Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who has gained international respect for his independence and integrity as a commentator on conflicts and foreign relations. This week, he was banned on the Twitter social media platform for challenging Western claims of a massacre in Bucha, Ukraine, allegedly carried out by Russian troops. Moscow denies the claims, as have other independent analysts who point to evidence that the incident was a false-flag provocation perpetrated by NATO-backed Ukrainian Nazi regiments to undermine Russia internationally and bolster Western objectives. It is a foreboding sign of the times that Ritter should be banned for daring to question dubious narratives. (He was later reinstated following a public outcry against censorship.)

In the following interview for Strategic Culture Foundation, he makes the crucial point that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is exposing the involvement of the U.S. and NATO in the training and weaponizing of that country’s dominant Nazi regiments. That is why Western media have been so vehement in trying to distort the conflict and blame Russia. The truth about Western dirty involvement in Ukraine would be too much to bear for the Western public.

When Ritter served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s he later challenged Western media and government claims that Iraq was harboring WMDs. Those claims were used as a pretext for the U.S.-British war on Iraq launched in 1993 that cost over one million lives, destroyed a nation, created millions of displaced and millions of casualties, as well as spawned international terrorism. It later turned out that the WMD claims were based on deliberate lies for which no Western leader has been held accountable. Scott Ritter was vindicated in his warnings against that war and it is one reason why he is widely respected among international public opinion.

Ritter is a critical commentator on U.S. conflicts and foreign relations. He is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the Soviet Union implementing nuclear arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and as a UN inspector in Iraq (1991-98) overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. He is the author of Scorpion King: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump (Clarity Press, 2020).

Interview

Question: Do you think that Russia has a just cause in launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24?

Scott Ritter: I believe Russia has articulated a cognizable claim of preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The threat posed by NATO expansion, and Ukraine’s eight-year bombardment of the civilians of the Donbass fall under this umbrella.

Question: Do you think Russia has legitimate concerns about the Pentagon sponsoring biological weapons programs in laboratories in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: The Pentagon denies any biological weapons program, but admits biological research programs on Ukrainian soil. Documents captured by Russia have allegedly uncovered the existence of programs the components of which could be construed as having offensive biological warfare applications. The U.S. should be required to explain the purpose of these programs.

Question: What do you make of allegations in Western media that Russian troops committed war crimes in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities? It is claimed that Russian forces summarily executed civilians.

Scott Ritter: All claims of war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, including Ukrainian allegations that Russia killed Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. However, the data available about the Bucha incident does not sustain the Ukrainian claims, and as such, the media should refrain from echoing these claims as fact until a proper investigation of the evidence is conducted, either by the media, or unbiased authorities.

Question: Do you think the alleged Russian bombing of a hospital and an art theater in Mariupol were false-flag provocations?

Scott Ritter: Both locations are available for detailed forensic examination that would either confirm or refute Ukrainian allegations that these locations were struck by Russian aerial bombs. Other data, such as the existence of any NATO radar data that would put Russian aircraft over these two locations at the time of the alleged attack, should be collected. A detailed forensic examination of each site would go a long way in proving or disproving the Ukrainian claims through the collection of weapons fragments and the evaluation of environmental samples which would show the chemical composition of any explosive used, thereby allowing a better idea of what weapon or explosive was used to destroy the sites.

Question: Western governments and mainstream media have denigrated Russian objectives to “demilitarize and deNazify” Ukraine. The West says Russia has invented or grossly exaggerated these problems as a pretext for invasion. Do you think this Western denialism is because it doesn’t want to acknowledge that Russia may indeed have legitimate concerns, and secondly that to acknowledge would mean admitting that the West is part of the problem in the current war?

Scott Ritter: The irony is that the West had thoroughly documented the extent of the Nazi ideology in Ukraine’s civil, political, and military structures during and after the 2014 Maidan coup. This documented reality was deliberately obscured by the same sources that had previously documented its existence once the Russian invasion occurred. To acknowledge the existence of this odious ideology by NATO would require NATO to acknowledge the role it played in training and equipping Azov regiment personnel since 2015. The Russian documentation of its ongoing de-Nazification effort in Ukraine is a source of continual embarrassment to NATO, as it exposes the scope and scale of NATO’s role in empowering the militarization of Nazi ideology in Ukraine.

Question: For about four months before the Russian intervention in Ukraine, the Biden administration was asserting non-stop that Moscow was planning an invasion. Do you think this is a case of great intelligence on the part of Washington or the culmination of provocation by Washington resulting in Russian military action in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: We now know that the U.S. intelligence community under the Biden administration is committed to a policy of haphazardly “declassifying” intelligence for the purpose of shaping public opinion (so-called “getting ahead of the story”). There is no evidence that the intelligence regarding potential Russian military action was based upon anything other than politicized speculation derived from a crude analysis of Russian military dispositions void of any context. Any genuine intelligence assessment regarding the timing of any Russian military action would have incorporated the domestic political imperative of getting Duma [Russian parliamentary] approval for the deployment of Russian forces outside the borders of Russia, which carries with it the requirement of a cognizable justification for this military action under the UN Charter. This required political steps such as Donetsk and Lugansk declaring independence, and then petitioning the Russian parliament to recognize this independence, so that Russia could legitimately invoke Article 51. None of these factors was knowable when the Biden administration was issuing its warnings of imminent attack, thereby certifying the “intelligence” as being derived from fact-free speculation, and not intelligence at all.

Question: The Western media are reporting that the Russian military operation in Ukraine is floundering because it has not over-run Ukraine entirely. As a military expert, how do you see the Russian operation proceeding?

Scott Ritter: Russia is fighting a very difficult campaign hampered by its own constraint designed to limit civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure and the fact that Ukraine possesses a very well-trained military that is well led and equipped. Russia deployed some 200,000 troops in support of this operation. They are facing some 600,000 Ukrainian forces. The first phase of the Russian operation was designed to shape the battlefield to Russia’s advantage while diminishing the size and capacity of the Ukrainian ability to wage large-scale conflict. The second phase is focused on destroying the main Ukrainian force concentration in eastern Ukraine. Russia is well on its way to accomplishing this task.

Question: Do you see danger from Ukraine being turned into a proxy war by the United States and NATO partners against Russia in a way that attempts to repeat the West’s covert war in Syria or the Afghanistan war (1979-89) with the Soviet Union? There are reports of foreign legions being sent to Ukraine via NATO countries. Do you think there is a Western plan to embroil Russia in a proxy war that is aimed at sapping Russia politically, economically, and militarily?

Scott Ritter: The Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. While there appears to be a NATO/western plan to embroil Russia in a “new Afghanistan”, I don’t see any risk of this conflict dragging on for more than a few more weeks at the most before Russia accomplishes a strategic victory over Ukraine.

Question: There is an arrogant assumption among Western governments that they can impose crippling economic sanctions on Russia in a similar way to what they did on Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea among others. But would you agree that if Russia begins to impose its own counter-sanctions by restricting oil and gas exports then the Western states may end up reaping a whirlwind that is devastating to their societies?

Scott Ritter: Russia was warned well in advance about the scope and scale of U.S.-led sanctions that would be imposed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. Russia has prepared its own counter-sanction strategy which will not only defeat the Western sanctions but further strengthen Russia’s economy by decoupling it from the West and Western control/influence. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this counter-campaign as the Russian ruble is strengthened, the Russian stock market enjoys positive traction, and Europe and the U.S. flounder economically. The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind.

