12 Days and Counting Down

Donald Trump made another move in his feckless game of global checkers today in Scotland, with the announcement that he is giving Russia a new, much shorter deadline—10 to 12 days from now—to end the war in Ukraine. Trump warned that if President Vladimir Putin does not reach a deal by around August 7–9, the US will impose new sanctions and “severe tariffs” on Russia and countries supporting its war effort. Trump’s new deadline elicited a collective yawn in Moscow.

Trump’s threat of new sanctions is just a blowhard bloviating… Ending shipments of fertilizers and precious metals is not going to hurt the Russian economy one bit. Thanks to the sanctions Biden levied in 2022, Russia’s economy grew to be the fourth largest in the world as measured by purchasing power parity. Western propaganda that the Russian economy is failing–citing current growth of 1.4%–ignores the fiscal policies that the Russian central bank put in place in 2024 to cool inflation. But those measures were only temporary, with the central bank announcing a two percent cut in interest rates late last week.

That means that Trump, if he is serious, will impose bone-crunching tariffs on China and India. Both countries appear unfazed by Trump’s bullying bluster. China in particular holds some very strong cards… Rare-earth minerals desperately needed by the US military industrial complex. I think this will be another Trump nothing-burger.

It’s obvious that more sanctions aren’t going to hurt Russia. Which raises the obvious question? Why the reduction of 38 days from the original deadline? Whatever the reason, it doesn’t smack of confidence, to the contrary, it reeks of desperation.

And when Putin ignores the deadline, what then? Threaten another one?

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Clown World Calls Time

The Black Rider has no more use for Zelensky and presumably will be throwing him from the horse this autumn:

For Ukraine’s sake, Zelensky must now step aside

Volodymyr Zelensky was once Ukraine’s saviour. In the first hours of the Russian invasion, as Putin’s paratroopers advanced on Central Kyiv with specific orders to kill him, Zelensky refused to evacuate.
Instead, he rallied his people to a heroic resistance that surprised the world – and Ukrainians themselves. It was thanks to Zelensky’s relentless lobbying and inspiring showmanship that Western nations were cajoled into sending rockets, artillery and tanks where once they had offered helmets and bandages.

But those times are gone. Zelensky is no longer part of the solution to Ukraine – he is part of the problem. Over the last year Zelensky has used emergency wartime powers to exile, investigate and jail many leading political opponents and critics. Opposition media have been shut down, and thousands of businesses have been seized by Zelensky cronies under the pretext of alleged links to Russia.

Zelensky has played an epic role in saving his country from destruction. Now there is a danger of his imitating his corrupt predecessors, and he should step aside, for Ukraine’s sake.

If a headline article in The Daily Telegraph is not a very clear signal for Zelensky to resign and run for one of his mansions in Florida or Tuscany while he still can, I don’t know what is. Short of Boris Johnson showing up in Kiev and telling him “it’s over” to his face, this is about as direct an order as Clown World ever gives.

This doesn’t mean the neoclowns have gotten any more realistic about what it will take to convince Putin to call off the Russian Army. The problem is that since the proxy war has gone global, it’s not just about what former Ukrainian territory will be transferred to Russian sovereignty, it’s also about ending the West’s economic war on Russia and its partners.

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They Hate Their People

Between Angela Merkel blessing the third world invasion of her country and her current successor in the Chancellorship, Friedrich Merz, promising German-assisted long-range missile strikes on Russia, it’s eminently clear that the German politicians hate the German people.

If Germany provides weapons (Taurus) and material assistance to Ukraine to target inside Russia (The Kiev Dictatorship can’t operate these missiles without German direct input). There is a real possibility that Russia will strike weapons production and transit sites in Germany.

Fortunately, Vladimir Putin is a patient man and he is unlikely to target civilian centers in Germany. Unfortunately, he has shown real restraint in not taking out the enemy political elites that are so willing to sacrifice the masses.

