Tag: Russia

A Lesson in Leverage

The former Russian president explains the difference between meaningless sanctions and massive leverage to the feckless European lapdogs of the Imperial USA.

Europeans will soon have to pay €2,000 ($2,200) per thousand cubic meters of natural gas, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev tweeted on Tuesday. The warning comes after Germany ordered a halt to Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline certification.

“German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ordered to stop the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Well, welcome to the new world, in which Europeans will soon pay €2,000 per thousand cubic meters of gas!” Medvedev wrote in a half-ironic Twitter post.

Earlier on Tuesday, Chancellor Scholz said that the German government was stopping the months-long certification process of the Russia-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project in light of the current standoff between Russia and Ukraine over the Donbass regions.

Late on Monday, Russia officially recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics of the breakaway region, sparking criticism from Western countries and claims that Russia is attempting to unlawfully invade Ukraine.

Chancellor Scholz said he had asked the German economy ministry to make sure the pipeline’s certification could not take place at the moment. “That sounds technical, but it is the necessary administrative step so there can be no certification of the pipeline and without this certification, Nord Stream 2 cannot begin operating,” the Chancellor stated.

The 12-billion-dollar pipeline, which is majority-owned by Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom is capable of transporting 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Russia to Germany. The pipeline could have been the answer to Europe’s current energy crisis and help refill the continent’s gas storage facilities, which had less than 5% of gas left in them last week.

However, while having been completed in August last year, the pipeline has since hit the wall of European bureaucracy, and has not delivered a single cubic meter yet pending certification. The US and Ukraine, as well as several other Eastern European states, have been voicing protests against the pipeline’s launch, arguing that it would allow Moscow to exert political leverage over Europe.

Nordstream 2 is not the leverage. The supply-demand equation is the leverage. The fact that US and European decision makers do not understand the difference is why there is very little chance they will come out on top in the current conflict with Russia.

The Great Negotiator gets it.

If properly handled, there was absolutely no reason that the situation currently happening in Ukraine should have happened at all. I know Vladimir Putin very well, and he would have never done during the Trump Administration what he is doing now, no way! Russia has become very very rich during the Biden Administration, with oil prices doubling and soon to be tripling and quadrupling. The weak sanctions are insignificant relative to taking over a country and a massive piece of strategically located land. Now it has begun, oil prices are going higher and higher, and Putin is not only getting what he always wanted, but getting, because of the oil and gas surge, richer and richer. The U.S. was energy independent under the Trump Administration, an independence that we had never obtained before, and oil prices would have remained low.

President Donald Trump, 22 February 2022

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Russia Recognizes Donbass Republics

Vladimir Putin expertly puts the ball – and any subsequent blame for future violence – in the Imperial USA’s court.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that Moscow has recognized the two self-declared breakaway Donbass republics in Ukraine’s east as sovereign nations, as a military standoff across the contact line continues to escalate.

Speaking as part of a televised address to the nation on Monday evening, Putin signed the decree, saying that “I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago to immediately recognize the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics.” Lawmakers will now be asked to consider statements of friendship and support with the two regions.

Putin clearly understands the significance of 4GW. By planting a rhetorical flag directly in the Evil Empire’s language of freedom, democracy, and self-determination, and recognizing both republics on those grounds rather than simply annexing them, Putin has ensured that Russia will hold the moral high ground in the event war breaks out in the region.

Russia has the military means to quickly and easily defeat Ukraine, but as I have pointed out since 2015, the Russians really do not want to deal with the hassle of occupation and empire. And it isn’t only Russia that will be protecting the two new sovereign nations, as I doubt it will be long before China officially recognizes them as well.

Unless the USA and the EU do likewise, their utter hypocrisy and lack of adherence to their own proclaimed principles will glow like a Fed at a patriot rally.

UPDATE: The Russian military will secure the peace in the newly independent nations. Hearts and minds.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to “secure the peace” in the newly recognized Donetsk and Lugansk republics, which were formerly considered to be part of Ukraine.

Moscow officially recognized the independence of the two breakaway regions on Monday.

Putin has instructed the Defense Ministry to send peacekeepers into the Donbass, while telling the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to establish diplomatic relations with the states.

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Fears for the Imperial Order

It’s not your imagination. The elite pedocrats of the New World Neoliberal Rules-Based World Order who have ruled the world since the end of World War II are genuinely fearful of the challenge posed to their satanic order by the Sino-Russian Alliance.

Russia and China are two “revisionist” powers attempting to change the current world order, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs has claimed, three weeks after Moscow and Beijing made a joint statement denouncing many aspects of Washington’s foreign policy, calling for an end to “interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.”

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, Josep Borell warned the current liberal multilateral world order is at stake, because the friendship between the “authoritarian” Russian-Chinese governments are defying the norms of the existing global architecture.

“30 years after the end of the Cold War, we are facing a determined effort to redefine the multilateral order,” the EU foreign policy chief said. “This statement is the culmination of a long-standing campaign. It’s an act of defiance. It’s a revisionist manifesto, the manifesto to review the world order.”