The apparent mass murder of civilians in Bucha and other locations in Ukraine has enraged Western public opinion against Russia.

Russia is facing mounting accusations of genocide and its president Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials are condemned as war criminals to be prosecuted in international tribunals similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.

Western media are blaring like foghorns while Russian media and other independent outlets are banned or stifled by the toxic anti-Russia political climate. In this grossly imbalanced situation, propaganda is amplified manyfold. There is a sense that the wholesale shutdown of media prior to the latest alleged massacres in Ukraine is all part of the orchestration.

When the Kiev regime and Western media warn of more massacres to follow in Ukraine that is a sinister prediction.

There are now unprecedented calls for Russia to be denied its seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a seat it has occupied along with having veto powers since the end of the Second World War (prior to 1991 as the Soviet Union). Russia’s veto power, along with China’s, has been a constant bane of the United States and its Western allies who have complained of Moscow’s obstructionism to their foreign wars and other intrigues.

Sanctions are being wielded with unprecedented hostility. The United States and European Union are ratcheting up economic and diplomatic sanctions against Moscow in an unbridled attempt to destroy its economy. The blockade of Russia’s economy would normally be seen as an act of war by the West.

U.S. President Joe Biden has ordered more anti-tank Javelin missiles and other weapons to be sent to Ukraine.

Peace talks underway between Ukraine and Russia are coming under intense pressure to collapse amid the heightened vilification of Russia for “war crimes”. Thus, the war in Ukraine is likely to be prolonged. Notably, the Bucha massacre and other alleged atrocities emerged just when Ukrainian and Russian negotiators appeared to be making progress last week on agreeing to a peace settlement that would involve Ukraine declaring neutrality and renouncing future NATO membership.

What’s more, any attempt by Russia to contest the allegations is dismissed with a torrent of derision and contempt. Normal diplomatic relations have been blocked. A request by its UN envoy Vasily Nebenzia to convene an emergency meeting by the Security Council to discuss the killing of civilians in Ukraine was rejected out of hand by Britain which currently holds the presidency of the council.

Russian diplomats are being expelled pell-mell from Western countries en masse. This week, several European states have banned dozens more Russian envoys.

Russian media outlets have been banned outright across social media channels and the internet across the European Union and Britain. One has to use arcane proxy servers to access such media. Journalists, analysts and academics who question Western media claims are scorned as being “apologists” for a “criminal regime”.

The information war has evolved over many years. Previously, the outpouring of condemnations against Russia in Western media could at least be countervailed with critical, alternative media. When Western media tried to incriminate Russia over the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in July 2014, there were plenty of critical sources to convincingly challenge those allegations and direct attention to the Western-backed Kiev regime as being culpable.

When Western media cried foul over the alleged Novichok poisoning assassination bids on the Skripals in England in 2018 and again on CIA-provocateur Alexei Navalny in 2020, there was a healthy public skepticism borne out of critical alternative media outlets.

Now though the information war has been optimized by the near-complete shutdown of alternative media. The Western media narrative has no competitor. The media foghorns can blare all they want without hardly a dissenting voice tolerated, let alone heard.

It’s all the more vital to retain a skeptical mind in these times of untrammeled bias where Western news media and government departments openly quote the Nazi Azov Battalion as credible sources of information.

When Russian forces withdrew from Bucha and other locations near the capital Kiev on March 30 they did so as a concession to facilitate the peace negotiations. The mayor of Bucha Anatoly Fedoruk in a video on March 31 celebrated the departure of the Russian military but he did not mention anything about atrocities. Now he is telling Western media outlets about alleged widespread killings.

The images of corpses strewn on streets only emerged on and after April 2, two days after Russian forces withdrew. It was reported that Azov Battalion entered Bucha and locations quickly after Russian forces pulled out. The Azov fighters were openly vowing to carry out “cleansing operations” which can be taken as a grim reference to dealing with people deemed to have collaborated with the Russian military during their brief occupation.

Several analysts cited here have debunked the widely circulated video footage that was put out by the Kiev regime forces purportedly showing corpses of people executed by Russian troops. The videos have strange anomalies such as supposedly dead bodies moving, stage-managed scenes, and the use of attractive female models purporting to be anti-Russian fighters. Cadavers that are supposedly weeks old are actually seen to belong to people who were killed in recent days, quite possibly after the Russian forces withdrew. Furthermore, some of the corpses are shown to have white armbands indicating that they were pro-Russian supporters. That suggests that the real perpetrators of the mass killings were the Azov Battalion and other NATO-backed regiments.

Russia categorically denies the alleged violations, claiming that the videos are part of a false-flag provocation to criminalize Russia in the eyes of the world. Would Russia be so stupidly reckless to commit such crimes?

The same manufactured media methods have been used in the alleged bombing by Russia of the maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9 and a public theater in the same city. Videos released by one side are broadcast unquestioningly by Western media along with ready-made condemnations by Western leaders. This is reminiscent of the media model used by the NATO-sponsored Jihadists and White Helmets in Syria.

The big difference now, however, is that Western propaganda has near-total dominance because all other critical, independent sources have been silenced or blackballed.

The criminalization of independent journalism as the persecution of Julian Assange prefigured is now bearing evil fruit.

I don’t think everyone has yet caught the significance of Russia announcing they are putting a floor under the price of gold.  But, to be clear, Russia just broke the paper gold suppression scheme.

On Friday the Bank of Russia announced:

RUB5000 to the gram at an exchange rate of 100 RUB/USD implies a $1550 per ounce gold price.

For a few days previous to this announcement, which they knew was coming, The West was running around with multiple bits of legislation to try and keep the Russians from selling their gold.

The G7 think the sanctions are hitting so hard that Putin will be forced to sell his gold to evade sanctions to pay for things.  They are literally running a script in their heads that is not actually playing out in the real world.

But, whatever, Neocons never met an ugly stick that they didn’t want to use to beat someone over the head with.  Too bad all they’re doing is hitting a rubber tire.

Boing!

Because here’s the gig, Russia won’t be selling any gold. They’re buying it.

These are supposed to be the architects of the global monetary system and you would think they are the ones that understand it the best.  But, clearly they do not.

What they think they understand is that they still control the flow of commodities around the world through price suppression schemes on the CRIMEX, LBMA and ICE.

They do not.

Ultimately, ‘outside money’ trumps ‘inside money.’  

Austrians, like myself, have always understood that eventually Inside Money [money that exists within the financial system] fails because it is ultimately nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme built on top of Outside Money — money that exists outside the financial system, like commodities and bitcoin.

Money, It’s a Hit!

Let’s start with the basics. Why do we create money? To act as a way to mitigate the time risk between selling what we have and buying what we want. So we sell our labor today to buy gasoline, printer paper or blow jobs tomorrow. In the meantime we hold money.

It is a way to turn thought and personal application of energy and time into a token which can procure for us real goods in the real world.

With that in mind, now think about the current financial system where all inside money is created by first selling a debt instrument to someone willing to hold it for a vig.

Back to the ruble and gold. Because once I lay out the new incentive structure it will be clear as to why the G7 has no friends in this fight anymore.