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The Wrong Lesson

The grand strategery of Clown World is quite possibly going to get an enormous number of soldiers killed because their abject retardery knows no bounds. This is what purports to be a military history piece encouraging direct US and European intervention published a year ago by the director of something called “Lazard Geopolitical Advisory” which makes an excellent case for never taking the advice of Lazard Geopolitical Advisory:

Northern Russia must have felt bitterly cold to U.S. soldiers, even though nearly all were from Michigan. On Sept. 4, 1918, 4,800 U.S. troops landed in Arkhangelsk, Russia, only 140 miles from the Arctic Circle. Three weeks later, they were plunged into battle against the Red Army among towering pine forests and subarctic swamps, alongside the British and French. Ultimately, 244 U.S. soldiers died from the fighting over two years. Diaries of U.S. troops paint a harrowing picture of first contact:

We run into a nest of machine-guns, we retire. [Bolsheviks] still shelling heavily. Perry and Adamson of my squad wounded, bullet clips my shoulder on both sides. … Am terribly tired, hungry and all in, so are the rest of the boys. Casualties in this attack 4 killed and 10 wounded.

These unlucky souls represented just one prong of the sprawling and ill-fated Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. From 1918 to 1920, the United States, Britain, France, and Japan sent thousands of troops from the Baltics to northern Russia to Siberia to Crimea—and millions of dollars in aid and military supplies to the anti-communist White Russians—in an abortive attempt to strangle Bolshevism in its crib. It’s one of the most complicated and oft-forgot foreign-policy failures of the 20th century…

Despite the current pall of pessimism pervading Western capitals, today’s war in Ukraine presents some of the more propitious circumstances a policymaker could hope for—unlike those faced by the Allies during the Russian civil war. Ukraine is a worthy and competent ally, fighting to defend its territory with a highly motivated population behind it. The Ukrainian cause is a righteous one, with a Manichean quality to it easily explained to Western publics. While Putin’s personal will to win is strong, it’s clear by his actions and hesitancy to fully mobilize Russian society that he senses a ceiling on what he can ask from his population. Though Russia’s manpower and materiel are larger than Ukraine’s, the amount needed to keep Ukraine armed and in the fight is completely manageable. A $60 billion aid supplement from the United States—currently held up by far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives—is a pittance compared with the returns: holding the line on international norms; standing up for the Ukrainians and, in doing so, Western values; bogging down Russia in a strategic sinkhole and reducing its capacity to threaten the rest of NATO’s eastern flank; and fortifying the trans-Atlantic alliance. Today, Western capitals are much more united than they were in 1918, and defense coordination among them is strong. Though they can sharpen the shared sense of an endgame in Ukraine, everybody knows that the conflict will end in some sort of negotiated settlement—the questions will be on whose terms.

If the United States and its allies can avoid the pitfalls of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war—developing a clear long-term strategy, continuing to coordinate closely, and reinforcing domestic support by making the case to their own populations—then they have a real shot of prevailing over Putin. 

Despite the current pall of pessimism pervading Western capitals, today’s war in Ukraine presents some of the more propitious circumstances a policymaker could hope for—unlike those faced by the Allies during the Russian civil war. Ukraine is a worthy and competent ally, fighting to defend its territory with a highly motivated population behind it. The Ukrainian cause is a righteous one, with a Manichean quality to it easily explained to Western publics. While Putin’s personal will to win is strong, it’s clear by his actions and hesitancy to fully mobilize Russian society that he senses a ceiling on what he can ask from his population. Though Russia’s manpower and materiel are larger than Ukraine’s, the amount needed to keep Ukraine armed and in the fight is completely manageable. A $60 billion aid supplement from the United States—currently held up by far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives—is a pittance compared with the returns: holding the line on international norms; standing up for the Ukrainians and, in doing so, Western values; bogging down Russia in a strategic sinkhole and reducing its capacity to threaten the rest of NATO’s eastern flank; and fortifying the trans-Atlantic alliance. Today, Western capitals are much more united than they were in 1918, and defense coordination among them is strong. Though they can sharpen the shared sense of an endgame in Ukraine, everybody knows that the conflict will end in some sort of negotiated settlement—the questions will be on whose terms.

