Tag: Russia

Regional Power != Global Invincibility

A surprising number of would-be war analysts are putting far too much stock in Russia’s inability to prop up the Syrian regime against the combined assault of US, Israeli, Turkish, and jihadist forces. But Russia and China are both REGIONAL powers; their inability to dictate events in the Middle East, or in Africa, is no different than the inability of the USA to dictate events in Eastern Europe or the Red Sea. The further away from their industrial core where force is generated, the harder it is to deliver a sufficient amount.

But the logistical difficulties in a remote location should never be confused with an inability to generate the force in the first place, as Andrei Martynov illustrates:

Russia is outpacing the arms production of the entire EU after significantly ramping up its defense industry and despite Western sanctions, the bloc’s commissioner for defense and space, Andrius Kubilius, has said. Kubilius, a noted Russia hawk and two-time prime minister of Lithuania, was approved by the European Parliament last month as the EU’s first ever defense commissioner. In an interview on Friday with the RND media group, he called on the EU to significantly expand the production of conventional weapons such as artillery and infantry vehicles, as well as long-range and precision weapons amid what he called a Russian attack threat. “The Russians have expanded their arms industry to an unimaginable extent despite our sanctions,” Kubilius stated. Russia now produces “more weapons in three months than the entire European arms industry can produce, and in six months more weapons than the entire German army has,” he added. Kubilius also cited experts who, according to him, say that Russia now produces more tanks than it uses on the front lines in the Ukraine conflict.

I want to stress, that in the last few years, a very good man, who I will not name, because I respect him, no, he is not my acquaintance–was repeating ad nauseam that Russia “with the economy the size of Spain”. Sadly, there is no such profession as a “good man”, but for most people in the US “intel” community it is worth learning that Russia’s economy is the 4th economy in the world and, possibly, the third. I want to stress that GDP numbers circulating in the “intel” circles are crap invented in the combined West to hide its deindustrialization and financialization of own economies. US industrial base was in steady decline for decades now and realistically, with the exception of automotive industry (granted with huge pure assembly from import parts sector) and aerospace with naval construction… well, that’s about the most important US machine building sectors.

What changed the equation in Syria was the involvement of the Turks and their willingness to help Clown World depose the Assad regime. The Russians quite rightly assessed the situation as hopeless and extricated their forces as well as the Assad family without taking any losses; contrast that with the expense incurred by the futile Us and European attempts to preserve Ukraine and its Clown World regime. But Erdogan has long been open about his dream of rebuilding the Ottoman empire, and Syria is part of that former Ottoman territory.

A deluge of new evidence shows Turkey slowly fortifying its position as future hegemon of the region. As soon as Damascus fell, the director of the MIT—Turkey’s CIA equivalent—Ibrahim Kalin was spotted visiting Jolani, touring Damascus, as well as paying homage to the ancient Umayyad mosque. Several videos showed Jolani acting as personal chauffeur to Kalin, driving him around Damascus with an armed escort. Think about that: Jolani as personal driver to the head of Turkey’s top intelligence agency—that’s not to mention that Kalin was senior personal advisor to Erdogan and is member of his AK Party. So, Erdogan’s personal henchman is already shadowing Jolani, whispering in his ear—what can that mean? And what does that say about rumors that HTS had long ago cut ties with Turkey, with the same going for SNA/FSA/TFSA?

This is why Israel has already invaded southern Syria. In my estimation, Turkey poses a much more significant long-term military threat than Iran ever has, although I wouldn’t assume that Turkey won’t eventually ally with Iran against Israel when the Israeli-Turkish war eventually begins.

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Five Lessons for Russia

Simplicius contemplates the lessons to be learned from the collapse of Syria and cites five lessons that the Russians should take from it.

FIVE LESSONS FOR RUSSIA

Doom and gloom are somewhat appropriate, but it is more important to think about the future now. What does the fall of Syria tell us?

