It's 1989 and the wall is coming down in Berlin. It marks the beginning of the end for liberal democracies in Western Europe. Communist parties have been rapidly gaining ground and are already in the ascendancy in France and Germany. They are coalition partners with the socialists in many other countries. NATO collapses as countries opt out of an alliance with a capitalist superpower and around 315,000 American troops are evicted from the European continent by Soviet-friendly governments.
The Warsaw Pact, with Russia at the helm, allays American fears by stating that the alliance will not spread a single inch westward. No former allies nor spheres of influence will be targeted. But the Russians can't help themselves. While there is no longer any need of collective defense, as the enemy has retreated to its Atlantic shores, the coalition still gradually expands. Austria and a united Germany enlist first, Italy and Spain soon follow suit, Switzerland surrenders its much prized neutrality and the Benelux countries eventually succumb. Scandinavia joins the fold in the 2010s.
Russian forces and missiles are stationed throughout these member states and are, therefore, exponentially closer to the US. The Americans, for their part, have continually protested Soviet expansion into former NATO countries, but have been repeatedly rebuffed. Moreover, the Russians have rekindled their kinship with their comrades in the Caribbean and are, once again, pointing ICBMs at the American mainland from Cuba. Even Canada, previously joined at the hip, is now in the hands of a half-Cuban communist who has taken the country into the Pact. While the Mexicans haven't yet come over to the dark side, it's not for the lack of Russian exertion.
In fact, in 2014, a Russian backed coup was enacted and the US leaning government was replaced by a Soviet puppet administration. The states of Texas (previously part of Mexico), Arizona and Baja California, already semi-autonomous and dominated by Hispanics, are fast becoming flash points between the US and Mexico, by now a Soviet proxy. The Mexican government bans the use of English as an official language and cracks down hard on separatist sentiment. Hostilities are joined and there are skirmishes between white American militias and the Mexican military. The US government backs the militias against Soviet-instigated hostilities.
A peace is brokered – the Chihuahua Accords – which reverses the language ban and re-affirms the semi-autonomous status of what are now provinces in the Mexican federal republic. American troops withdraw from the disputed areas. Nonetheless, the Mexican army conducts a low-intensity artillery campaign for the next eight years, while refusing to honor the Accords. The Russians train and equip a huge modern army, 700,000 strong with a million troops in reserve. There is constant talk of Mexican membership of the Pact, which would mean missiles on the border and only five minutes warning before DC could be obliterated in a potentially decapitating surprise attack.
The rhetoric from within Mexico grows ever more strident by the year. Hardcore communists, who revere Stalin for his genocidal purges and for the Holodomor in Ukraine (which killed millions) infest the civilian and military leadership in Mexico. El Presidente has made it clear that Mexico will conquer the provinces by force of arms and, in the early part of 2022, starts massing hundreds of thousand of troops on the border. The US, despite offering terms that would de-escalate the conflict, has to deploy its army in self defense.
It does so, but only in small numbers – perhaps 150,000 to 200,000 troops. Military intelligence warns US commanders that the Mexicans are about to attack, so the Americans launch a pre-emptive strike instead, a special military operation, with the stated intention of removing the communist threat to their southern border. After a short campaign, and a bloody nose, the Mexicans negotiate peace terms but, before they can be signed, the Russians dispatch the Chancellor of Germany, who demands that the Mexicans fight on. This they do, for two bloody years.
The analogy is not perfect (especially with regard to the border states), but it's close enough for government work. Does anyone have a problem with US actions? Would anyone believe a single word the Mexicans or the Russians said any more? In fact, would anyone have let it get that far in the first place? Thirty years of unbroken lies and the streak continuing unabated. But every country's leadership has, as its primary responsibility, the duty to keep its citizens safe. It cannot wait to get smacked in the face when its opponent already has its right hand cocked. The much-touted international law would tend to agree. More on that shortly.
Russia has found itself in an invidious position. The NATO defensive alliance, instead of folding its tent and exiting stage left upon the collapse of the Evil Empire, instead stayed put and morphed into an offensive alliance. And by NATO I mean, of course, the United States of America, whose leadership used the alliance to pursue its own foreign policy aims. The rest of NATO couldn't go anywhere, as it was already geographically present. The Americans (NATO) busied themselves in the Balkans, bombing Serbia into an acceptance that Kosovo was to go its own way. NATO also joined the US in coalition in Afghanistan and engineered regime change in Libya in 2011.