If the United States and its allies can avoid the pitfalls of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war—developing a clear long-term strategy, continuing to coordinate closely, and reinforcing domestic support by making the case to their own populations—then they have a real shot of prevailing over Putin. 

This is totally insane advice. In addition to the obvious fact that a) there is zero domestic support for war with Russia in any country outside of the Baltics and Finland, b) the Russian industrial advantage with regards to weaponry, vehicles, missiles, and ammunition is insurmountable, and c) Russia’s global allies outproduce, outnumber, and outgun the entire forces of the West, the historical invaders had one massive advantage that Russia’s current enemies lack.

The Western forces of 1918 had the ability to transport and stage their troops without fear of being attacked. In 2025, any trans-oceanic transports carrying men and materials to invade Russia will be sunk with hypersonic missiles long before they come anywhere close to the Russian coast. Not only that, but the entire logistics line leading all the way back to factories in Dusseldorf and Columbus, Ohio is similarly vulnerable to complete destruction.

The inability of Clown World’s elite to understand that it is no longer 1950, much less 1918, is truly remarkable. Andrei Martyanov is absolutely right to denigrate and disregard the military doctrine of the Western militaries, because their grasp on the history of warfare and how it applies to the present appears to be nonexistent.

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Russia Acknowledges WWIII

In my opinion, WWIII began in the spring of 2014 with the US-backed coup given the highly Orwellian name “the Revolution of Dignity” and the Russian occupation of Crimea. This is similar how WWII actually began eight years before most people realized with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. But regardless, it’s clear that the Russian intellectual elite are fully aware of the situation.

Many now speak of humanity’s drift towards World War III, imagining events similar to those of the 20th century. But war evolves. It will not begin with a June 1941 Barbarossa-style invasion or a Cuban Missile Crisis-style nuclear standoff. In fact, the new world war is already underway – it’s just that not everyone has recognized it yet.

For Russia, the pre-war period ended in 2014. For China, it was 2017. For Iran, 2023. Since then, war – in its modern, diffuse form – has intensified. This is not a new Cold War. Since 2022, the West’s campaign against Russia has grown more decisive. The risk of direct nuclear confrontation with NATO over the Ukraine conflict is rising. Donald Trump’s return to the White House created a temporary window in which such a clash could be avoided, but by mid-2025, hawks in the US and Western Europe had pushed us dangerously close again.

This war involves the world’s leading powers: the United States and its allies on one side, China and Russia on the other. It is global, not because of its scale, but because of the stakes: the future balance of power. The West sees the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia as existential threats. Its counteroffensive, economic and ideological, is meant to put a halt to that shift.

It is a war of survival for the West, not just geopolitically but ideologically. Western globalism – whether economic, political, or cultural – cannot tolerate alternative civilizational models. Post-national elites in the US and Western Europe are committed to preserving their dominance. A diversity of worldviews, civilizational autonomy, and national sovereignty are seen not as options, but as threats.

This explains the severity of the West’s response. When Joe Biden told Brazil’s President Lula that he wanted to “destroy” Russia, he revealed the truth behind euphemisms like “strategic defeat.” Western-backed Israel has shown how total this doctrine is – first in Gaza, then Lebanon, and finally Iran. In early June, a similar strategy was used in attacks on Russian airfields. Reports suggest US and British involvement in both cases. To Western planners, Russia, Iran, China and North Korea are part of a single axis. That belief shapes military planning.

Compromise is no longer part of the game. What we’re seeing are not temporary crises but rolling conflicts. Eastern Europe and the Middle East are the two current flashpoints. A third has long been identified: East Asia, particularly Taiwan. Russia is directly engaged in Ukraine, holds stakes in the Middle East, and may become involved in the Pacific.

The war is no longer about occupation, but destabilization. The new strategy focuses on sowing internal disorder: economic sabotage, social unrest, and psychological attrition. The West’s plan for Russia is not defeat on the battlefield, but gradual internal collapse.

The irony, of course, is that it is not Russia that is being destabilized, but all of the Western governments from France to the USA. Influence and subversion are no substitute for material power once the latter is aware of the situation.

