Tag: Russia

How to Read the News

A brief lesson in mendaspicy, a form of divination based upon the inspection of lies exposed through the dissection of a media article. As the media’s relentless anti-Putin and anti-Russian propaganda increases in intensity, it’s useful to examine it closely in order to see if it can help us better understand what is really happening beneath the media cover of its inverted Narrative.

ITEM: Vladimir Putin is panicking. “Panicking Putin ‘calls up OBESE 20st retired general, 67, to lead forces in Ukraine'”

ITEM: Vladimir Putin is desperate. “Desperate Putin plans to send nuclear-capable arsenal to Belarus”

ITEM: Vladimir Putin is running out of financial resources. “Financial noose around Vladimir Putin”.

ITEM: Vladimir Putin is running out of military resources. “Putin ‘running out of puff'”

ITEM: Vladimir Putin cannot divide the G7 nations. “Vladimir Putin will not divide G7 leaders”

ITEM: Any steps toward peace will lead to global instability.

Boris Johnson reveals downside of settling Ukraine conflict. Any effort to resolve the conflict between Moscow and Kiev peacefully will cause more harm than good, the UK PM has said.

The West needs to keep arming Ukraine instead of seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Kiev and Moscow, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told French President Emmanuel Macron, according to Downing Street. Any attempt to resolve the conflict peacefully will lead to global instability, he said at a meeting on the sidelines of the G7 Summit on Sunday…

The prime minister also cautioned the French leader against seeking alternatives to resolving the conflict. The Prime Minister stressed any attempt to settle the conflict now will only cause enduring instability and give Putin licence to manipulate both sovereign countries and international markets in perpetuity.

Johnson took a similar stance at a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday. “Ukraine is on a knife-edge and we need to tip the balance of the war in their favor. That means providing Ukraine with the defensive capabilities, training and intelligence they need to repel the Russian advance,” a statement from Downing Street read.

On Sunday, Johnson tweeted that Ukraine’s “security is our security, and their freedom is our freedom.”

Now, note that these are all headlines featured in The Daily Mail for 26 June 2022. There are 26 direct references to Vladimir Putin on the home page, compared to 20 for Boris Johnson, 7 for Joe Biden, and 0 for Xi Xinping. Applying the mendaspicic principle of narratival inversion, what can we potentially discern about the present conflict between Russia and the globalist forces from these six headlines?

  1. The globalists are panicking.
  2. The globalists are desperate.
  3. The globalist economies are in a financial crisis.
  4. The globalist militaries are running out of infantry, armor, and ammunition.
  5. There is an incipient split in the G7, most likely between those who want to negotiate a peace settlement (Japan and Italy) and those who don’t (USA, UK, Canada). France is leaning toward the former and Germany is leaning toward the latter.
  6. The neo-liberal rules-based world order will not survive either a) a peace settlement with Russia or b) a war with the Sino-Russian alliance. Therefore, gambling on c) defeating Russia while avoiding war with China is the globalists’ preferred option.

Time will tell whether mendaspicy is any more accurate than haruspicy, but at least it gives us a predictive model against which we can compare future events and actions.

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NATO Wants World War

That’s the only possible conclusion, which makes it obvious that the neocons – who have been banging the drums for war with Russia for years – are in full control of US, EU, and UK foreign policy

Vladimir Putin’s allies have threatened Lithuania after the NATO country blocked EU-sanctioned goods from reaching the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Moscow warned of ‘very tough actions’ against the country after deliveries of coal, metals, construction materials and advanced technology were stopped from entering the Russian territory, fuelling fears of an escalation of the Ukraine war.

The Lithuanian chargé d’affaires in Moscow was told that unless cargo transit was resumed in the near future, Russia reserves the right to act to protect its national interests.

The Russian foreign ministry said: ‘We consider provocative measures of the Lithuanian side which violate Lithuania’s international legal obligations, primarily the 2002 Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the European Union on transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of the Russian Federation, to be openly hostile.’

Loyalist senator Andrey Klimov warned it was ‘direct aggression against Russia, literally forcing us to immediately resort to proper self-defence’. The head of the parliamentary sovereignty protection commission, he vowed that Russia would solve the blockade ‘in ANY way we choose’.

Any direct Russian attack on alliance member state Lithuania would be seen as an act of war against NATO and could spark a world war.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the Lithuanian blockade: ‘This decision is really unprecedented. It’s a violation of everything.’ He warned: ‘We consider this illegal. The situation is more than serious… we need a serious in-depth analysis in order to work out our response.’