  1. False Peace is Death. A bad faith ceasefire is a recipe for disaster and after Minsk and Astana should never be repeated. False peace is worse than war, because false peace means you still have to fight the war later, but at a disadvantage. No green busses or green corridors for the enemy, no deescalation zones, no freezing of any lines. The enemy has to be defeated completely: victory is a prerequisite for mercy. Until that is achieved, no ceasefires, only death under FABs.
  2. Collapse is always sudden. The Assad regime resisted NATO-Israeli aggression for 13 years. And then it fell in a week. Mistakes, systemic errors and structural attrition accumulate until a critical mass is reached, and at that point the smallest impact will bring down the entire house of cards. Likewise, our current enemy in the main theater will resist stubbornly, until he will not be able to anymore, and then we will see Big Arrows. All our efforts should be focused on damaging the enemy’s war-waging capabilities to reach that critical point.
  3. Infantry is King. A single full-sized, dependable Russian infantry brigade (or a Ukrainian one, for that matter) would have been able to defeat the Jihadi advance for good. They were completely overstretched and to a large degree their offensive was a bluff that only worked because the SAA didn’t even try to resist, they just ran. We had our own experience with a lack of infantry in the SMO — it led to the Kharkov oblast debacle in fall ’22. No matter what anyone says, no matter what technological advances there are, the infantry unit was and remains the central actor of history, upon which all else depends.
  4. Empire is secondary to the Nation. There was a loud public debate among patriotic circles in Russia when the intervention in Syria began in 2015. Personally, I was opposed to the intervention because it seemed absurd to me to send Russian men to die in a foreign desert while Russian people are suffering under the yoke of Banderite occupation just across the border. We were told by Kremlin propagandists that “Palmyra is a symbol for all mankind” and the Donbass is just, eh, the Donbass. Whatever. Now, Jihadi dogs will get to loot and destroy all that archaeological treasure of all mankind, and we have to fight for the Donbass, anyway. Was it worth it? I have always been staunchly pro-Assad, but a single square mile of Russian land in Novorossiya means more to me than the entire Middle East. A nation should have its priorities in order.
  5. You can’t change nature. Some peoples and countries are just unreliable. They will never have stable polities unless compelled by overwhelming force or foreign occupation. They will never build working institutions on their own. You can’t just offer them a comprehensive reform package and then shrug when they refuse to implement it. They will always be shitty client states if you work with them within a civilized framework. We know how to work around local particularities in other parts of the world, so we should let Middle East policy also be guided by this knowledge. They are not Warsaw Era-pact allies you can let do things on their own.

The most important lesson, of course, is to stop trusting to agreements with the agreement-incapable. The second-most important lesson is to recognize that every state and entity controlled by Clown World is agreement-incapable.

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Why Russia Quit on Syria

Andrei Martyanov’s citation of a Russian journalist helps explain why the Russians finally stopped protecting the Assad regime in Syria:

I do not feel sorry for the Syrian authorities. I remember too well how, back in 2012, we, Russian journalists, were “squeezed” at border control, with all our luggage turned inside out, and our cameras and photo cameras confiscated. Then they hounded us around the offices of various ministries, putting us through an unsolvable puzzle of obtaining various papers and permits. And Western reporters were practically carried around in their arms, trying to demonstrate their liberal views against the backdrop of the uprising in Daraa. These are not my personal grievances. This, among other things, was an expression of their attitude towards my country. Condescending, with rolled eyes and a disdainfully raised upper lip. Then we saved Syria in 2013, if anyone doesn’t remember. Obama was going to cover it with carpet bombing after the chemical provocation in Eastern Ghouta. And thanks to the efforts of Russian diplomacy, the catastrophe was averted. Postponed, as it turns out now. In 2015, we came to Assad’s aid again when the terrorists were five kilometers from the center of Damascus. And as best we could, we patched up this patchwork quilt, consisting of various religious, social, forbidden and not so forbidden pieces, between which contradictions grew.

Now Israel and Turkey will divide up whatever parts of the country ISIS-HTS are not allowed to keep. It appears the US military is already bombing their jihadist proxy army; one wonders how it is going to respond to the Turkish invasion of Kurdistan.

I would also keep an eye out for similarly sudden events in Ukraine; Martyanov and others believe Russia dropping its support for the Assad regime was traded for US dropping its support for the Kiev regime and that this was not necessarily the win for Clown World that it appears to be.

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The Beginning of a Failure Cascade

This may be one of the worst technological developments for humanity since gunpowder:

This is the type of AI that all leading experts have warned us about. German defense firm Helsing has announced it will provide Ukraine with 4,000 HX-2 “Karma” kamikaze drones this month. Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he had been “very pleased that the delivery of these drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) technology is already underway.”

With a top speed of 137 mph, these drones are capable of traveling up to 62 miles and can be loaded with various warheads for maximum destruction against armored vehicles, buildings, or platoons. The company states that these drones do not need a human operator, rather, they will be programmed to “search for, re-identify, and engage targets, even without a signal or a continuous data connection.” A human operator may “stay in the loop,” per the company’s messaging, but these weapons are designed to act autonomously.