Davos’ power rests on the ability to create credit and sell it at a positive interest carry to commodity producers.  Since base commodity production in any kind of efficient market should be a very low margin enterprise, think 1-4% real annual return, selling them debt to extract oil or gold out of the ground at higher rates than that ultimately sucks all the profit out of the venture.

Free markets when allowed to function properly grind out profit through competitive arbitrage. It is both brutal and the spark of new innovations and efficiencies.

It is the desire for higher profits over baseline that does this.

In base commodities that is difficult, at best, to do. Why? Because they aren’t anything more than a second order good. First order would be the ore or timber harvested. Second order would be the ingot or lumber produced. The higher order the good, the more specialized it is and the higher opportunity for profit through product differentiation on something other than price emerges.

That’s most difficult to do in improving resource extraction because, it follows, most of the major gains in efficiency occurred in the past when the economy was less specialized.

Confusion Over ‘The System’

If the banks are on both sides of the trade setting the price of money, then they ultimately control who wins and who loses while this goes on. And let’s not mince words, it’s them. The profit rolls up to those that produce the highest order goods with the most complex supply chains.

The banks plough the profits from getting interest on the original debt into the very companies producing the higher order goods needed to ensure the lower order goods produce no wealth through the grinding out of profit via arbitrage throughout the supply chain.

Don’t believe me? Ask cattle farmers.

In this respect the current financing of these industries is nothing more than a virtualized version of the colonial economic model of the 15th through 19th centuries.

Instead of using physical men to subjugate the locals through superior weaponry and bribes to get them to extract the mineral wealth which the colonialists take back home, today we use the post-WWII institutions to run that same system through debt issuance for capex and the interest payments (in this case pure economic rent – unearned wealth).

The producer countries of all the mineral wealth in the world are nothing but debt slaves to the money masters in Brussels, City of London and New York.  That’s the gig.

Since we’ve reached the point of debt saturation where no more debt can be issued to extract mineral wealth and have the markets believe it could ever be paid back at these real yields, the system has to be reset.

The whole Great Reset is a way to crash the existing system but leave the same colonialists in power legally.

It’s not really more complicated than that.

When you understand that dynamic now you can understand why Russia, in particular, is the vanguard of the Global South’s desire to change the System of the World.

It is also the one country that has the commodity production power to expose the vulnerabilities of this System.

That’s Nice… #GotRubles?

And that’s where pegging the ruble to gold comes in.

The Bank of Russia is now a buyer of gold at 5000 rubles to the gram, or 155,500 rubles to the troy ounce.  At a Friday March 25th closing price of RUB96.62 vs. the USD that implies a gold price of $1610 per ounce.

The ruble is now freely strengthening versus the US dollar.

Now, that is not that remarkable on its own.

As I explained on Twitter that day:

• 1: At $1550 per ounce the first order effect here is that is implies a RUB/USD rate of around 75. Incentivizing those holding RUB to continue and those needing them to bid up the price from current levels.
• 2: This creates a positive incentive loop to bring the ruble back to pre-war levels.  Then after that market effects take over as ruble demand becomes structural, based on Russia’s trade balance.
• 3: Once that happens and the RUB/USD falls below 75, then the USD price of gold rises structurally draining the paper gold markets and collapsing the financial system based on leveraged/hypothecated gold.  Now we’re into the arb. phase @Lukegromen postulated w/ 1000bbls/oz.

So, this scheme incentivizes Russians to hold savings in rubles, because the ruble is undervalued.  It also incentivizes foreign traders to hold rubles because the ruble is undervalued relative to an overvalued open gold price.

Clearly currency speculators in Moscow, Shanghai, Singapore, Mumbai and Hong Kong are having a field day with this.

Coupled with Putin demanding ‘unfriendly countries’ paying for their Russian imports with either gold or the ruble, the natural choice is for them to buy rubles until such time as the price of gold and the ruble are in sync on international markets.

The howls of pain from the G-7 and Germany in particular are equal parts pathetic and hilarious as they complain that Putin is in ‘breach of contract’ for demanding a different payment currency for gas other than the euros stipulated in the contract.

Earlier Monday German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said from Berlin that the Kremlin demand for natural gas contracts to be paid in rubles is a “one-sided and clear breach of contracts” – saying the contracts must be honored under prior conditions, according to Bloomberg. “That means that a payment in rubles is not acceptable and we urge the relevant companies not to comply with Putin’s demand,” Habeck said. “Putin’s effort to drive a wedge between us is obvious but you can see that we won’t allow ourselves to be divided and the answer from the G-7 is clear: the contracts will be honored.”

The Kremlin’s quick shooting down of the German economy minister’s comments and the G-7’s stance on the ruble came Monday via a Russian lawmaker to state-run RIA Novosti: “Russian lawmaker Abramov says G7’s refusal to pay in Russian roubles for gas will definitely lead to a halt in supplies.”

Pissed off Russians certainly have a way with words, as a writer, I appreciate this greatly. According to TASS:

Moscow is handling the details of its gas delivery plans to unfriendly countries for payment in rubles, but it won’t engage in charity if Europe refuses to pay in the Russian currency, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

…The Kremlin spokesman remained tight-lipped on what measures Russia might take if Europe refused to pay for gas in rubles, noting that these “issues should be sorted out as they develop.” “But we will definitely not supply gas for free, that’s for sure. It is hardly possible and reasonable to engage in charity in our situation,” he emphasized.

Do you hear that Davos? That’s the sound of the ticking clock.

The Trade’s the Thing…

The reason why this current scheme is already working is that Russia runs a positive trade balance mostly in base commodity exports. Davos doesn’t want them making any money selling those commodities to the world and will continue to put sanctions on to get people to not use rubles.

They are however fighting the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s market. The demand for the ruble will rise above the pre-war exchange rate of around 75:1 vs. the USD.

The price point for gold/ruble implies that exchange rate. Russia will revisit this at the end of Q2.  This also implies they expect the ruble/dollar rate to fall to 75 by the end of Q2, if not earlier.

After that if the ruble strengthens beyond that they can adjust the gold buying price.

If the ruble/dollar rate dips below their pegged price, buyers are getting oil at a discount when paying in gold. That will force the CRIMEX and LBMA into a supply shortage situation or they will have to end the expansion of paper gold versus real gold and allow real price discovery to the upside.

If the sanctions are successful in scaring everyone into not using rubles gold Russian commodities then the exchange rate will stay stubbornly above 75 and the boycotting world will lose competitive advantage versus those willing to brave the US’s ire by getting Russian commodities on the cheap.

As I talked about in previous articles, this sets up the opportunity to end the suppression of the price of gold through rehypothecation of physical gold in the paper markets which is the basis for the entire financial colonization system I described above.

FYI, this same scenario is going to play out in Bitcoin now that Russia has said ‘friendly countries’ can pay for imports with Bitcoin.  Has anyone noticed the current rally in the World’s Most Hated Cryptocurrency?

We now have a full gold/bitcoin/ruble (and soon Yuan) interconversion system that completely and utterly cuts out Davos and destroys their colonial debt model while also taking away their power to crash economies through hot money in and out flows.

Because the next step in all of this is for Russia to close their capital account and nationalizing the Bank of Russia making the only source of international rubles be the Russian government.