It appears the neocons are finally going to get the world war for which they have been agitating. However, I very much doubt it is going to go the way they planned for it to go, since they thought China was going to be on their side rather than the most powerful force against them.

Meanwhile, fresh from their defeat in Afghanistan, the British are gearing up for war in the other famous graveyard of empires:

Britain’s armed forces must be ready and willing to fight Russia in Europe, a former head of UK Special Forces warned today. General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, former director of Special Forces, said the UK must help Nato allies prevent giving Vladimir Putin ‘an opening’ to widen the war in Ukraine into a battle against the West.

The former senior officer’s intervention follows an extraordinary announcement by the new head of the British Army.

General Sir Patrick Sanders, who assumed overall command last week, warned soldiers at the weekend ‘we are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again’ as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine rocks global stability.

Perhaps Sir Adrian Bradshaw should have a conversation with the Lithuanian allies about that.

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In Which a New Strategy is Required

Russia claims it wiped out Ukraine’s General Staff:

RIA Novosti. Russian Kalibr missiles struck a command post of Ukrainian troops near the village of Shirokaya Dacha in Dnipropetrovsk Region, killing dozens of generals and officers, Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said. A working meeting of the command staff of the operational-strategic grouping of troops “Alexandria” was held there at the time, he explained.

“As a result of the strike more than 50 generals and officers of the AFU, including the General Staff, the command of the grouping of troops “Kakhovka”, airborne assault troops and formations operating in the Nikolaevsk and Zaporozhye directions were destroyed,” the general said.

If it really was the General Staff, then one would expect that more than a few US military advisers were also affected by the strike. The loss of his strategists might explain why Zelensky is crazy enough to publicly advocate preemptive war against China too.

While appealing to Asian nations for support to fend off Russia’s invasion on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the international community should help Taiwan resist China’s aggression now, before Beijing attacks the island democracy it claims as its own province.

The comments risk upsetting Ukraine’s delicate balancing act with China; nevertheless, Zelensky insisted that aggressors must be confronted wherever they emerge. Asian countries must not wait for the crisis to act on Taiwan’s behalf, which would be repeating the mistake Europe made before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are sending signs that they will respond to sanctions against China by forcing reuinification with Taiwan.

“If the United States and the West impose destructive sanctions on China as they treat Russia, we must recover Taiwan,” said China’s economist Chen Wenling on May 30 at a forum hosted by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, according to state outlets. “Especially in the reconstruction of industry and supply chains, we must seize TSMC, a firm that inherently belongs to China.”

Chen is the chief economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a state think tank overseen by China’s top economic planning agency National Development and Reform Commission. Her comments came as TSMC, a global leader in semiconductor production, becomes increasingly important amid the global chip crunch.

As I’ve previously mentioned, WWIII has already started. Both President Trump and Fake Pope Francis have acknowledged as much. It presently appears to be somewhere between the Sudentenland and Poland phases. Plan accordingly, but don’t panic and keep in mind that it doesn’t mean the end of the world.

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Transcript: Putin’s Speech at SPIEF

I welcome all participants and guests of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

It is taking place at a difficult time for the international community when the economy, markets and the very principles of the global economic system have taken a blow. Many trade, industrial and logistics chains, which were dislocated by the pandemic, have been subjected to new tests. Moreover, such fundamental business notions as business reputation, the inviolability of property and trust in global currencies have been seriously damaged. Regrettably, they have been undermined by our Western partners, who have done this deliberately, for the sake of their ambitions and in order to preserve obsolete geopolitical illusions.

Today, our – when I say “our,” I mean the Russian leadership – our own view of the global economic situation. I would like to speak in greater depth about the actions Russia is taking in these conditions and how it plans to develop in these dynamically changing circumstances.

When I spoke at the Davos Forum a year and a half ago, I also stressed that the era of a unipolar world order has come to an end. I want to start with this, as there is no way around it. This era has ended despite all the attempts to maintain and preserve it at all costs. Change is a natural process of history, as it is difficult to reconcile the diversity of civilisations and the richness of cultures on the planet with political, economic or other stereotypes – these do not work here, they are imposed by one centre in a rough and no-compromise manner.

The flaw is in the concept itself, as the concept says there is one, albeit strong, power with a limited circle of close allies, or, as they say, countries with granted access, and all business practices and international relations, when it is convenient, are interpreted solely in the interests of this power. They essentially work in one direction in a zero-sum game. A world built on a doctrine of this kind is definitely unstable.