The eastward creep was not universally popular among the European members; it was driven by the US. The cordon sanitaire of independent buffer states in Eastern Europe was gradually dissolved. The Russians were warning NATO about their red lines – specifically, Georgia and Ukraine – as early as 1994, telling them that a forceful response would result if either country was recruited. Putin, in 2007, wasn't backwards in coming forward:
“I think it is obvious that NATO expansion … represents a serious provocation … And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”(1)
However, as we have belatedly come to expect, the US regime continued to double down and, in 2008, NATO invited both countries to join it. This despite the US Ambassador to Moscow's warning that “nyet means nyet”.(2) By August that same year, Moscow felt compelled to reinforce their point when Georgia overreached in the border regions. But it was the US-engineered Maidan Revolution of 2014 that really set the trajectory for the next decade. Russia was suddenly obliged to confront the probability that it would lose its 250 year old naval port in Sevastopol to NATO (the US). A swiftly organised referendum produced a result consistent with prior votes – Crimea is Russian speaking and had previously voted to not be part of Ukraine on several occasions – and Putin reincorporated the peninsula into the Russian Federation.
Civil war broke out in the eastern oblasts, between the ultra-nationalists (previously identified as neo-Nazis by Western media, but no longer) and Russian-speaking separatists. By 2015, it was a full-blown proxy war. Russian troops were fighting alongside the secessionists, while Kiev built that 700,000 strong army, trained by NATO – a larger force than any other member, other than Turkey and the US itself. The alliance had no business being there in the first place, but they were there nonetheless and so, to a degree, the issue of Ukrainian membership is somewhat academic – they have been de facto members for ten years already. The only critical difference between unofficial and official membership is, of course, the all for one, one for all obligation under Article 5. Here are NATO's allies in Ukraine.
Figure 1
And here are the Americans training them. American heavy weapons have also found their way to the Azov Battalion (above), all the while the lower house of Congress was trying to prevent same.(3)
Figure 2
Periodically, NATO re-floated the idea of Ukraine's incorporation as a member of the alliance, an offer that was made once again in September 2021. And, as the year ended, Zelensky judged that his US-funded and equipped military was now ready to crush the dissidents in the Donbas and he deployed a multitude of units to the border, for the launch of a major offensive to commence in early 2022. Putin could read the runes and;
“...in mid-December 2021, 28 years after Moscow’s first warning to Washington, Putin issued a formal demand for written security guarantees to reduce the apparent threats to Russia from NATO enlargement by restoring Ukrainian neutrality, banning the stationing of U.S. forces on Russia’s borders, and reinstating limits on the deployment of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in Europe.”(4)
Russia also massed troops on the border, sending a seemingly unambiguous message; it wasn't bluffing, although Biden's puppet-masters would have us believe that they thought it was. Putin wanted negotiations but, in their likely absence, was prepared to go to war. The US refused to negotiate and, by mid-February, Kiev had amped up its military campaign along the border. On February 21st, at the breakaway republics' request, Russia finally recognized their independence and moved to secure their borders against Ukrainian attacks. Putin had this to say:
“It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.”(5)
Naturally, NATO disputes this narrative but, in the real world, Putin is demonstrably correct in his assessment. The Russians have not sought to expand their borders in a bid to recreate the Soviet Empire – they have not been the aggressors. They have intervened in Georgia and Ukraine when ethnic Russian-speakers were threatened and attacked by the ethnic majorities. When the Georgians withdrew, so did the Russians. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, lobbed shells into the Donbas for eight years solid, without managing to provoke an invasion. It took the certainty of an imminent ground attack to stir Putin into action.
Western propagandists continually append the word 'illegal' to 'Russian invasion'. However, international law (upon which they rely for that designation) is not unambiguous on the subject. As is frequently the case in that arena, what should be clear-cut has been rendered opaque by a combination of subjectivity and politicking, but there is still a degree of clarity. The concept of an anticipatory use of force is accepted, provided that the violence that will be visited upon the victim/aggressor is imminent and there is “no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation”.(6)
Russia could certainly argue that they had tried diplomatic overtures, which had been rejected while Ukraine continued to mass its troops at the border. They were clearly not intending to be the aggressor and were responding to offensive actions undertaken by Zelensky et al. Lawyers, as is their wont, fight over the proper meaning of words such as “imminent” and “threat” and fail to give proper weight to morality and justification. One would imagine that most reasonable people would bridle at a law that required the infliction of actual injury before a response to an aggressor was justified.