Internally, the ruble will be de facto backed by gold and can circulate freely.

The War Without End, Ended

The war is over folks.  Russia, China and the rest of the Global South have already won. As Luke Gromen replied to me., “in the end there’s nothing they can do about it.”

What scares me is the last thing I tweeted out in that thread:

“Other than widen the war on the ground.  That’s the part that scares me.”

And that’s exactly what I expect to happen next, sadly.  Biden is in Brussels saying the quiet parts out loud talking with the 82nd Airborne about going into Ukraine and calling for regime change in Moscow.

These people still believe their own bullshit to the point where they think this becomes a war the Russians can’t win.

Putin let the world down easy with this announcement.  He could have walked right in and said 8000 rubles to the gram or $2575/oz and that would have broken the markets Friday going into the weekend, by selling his oil and gas at a steep discount.

He waited until after OpEx last Friday and the Fed’s interest rate hike plan was announced.

Timing matters guys.

But, by doing this he has very subtly also supported the Fed and it’s plan to withdraw dollars from Europe, because this will keep the price of gold in check for a little while and keeping the ECB from offsetting spiking Eurobond yields with higher gold reserves on its balance sheet.

Putin on the left arm, Powell on the right and Lagarde is about to get pulled apart at the seams if Davos doesn’t play ball and give up.

The problem there is the unquenchable arrogance of these European elites who simply do not believe they could be bested by the “colonies” in the US and the “dirty slavs” in Russia.  I’ve told you for years now that it is their inherent racism that drives their actions.

So, do not be surprised if they empower the neocons in the UK and US to escalate from here. The signs are piling up that the Pentagon and the White House are at odds over the planned escalations. The State and Treasury Depts. are nests of vipers having usurped Congress to wage war without declaring it.

I can only hope that serious and adult people within the Pentagon will finally end this nonsense before we wind up in a war no one wants except a bunch of inbred Eurotrash well past their ‘use-by’ date.

I always say that spooks start civil wars but militaries end them. Let’s hope that we never get to the point of needing any other military than the Russians’ to end this war.

In the meantime, the message is clear, #GotGoldorRubles?

tomluongo.me

Far from NATO being emboldened and “united”, despite the military drills in backwaters like Norway which mainstream media dutifully accept being spoon fed, the organisation itself is likely to become even more ineffective, weak and poorly managed than ever before once the Ukraine crisis is over.

That doesn’t mean it might not expand. There are one or two candidates which are mulling such a move like Finland. But in terms of its clout on the world stage, the Ukraine crisis has shown that the powerful nations behind NATO are quite happy with it being a somnolent power which has the resources which it is unlikely ever to use in a standoff with Russia. The danger of being weak, which is clear to see with the Ukraine situation where NATO hasn’t the courage to threaten Putin with a nuclear or even conventional war, is that people remember it for a very long time and in terms of PR and its own identity, the failure to support Ukraine will reverberate for decades to come. While Finland might ponder the pros and cons of joining NATO, others, like Balkan countries may well be thinking that it is better to reap the cash benefits and corruption possibilities for EU membership while playing a cool hand with Moscow and staying out of NATO. Many will just ask “what is the point?”. In the end, it wasn’t NATO which helped Ukraine but individual member states like the UK, France and Germany with effective military hardware without sending troops on the ground. And so in joining NATO, new members in the Balkans immediately draw the wrath of Moscow as they paint a cross on their backs as their countries become a playground for world powers to flex their muscles.

NATO has lost, rather than gained, so much credibility as all that those in the West whose countries make up the ‘big guns’ can remember is its buffoonish chief waving his arms around at press conferences and talking. And talking.

But actions speak so much louder than words. And no one knows that more than Zelensky who has been watching Joe Biden meddle with Ukrainian politics since 2014 where he was part of a plot to install Poroshenko into power, a leader who, despite being a western ideologue, was ousted essentially for corruption and mismanagement on a grand scale. Biden in 2015 talked the talk then, when Poroshenko was elected, and he talks the talk today. No fly zone from either NATO or the U.S. will be his position when he takes the podium in Brussels at a special meeting in the Belgian capital.

The theme of meddling in the domestic politics of countries that are politically finding their own feet after the fall of communism, by backing so-called “revolutions” but then failing to support their friends when the blood starts to flow is really what Biden is all about. And this is really NATO’s problem as well as the EU’s as the implications will be felt even more so by Europeans than Americans. NATO members might well harangue Biden at the meeting to consider a partial no fly zone, but even on a practical level, it’s hard to imagine Pentagon advisors going with it as Ukraine is so huge that it would be hard to implement. Furthermore, how would a no fly zone work against Russian aircraft which stay in Russian airspace and deliver their arsenal from afar?

It’s not hard to work out what is the core of the reasons why Ukraine is at war. Biden is weak and Putin strong, although by the same token we shouldn’t pander to the Trump camp’s lame allusion that things would have been different if The Donald was in the White House. Trump proved to be also quite yellow when it came to going to war with Iran when Tehran provoked a war by a drone strike in the summer of 2019. American presidents, regardless of political colours, have lost their courage for going the extra mile in enforcing U.S. foreign policy around the world and faced with a no-nonsense Russian leader like Putin become pathetic. How could NATO, led by the U.S., ever be effective if American leaders only constantly polish and admire their factory greased still-in-the-wrapper weaponry, confident that it will never be used to uphold the core principles of the treaty’s Article 5? Countries like Poland, Romania and Slovakia are left wondering if NATO would have the courage to fight in those territories in the event of a Russian conflict. No one is interested in looking at the bigger picture and holding the West to account for lying to Russia since the early 90s about halting expansion or America’s dangerous meddling in regional politics. Or corruption. How, after all, does a former comic who becomes president on an anti-corruption ticket, end up with share options worth 600 million dollars?

The current situation in Ukraine has once again invigorated the lying Western media and sent them into an anti-Russian frenzy. For the last two years the media has been enthusiastically pushing the genocidal Covid narrative on behalf of the Globalist faction. Whatever doubtful credibility they had prior to Covid they have destroyed with their relentless lies. With an astonishing lack of self-awareness they are now pushing the anti-Russian narrative like the unprincipled mindless hacks that they are. Ignoring both facts and context they are relentlessly promoting war propaganda to justify this hostility to their own beleaguered populations.

The unfortunate reality is that despite unprecedented distrust in the media that propaganda works. Anti-Russian sentiment is rising throughout the West. We have witnessed the same phenomena with the rabid anti-China narrative emanating from Western governments and their client stenographers in the media. The message is clear, unless you are a pliant puppet of the Anglo-American empire, then obviously you are evil and must be destroyed.

The truth of course is deeper, the real war the Globalists are fighting is against the citizenry of every country on earth. As the Covid atrocity is being rapidly exposed the repression of the people is the only option open to the New World Order Davos cabal. As has always been the case, a war abroad is the best excuse to impose tyranny at home. The Western Neo-liberal governments of America, Canada, Australia and most of Europe cannot afford to be removed from power. The full anger of the people will be unleashed full power against those who imposed the Genocidal Covid lie upon them. Trudeau, Macron et al will be held to account (one way or another) for their pivotal roles in this atrocity. They cannot allow that to happen, they have too much to lose.