After declaring victory in the Cold War, the United States proclaimed itself to be God’s messenger on Earth, without any obligations and only interests which were declared sacred. They seem to ignore the fact that in the past decades, new powerful and increasingly assertive centres have been formed. Each of them develops its own political system and public institutions according to its own model of economic growth and, naturally, has the right to protect them and to secure national sovereignty.

These are objective processes and genuinely revolutionary tectonic shifts in geopolitics, the global economy and technology, in the entire system of international relations, where the role of dynamic and potentially strong countries and regions is substantially growing. It is no longer possible to ignore their interests.

To reiterate, these changes are fundamental, groundbreaking and rigorous. It would be a mistake to assume that at a time of turbulent change, one can simply sit it out or wait it out until everything gets back on track and becomes what it was before. It will not.

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Continue reading “Transcript: Putin’s Speech at SPIEF”

Eurofragility

SHOT: French demand for Russian natural gas has been on the rise for the last four years. The upward trend continues in the current year as well. From January 1 through June 5, 2019, Gazprom’s gas supplies to France totaled 5.8 billion cubic meters, an increase of 5.6 per cent from the same period of 2018. In 2018, Gazprom supplied to France 12.9 billion cubic meters of gas, an increase of 5.4 per cent against 2017 (12.3 billion cubic meters).

CHASER: Russian natural gas flows to France via pipeline from Germany have ceased. Russia’s Gazprom will reduce gas supply to Italy by 50 percent today, says the energy company Eni.

I wonder how the politicians in Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden who threw away their nations’ neutrality in order to participate in those stunningly self-destructive sanctions are feeling now? The presumably unintended consequences have boomeranged so horrifically on the neoliberal economies that they could not unreasonably be charged with being Russian agents.

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Running on Empty

The Tree of Woe contemplates the global economic order and the reinvention of the Third World in a four-part series.

Part I of this series explained that the US dollar is the world’s first reserve currency that is not backed by precious metals. Instead it is backed by other people’s oil. Because of a secret treaty between the US and Saudi Arabia, petroleum can only be purchased with dollars. Every country needs oil, so everyone country needs dollars and sells imports to the US to get them. Demand for dollars has made the USD the primary American export, allowing the US to deindustrialize and financialize its economy.

Part II explained how the petrodollar has grossly enriched American asset holders (stocks, bonds, and real estate) and painfully impoverished American wage earners. Under the petrodollar system, dollars are created by private banks for profit. These dollars are recycled into the economy by OPEC nations, causing stocks, bonds, and real estate to rise. This profitable exchange is enforced by American military might, which punishes any country that seeks to exit the petrodollar system.

Part III explained that for the petrodollar system to function, America needs to be able to project power worldwide to secure international trade and enforce the system. America secures global commerce and projects military power by commanding the World Ocean, by which 90% of all goods are trafficked. To overcome America’s naval supremacy, both Russia and China have sought to establish control of the World Island, the Eurasian supercontinent that houses most of the world’s population and resources. The Russo-Ukraine War is a proxy war between the uncontested master of the World Ocean (America) and the would-be masters of the World Island (China and Russa).

In Part IV, we’ll discuss how faulty expectations by both sides in the Russo-Ukraine War have led to sanctions of such severity might cause the petrodollar system to break down.

It’s an excellent series, and you’d expect, although my perspective on the military situation is a little bit different. I don’t think Russia expected to quickly knock Ukraine out of the war. I think they hoped to do so with their opening gambit that included the lightning light infantry assault on Kiev, but that Operation Z never depended upon it.

The relatively small number of troops utilized, the way in which Russia has not heavily utilized its air and sea superiority, the second-rate units utilized, and the way Russia has methodically focused on attrition warfare in the Donbass all demonstrate that Russia has been holding its forces in ready to take on NATO directly. Just as the Germans were surprised by Russian manufacturing capabilities, Russian shell production has resulted in NATO complaining about Russia’s overwhelming artillery advantage, with the Russian forces able to fire up to 60,000 shells and rockets per day several months after we were informed that Russia was going to run out of ammunition within two weeks.

However, this doesn’t undermine Tree of Woe’s case so much as it underlines it. Russia has clearly been planning for a long and unrestricted confrontation with NATO and the USA from the start, one which includes both the military and the economic conflicts. Which is precisely why I think it is highly unlikely that the special military operation is going to end with a Ukrainian surrender and a negotiated settlement that brings Russia back into the neoliberal economic order.

