The Russians are Coming, the Russians are...oh, they're here...

[Stavros]

But if war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means, are sanctions not the continuation of war by othe means? In other words, the US/NATO is at war wth Russia, just not using military ordnance.

I have read the argument that negotiations which lead to Ukraine declaring itself neutral will satisfy Russia, but I don't think so. I think in Putin's mind, 'neutralizing' Ukraine means destroying it, that is, levelling its buildings, smashing its infrastructure to pieces, killing and injuring its men, women and children, rendering it incapable of being anything other than a giant graveyard. Why should he care about the place? It will still be on the map when it is all over.

Moreover, as I have argued before, creating a refugee crisis is a positive result for Russia if it sows division in eastern Europe, and by extension the European Union, which Russia successfuly destabilized with its influence on the Brexit Referendum, through the agency of Nigel Farage, Aaron Banks, Andy Wigmore and Cambridge Analytica.

Farage seems to have trouble remembering when he praised Putin, as he now thinks the end is nigh for his Russian idol. This has also become a problem for Americans like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, whose political judgments have exposed what nauseating hypocrites these men are, whereas Marjoie Taylor Greene did not stray into Nick Fuentes' New Wave Fascist rally where they chanted 'Putin! Putin!' by accident. She chose that particuar pigsty, because Putin is the fearless champion of the 'anti-woke' world in which she wants Americans to live. Presumably supporting the laws in Florida and Texas that ban abortions even when the pregnancy was the result of rape and incest. In what morally pure America does incest get a free pass, where Rapists have Rights that Pregnant American citizens do not?

I have wondered if the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with all its baggage of Nationalism, its 'anti-woke' crusade, has taken this spectrum of 'alt-right' zealots to a place they did not expect to go, just as January 6th exposed to the US the practical reality of extending Trump's ani-Government agenda, and his relentless promotion of himself as the definition of 'America'. On the one hand, now, suddenly some people are standing back and saying 'that's not us', but the logic of Trump's campaign is little different from the campaign of Nick Fuentes to 'purify' America, to 'cleanse' it of its 'radical leftists', its Muslims, its Immigrants. On the other hand, I don't see any chastened reversals in Texas or Florida, where Putin's agenda is no different from the one promoted by His Holiness the Abbott, or by the ridiculous Ron not-so Sanctis Santis.

Russia may fail, Ukraine may become a graveyard state, like Chechnya, but the 'war' goes on in the US. How many times, and in how many places are these people going to smash and destroy what has been built up over generations, out of the resentment of losers and lunatics like Trump, Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin? So many miles to go before we can sleep, without fear.

[Stavros]

The Russian Government has set out its four conditions of peace with Ukraine. These are-

-Ceasing all military action
-A change to the constitution to enshrine neutrality
-Acknowledgement of Crimea as Russian territory
-Recognition of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-ne...nato-invasion/

Of these four, neutrality could be acceptable, but is loaded with problems, the most obvious being that Ukraine might declare itself a neutral country, but even if it secured a guarantee from Russia that it would respect this neutrality, the record shows that Putin is unreliable.
It would be a 'giveaway', just as it is absurd to think Ukraine would simply wish away portions of its territory because they had a majority Russian speaking or 'Ethnic Russian' population, which is common across Ukraine and the Baltic region, and because it would be a reward for Russian aggression. Moreover, what would Ukraine ask for itself in these negotiations, with the likelihood that their proposals for peace would be unacceptable to Russia?

First put your enemy in a weak position, then extract the highest price. But what of the legacy of bitterness and resentment that Russia has created in Ukraine? To live under harsh condtions imposed against the will of the people is not a recipe for peace. It merely delays to a future date the retribution many Ukrainians may want.

Verdict -a clear statement from Russia, but one that makes an honorable peace impossible.

[Stavros]

I have been thinking about some of the similarities between Putin and other Dictators, and how they become insulated from reality, rely for their information on sycophants and hangers on who may have their own agenda, be protecting their jobs and income, but supply the Boss with glowing tributes and reports of success and popularity even where none exists. Saddam Hussein thus believed, or was led to believe the US would not oppose his annexation of Kuwait in 1990, and was thus shocked by the 'Coalition of the Willing' that he felt had turned against him, given that, with the exception of Syria, they had supported his war against Iran.

Here again, one notes that in 1990 Iraq had the fourth largest land army in the world, battle-hardened after 8 years of war, yet incapable of taking on the US and its allies to any effect, just as there are reports that for all its volume and fire-power, the Russian military is having multiple problems with equipment and communications, and with a young cohort of soldiers who don't really know what fighting is. And, again, as with 2003 in Iraq, there are claims the 100,000 strong force assembled by Putin is too small to win a war in a country the size of Ukraine.