The tragic and unnecessary conflict in the Ukraine can be viewed as the “Great Reset War”. Although targeted towards Russia for media purposes, its real objective is the further subjugation of the peoples of their own countries. The Western Neo-liberal agenda is failing on every front, economically, socially and morally. The Cabal has destroyed the once prosperous and free societies that they governed. The dystopian future that they have planned for the world is now plain for all to see. It has been on display in Canada and Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe. It is a prospect that should alarm everybody.

“The Great Reset” is the Cabal’s way of ensuring that the same Globalists who plunged the world into chaos are still in charge after the coming inevitable collapse. The Green agenda and the 4th industrial revolution are about de-industrialising the world and destroying successful industrial competitors such as Russia and China. Not surprisingly, neither Russia or China, along with India and Iran are going along with this insidious plan. They are not alone, many countries from Africa, South America and Asia are also gravitating more towards the Russian/Chinese orbit. All have good reasons to be distrustful and angry at the Empire. The Cabal is weak and failing, it has created powerful enemies who are formidable obstacles to the New World Order and the Great reset. Expect this to embolden other countries to resist the Empire’s plans.

The Empire doesn’t care about the Ukrainians anymore than they care about the people in their own countries. It is about maintaining control over humanity. President Putin is not in essence fighting the Ukraine, he is fighting the N.W.O. And that is everyone’s fight. The battle being waged by the West is for the minds of the Western people so they can justify the imposition of further tyranny. Until recently, President Putin has demonstrated incredible restraint, despite the incessant lies and aggression he has pursued peace and diplomacy. This has not been reciprocated, it has been meet with more lies and provocations. It has been faced with only two options, capitulate or resist, he has resisted. Russia’s fight is the fight of all peoples who value freedom and resist tyranny.

We are all Russians now.

Excerpted from a February 26 Newsweek article:

“By February 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was considering an invitation from Moscow to hold ‘neutrality’ talks in neighboring Belarus. If those talks happen, Putin will then be able to pull back troops and end the conflict – while having dealt the West a humiliating blow.

And that, military and Russia experts agree, may be the real point.“

I don’t believe that Putin is primarily motivated to tweak the West. If anything, it’s more the other way around. His primary motivation is to militarily strike before Ukrainemightbecome a strong NATO beachhead, in conjunction with better securing the position of the Donbass rebels. I make this assessment, while being uncomfortable with the action undertaken and some of the responses to it.

The selective outrage is breathtaking, given the lack of attention to the plight of the Donbass rebel inhabitants. These people have endured eight years of reckless shelling from the Kiev regime. (Among other sources, refer to David Hendrickson’s February 22 National Interest article and the content referenced in a same day Aaron Mate tweet.)

Within Russia and​ abroad, there’s the view that Zelensky periodically gets stonewalled by Kiev regime nationalist circles and perhaps the US government. The latter certainly hasn’t helped to calm things down.

Zelensky won the last Ukrainian presidency on a campaign promoting better relations with Russia, including an end to the war in Donbass. Upon assuming office, Zelensky drifted in a noticeably opposite direction from his election platform. In US mass media, Tucker Carlson has exposed what keen Russia-Ukraine observers have already known about Ukraine being democratically challenged.

In the last Ukrainian presidential election, Petro Poroshenko was Zelensky’s main opponent. Poroshenko ran on a nationalist platform. He was once friendly with ex-Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now imprisoned in Georgia.

During the 2008 war in the Caucasus, Saakashvili regularly appeared on CNN, spouting neocon/neolib  out anti-Russian rhetoric. Over the past weekend, Poroshenko has pretty much done the same on that network.

In English language TV media, the CGTN America shows (particularly The Heat show) covering Russia-Ukraine, are generally superior to what France 24’s The Debate, Al Jazeera’s Inside Story and RT’s CrossTalk have put out. A respectfully diverse and knowledgeable panel makes for great viewing.

Lagging behind are the BBC, CNN, PBS, MSNBC and NPR, among numerous others. Some (not all) of the CGTN Western hired reporters and moderators periodically exhibit the inaccurate slants evident in Western mass media.

What follows is an updated message I sent to some of the people who’ve appeared on that network, as well as some others who’re involved with Western mass media and/or think tank circles. I appreciate the private replies. MA

I’ve a response to what Michael O’Hanlon, Serhiy Kudelia and Lincoln Mitchell said on CGTN.

Regarding a thought from Dr. O’Hanlon, NATO is a definite existential threat to Russia, as evidenced by the anti-Russian commentary regularly dished out by key NATO brass over the years. In comparison, someone like a now ex-German naval commander gets pushed out for offering a counter view.

NATO exhibited its bias going back to the 1990s. From that period, compare the reply to Russia’s open inquiry about joining NATO to those granted NATO membership. I’ve provided details on that blatant anti-Russian bias.

Poland presently has a nationalist anti-Russian government which some in the West consider as democratically challenged. Hypothetically, what happens when a noticeably anti-Russian NATO country picks a fight with Russia? Exclusively or otherwise, is Russia always in the wrong? There’s also the matter of how NATO militarily engaged itself on non-NATO territory in 1999.

The Neo-Nazi situation in Ukraine meshes with how the US government and Kiev regime were the only two delegations voting against a General Assembly resolution denouncing the glorification of Nazism. As I’ve noted, the official US explanation for its vote is crock.

Over the decades, the US body politic has been influenced by the activism of pro-Stepan Bandera elements in the Ukrainian American community. Dominating the Captive Nations Committee, these individuals influenced the US Congress to pass the Nazi like Captive Nations Week Resolution, portraying Russia and Russians as the benefactors of Communism at the expanse of others.

This move has greatly and understandably offended Alexander Solzhenitsyn and people in the Russian American community, who’re proud of their dual background. Do Russian lives matter? In Ukraine, monuments honoring pre-Soviet figures Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov get disrespected unlike what’s accorded to the memory of Bandera.

Paul Robinson perhaps best sums up this situation by saying that Ukraine isn’t a Nazi state, while having a Nazi problem. This subject has been definitely downplayed in the US.

Note how US mass media recently covered a Ukrainian granny getting a shooting lesson from a group wearing the fatigues with the logo of a Neo-Nazi militia. The coverage didn’t mention that affiliation. Such oversight is common when the black and red Banderite flag is shown in news clips.

The Neo-Nazi elements have been evident among the forces which have killed and displaced many in the rebel Donbass area over the past eight years. Relying solely on Western mass media, some might be duped into wrongly believing that substantial war related deaths and population movement suddenly began on Ukraine’s Soviet drawn boundary.

When belittling the Neo-Nazi role in Kev regime-controlled Ukraine, Dr. Mitchell notes his family’s Russian Empire Jewish roots. I sense that my family’s Russian Empire/Soviet Jewish and Russian Orthodox Christian backgrounds, have given me a broader scope, enabling me to make the following observations.

After WW II, the Banderites de-emphasized their anti-Jewish and anti-Polish activity, as they hyped an extreme anti-Russian message. In the US, this is more likely to be accepted:

• The USSR was created to benefit Russians at the expense of others.
• As opposed to – The USSR was created to benefit Jews at the expense of others.

In reality, both are inaccurate. Likewise, with The NYTs’ Juliet Macur distinguishing between “clean athletes” and “Russians” How is that different from categorizing “law abiding citizens” and “Blacks“?