While the World Ocean would cheerfully settle for that now, both Russia and China are obviously aware that it would merely mean putting off the larger conflict for a few years and giving their adversaries time to better prepare for it.

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The Battle of Ukraine is Over

“The battle of Helm’s Deep is over; the battle for Middle Earth is about to begin.”

Ukrainian troops are suffering massive losses as they are outgunned 20 to one in artillery and 40 to one in ammunition by Russian forces, according to new intelligence painting a bleak picture of the conflict on the frontline.

A report by Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials also reveals that the Ukrainians are facing huge difficulties responding to Russians shelling with their artillery restricted to a range of 25 kilometres, while the enemy can strike from 12 times that distance.

For the first time since the war began, there is now concern over desertion. The report, seen by The Independent, says the worsening situation in the Donbas, with up to a hundred soldiers being killed a day, is having “a seriously demoralising effect on Ukrainian forces as well as a very real material effect; cases of desertion are growing every week”.

At the same time, as the Russians capture territories in the east, and consolidate their control over the seized cities of Mariupol and Kherson, the bargaining position of the Ukrainian government is being weakened by acute disparity in the numbers of prisoners being held by each side.

The total number of Russian soldiers being held by Ukraine has fallen to 550 from 900 in April after a series of exchanges. Moscow meanwhile has more than 5,600 Ukrainian troops in captivity, the figure enlarged by the surrender of 2,500, including members of the Azov Battalion, in Mariupol.

Business Insider, 11 June 2022

The battle of Ukraine is over. The outcome – always predictable from the start – is certain, which is why the media is now filled with accounts of various globalist figures very cleverly suggesting that giving Russia what it already has might buy more time for the failing neoliberal world order. It won’t, because there was never any real war between Russia and Ukraine, which was why the Russians very carefully described their actions as a “special military operation”.

It was just a battle, and not a particularly big battle in historic terms at that. It was the first phase of a much larger military conflict.

The Russians know very well that the war isn’t over. Ukraine isn’t their primary enemy anymore than Austria or Poland were the primary enemies of Germany in the 20th Century. 2022 is more akin to 1939 than 1940, much less 1941.

The battle of Ukraine is over; the battle for world order is about to begin.

A battle which some observers, such as Karl Denninger, suspect is already lost:

The so-called Russian Sanctions have blown up spectacularly in the western world’s face. Russia now has a stronger currency than it did before the war we instigated began. Oil and Natural Gas, never mind things like fertilizer, are nice and expensive which suits Putin just fine. He has negotiated long term interchange with China for both and is building out the capacity to wildly increase same. Europe is fucked down the road as a result and in the meantime they got nothing for all these “sanctions.”

For that matter so are we. We’ve sequestered our inflationary deficit spending overseas via the China/US (and other nations, including India) trade deficit for the last two decades. That’s over and will never come back because none of the nations that we were doing it with have any reason to allow it ever again and they don’t need to. Not a single member of the Fed or other “economic punditry” has said one word about this although I sure as Hell have.

At the same time Russia is shipping oil to these nations who then cross-ship it back, some refined first, and there’s absolutely no way to do anything about that since we’re incapable of sanctioning either without instantly detonating our supply chains, offshored labor or both. As a result we can no longer spend in deficit without it reflecting back into inflation which means the “free ride” gave has been terminated and while this was always eventually going to end we did this to ourselves and thus the inflation you’re seeing and will continue to see was and is caused directly by our policies and our government.

The outcome isn’t absolutely settled. But the smart money is betting on the eventual victory of the Silk Road Alliance. There is a reason they call it Clown World and not Rocket Scientist World or Smart, Sensible, and Sustainable World, after all.

Quote of the Day: “You cannot appease Russia with some territory that they already have, or will take. Its not yours to give. Russia will decide exactly what happens to the Ukraine, how, and when.”

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So That’s Settled

ITEM: Ukraine’s president says the outcome of the battle for Sievierodonetsk will “decide the fate” of the entire Donbas region.

ITEM: Ukrainian troops may soon have to retreat from a key eastern city, the region’s governor and Western military analysts have said, as Russian advances force them back.

ITEM: Ukraine’s fortunes in defending Sievierodonetsk took a turn for the worse Wednesday, with its troops forced to retreat to the outskirts of the eastern industrial city in the face of a fierce Russian attack.

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Starve Harder

It will be informative to see the extent to which Russia cares about “international opinion” in light of the death sentences announced for three mercenaries employed by Ukraine:

International fury as two Brits Shaun Pinner, 48, and Aiden Aslin, 28, are sentenced to death by Russian separatists after they joined the Ukrainian army and were captured during the siege of Mariupol.