Trump and Thatcher are also parallels -toward the end of her tenure, Thatcher's press secretary made sure she never saw the newsapers but edited cuttings which he chose if they supported her policies, though she seems to have been surprised at the hostility to the Poll Tax which so alienated her Cabinet colleagues, they turned against her. Donald Trump not only surrounded himself with 'Yes Men', so fierce is his temper even honest men and women were terrified of telling him the truth. Moreover, though he was a constant user of Twitter, he seems to have no interest in the World Wide Web and maybe has never even used it, thus insulating him from the extensive ridicule with which he is held across the US and the World, notwitstanding the 30-odd percent who adore him.

And, just as at the end, Qadhafi's closest aides deserted him, I wonder if the assumption Putin is impregnable, that he has his own private army (as was true of Saddam), that the Generals are committed to his agenda in the Ukraine, the time might come when in fact they turn against him, to save the Military as well as their own skins, and that we might wake up one day to find Putin has 'disappeared' and that a troika of men, mostly military are in command.

On the on hand, Russia does have friends, even if they are the dictatorships in Belarus, China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the latter two refusing to engage with the US, presumably keen to see the oil price rise or at least remain around $100 a barrel. Israel is stuck between them, led by a nasty Fascist who nevertheless seems reluctant to either condemn or support Putin's ambitions- but if this war drags on, and Putin uses chemical weapons and relentlessly pounds civilians as Russia did in Syria, and still does, can these half-hearted friends break with Moscow? Belarus looks the most solid ally, but could Lukashenko's support lead the opposition there to have another attempt at regime change from within?

If this ends badly for Russia, they could be back where they were when the USSR was dissolved in 1990-91, that everything that has been achieved over the last 30 odd years was all for nothing, the complete opposite of what Putin wants, with his grand vision of an Empire Restored to Glory. For this is a tragedy for Russia, as well as the Ukraine.

[broncofan]

Dictators can insulate themselves from bad news but Russia also has sophisticated (and not so sophisticated) mechanisms for insulating its public from the truth. Russia Today runs an alternative reality narrative, Russia has imprisoned over 10,000 protesters of the war, and Russia has in the West affiliates who do its bidding with a not so subtle combination of whataboutism and moral relativism. Still it's not enough as most people know that Russia's pretext for war was bullshit and the whataboutism doesn't work when anyone is still free to oppose imperialistic actions by western countries.

Putin's war is inflicting horrendous damage on Ukraine but it doesn't seem plausible it can ever hold the country. Russia's economy is being destroyed, the ruble is practically worthless, and Russia is currently just carpet bombing civilian buildings. If Putin hasn't lost it completely and isn't suicidal then maybe there's a way out of tis before more damage is done and lives are lost.

[Stavros]

One of the threads that the Russians are promoting is that they are engaged in the 'De-Nazfication' of Ukraine. Today, at the talks in Turkey, Sergei Lavrov claimed the maternity hospital bombed by the Russians had been taken over by the 'Azov Battalion' who movd out the patients, thus-

"It is not the first time we see pathetic outcries over so-called atrocities by Russia," Lavrov said. He said the hospital building was being used as a base by an "ultra-radical" Ukrainian battalion."
https://www.ibtimes.sg/russias-lavro...attalion-63298

""As for the maternity ward, it is not the first time that we see the shouting in relation to so called atrocities of the Russian military."He claimed that hospital had been taken over by the Azov battalion - a volunteer group fighting alongside the Ukrainian army - "a long time ago" and that all pregnant women had been taken out of the building."
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-w...pital-12562163

The Azov Battalion was indeed an extemist group that was formed in 2014 as a response to Russia's annexation of the Donbas region (they also make a lighning appearance in Oliver Stone's fantasy film on Ukraine); it denies it is Neo-Nazi, many of its volunteers are of Russian origin, it has never exceeded more than 2,000 or so some of whom are foreign (at least two from the UK, members of National Action), and it was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard in 2015. Did they occupy the Maternity Hospital and remove its patients? I don't know, but why would they if there were concerns, and there were, that the Russians are targeting civilian buildings such as hospitals? No need to defend these people when they are not that important.

The problem is that the Nazi narrative is part of the Russian/Soviet history of the Second World War, when those Ukrainians, and Russians who had never liked the Communists, took sides with the Germans, though some may have done for survival, and some out of ideological sympathy with Hitler's theories of race -because these were common throughout the Russian Empire before Hitler was even born. The Revolution of 1917 did not give birth to a generation of Marxist-Leninists, 'the people' in the 1940s were not so different from the People of 1900.