Indeed, the right to a pre-emptive strike when a person has a reasonable belief that they are about to be attacked is enshrined in English law. To hold that a sovereign state doesn't enjoy an equal dispensation is nonsensical. And, in any event, the law is supposed to exist as the codification of morality; as such, it is downstream from that morality. If it is deficient, if it does not reflect what is right, then it isn't fit for purpose and should be disregarded. Lawyers would vehemently disagree, but the law is not holy writ, nor will it ever be.
In addition, the US is (as is the case more often than not) on extremely thin ice. Reading between the lines, one of the main reasons that international law is not as clear cut as it could be in this regard, is that – if it was – the Americans would be in the dock as serial offenders. The Bush National Security Strategy, formulated (allegedly) in the wake of 9/11, redefined the concept of “imminent threat” in such a way as to corrupt its meaning entirely. Citing “contemporary realities”, whatever that means, the US insisted that a state (well, the US anyway) now had the right to aggressively pre-empt “emerging threats”, too.(7) Any requirement that the threat itself be immediate was thus removed. Naturally, that wholly subjective judgement was to be exercised by US leadership, not the UN Secretary-General.
Typically, Bush insisted that this new doctrine, which radically expanded the scope of anticipatory self defense, was simply a re-interpretation of Article 51, rather than what it plainly was instead – a junking of the judicial straitjacket in favor of the soon-to-be painfully familiar US adjudicated, rules-based international order, with foundations in whatever whimsy the current presidential incumbent was preoccupied with at any given time. However, what's good for the goose is also good for the gander. Putin's Special Military Operation would certainly (also) be justified under the Bush Doctrine, a fact that is completely (and predictably) ignored by the mainstream media.
The invasion was not an overwhelming demonstration of force. It was designed to bring Zelensky to the negotiating table and, after the 150,000 – 200,000 Russian detachment had swiftly disabused the Ukrainian leadership of the notion that their NATO backing had made them a match for the Russians, Zelensky duly dispatched his diplomats to Ankara where they hammered out a deal with the Russian delegation.
“In mid-March 2022, the government of Turkey and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett mediated between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, who tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement. The agreement provided that Russia would withdraw to its position on Feb.23, when it controlled part of the Donbass region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”(8)
All that was now required was a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, at which the agreement would be finalized. The latter publicly confirmed that he would go through with the deal. In anticipation, Putin withdrew the forces that were threatening Kiev. However, twelve days later, on 9th April, Boris Johnson rocked up in Kiev and told Zelensky that Putin should be crushed and that NATO was not ready to end the war. The deal was off.
Figure 3
And so, nearly two years later, the war rumbles on. Despite well over $150 billion in materiel and cash, the Ukrainians are being crushed. That they cannot possibly win the conflict has been clear since the autumn of 2021, when Putin finally accepted that nobody in the West wanted to talk to him. At that point, the Russians dug in for the winter and mobilized hundreds of thousands of extra troops of fighting age. Come the campaign season, the much-publicized, much-delayed Ukrainian counter-offensive was launched, to devastating effect – to Zelensky's army. The Russians have control of the air and have mastered an integrated defense system that severely circumscribes Ukraine's ability to even move assets around on the battlefield. Western wonder-weapons, particularly battle tanks and ground-to-air weapons systems, have been found wanting.
Figure 4
Despite the West's determination to fight to the last Ukrainian, demographics alone have long guaranteed a Ukrainian defeat. A population of only 31 million has been degraded by at least a third. They have taken horrendous casualties, a consequence of Zelensky's Hitleresque insistence that every unwinnable battle must nevertheless be prosecuted to its fullest extent, losses be damned. Official propaganda has continually obfuscated and mislead, but it is known that at least 50,000 Ukrainians are now amputees.