Brits Shaun Pinner, 48, and Aiden Aslin, 28, were captured in Ukraine in April during the siege of Mariupol. The so-called supreme court of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) issued the death sentences on Thursday. Moroccan national Saaudun Brahim has also been sentenced, reports said. Video showed the trio in a cage.

The trio were accused of being ‘mercenaries’ after fighting for Ukraine’s armed forces in the battle for the city. Russian media reported that they would appeal. The court is not internationally recognised, the BBC reported. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss condemned the death sentences as a ‘sham judgment with absolutely no legitimacy’. No10 said it was ‘deeply concerned’.

I’m just curious what sort of leverage the “international community” thinks it has at this point. What are they going to do, pile on a few more sanctions, further inflate the currency, raise fuel prices, and starve harder?

I assume Russia will swoop in and make a useless gesture of magnanimity by trading the three mercs for three Russian prisoners-of-war, but it will be telling if it simply washes its hands of the affair and permits the DPR to fulfill the sentence.

And it’s certainly interesting to read the comments from British readers who genuinely want war with Russia over this. They really don’t grasp the fact that it’s not the 19th Century anymore and Britain no longer rules the waves.

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Tactical Attrition Warfare

One of the reasons the media finds it so difficult to make heads or tails of which military is winning in Ukraine is the fact that the Russians are not attempting to hold any territory that is not strategic. Instead, they’re engaged in something that could be described as artillery maneuver warfare that is focused on eliminating the enemy’s infantry while minimizing the risks to their own infantry.

The main difficulty in carrying out offensive operations in Ukraine is that in fact our troops have to go on the attack when the enemy’s artillery is not suppressed. The reasons why we were not able to suppress the artillery:

1. the absence, or a critically small number, of artillery radars.

2. lack of effective reconnaissance of enemy artillery positions.

3. the absence or scanty number of strike UAVs or kamikaze drones to destroy enemy artillery, immediately after detection.

4. lack of organization of counter-battery combat.

5. after the discovery of an enemy mortar or artillery position, a lot of time passed when our artillery could begin to suppress it. Two factors influenced this: communication and, in fact, the qualifications of the servants of the guns.

6. the lack of a sufficient number of reconnaissance UAVs for round-the-clock hunting for enemy artillery.

Enough infantry can be thrown into battle, even with AK-12s, even with “mosquitoes”, but neither one nor the other will simply be able to reach the enemy’s positions if enemy artillery is not suppressed. Practically all the fighters of the assault groups, from different sectors of the front, note that the enemy, in 90% of cases, cannot withstand close combat, especially the newly formed units, and retreats. But due to the fact that the enemy artillery is not suppressed, it is not possible to hold the already occupied positions.

You can assemble as much infantry and equipment as you like, but the lack of an effective counter-battery fight will simply turn any, the bravest army, into “cannon fodder” and interfere with the solution of GEOPOLITICAL OBJECTIVES.

It is not a Masonic conspiracy that will stop our troops, but specific shortcomings in the combat work of each commander.

TatarZky says that Russian troops in fixed positions are also suffering from Ukrainian artillery. Maybe this is why Russians do not defend positions, but instead constantly move around. I have seen multiple cases, where some village is reported liberated by Russian forces, but next day on the maps it is again side to be under Ukrainian control. Unfortunately the Russian aim at this point seem not to be liberating territory, but to kill as many Ukrainians as possible. This is a direct result of the Ukrainian policy of holding on to every last inch of Donbass.

It’s interesting to learn that despite the Russian air superiority, they have not been able to suppress the enemy artillery. There are several possible reasons for this; perhaps the Ukrainian ground-to-air defenses make it too expensive to provide air cover, perhaps it is too easy to hide and move the artillery (see: Serbia), or perhaps the Russians are unwilling to reveal the full extent of their air capabilities to NATO forces given the probability that they will be fighting them soon.

However, there is no need for the Russians to rush the inevitable end or risk unnecessary casualties, as time is clearly on their side. The Western economies are crumbling, the Ukrainians are running out of infantry, weapons, and supplies, China, India, Iran, Brazil, Venezuela, and the Arab nations have all made it clear they are aligned with Russia against NATO, and even the neocons are starting to have second thoughts about the wisdom of war with the planet’s largest nuclear power.

Indeed, it appears that the globalists are now hoping that an early settlement in Russia’s favor will be enough to preserve their disintegrating Clown World empire.

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