Concerning sports demagoguery, the IOC is advocating for the Russian flag and anthem to be banned from sporting events, as a response to the Russian military action in Ukraine. With the exception of the disingenuous decision against Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics, when did the IOC ever ban another country for involvement in a war that led to many deaths and homeless, whether before, during or after an Olympiad?

Especially sickening, is Wayne Gretzky calling for a ban of Russia from the rescheduled World Junior Ice Hockey Championship. He never advocated banning Team USA to protest the many who died care of US military action. I don’t support such a banning. We’re talking about athletes – in this instance young ones. Russian NHL players are in a difficult position to speak out against Gretzky.

The gross arrogance, ignorance, hypocrisy and bigotry pertaining to Russians is quite evident. Make no mistake about it, many on the territory of Ukraine (in addition to some others elsewhere) are opposed to this deceit.

With the unipolar world in decline, China is in a prime position to broker a Russia-Ukraine settlement. Beijing has good ties to Moscow and Kiev, with Chinese officialdom exhibiting a more balanced approach than their US and EU counterparts.

antiwar.com

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The collective West was already angry. And it is apoplectic after President Putin shocked western leaders by ordering a special military operation in Ukraine, which is being widely described (and perceived in the West) as a declaration of war: ‘a shock and awe assault affecting cities widely across Ukraine’. So angry in fact is the West that the information space has literally bifurcated into two: It is all black and white, with no greys. For the West, Putin has comprehensively defied Biden; he has unilaterally and illegally ‘changed the borders’ of Europe and acted as a ‘revisionist power’, attempting to change not just the borders of Ukraine, but the current world order. “Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, we are facing a determined effort to redefine the multilateral order,” the EU High Representative, Josep Borell, warned. “It’s an act of defiance. It’s a revisionist manifesto, the manifesto to review the world order”.

Putin is characterised as a new Hitler, and his acts asserted to be ‘illegal’. It is claimed that it was he who tore up the Minsk II Accord (yet the Republics declared their independence in 2014, signed Minsk in 2015, and it was Russia who never signed the accord – and therefore cannot be in breach of it). Indeed, it is the US effectively that has vetoed the Minsk process since 2014, and Russia’s publication of diplomatic correspondence in November 2021 exposed that France and Germany too, had little intention of pressurising Kiev on any meaningful implementation. And so, having concluded that a negotiated settlement – as stipulated in the Minsk Accords – would simply not happen, Putin determined that there was no point in waiting any longer before implementing Russia’s red line.

The late Stephen Cohen wrote of the dangers of such unqualified Manichanaeism — how the spectre of an evil-doing Putin had so overwhelmed and toxified the US image of him that Washington has been unable to think straight – not just about Putin – but about Russia per se.  Cohen’s point was that such utter demonisation undercuts diplomacy. How does one split the difference with evil? Cohen asks, how did this happen? He suggests that in 2004, the NY Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, inadvertently explained, at least partially, Putin’s demonisation. Kristof complained bitterly of having been “suckered by Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin”.

Most Russians however, are behind Putin with the recognition of the Donbas Republics, which he then followed up by obtaining the authorisation of Russia’s upper parliament house for the use of armed forces outside Russia (as required under the constitution). The resolution by the Federation Council was unanimously supported by all the 153 senators at an extraordinary session on Tuesday.

In his national address, Putin spoke with a bitterness that is reflected by many Russians. He views the post-2014 political developments in Ukraine as having been engineered to create an anti-Russian regime in Kiev nurtured by the West, and with hostile intentions towards Russia.  Putin illustrated this point by explaining that “The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads”. Putin also noted that the Russian constitution stipulates the borders of Donetsk and Lugansk regions to be as they were “at the time when they were part of Ukraine”. This is a carefully worded formulation — the borders of the two republics underwent significant changes in the aftermath of the Maidan coup. (At issue here is Donetsk’s historic claim to coastal Mariupol).

Putin’s recognition statement was accompanied by an ultimatum to the Kiev forces to cease their artillery bombardment across the Line of Control or face military consequences. Throughout Wednesday evening however, the situation on the Contact Line was heating up, with heavy artillery fire; but early Thursday morning, for the first time, multiple rocket-fire was used by the Kiev forces across the Control Line. (Someone from the Kiev side clearly wanted escalation – perhaps to put pressure on Washington). Putin immediately ordered what was evidently a pre-prepared Special Operation ‘to de-militarise and de-nazify Ukraine’. Russia’s military announced within a couple hours of the offensive that all of Ukraine’s air defense systems had been taken out. A massive Russian aerial presence, including fighter jets and helicopters, has been confirmed over much of the country.

Possibly this operation (which Putin said is not about occupying Ukraine), will follow the pattern of Georgia in 2018, when Russian forces withdrew after a few days. This was the pattern too, in Kazakhstan. We simply do not know whether this will be the case in Ukraine — very possibly not. When Putin spoke of ‘de-nazification’ he was referring to the US co-option of a neo-Nazi formation in Ukraine’s armed forces to help mount the 2014 Maidan coup.  The so-called Azov Brigade of neo-Nazis had proved to be the most effective fighting force in pushing back the DLR militia in the Donbass region. (Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces and there will be scores to be settled).

Nonetheless, Putin’s Special Order has, as no doubt he foresaw, shocked the West deeply with its decisive military reaction. It has set the world – and its financial and energy markets – on edge.

Indeed, the latter aspect may become the more salient. In 1979, upheavals in the Middle East sent energy prices soaring (just as is occurring today), and western economies tumbling. Wherever the next days bring, it must be plain that Putin’s short press conference on 22 February is acting as intended, as a powerful accelerant. The “constructive destruction” of the old Global Order will proceed faster than many of us had imagined. It marks an End to Illusions — an end to the notion that the US imposed, rules-based order remains an option.

How then to interpret the extreme anger in the West?  Simply this: In the end, there is reality. And that reality – i.e. what the West can do about it – is all that matters — which is … little.

The brutal first realisation underlying the anger is that the West has no intention – and critically, no ability – to counter Russia’s moves militarily. Biden has repeated the ‘no boots on the ground mantra’ again in the wake of Russian military operations. And for Europe, the imposition of a sanctions regime on Russia could not have come at a worse moment. Europe is facing recession and a pre-existing energy crisis (which will be hugely aggravated by Germany’s offering up Nordstream 2 to the hungry gods of vengeance). And spiking inflation (worsened with oil at $100) is causing interest rate and sovereign bond nerves to rattle. Now the pressure will be on Europe to find additional sanctions.

Sanctions there will be – and they will hurt Europeans directly in their pockets. Some European states are putting up a rear-guard action to limit sanctions that might worsen the coming European recession.  However, in a very real sense, the fact is that Europe is effectively sanctioning itself (it will sustain the bigger hurt from its own sanctions), and Moscow has promised to reciprocate any sanctions in a way that will hurt the US and Europe.  We are in a new era. This prospect and impotence in the face of it,  must account for a large portion of European frustration and anger.