“With HX-2, we have created a new smart effector that combines mass, autonomy and precision. Individual HX-2s can reliably engage armored targets in highly contested environments. When deployed along borders at scale, HX-2 can serve as a powerful counter invasion shield against enemy land forces,” Helsing’s co-founder Niklas Köhler stated. The other co-founder, Gundbert Scherf, said that NATO in particular has been eager for this technology. On one hand, the company says that these drones will retain human oversight, but on the other hand, the entire purpose of their design is to be autonomous.

Forget all the Skynet possibilities. Begun the Hacker Wars have. The easiest and most effective way to combat AI-controlled drone swarms is by putting a backdoor in the manufacturing process and giving yourself the ability to take control of them. And the utility of these autonomous killer drones in repressing civilian populations is obvious; combined with facial recognition technology it could be used to deny any movement to persons deemed undeniable.

It is informative that while knives are being banned by governments, this sort of lethal weaponry continues to be legally developed. Of course, civilians are going to acquire it too, which should make for a very interesting arms race.

But if they’re actually being used on Russian troops, I definitely wouldn’t want to be working in a Helsing factory. Or at their corporate HQ. I can’t imagine they would not be a priority on the Russian target list.

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Color Revolution in Georgia

The neoclowns are up to their usual shenanigans in another country that borders on Russia, led by a French diplomat who somehow managed to get elected President and, like Zelensky in Ukraine, is now refusing to step down when her term comes to an end.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili will not step down from her position despite the end of her mandate in December, she said in a video address on Saturday, explaining that she does not recognize the legitimacy of the newly-formed parliament and intends to stay in office until new elections.

“I remain your President! There is no legitimate parliament that will elect a new president,” she said in a video published on her Facebook page. “My mandate continues until there is a legitimately elected parliament that will legitimately elect a President who will replace me!”

Under the 2017 Georgian Constitution, the head of state is elected by an electoral college consisting of 300 members. Half of them are MPs, and another half are representatives of various Georgian regions. The next presidential vote is scheduled for December 14. Whoever wins is reportedly expected to be inaugurated before the end of the year.

In October, the South Caucasus nation also held parliamentary elections. The Georgian Dream party, which seeks to establish pragmatic relations with all the country’s neighbors, including Russia, emerged victorious with nearly 54% of the vote. The pro-Western opposition parties have refused to recognize the results, sparking a wave of street protests.

The French-born Zourabichvili – a career diplomat for Paris who acquired Georgian citizenship in her 50s – condemned the October election as a “Russian-style” operation, claiming that Georgian Dream is steering the nation towards Moscow and away from that of the EU. She also called for mass protests. A new wave of demonstrations was sparked this week by the Georgian government’s decision to suspend EU accession talks until 2028.

It’s all so tiresome. Once more, we see how genuine what passes for Western “democracy” is; it is now abundantly clear that it is nothing more than rhetoric meant to hide the fact that global satanists are controlling the government under a very thin veil of the supposed “will of the people” which just happens to be directly opposed to the genuine will of the people as expressed by the populist parties.

However, the world has changed since 2005 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that brought that tragic country into neoclown control. Even if the Georgian people are sufficiently hoodwinked to abandon their nationalists, there is no way that Russia is going to permit another NATO catspaw on its borders.

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The Takeaway

Simplicius summarizes the current stage of US-Russian pre-negotiations for NATO’s surrender in Ukraine.

The long-awaited plans we’ve theorized and brainstormed on since last year are finally resolving into view, where the West believes they can freeze the war Korean-DMZ style then insert their occupation KFOR troops to make sure Russia can never take Odessa, etc. As we said last time, they are even considering outlandishly absurd contortions to satisfy Putin’s demands, such as ‘stationing the bulk of the Ukrainian army somewhere in Europe’ in order to fulfill the “demilitarization” goals as per Putin’s Istanbul negotiations, which stated what Ukraine was allowed to have “on its territory”, technically speaking.

The problem is, Russia is in the driver’s seat and will not indulge such petty attempts to cozen and wheedle out a minor victory for Ukraine. As such, the only danger we can now expect is for the West to escalate in some brazen way should they finally realize Russia is not taking the bait. But we know neutered Europe has no political authority or consensus to act unilaterally, and at this point can only function like a pack of hyenas, if other major European states back each other’s ‘daring’ initiative…

The fact is though, the longer the Ukrainian conflict goes on, the closer the European Union comes to the verge of collapse. The conflict is outright killing Europe by exposing its bought-off treasonous leaders as the populace-hating cretins they are, causing mass discontent and political breakdown, spurring revolutionary new impulses which will soon bulge out the foundation’s cracks.