Thus Putin has a problem when he dreams of reviving the Empires of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and whicheve Tsar takes his fancy, because the violent anti-Semitism that reached its crescendo in the 1940s was a follow-up to the Pogroms of the 19th century that are an indelible stain on Russian history, with the last Tsar, Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra the most obnoxious anti-Semites even by Russia's low standards.

One also associates Russia with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Black Hundreds who, when they lost to the Bolsheviks, moved to Germany, Munich in particular where their vicious anti-Jewish beliefs were instrumental in the development of Hitler's ideas and his party.

It is impossible to deny the influence the Jews of the Russian Empire had on Russian/Ukrainian culture and history, if you are not sure, you can hear it in the music of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Shostakovich; the first committed Zionists to leave the Russian Empire and settle in Ottoman Palestine in the 1880s were from Kremenchuk in central Ukraine.
Over a million Jews are believed to have been murdered in what is now the Ukraine in the Second World War, so that today the Jewish population is relatively small but a visible presence in cities such as Kyiv and Odesa. But if the Neo-Nazis are so important to Putin as a cancer in Ukraine, it doesn't explain the aparrent absence of any significant anti-Jewish campaigning when Zelensky was running for the Presidency and getting over 70% of the vote. There is a useful historical overview here-
https://jewishunpacked.com/who-are-the-jews-of-ukraine/

It appears that Putin has created a narrative, and he is sticking to it. Needless to say, Russia is the Victim, and those opposed to Russia's independence and ambitions are 'drug addicts', 'Nazis', and whatever else can be plucked from the history of Russian Demons, the irony being that were this 1892, the Jews would be right up there. But don't tell Vlad that, or you will be impaled.

So there's your Shalom, without much Aleichem.

[Stavros]

Just in case you didn't know what reckless fools and hypocrites we have in the UK Government-

"Sajid Javid, the health secretary and the minister giving interviews on behalf of the government this morning, said that if a “single Russian toecap” were to step on Nato territory, that would be considered an act of war."

But if the Russians poison people in London and Salisbury with fatal consequences, we will slap the Russian wrist, and leave it at that.

Because the Party is soaked in Russian cash, and you know what is said 'Follow the Money'. Warning: you may end up in Boris Johnson's arse, and even his (ex?-) Russian girlfriend Olga Kholodnaya didn't get that far.

https://www.politico.eu/article/brit...oney-oligarch/

Fiddler on the Hoof-
https://twitter.com/imincorrigible/s...593?lang=en-GB

[Stavros]

When Putin says Ukraine must be 'De-Nazified' it appears he is using the concept to summon up the demons of the past, though it is not sure if the younger generation really understand the link. The sick irony in this is that, though it was not initially created by his Government, the Russian Imperial Movement [RIM] is now operating in Ukraine, having first gone into action in the annexation of Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The point being that the German Nazi movement was heavily influenced by the Russians who fled the Revolution in the aftermath of 1917 and the failure of the 'White Armies' to defeat 'the Reds'.

Russia was one of the crucibles of the violent anti-Semitism that reached its climax in the Holocaust. The notorious 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' was a Russian publication sanctioned by the Jew-hating Romanov Tsar and his wife, and the the three pillars of their dynastic rule over Russia were described as the Autocracy of the Tsar, the Orthodoxy of the Church, and the Nationalism of the people. These three were in effect re-habilitated by the Bolsheviks even before Lenin's death, thus giving to what became the USSR, the Autocracy of the Communist Party, the Orthodoxy of Marxism-Leninism, and the Nationalism of the people, most obviously expressed in Stalin's slogan for the 1941-45 conflict as 'The Great Patriotic War'.

Thus the RIM represents the resurrection of the project dear to Putin's heart, and it is no surprise that anti-Semitism is a constant feature of their narratives on the Ukraine. There are obvious differences in ideology with the Nazi's, but the national and international reach of the RIM is one potent factor in the violence in the Ukraine which may be easier to sustain than the conventional military, which as Petraeus has been pointing out is badly run, ill-equipped, and actually losing on the battlefield, reduced to having only missiles as their most effective weapon.

This suggests that along with the Wagner Group and mercenaries hired from Syria, a form of guerrilla warfare could drag on for some time in Ukraine, with peace negotiations likely to stall as guarantees are hard to confirm.