Washington professes to have a ‘killer weapon’ targeted at Moscow: sanctioning semi-conductor chips. “This would be the modern equivalent of a 20th century oil embargo, since chips are the critical fuel of the electronic economy”, Ambrose Evans Pritchard argues in the Telegraph: “But this too, is a dangerous game. Putin has the means to cut off critical minerals and gases needed to sustain the West’s supply chain for semiconductor chips”.  In short, Moscow’s control over key strategic minerals could give Russia leverage, akin to Opec’s energy stranglehold in 1973.

Here lies the second strand to Europe’s outpouring of frustration: the unspoken recognition that Biden’s Ukraine policy; the west’s failure of diplomacy (all process and no substantive addressing of the underlying issues); plus Germany’s cack-handed handling of the Nordstream 2 question, have doomed the EU to years of economic decline and suffering.

The third strand is more complex and is reflected in Josep Borell’s indignant cry that Russia and China are two “revisionist” powers attempting to change the current world order.  The European ‘fear’ is grounded not only in the content of the Beijing joint declaration, but likely also that not in his entire life has President Putin before made a speech like Monday’s address to the Russian people. Nor has he ever named the Americans to be Russia’s national enemy in such unequivocal Russian terms – American promises: worthless; American intentions: deadly; American speeches: lies; American actions: intimidation, extortion and blackmail.

Putin’s speech portends a great fracture. It seems to be just dawning on Europeans (such as Borrell) just how much of an inflection point Putin’s address represents. It was framed around Ukraine, yet the latter issue – though compelling – is incidental to the decision by Russia and China to change forever the geo-political balance and the security architecture of the globe.

What the recognition of the Donbas republics represented was the manifestation of this earlier geo-strategic decision. It is the first practical unfolding of that break with the West (never absolute, of course), and the unveiling of Russia’s compilation of ‘technical-military’ measures designed to force a separation of the globe into two distinct spheres.  The first was the republics’ recognition; the second military-technical measure was Putin’s address; and the third, his subsequent ‘Special Operations’ order.

They – the Russia-China Axis – want separation. This is to come about either through dialogue, (which is unlikely, since the core principle of today’s geo-politics is defined by the deliberate non-comprehending of ‘otherness’), or it must be achieved by a contest of escalating pain (defined in terms of red lines) until one side, or the other, buckles.  Of course, Washington does not believe Presidents’ Xi and Putin possibly can mean what they say – and they believe that, anyway, the West has escalatory dominance in the field of imposing pain.

Less diplomatically put, Russia and China have concluded that sharing a global society with an America set on enforcing a hegemonic global order crafted to ‘resemble Arizona’ is no longer possible. Putin means what he says: Russia’s back is to the wall, and there is nowhere to which Russia can now retreat — for them it is existential.

The West’s denial that Putin ‘means it’ (thus ensuring the consequent failure of diplomacy) suggests that this crisis will be with us for at least the next two years. It is the start a drawn-out, high-stakes phase of a Russian-led effort to change the European security architecture into a new form, which the West presently rejects. The Russian aim will be to keep the pressures – and even the latency of war ever-present – in order to harass war-averse Western leaders to make the necessary shift.

Ultimately – after a painful struggle – Europe will seek reconciliation. America will be slower: the Beltway hawks will try to double-down. And it will be the western economic and market situation that may ultimately determine the ‘when’.

‘Constructive Destruction’ is a term coined by Professor Sergey Karaganov.

By Tony KEVIN

The dramatic declarations on Monday of independence by Donbass city-states Donetsk  and Lugansk, and Russia’s accompanying military guarantee to protect them against further heavy artillery attack by Kiev forces, illustrate yet again Barbara Tuchman’s classic March of Folly thesis – how often intelligent governments can act foolishly and against  their  best interest:  in this case, illustrated by Washington and Kiev.

This analysis will be unpalatable to many in the West. It is hard for us to see beyond the all-enveloping narrative that surrounds us of Western good intentions with occasional mistakes in implementation, versus our horror comic negative mental images of Russia’s president, Vladimir  Putin.

The latter images are far from the truth but very compelling. The people who create and sustain our mental furniture are top professionals at what they do. They  condition our thinking and emotions, through powerful images and memes as well as words. Highly intelligent people hate to admit they have fallen for such propaganda,  and often get angry when it is suggested to them that they have.

What Putin Wants From Ukraine

The fact is that there have been many speeches over the years by Putin acknowledging full Ukrainian sovereignty since the 1991 breakup of the former Soviet Union, an authoritarian state in which Ukrainian Communists had played a major leadership role. Putin consistently has asked for two things of Ukraine.

First, decent  good-neighborly  relations based on mutual respect and mutual security, as between the U.S. and Canada. And second, as in Canada, respect for the full human rights of  Ukraine’s numerous “French Canadians” – the 50-percent-plus of Ukrainians who share Russian native language and culture. This importantly includes a right to share in the formation of Ukraine’s national security policies and priorities. But the U.S.  has at least since 2013 used Ukraine’s  Nazis, and there are plenty of those, as the spearhead of its determination to make Ukraine monocultural, militarized and permanently hostile to Russia.

Just because Putin asserts these things does not mean they are not true. I believe they are true.

Putin, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany  (as with Angela Merkel before him) in recent years and weeks did their best to find pathways through the growing confrontation,  but in the end they could not halt the determination of Washington and Kiev foolishly to provoke the Russian bear.

Over months, Putin had warned the West to step backwards from the militarization of Ukraine, and to work with Russia towards a wider European settlement, reversing  NATO’s dangerous expansion towards Russia’s borders since 1996. (See my two recent essays on Russian settlement proposals.)

As usual, the West cherry-picked, they prevaricated and – the  biggest Western blunder  of all – Washington’s Joe Biden supplied powerful city-destroying heavy weapons to the ill-disciplined  and Nazi-infected Ukrainian army. The temptation to start using them was irresistible.

We saw  from Feb. 17 onwards a determined, very  threatening, but foolish attempt by Kiev’s  armed forces along the line of contact, including the notorious Azov Battalion, to advance into and occupy Donbass, under the noses  of the 130,000 Russian troops waiting for orders in  nearby Russia.

The Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelensky  and his American advisers like Victoria Nuland had convinced themselves that Putin would not now dare to invade Ukraine after all the Western warnings of wider retribution.  How wrong they were: right that he would not try to occupy Kiev, but wrong  that he would let Donbass fall, creating unacceptable high risks of brutal ethnic cleansing  of up to 4 million Russian Ukrainians forced to flee Donbass into Russia. And what a political humiliation this would have been for Putin.

By  Feb. 18 it was already clear from Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe   reporting that a sharp escalation in Kiev’s shelling  of Donbass was taking place. Donetsk suburbs were  being shelled. A Ukrainian special forces commando raid into neighbouring Rostov province in Russia  was discovered  and neutralized.  The Donbass leaders wisely ordered evacuations, not to leave civilian hostages  in place  in cities at imminent risk of carpet-bombing, if they did  not surrender. Aleppo was the stark example of what could have happened.

Now Russia has given the green light to Donbass independence, protected by Russian military might, as was the case in Crimea.

It cannot have been an easy decision for Putin and his National Security Council, urged on by the Duma  as they were to do something.  Donbass  does not have the many strategic and economic attractions and assets  of Crimea. Reconstruction will be huge and expensive and the diplomatic costs to Russia  very high.