But regardless, the author is correct. “The time for illusions is over.”

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Less School, More Children

Any modern society that wishes to survive needs to reduce the number of years that young women spend in school. Russia has already figured this out and I have little doubt that China will soon follow suit.

A senior Russian demographer has proposed cutting the number of years children must attend school in order to promote earlier parenthood and reverse a national trend towards lower fertility, TASS reports. Sergey Rybalchenko, head of the Public Chamber’s Demography Commission, has argued that bold steps are necessary to prevent Russia’s population from shrinking.

In recent years, the country has seen negative natural population growth, falling from 149 million in 1993 to 146 million in 2025 despite an influx of immigrants and the unification of the country with Crimea in 2014 and four former Ukrainian regions in 2022.

The country’s population is poised to decrease to 138.8 million people in 2046, according to the base-case scenario developed by the federal statistics agency Rosstat.

“A shorter education period would enable young people to reach adulthood and plan to have children for two years earlier,” Rybalchenko told TASS, explaining the initiative.

Getting married and having children at a higher age is linked to a longer period of social maturation, the demographer pointed out. Young people only start to think about children by the age of 27, as they spend 17 years getting an education and dedicate an additional three years to social adaptation after finishing university, he explained.

A large scale study covering 1950 to 2023 clearly showed that to reach an average Total Fertility Rate of 3.0, the average number of years schooled for young women should be 10. And anything beyond 12 is a disaster; the most societally destructive thing that the USA has done since passing the 1965 Naturalization Act is to increase the number of women in higher education.

As I have stated repeatedly before, feminism is one of the few ideologies that are more lethal and destructive than either communism or national socialism. And whichever major power recognizes this and embraces post-feminism will have a significant advantage over its rivals.

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Adapt or Disappear

This is confirmed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the People’s Republic of China:

On the morning of July 15, 2025, President Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Xi Jinping asked Sergei Lavrov to convey his cordial greetings to President Vladimir Putin. Xi Jinping stressed the need for both sides to implement the important understandings reached between the two presidents, deepen the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, strengthen mutual support in multilateral fora, safeguard their development and security interests, promote solidarity among Global South countries, and work together to make the international order more just and equitable. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was jointly established by China and Russia, is a comprehensive regional cooperation organization that holds significant importance for maintaining peace, stability and development on the Eurasian continent. Both sides should support each other, steer the development course of the SCO, continuously inject new momentum, and make this strategic platform more substantive and stronger.

This is not.

President Xi Jinping of China, meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia, made some brutal remarks about the United States and Europe today.

Xi said “China and Russia are not building an alliance. We are building a new global reality. The West must either adapt or disappear.”

He went on to say: “The West wants others to live in perpetual poverty so that their banks remain rich.”

Then, the big remark:  speaking before Lavrov and Iran Foreign Minister Araqchi, Xi Jinping declared: “We do not seek to rule the world… only to liberate it from those who believe they own it.”

It would certainly be interesting to see a transcript of that meeting. Either way, it is entirely obvious that both China and Russia know that Clown World is the real enemy.

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50 Days to Ceasefire

President Trump inadvertently encourages the Russian Army to launch its summer offensives:

Axios now reports that Putin allegedly told Trump he plans to ‘intensify’ the Russian summer offensive in the next 60 days, with the goal—according to some sources—purportedly being to capture the remainder of nominal Russian territory, i.e. Donetsk, Lugansk, and Zaporozhye oblasts.

If there’s any hint of truth to such reports, then Trump’s “50-day notice” would seem to line up with Putin’s timeline, given that the conversation happened days ago, and thus Putin’s “60-day plan” would fall almost precisely on Trump’s deadline.

The basic interpretation of that could be that Trump is giving Russia two months to capture whatever territory it claims belongs to it, then “the hammer” will come down.