Israel thus finds it is both sympathetic to the Jewish oligarchs, many of whom have Israeli citizenship and property in the country, presumably to which they can or wish to retire, while the State has hedged its bets by not condemning the Russian war, perhaps because Naftali Bennett sees in Putin's claim that Ukraine is part of Russia, his view that Palestine is a fiction and that the 'West Bank' can only make sense as being part of Israel, while the violent tactics of the Russians in Ukraine are not so different from tnose of the Jewish Settlers in the Palestinian territories, supported by Bennett, who rip up orchards and olive groves, and attack Palestinians on a regular basis. The scale may be different, the aims are the same. And further proof, as if it were needed, that Naftali Bennett is just another Israeli Fascist unfit for public office.

But we are living through an era when Fascism is being revived, when Democracy is being held up to ridicule as an ineffective form of government, and in practical terms being undermined, not just in Russia, but in the UK and the USA.

Which is one reason why the stakes are so high in Putin's poker game.

Two articles on RIM here-
FSI | CISAC | MAPPINGMILITANTS CISAC - MMP: Russian Imperial Movement (stanford.edu)

The Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) and its Links to the Transnational White Supremacist Extremist Movement - ICCT

[Stavros]

You have to wonder what Putin and Medvedev are using for brains when they talk such nonsense, and even worse, one has to assume they believe it too.

"Mr Medvedev said that relations between the West and Russia were now worse than even during the Cold War.
“The state of relations between the Russian Federation and the Western world, the Anglo-Saxon civilisation in the broad sense of the word, led by the United States of America, is worse than, probably, in 1960-1970, this is beyond any doubt,” he said."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/kremlin-co...201647029.html

By coincidence last night, I watched part two of Robert Bartlett's splendid presentation of The Normans -that's the people from across the way who sent the Anglo-Saxons into the dustbin of history....I guess William the Conqueror is not the man of history he once was. Maybe one day people will look back at the history of Russia and compare Putin to Boris Godunov? Think about it! Or don't.

You can watch The Normans here if you have access to the BBC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...ans-2-conquest

[filghy2]

But we are living through an era when Fascism is being revived, when Democracy is being held up to ridicule as an ineffective form of government, and in practical terms being undermined, not just in Russia, but in the UK and the USA.

There has been an increasingly common view that autocracies have an inherent advantage over democracies because they can act decisively without having to worry about legal/legislative constraints or public opinion. Putin's Ukraine debacle seems to be demonstrating that the lack of checks and balances on the dictator's whims is actually the weakness of autocracies, combined with the unwillingness of subordinates to tell the leader anything they don't want to hear.

I suspect the only competence of autocracies in the long run is repression. Competence requires accurate information to assess the implications of different courses of action and willingness to listen to different viewpoints. None of this is possible in a dictatorship, which is why they ultimately screw up and rely on increasing repression and external aggression. It might be said that the economic success of China is a counter-example, but I think the shift from collegiate leadership to one-man rule under Xi Jinping may ultimately prove to be their undoing.

[Stavros]

There has been an increasingly common view that autocracies have an inherent advantage over democracies because they can act decisively without having to worry about legal/legislative constraints or public opinion. Putin's Ukraine debacle seems to be demonstrating that the lack of checks and balances on the dictator's whims is actually the weakness of autocracies, combined with the unwillingness of subordinates to tell the leader anything they don't want to hear.

I suspect the only competence of autocracies in the long run is repression. Competence requires accurate information to assess the implications of different courses of action and willingness to listen to different viewpoints. None of this is possible in a dictatorship, which is why they ultimately screw up and rely on increasing repression and external aggression. It might be said that the economic success of China is a counter-example, but I think the shift from collegiate leadership to one-man rule under Xi Jinping may ultimately prove to be their undoing.

You make valid points that I agree with, and would only ask if the Generals who one assumes assured Putin the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick victory, believed it themselves, whereas we have seen the shambles that the Russian armed forces are in the field. Were they aware of the sub-standard equipment they had, or were they so ill-informed that they did not know the ineffective armed forces of Ukraine in 2014 had been overhauled with new equipment and a more obviously motivated soldiery? You have to wonder why any Russian would start a war in winter, and now with the ice and snow melting, the roads will in some cases become rivers of mud. But as you say, the hubris that accompanies Dictatorship often form the basis of their collapse, if not yet in Russia.

One curious detail I discovered yesterday, is a 2013 agreement between Ukraine and China with the latter pledging to support Ukraine in the case of threat and or use of nuclear weapons, thus making it difficult for China to give Russia its complete support, while there is the longer term case of China having to subsidize Russia. Here is the key paragraph in the 2013 agreement-

"China pledges unconditionally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear Ukraine, and under the conditions of Ukraine suffering an invasion using nuclear weapons or suffering the threat of such kind of invasion, to provide Ukraine with corresponding security guarantees."
In 2013, China pledged to defend Ukraine in the event of a nuclear attack - Mothership.SG - News from Singapore, Asia and around the world