless small European islands.
As Scott Ritter shows, Agent Zelenskyy is handled by British MI6 chief Richard Moore personally.
Meanwhile Wagner repurposed to Belarus to take the Suvalki if and when necessary – see post above. Meanwhile Ukr. seaports pulverized.
“Kerch is not strategic ”
Thank you for your illustration of your ignorance of the concept “strategic” shared by many including “The Pentagon” as a function of the building being inanimate despite having a half-life.
Putin is under enormous pressure from his bowl cancer. He is about to blow any time. Desert seems like a resonable place to send that No. 2 Genräle.
Thoughtful piece from Aurelien about the consequences of accepting 404 into NATO. Hint: not what the big brains at NATO might have expected….
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/ukraine-in-nato-would-be-a-disaster
That, too, is Russia:
The case of Kvachkov”: where is the line between discrediting the army and criticizing it?
“Bad” is now understood to mean everything that does not correspond to the words of the military about their successes”
https://svpressa-ru.translate.goog/war21/article/380471/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Scot Ritter was recently in Russia. Total O.K.
When was the last time Andrei Martyanovs was in Russia?
A desk ink pisser??
I would like to say goodbye here today.
Almost every article is speculation. Nobody knows anything concrete.
Why does Andrei Martyanovs still live in the USA and is not with RT in Russia? Nevertheless, I like to read him.
Practical theory of yesterday, is not a forecast for today, let alone tomorrow. Panta rhei.
All speculation.
Thank you.
“Almost every article is speculation. Nobody knows anything concrete.”
Evaluation is a function of purpose and purposes vary.
Some facilitate their purpose by analysing the speculations’ content, framing and trajectories, to estimate the levels of ideological immersion of the speculators which was/is a component of their purpose in “bloggery analysis”, but not concrete as concrete has a long half-life of inflexibility, and since lateral change is a constant, flexibility (non-concreteness) is required throughout.
Another facilitation of purpose is deflecting focus to the past and to the future, not to the changing present, encouraging bridging over unperceived troubled waters by linear extrapolations of the past – the vector of expectation.
The speculations of others are very useful, since all datastreams have utility for those with facility.
The last – GRU controls Crimean bridge
Or FBI???
https://t.me/uncut_news/56189
They didn’t sell their soul to the West they sold their soul to the jews – the Zionist parasitic bolshevik jews that are always behind every stinking f****** operation
A bit of an aside here, Larry, pertaining to Belarus and Wagner – what the heck is going on there, and what are the ramifications. Prigozhen is shooting his yip off again, and one has to wonder what the deal is there. Supposedly Wagner is training Belarus’ forces before heading off the Africa. Really? Anybody have any ideas on this and how it affects Ukraine/NATO and especially Poland?
Mac, this affects not only the shithole like Poland, it also affects lots of others that got themselves into the NATO dungeons. No way out! They just have to repeat, parrot- fashion, the narrative and then hope for the best.. And some of them had already realised that NATO’s days are numbered..except of course for the f*ckwits like Swedish and Finns! Talk about jumping on the Titanic AFTER it struck the iceberg!
Larry, can we conclude that what makes the Ukraine debacle even more disastrous for the west in general, and for the USA in particular, is that what we are witnessing is the collapse and complete annihilation of a 76 year plan to cultivate, nurture, mature, and execute a plan for the destruction of the Soviet Union/Russia, completely disintigrate for the CIA/ western intelligence agencies and state foreign policies? I mean when you look at the resources, man hours, time and money that was put into this three quarter century program, words cannot even come to describe the magnitude of this historic defeat the west has suffered. Please tell me I’m wrong in thinking this is truly an epic and colossal failure without being hyperbolic! If so, I can only surmise that the blow back will be a bitch.
“the Ukraine debacle even more disastrous for the west in general, and for the USA in particular, is that what we are witnessing is the collapse and complete annihilation of a 76 year plan to cultivate, nurture, mature, and execute a plan for the destruction of the Soviet Union/Russia”
The ongoing debacle is not limited to Ukraine, and the plan to cultivate, nurture, mature, and execute a plan for the destruction of The Soviet Union/The Russian Federation informed the decision of “The United States of America” to enter “The First World” in 1917, the plan being in draft in 1916 during The Battle of the Somme from July until November 1916, and whose attempts of implementation have been unsuccessful to date through preclusion of execution, whilst the transcendence of “The United States of America” by The Russian Federation has not yet been fully achieved but remains laterally ongoing/ongoing laterally.
Hence not only did the Cold War never end but presented in laterally modified forms, “The First World War” also never ended but presented in laterally modified forms, hence this phase of the “World War” is becoming even more disasterous for the west in general, and for the USA in particular since these cultures are being transcended, not sustained in linear paradigms within acceptable tolerances, which is a signicant purpose of “The United States of America” to facilitate their sustainability.
Washington motto: “Carthago delenda est”
I think Biden meant to say . “ God save .. it’s a drag Queen ..man “
Most comments are correct, BUT, NATO never had the ground force capability to defeat Russia in or near Russia; we only wanted (hoped) to stop the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in Germany and NATO was easily 10x better equipped, better armed, and better trained, that it is now. We have no resupply capability, hence still waiting for Abrams in Ukraine. Except for some missile systems, we are fighting with 30-40 year old equipment and rainbow forces don’t fight well.
“we only wanted (hoped) to stop the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in Germany”
That was one version.
Another version was “NATO only hoped to DELAY “The Soviet Union” and the Warsaw Pact in Germany”
since the seiving of NATO is not a new occurence, whilst widely publicising hopes has never been a preferance until lately, through de-emphases of “Happiness is a warm gun” except for the mercenary community.
If only Larry , Col Macgregor and Scott Ritter could get Trump alone and talk about Russia/Ukraine. Or maybe Trump knows the whole truth ? I get tired or republicans saying “we need to get out of Ukraine despite the fact that Putin is a really bad guy.”
No, Putin is a good guy and he should be our ally !
Knowing the whole truth requires effort. Lots of it. Trump is just another executive summary buffoon. My English skills fail me in a search for a word to describe people that put their hopes in him.
“My English skills fail me in a search for a word to describe people that put their hopes in him.”
Let us co-operate on the basis of from each according to her/his abilities, to each according to her/his needs.
I suggest the English designation is : Useful fools, which is also the most productive as rendering them useful fools tends to facilitate less blowback than killing them and less effort through their useful foolery, although that is not a constant, but a component of present Panics of those who believe that:
“Happiness is a warm gun
When you are in my arms
Happiness is a warm gun.”
Some even believed that the The Russian Federation meddled in the “Presidential election of “The United States of America” of 2016 in hope and projection, thereby illustrating their potentials and implementations of useful foolery on a world stage, including but not limited to their lack of analytic facilitites mistaking 1996 for 2016, and in 1949 apparently losing China.
I constantly translate in the greek language and publish in my blog articles of your site, Mr. Johnson. Here it is the above: https://vulcanactiv.wordpress.com/2023/07/19/%ce%b3%ce%b9%ce%b1%cf%84%ce%b9-%cf%84%ce%bf-%ce%bd%ce%b1%cf%84%ce%bf-%ce%b5%ce%b9%cf%87%ce%b5-%ce%b5%ce%bc%ce%bc%ce%bf%ce%bd%ce%b7-%ce%bc%ce%b5-%cf%84%ce%b7%ce%bd-%ce%bf%cf%85%ce%ba%cf%81%ce%b1/
Thank you.