In conclusion: the entire charade appears to be a sneaky but brilliant act of jugglery by Trump, wherein he once again gives the appearance of major ‘action’ against Russia to silence critics and placate neocons, while in actuality doing little to further Ukraine’s war efforts, apart from plugging the previous status quo back onto life support. The act is meant to play both sides, relieving pressure on himself, while not overly risking his relationship with Putin in the hopes he can still clinch his big Nobel-earning armistice.

Color me dubious. Putin isn’t just going for capturing the rest of the four oblasts that were annexed to Russia, they’ve already got troops in at least two additional oblasts and I don’t see any chance that the Russians agree to a ceasefire until they control Odessa.

I think it’s more likely that this will a) extract more money from Europe and b) allow Trump to kick the can down the road again when the 50-day period is up. It also gives saner parties in Ukraine time to get rid of the current Kiev regime in order to be in a position to reach a lasting agreement in two months.

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China Warns EU

For the first time, China has openly sided with Russia and acknowledged that it is in a de facto state of conflict with the USA:

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing cannot afford a Russian loss in Ukraine because it fears the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

The comment, to the EU’s Kaja Kallas, would confirm what many in Brussels believe to be Beijing’s position but jar with China’s public utterances. The foreign minstry regularly says China is “not a party” to the war. Some EU officials involved were surprised by the frankness of Wang’s remarks.

Wang is said to have rejected, however, the accusation that China was materially supporting Russia’s war effort, financially or militarily, insisting that if it was doing so, the conflict would have ended long ago. During a marathon four-hour debate on a wide range of geopolitical and commercial grievances, Wang was said to have given Kallas – the former Estonian prime minister who only late last year took up her role as the bloc’s de facto foreign affairs chief – several “history lessons and lectures”…

The tone of Wednesday’s dialogue was said to be respectful, if tense. Nonetheless, some insiders were surprised by the harshness of Wang’s message, just three weeks out from an important leaders’ summit in China. Any appearance of a charm offensive is seen to have evaporated.

This is not exactly a surprise. China has been waging asymmetric “unrestricted” warfare against the United States since 1999, although part of that strategy has been assiduously avoiding any direct conflict and any actual military engagement. But it appears that as the NATO-Russian war enters what one hopes will be its final stage before the collapse of the Kiev regime and the subsequent Russian stabilization of the situation, China is preparing itself for the US to turn its attention from Ukraine and the Middle East and toward Asia.

Does this have anything to do with what are still nothing more than rumors of Xi’s weakening hold on power? I doubt it, but it’s important to remember that his successor may not be another Western-influenced liberal, but could be considerably more of a hawk on Taiwan, Japan, and the USA than Xi has been.

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You Just Thought of That NOW?

Remember when the jokers at NATO were telling everyone that Russia would be out of ammunition in two weeks and that it had no allies, so everyone should support the Kiev regime? Now they’re trying to scare everyone with a threat that was always obvious to more serious military analysts.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has chillingly warned that World War III will start with simultaneous invasions from Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

Secretary-general Rutte suggested the combined attacks from the Chinese and Russian leaders could trigger a World War nightmare and bring the planet to the brink of Armageddon.

According to the NATO chief, China would start by seeking to grab Taiwan – while ensuring the Kremlin dictator simultaneously attacks NATO territory, amid fears Putin is anyway eyeing the Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, formerly part of the USSR.

Now, suddenly, they’re aware that Russia has allies, that Russia and its allies significantly outnumber the US-EU-Israel alliance in terms of population, military power, and industrial capacity, and that the USA cannot possibly defeat either Russia or China, let alone both at once.

The fascinating thing is that their solution to the danger to which they are so newly awakened is exactly the same as their original call for everyone to support the Kiev regime.

I wouldn’t bet one single dime on these incompetent Clown World puppets. The smarter move would be to bet on their continuing failure.

Israeli media outlet Haaretz has reported that the U.S. military used 93 ‘THAAD’ interceptor missiles in 11 days to defend Israel, revising earlier estimates by others of $800 million to an actual cost of approximately $1.2 billion. With an annual production rate of roughly 36–48 ‘THAAD’ interceptors, the United States used nearly two years’ worth of interceptors during the war.

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