I suspect that Russia will have to destroy an American base in Europe or two with non-nuclear Oreshniks before President Trump utilizes the financial corruption and the misuse of US aid funds to provide him with political cover to cut off Ukraine and Europe alike. NATO will die of its own accord as soon as the US stops funding it, and the EU will be more focused on its own survival as a smaller supranational organization when Hungary and other member-nations start leaving it.

There isn’t going to be any US nuclear response to Russia no matter what Russia does in Europe, because no American has any interest in dying for the Europeans who can’t even bother to defend themselves. America has its own issues with its tens of millions of invaders, and is far more concerned about the global challenge posed by China than the return of historic norms in Europe. Which means that despite all the neocon bluster, Russia is ultimately free to act in its own interests; there is no economic incentive that the West can offer that Russia will be short-sighted enough to believe is either real or meaningful in the aftermath of the 13 rounds of economic sanctions and financial theft.

President Trump is under considerable pressure to figure out a way to rescue the Ukrainian rump state, but he’s more interested in the Middle East. So all of the various factors point to the USA abandoning Ukraine, the EU governments collapsing as they eventually follow suit, and Russia finally imposing its solution on whatever government succeeds the corrupt Zelensky regime in Ukraine.

Which, tragically, is the outcome that was inevitable nearly three years and one million Ukrainian lives ago.

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Strike Two

There are signs that Russia is going to be launching another Oreshnik missile strike very soon.

Russia has issued another Notice To Air Missions (NOTAM) closing its air space over Kapustin Yar. This was the area from which Russia launched its new Oreshnik Ballistic Missile at Ukraine last week.

Since that Russian launch, which utterly obliterated a Soviet-era munitions factory inside Ukraine, the Ukrainians have again used American-supplied ATACMS to launch at least THREE MORE attacks into Russia, primarily in the Kursk region.

It seems logical to believe Russia is going to launch again as response to Ukraine continuing to use west-supplied missiles to strike interior Russia.

One might also theorize that it won’t be just one Oreshnik this time.

The NOTAM Begins on 11-27-2024 at 0400 UTC.

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The Next Russian Target

Russia has publicly warned Poland and the USA that it intends to strike a US military base in Poland soon:

Russia is now warning about a new attack on a US base in Poland with “advanced weapons,” only hours after they reportedly launched intercontinental missiles inside Ukraine in response to Ukraine sending US-made ballistic missiles into Russia. According to the New York Times, America’s “President” Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to launch the missiles, which was a major shift in US policy.

The US base at Redzikowo, which opened Nov. 13, is part of a broader NATO missile shield — known as “Aegis Ashore” — that can intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles, according to the alliance.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova made the announcement today: “This long-term America’s and NATO’s construction, which lasted for almost a decade and totally neglected Russia’s security concerns, has been the focus of our attention from the standpoint of compensating countermeasures. Given the nature and level of threats posed by such Western military facilities, the missile defense base in Poland has long been added to the list of priority targets for potential destruction, which, if necessary, can be executed with a wide range of advanced weapons.”

Rumor has it that three “TOPOL-M” ICBMS have been observed on the move with their launchers. However, I very much doubt Russia would strike using the 1 megaton nuclear warheads that the missiles usually carry, since a) nukes may not actually exist and b) a conventional strike would suffice to deliver the warning without escalating to the nuclear level.

Since NATO is already at war with Russia and has launched long-range missile strikes inside Russia, there is no reason Russia should not proceed to methodically destroy every US base located in all the countries on its borders. NATO already escalated, and if the Russians have learned one thing from their experience with NATO, it is that even if one doesn’t give it an inch, it will take hundreds of miles.

If the Russians do destroy the base in Poland, it’s going to be interesting to see the response of the people who have hitherto believed the claims that all of the Russian missiles targeting Ukraine, and all of the Iranian missiles targeting Israel, have been shot down.

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The Rhetoric of London Larry

The British are gradually beginning to realize that they have bitten off far more than they can possibly chew, and that their time-honored method of providing the decisive force to help one side or the other have the advantage in the conflict is not going to work in the current situation:

Putin’s aim is not to defeat us in military combat: he knows he cannot – for now – win against the combined might of Nato, while Beijing remains unlikely to commit its millions of troops to his cause.

His aim instead is to instil cowardice in the general population – to cause ordinary Britons to turn their backs on Ukraine, and demand that their own government stop supporting the defenders.

Why support Ukraine, these siren voices will sing, when the price is misery at home?

Why do we maintain and expense a ‘tripwire’ force in Estonia?

What is the point of Nato now that an isolationist Trump is heading back to the White House?

Surely it is better to pull out of these entanglements and concentrate on our own problems?