But Putin had no alternative: in the end, he had to defend Russians  at grave risk abroad, with real threats to their lives as reported by OSCE and Russian  intelligence. The Minsk Accords are now dead. These steps already seem irreversible.

Sooner or later these temporarily independent statelets will merge into Russia. The irony is that France and Germany, the guarantor powers, had for years since 2015 been urging Kiev to accept  the federal solutions proposed by the Minsk Accords. But  then, Kiev nationalists, quietly  backed by NATO, had reneged on Minsk, confident that in the end they could achieve the unitary Ukraine they wanted by letting the Minsk Accords  be forgotten.  Now, ironically, Kiev pleads in the UNSC  for a return to the Minsk Accords. But this train has already left the station.

Downside for East & West

December 2019: From left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

There will be downside consequences for both East and  West. There  will be immediate major losses of French and German  sovereignty. They will be sucked  back into U.S. alliance hegemony.  There will be immediate setbacks to Russia-France and Russia-Germany possibilities for detente. These two major states now will be, albeit reluctantly, more firmly locked into U.S.-led NATO military operations.

It is hard to see the Nord Stream pipeline opening now,  which  will be a great economic and humanitarian loss to Europe. There will be greater sanctions intensity, hurting both sides economically, and a huge setback to detente generally. The new Cold War will be more firmly lodged in place.

Will Russia advance further into Ukraine?   I would predict almost certainly not, though we will hear Western propaganda for weeks that Russia will do so. The present line of contact will become the frontier, as it has de facto  been the frontier since 2015 after former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s failed attempt to overwhelm Donbass.

How will China and the nonaligned world react? These are the most important questions now. Will they see through this latest Anglo-American false narrative of unprovoked Russian aggression , or will they be fooled yet again by the information warriors ? I would like to think the former, but I fear the sedulous power of the Western false narrative. I believe that China, and more quietly India  , will stand by Russia. Others– we shall see.

It did not have to be this lose-lose outcome. A Canadian solution was possible, if there had been a modicum of goodwill  from Kiev: a federal Ukrainian state with real sovereignty rights for Russian Ukrainians,  including importantly a real say in Ukraine foreign policy choices.

Putin was desperate for this outcome and he waited as long as he could. But Washington and Kiev  wanted confrontation and permanent East-West hostility, whipped  up by Victoria Nuland and her ilk. They now have this. Ukraine will remain poor, depopulated, illiberal and militarized. It is a tragedy, but the threatened genocide  and ethnic cleansing of Donbass Russians  would  have been intolerable for the majority of Russians. As it was personally, for an obviously angry and distressed Putin. This outcome will bring him and his key advisers no great joy, but it was the right decision to take.

johnmenadue.com via consortiumnews.com

Political leaders from around the world are experiencing the lowest approval ratings in recorded history. Emmanuel Macron in France, Boris Johnson in the UK, Justin Trudeau in Canada, and it seems the entirety of the Australian political class are all widely despised by the electorates in their countries. It is also the case in most European countries as huge demonstrations protest the increasingly Draconian and transparent Covid restrictions. Few now doubt that the absurd, incompetent and unscientific response to this Scamdemic is about more than just the Flu. Vaccine mandates are the cause of an immense pushback against what is now seen as a poorly disguised move towards totalitarianism.

Obvious to all but the willfully uninformed is that the political class are advancing the interests of an entirely different constituency that that of the people they purport to represent.

The Pharmaceutical giants and the control they exercise over the political system and all its institutions have been exposed. Public trust in the institutions that govern have eroded to an extent that it may never recover. To be sure, this political class are not the real power, they don’t rule, but they do govern. They have been exposed as little more than frontmen for the real power structure. They are unprincipled and lie with impunity even when they know they are not believed. They continue to act against the wishes and best interests of the public even after their lies have been exposed. They no longer promise a better future, all that they have left to offer is fear. Covid, Russia, China, all evils that they vow to protect us from.

While the political class relentlessly bombards us with fear porn, they reassure us that we are on the side of the righteous. Western values they proclaim are what makes us better than the evil Russians and Chinese. Never explained or elaborated upon, these values are those of a Neo-liberal democracy, we are assured. This apparently should be enough to satisfy and increasingly unsatisfied populace that all is well with the system. However, these values are neither new, liberal or democratic, Neo-liberalism is Corporatocracy. The corporate charter defines only one objective, maximise shareholder value (profit) to the exclusion of any other considerations. No concern for consequences or the human cost are to be figured in the profit calculus. If corporations are as they are legally recognised, “people too”, they then are sociopaths. To speak of corporate values is a contradiction in terms, there are none.

Sociopaths represent about 2-3% of the male population, less in women, about 1 %. It is a spectrum, not all sociopaths are serial killers. Defined by an absence of empathy and consequence for their actions, a sociopath will do or say anything that furthers his ambitions. They lie with impunity even when they know they are not believed. If this sounds like a politician you know, it is probably because they are indeed a sociopath. Corporatocracy requires sociopaths to run their sham political systems. There is a name for it, Kakistocracy, define as rule by the worst, least qualified. Difficult to dispute is that it is exactly what now governs the Western world.

Sociopaths are wildly overrepresented in certain professions. Senior executives at multi-national companies, especially CEOs, Law enforcement, the Medical profession and Politics. Another characteristic among sociopaths is their ability to be able to identify each other. This is a useful tool for those that select and groom these aspiring, flawed human beings for influential roles. Klaus Schwab, the sinister head of the WEF at Davos has been running his school for sociopaths for several years. Innocently titled the “Young global leaders program” he has been turning out some of the worst, least capable political figures in recent memory. Macron (France) Kurtz (Austria) Tony Blair (UK) Angela Merkle (Germany) and Jacinda Ahern (NZ) are all graduates. The European Union is overrun with them, including president Jean-Claude Juncker. America also has many of Schwab’s prodigies exercising power and influence. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Chelsea Clinton and California Governor Gavin Newsome. To name but a few, none of whom could even be charitably described as decent human beings.

The unity which Governments around the world have followed the absurd Covid response has illuminated the power that this sociopathic managerial class wields. Even as the Covid lie and its attendant evils falls apart they continue to “double down” and strip people of their freedoms and grant themselves new powers they were never entitled to. We can be assured that while these particular Sociopaths continue to lose any credibility they had, a pipeline of fresh graduates await their turn to follow their master’s voice. If history teaches us anything, it is that those who want power, and the last people who should ever be trusted with it.

The public bear some responsibility too, the French should know better than to elect a Rothschild banker like Macron. And the British – an Oxford graduate and serial liar such as Boris Johnson. In defence, it should be pointed out that electing leaders from within the existing political establishment will only produce more of the same. The faux left, right paradigm is just political theater, a distraction, the same power structure controls all sides of the political divide. Choice without options is no choice at all.

We may look back on the Covid era has a turning point in history. We are at the point where the masses are seeing through the lies of the ruling class and their political lackies. Progress can only be achieved when the people reject the options presented by the ruling class and chose leaders from outside the control of the parasitic corporate elite. Covid has exposed many villains, but it has also produced genuine heroes who have courageously stood on the truth. Robert Kennedy Jr. for example. It is essential that decent, brave and principled people are pressed into political service. If people continue to settle for the lesser of two evils, no change can be expected and the west will continue to be governed by the worst, least capable among us.