In addition, satellite surveillance of overflowing graveyards and careful attention to open source intelligence – such as newspaper obituaries – reveal that, by August 2023, at least 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in battle,(9) although a report from the ground estimates that there are a million dead.(10) It is known that many decimated front-line units have surrendered to the Russians, because they couldn't fight any longer. The wounded, which were plentiful, couldn't be evacuated and commanders were faced with the choice of laying down their arms and saving the seriously injured or futilely fighting on and, effectively, sentencing their casualties to death. They have largely chosen the former option.
Their front-line replacements are largely untrained, unsuitable, too young, too old, some are female and all are supremely reluctant. The average age of the current crop of Ukrainian soldier is 43.(11) Recruiters have become increasingly aggressive, snatching men from the street;(12) within hours, most are on the front lines. Many others are in hiding or have left the country. That initial nationalistic fervor has long since dissipated as reality has set in. That this is the West's war is readily apparent. That it can still be won is not.
The chances of the Donbas or Crimea returning to Ukrainian sovereignty are nil. When the mud offensives of the winter months give way to the fighting season, the Ukrainian military is going to be crushed. More territory will fall to the Russians, quite possibly the entirety of southern Ukraine to the Moldovan border, including the Odessa oblast, thus separating the rump of the country from the Black Sea. An outcome that has all the colored areas under Russian control would be unremarkable.
Figure 5
The reality of life in Ukraine is the polar opposite of what we have been told. For them, the war was for nothing. Eight million people are internally displaced, the south east of the country is in ruins and is largely uninhabitable and as many again have left the country, most never to return:
“I just got back from Ukraine...Everything we have heard about what's happening in Ukraine is a lie...The outcome always was, and is, clear....Make no mistake, they are angry at Putin. But they are also angry with Zelensky and the West. They have lost everything, worst of all, hope and faith, and cannot comprehend why Zelensky wishes to continue the current trajectory, the one of human devastation.”(13)
The hoped-for impact on Russia, the supposed degrading of its economy and consequent regime change in Moscow were always magical thinking. Russia now boasts the fifth wealthiest economy in the world and the largest in Europe, leaving Germany in the rear view mirror.(14) Its defense industries can produce more than enough materiel to keep its military supplied. The Russian defense budget, now doubled, is still only around $110 billion, an eight of America's, and yet it is NATO that is running short of equipment and munitions.
And so, the tone is changing and the fissures in the West, already noticeable on other issues, are widening and some of the more independent-minded natives are growing restless. In the main centers of power, in the White House, in the German-dominated EU and in the UK, resolve is still publicly strong. In October, the DEI approved German Foreign Minister probably thought she was being resolute, rather than delusional, when she stated that;
"Ukraine's future lies in the European Union, our community of freedom, and it will soon stretch from Lisbon to Luhansk. It [Ukraine] also broadens its path to the EU with every village, every meter that it liberates, and every meter where it saves its people."(15)
The Biden administration is still trying to blackmail the Republican House into supporting another $110 billion for Ukraine in exchange for a commitment to “secure the border” that it will never keep. It remains to be seen whether the house-trained GOP allows itself to be blind-sided once more.(16) In the meantime, Sunak reaffirmed his bromance with Zelensky by sending a cheque for £3 billion from some governmental slush fund, just to tide him over until the Republicans once again assume the position.(17)
Figure 6
But Viktor Orbán, a man who is permanently on the EU's naughty step, has now been joined by an unlikely ally, the nominally Leftist Robert Fico of Slovakia who is, nonetheless, a nationalist whose priority is his fellow countrymen. Both men have vowed to veto any attempt to game Ukrainian membership of NATO and are blocking the EU's attempted €50 billion package,(18) even though Ukraine's prospective membership of the EU is still being discussed. And in early November, there was a slew of (planted) media reports that suddenly appeared, all gently hinting at the need for Zelensky to start thinking about a peace deal. According to regime mouthpiece, Time Magazine;
“U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions...The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said.”(19)
The writing had been on the wall for six weeks or so. Yet another trip to Washington, complete with the inevitable green uniform and outstretched begging bowl had not gone as planned, as the ever duplicitous Senate started to show its true character. That open-ended, stand-with-Ukraine-forever rhetoric was revealed as the hogwash it always was.