Yet if we allow Russia to conquer Ukraine, the result will not be perfect peace. Instead, the seeds will be sown for a future conflict, one in which Britain will be in a far more parlous position.

Instead of kowtowing to our foes, we should rekindle the spirit that won previous epic contests — the world wars against Germany and its allies, and the cold war against Soviet Communism.

We need, too, a new arsenal of crafty, painful counter-measures – for example seizing the frozen £250billion assets of Russia’s central bank and using it to arm and rebuild Ukraine.

So long as our enemies believe they can attack us with impunity, they will not cease from doing so. That is why we must continue to support the Ukrainians – and show Putin that we will not back down.

Let’s count the errors:

  1. Putin’s aim is not to defeat Britain in military combat. His aim is to remove a structural threat to Russia that has spread from the middle of Germany to his borders, a threat that the USA created unnecessarily by breaking its promises to not expand NATO in return for Russia abandoning its occupation of East Germany.
  2. Beijing will absolutely stand by Russia, and has no need to send troops to Europe in order to provide decisive military aid the Russians. It can quickly and easily remove more than half the military forces capable of being brought to bear in Europe by simply pursuing its own objectives. That’s how military alliances work when properly conceived. Forget Taiwan. Just one move aimed at South Korea or Japan would be sufficient to cause the US military to abandon all support for Europe.
  3. Russia can defeat “the combined might of NATO”. It has already done so. If Putin wanted to go all the way to Normandy, he could. Russia has lost 70,000 soldiers, one-quarter of one percent of the number of Russians it lost in WWII, while inflicting casualties at a rate that exceeds that of the historical delta in favor of the IDF in the Arab-Israeli wars.
  4. The British public already wants their government to stop spending money on Ukraine. There are already mass demonstrations against the Labour government’s rapacious new tax schemes. That’s not cowardice, that’s putting the British national interest ahead of Clown World’s interest in Ukraine.
  5. Russia has frozen an equivalent amount of European assets. Stealing the frozen Russian assets and giving them to Ukraine will be counterbalanced by the Russians liquidating those European assets and utilizing them. This is an obviously futile threat.
  6. It is not within the British power to “allow” Russia to conquer Ukraine. Russia has already defeated both Ukraine and NATO in Ukraine; if Ukraine is not permitted to surrender, Ukraine will be conquered and occupied.
  7. There will be no rekindling “the spirit that won previous contests” because the multiracial, multicultural morass of New Britain is not inhabited by the same British people who contributed to the victory of the Allies in WWII. Furthermore, it was the Russian people who won the war; the British population would have been 60 percent smaller if they had suffered the same number of fatalities that the Russians did.

This is just rhetorical bluster, no different than the “mother of all battles” posturing we became accustomed to hearing from Baghdad Bob. London Larry is no more convincing, and every bit as deluded about the military prospects for the British military, as Baghdad Bob was about those formidable forces of the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein.

UPDATE: Clown World’s most-likely replacement for Zelensky, Valery Zaluzhny, points out that North Korea, Iran, and China are already fully allied and aligned with Russia. Not only that, but they are much more likely to stand by Russia than the USA, the UK, or the European nations are to continue “supporting” Ukraine once either a) Russia decides to cross the Dnieper, b) Russia drops the hammer on the UK or a European state, or c) the next front goes hot.

Ukraine’s former military chief has warned that World War Three is already underway – with Vladimir Putin’s autocratic allies, North Korea, Iran and China, openly supporting his forces on the battlefield. Valery Zaluzhny, who is now Ukraine’s envoy to the United Kingdom, told the UP100 award ceremony in Kyiv: ‘I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun.’ The General said that as of this year, ‘Ukraine is no longer facing Russia. Soldiers from North Korea are standing in front of Ukraine.’

UPDATE: Uncle John calls a scripted bluff.

Note incongruities. Beast media is running two incompatible nonsense narratives. A) crumbling Putin’s impotent rage and B) OMG nuclear war. It’s not which is right. It’s sowing chaos. Chaff. Put down a marker. No one will be using “nukes”.

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Russia’s Warning

Russia hit Ukraine with an ICBM containing multiple conventional warheads in response to the long-range strikes by the USA and the UK on its territory. The message is clear: next time, these might not be conventional warheads and they might not be hitting Ukraine.

However, the willingness of the Clown World leaders to risk nuclear war does tend to suggest that Big Bear and the other nuclear skeptics might be correct. What if they’re not crazy, they’re simply willing to blow the cover off the official story and allow the world to discover the nonexistence of nuclear weapons? That’s what Occam’s Razor would suggest, anyhow.

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