Figure 7
But it seemed like Zelensky wasn't taking the hint. So, in late November, the US/NATO axis decided to drop the mask and, instead of smoothly transitioning to a more modulated approach, instead lobbed a hand grenade into the public square:
"In this tough and dynamic battle, Ukraine’s soldiers are fighting bravely every single day, and they continue to inspire the world with their bravery and courage. We will continue to support them to be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table when the time comes."(20)
There had never previously been any talk of negotiations and Zelensky himself is clearly not a fan, having repeatedly vowed to regain all the lost territories (including Crimea) by force. It is conceivable that the ex-comedian has completely lost the plot. He did, after all, tell Time that “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody.”(21) With good reason. Apparently, he feels betrayed by his Western allies, who “have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.”(22) Like all the other forever wars, you mean?
But Time also called him delusional and their sources for those claims came from inside the Ukrainian tent; this from the publication that declared him their “Person Of The Year” in 2022.
Figure 8
Other 'trusted' media hacks were given the job of attempting to rationalize the volte-face and to accelerate the ebbing of public support for the war. Magical thinking about pivots, air defenses and ceasefires abounded in an effort to “redefine success”, aka excuse failure.(23) Another narrative was being embedded; this time, there would much talk of a stalemate, a frozen conflict. Except, of course, that it isn't.
Whole Ukrainian brigades are are critical condition and the Russians are advancing via local attacks, without the need to commit their massive reserves:
“These attacks have had the effect of drawing the limited Ukrainian reserves - which at this point consist largely of units already mauled in their disastrous Hundred Days Offensive - back to the front and back into close combat.”(24)
The shiny new conflict in Gaza hasn't done much to help the cause, either, with the West's attention span inferior to that of a kid with ADHD. Israel is now at the head of the line for NATO's dwindling supplies and Congressmen, mostly of the Republican persuasion, have finally developed a partially formed backbone and declared that reinforcing failure is unsound policy. But the British are also important players in this theater, with soldiers on the ground in Ukraine and the Royal Navy intermittently patrolling in the Red Sea.(25)(26) Quite who is pushing the buttons behind the scenes is open to debate.
But once the ground hardens, the inevitable will happen. Putin's army now stands at 2.2 million; according to his most recent remarks, "...not only has their counteroffensive failed, but the initiative is entirely in the hands of the Russian Armed Forces. If this continues, Ukraine's statehood could be dealt an irreparable, very serious blow.”(27)
If Biden gets his funding bill through and if Zelensky's 'recruitment drive' is moderately successful, there may be some brief delays, but raw, untrained recruits thrown into the front line are simply cannon fodder and no amount of weapons will help if there is nobody qualified left to use them. In any event, with Ukraine wholly dependent on the West, whoever replaces Zelensky can be forced to negotiate, simply by turning off the money spigot. I can't see Ukraine's erstwhile President lasting much longer, as his stubbornness – previously a quality they admired - is now becoming a large stumbling block, obstructing NATO's off ramp.
That's not to say that the West's reflexive animus towards Russia won't be demonstrated in other ways, instead. There is copious evidence that the string-pullers are setting us up for yet more carnage, sans Ukraine. The Baltic is one potential flashpoint, with continual talk of turning the sea into a NATO lake, denying Russia access to the North Atlantic. This would almost certainly be viewed an act of war by Putin.(28) It also seems that the ocean-floor infrastructure offers rich pickings, if the objective is to escalate tensions à la Nordstream.
Figure 9
Finland, the new boy on the NATO block, is taking the lead in needling the Russians along its 1,340 kilometer border, threatening to close it unilaterally in November.(29) The rationale for doing so was non-existent. Nonetheless, a destabilizing front with Russia in the north would make sense, given the increasing importance of the Northern Sea Route to the trading efforts of the Russians and the Chinese and, by association, the BRICS nations. The war in Ukraine has already put the kibosh on an artery China's Belt and Road Initiative. More disruption that delays a multi-polar future cannot be ruled out.
The Moldovan president, clearly a woman with an impressive imagination, has also claimed that Russia plans to install a pro-Russian leadership, using colour revolution tactics. She seems to be unaware that it is the Americans who are the clear market leader in astroturfed coups in eastern Europe, not the Russians, but it seems that Western strategy calls for starting little fires in numerous locations and then, when the time is right, throwing gasoline on the 'conflict' of choice.(30)
But it's the concerted propaganda campaign of the past couple of weeks that should really set alarm bells ringing. The German military leaked a 'secret' document which war-gamed a Russian attack on NATO's eastern flank, a neocon wet dream that has never had an atom of evidence to anchor it. According to the Germans, who claim the document is merely a training scenario, the Russians might turn aggressor as soon as next month.(31) The Swedes seem to have also got the memo, as they too are busy warning their citizens that war with Russia may be just around the corner.(32)
Not to be outdone, The Times of London encouraged their in-house Mystic Meg to consult her crystal ball and make her own prediction about a likely Russian attack on the Baltic states.(33) Then it was the turn of the ubiquitous 'retired general' to wade in, ably assisted by an ex-Ukrainian minister and think-tanker, and peddle the claim that once the world sees that the West is beatable, a nuclear war will be inevitable. The Daily Mail's headline reads:
“What happens if Putin WINS in Ukraine? 'Catastrophic' change to world order 'would lead to the fall of NATO, economic carnage and inevitable nuclear war once autocrats see that US and the West are beatable'”(34)
This is utter, alarmist drivel. Classic boilerplate, clichéd nonsense that is par for the course for the tabloids, which the Daily Mail now is. They even include a map showing us how Russia will invade the West in 2045. It's clumsy, clownish, unhinged propaganda at its most obvious. No doubt those seduced by masks, 'vaccines' and climate change will lap it up. The rest of us, not so much.
Figure 10
These are not serious people. Another 'security expert', one Professor Anthony Glees, joined with the outgoing head of the British Army to warn that a ground conflict could be fought between NATO and Putin “in the next 20 years” because....Ukraine. This being the case, the whole of the UK should be prepared to accept conscription into the armed forces within the next six years.(35) In the US, the mind infection has also spread to Congress and the Secretary of Defense. Lloyd Austin went so far as to threaten lawmakers, stating that if he didn't get the funding he wanted, he'd deploy American troops to Ukraine, notwithstanding the fact that there he has no authority to do so.(36)
A Republican congressman, no less, then unburdened himself of his assessment that;
“...if [Vladimir] Putin takes over Ukraine, he’ll get Moldova, Georgia, then maybe the Baltics. And then the idea that we’ll have to put troops on the ground in Secretary Austin’s word was very likely. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”(37)
It's clear that some people on Capitol Hill are not up to date with their meds. There has never been any indication that Putin is in the slightest bit interested in any tract of land beyond Ukraine's borders. Even the Secretary-General of NATO is prepared to admit that “…we don’t see any direct or imminent threat against any NATO Ally.”(38) Stoltenberg has form in this regard; it was also he who stated that Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion.(39)
Yet the US administration, the Brits, the Germans and others are telling us that they are sold on the idea that Putin intends to dismember Ukraine and then come after NATO. Which, of course, explains why Putin initialled the draft of the Istanbul Agreement in March 2022, an agreement which would have required him to retreat to Russian territory.(40) It's also why he waited until 2022, and Ukrainian aggression, before he even attempted territorial conquest. It's why, in 2008, when Russian troops were an hour's drive from Tbilisi, they withdrew.(41) It's why, when given the chance to annex Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he declined.(42) And it's also why he opposed the 2014 independence referendums in Lugansk and Donetsk.(43)
“There is no evidence in the public record that Putin was contemplating, much less intending to put an end to Ukraine as an independent state and make it part of greater Russia when he sent his troops into Ukraine on February 24th.”(44)
So says noted scholar John Mearscheimer and his argument is given further weight by the head of the Ukrainian negotiating team of March 2022, who confirmed that the overriding Russian concern was Ukraine's potential membership of NATO and that “everything else was simply rhetoric and political ‘seasoning.’”(45) But it's not the fact that the 'experts' are wrong that's the key point (they cannot believe what they are saying, in any event, as it contradicts all the observable facts); it's that they are trying to tenderize us to accept yet another fallacy and what that then reveals about what they have in store for us. The impression one inevitably forms is that while Ukraine will shortly outlive its usefulness, Russia won't.
Between them, Biden and Zelensky poked the Russian bear with sufficient force as to draw a response. It's difficult to see how Putin could have faithfully discharged his duty to the Russian people by giving Zelensky his head and then standing aside while NATO established itself on yet another Russian border.
Figure 11
As per the alternative universe scenario with which I opened this piece, if the roles were reversed, we wouldn't countenance even a hint of reticence in our leaders. We would expect decisive action. Putin's fault was not in acting pre-emptively; it was in misjudging the character of the current White House crop, a mistake he has been making for well over two decades. The only straight shooter he has dealt with since 1999 is probably Trump, who doesn't seem to suffer from Russophobia, but NATO has continually misled him.
The current mood music still seeks to demonize Russia. If Zelensky is deposed and the Ukrainians broker a deal with Putin, which will inevitably involve ceding territory, the NATO circus will simply set up camp elsewhere. The onset of the current war was useful in masking the initial stages of the deliberate de-industrialisation of the West, by blaming the ruinously high energy prices and subsequent inflation on Putin. The 'pandemic' had been similarly co-opted, as a way of justifying shortages and inflation, via the medium of a supply chain crisis – never mind the fact that it was the response to the 'pandemic' that was really at fault.
I imagine that fueling an ongoing feud with Putin will supply the odd pretext that can be leveraged into actions that further harm us, and I cannot imagine that the years of “Russia! Russia! Russia!” will suddenly give way to harmony; especially if Trump somehow makes it back to the White House. The elites need an identifiable enemy and it must be an entity that is other than the real enemy, which is China. But China is only freedom's enemy, which makes her the elites' ally.
Further, if there is need of a hot war – simply because domestic considerations dictate the imposition of martial law, or similar – it would be wise to keep stirring the pot. The Middle East may prove to be sufficiently combustible – particularly the section of it that has infiltrated the States via the southern border – but Putin's pantomime villain status is firmly established and easily exploited.
Besides, keeping abreast of the shifting allegiances on the Arabian peninsular is much more challenging than pointing at the Russian leader and saying the words “war criminal”, particularly now that Biden's deterrence quotient is tanking. Russia will continue to be default public enemy number one, but it feels like a change of theater is imminent. Some sort of change, anyway. The rhetoric seems preparatory.
Citations
(1) https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/06/the-many-lessons-of-the-ukraine-war/
(2) Ditto
(4) https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/06/the-many-lessons-of-the-ukraine-war/
(5) Ditto
(6) https://www.e-ir.info/2011/06/08/is-pre-emptive-war-ever-justified/
(7) https://www.jstor.org/stable/25659945
(8) https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/06/the-many-lessons-of-the-ukraine-war/
(9) https://www.voiceofeurope.com/col-douglas-macgregor-400000-ukrainians-dead-army-is-melting-away/
(10) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1743658029893984735.html
(11) https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/recipe-150-oil
(12) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-military-recruitment.html
(13) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1743658029893984735.html
(14) https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/russia-worlds-5th-largest-economy-gdp-ppp
(15) https://news.yahoo.com/eu-stretch-lisbon-luhansk-german-090026904.html
(16) https://apnews.com/article/congress-border-security-ukraine-058876834b48bacf5b3678b067d8dd9a
(18) https://en.apa.az/europe/slovak-pm-says-he-would-block-ukraines-membership-in-nato-423797
(19) https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/
(20) https://twitter.com/USNATO/status/1726615865980813706
(21) https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/
(22) Ditto
(23) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/redefining-success-ukraine
(24) https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1723579577677844538
(25) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65245065
(26) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Black_Sea_incident
(30) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/moldovas-pro-eu-president-claims-russia-planning-overthrow-her
(31) https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/secret-german-mod-document-lays-out-path-world-war-iii
(32) https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/01/war-drums-in-europe.php
(33) Ditto
(37) Ditto
(39) https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm?selectedLocale=en
(40) http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/71391
(41) https://www.unian.info/world/137400-russian-convoy-heads-into-georgia-violating-truce.html
(42) https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/end-war-ukraine-expose-its-core-lie
(43) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/ukraine-crisis-putin-referendum-autonomy-postponed
(44) https://nationalinterest.org/feature/causes-and-consequences-ukraine-crisis-203182
(45) https://news.yahoo.com/head-ukraines-leading-party-claims-205150773.html
Figure 1 https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/04/how-zelensky-made-peace-with-neo-nazis/
Figure 3 https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/06/the-many-lessons-of-the-ukraine-war/
Figure 5 https://mapofeurope.com/ukraine-war-map/
Figure 7 https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/
Figure 8 https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/11/ukraine-left-cold-as-israel-gets-americas-unfettered/
Figure 9 https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/west-inching-closer-more-insanity-baltic-sea