On February 4, after a three-hour-long meeting in Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping signed a joint statement, in which the two leaders expressed agreement on multiple issues of global sustainable development and international relations.

Among other things, Putin and Xi agreed to oppose the “abuse of democratic values and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states under the pretext of protecting democracy and human rights, and any attempts to incite divisions and confrontation in the world.” They also called on the international community “to respect cultural and civilizational diversity” and “the rights of peoples of different countries to self-determination.”

Beijing also supported Russia’s demand to stop the eastward expansion of the US-led NATO bloc, while Moscow reiterated its stance on the indivisibility of China, denying Taiwan’s independence claims.

According to Borrell, the joint statement is in contravention of the UN Charter’s definition of human rights and democracy. The official claimed that the agreement of Beijing and Moscow to oppose “color revolutions” is illegal, because it would violate the rights of individuals to self-determination.

China and Russia aren’t doing it for our sake. They’re doing it for themselves. But in doing so, they are demonstrating the way for nationalists of every nation to resist the evil Empire that has inverted everything from “the will of the people” to “national sovereignty”, and which regards every form of resistance to its rule as “illegal”.

If I am reading the signs correctly, the wild magic is gathering power and it will soon be time for Herne to ride and for his hounds to harry The Empire That Never Ended to the ends of the Earth and drive it back into the shadows again. And while Christians pray for crusade and inquisition, they should not forget that God often makes use of pagan nations to chastise the wicked. Deus vult.

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The Benefits of Imposed Protectionism

The Russians have learned there is nothing to fear from Western sanctions:

Vladimir Putin ‘doesn’t give a s**t’ about the risk of Western sanctions if it were to invade Ukraine, Russia’s ambassador to Sweden said as US staff began withdrawing from eastern Ukraine amid warnings of an ‘imminent’ invasion.

In an outspoken interview, Viktor Tatarintsev told the country’s Aftonbladet newspaper that ‘the more the West pushes Russia, the stronger the Russian response will be’.

He claimed Russia had become more ‘self-sufficient’ amid the threat of sanctions and accused the West of not understanding his country.

‘We are more self-sufficient and have been able to increase our exports. We have no Italian or Swiss cheeses, but we’ve learned to make just as good Russian cheeses using Italian and Swiss recipes’, he said.

There is nothing that a big, resource-rich country needs from trade. Indeed, every nation large enough to be self-sufficient will be much better off, over time, by refusing to trade with the rest of the world. The USA has been impoverished, and is now debt-ridden, due to its foolish embrace of free trade and the Ricardian lie.

It’s only a matter of time before China and Russia cut economic ties with the USA. And that will harm the USA, and the West, far more than it harms the rising world powers.

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Provocations

One can’t help but notice that it is the US Navy that is invading Russia’s territorial waters, and not the other way around:

A US Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine has been detected and chased away in Russian territorial waters off the Kuril Islands, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

The vessel was found submerged off the small uninhabited island of Urup while Russia’s Pacific Fleet was holding exercises in the area. Russian vessels contacted the submarine, warning it was in the country’s territorial waters and ordering it to surface immediately, the military said.

The submarine, however, did not respond to the messages, and destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov was deployed to chase it off. The Russian vessel used “appropriate means” against the US sub, the military noted without providing any further details.

Following the run-in with the destroyer, the Virginia-class submarine used an active radar decoy, sailing away from Russian waters at full speed.

Remember, any US military action is customarily preceded by a false flag of some kind. Don’t be fooled by the mainstream media narrative.

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Empire’s End

Empires tend to end in farce. The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets is no exception:

The UK will remove all of its troops from Ukraine amid fears that Russia could invade its neighbor, Britain’s armed forces minister, James Heappey, said on Saturday. “All of them will be withdrawn,” Heappey told BBC Radio 4’s Today show. “There will be no British troops in Ukraine if there is to be a conflict there.”

One wonders what the victors of the Crimean War would have made of such an ignominious and farcical series of maneuvers on the part of the British Armed Forces. The heir to that fallen empire, the Imperial USA, shouldn’t laugh too hard, though, after its own debacle in Afghanistan. The end of the US empire is already in sight.

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That Which Doesn’t Kill Russia

Only makes it stronger. The Axis of Antichrist discovers Nietzschean economics:

Russia has done far more to build resilience to Western sanctions than the European Union has to improve its ability to survive disruptions in the gas supply chain, the EU high representative for foreign affairs said on Sunday.

Writing in his weekly blog, Josep Borrell accused Moscow of using energy supplies for “political purposes” and suggested any further measures against the Kremlin have serious blowback effects for the EU, including a reduction of gas available to the bloc. His comments came ahead of a meeting of the EU-US Energy Council, due to be held on Monday, in America.

“Energy prices have surged due to global supply and demand issues,” Borrell wrote. “With the severe crisis that we are currently going through with Russia, it has become not only a price issue but also a matter of security of supplies.”

According to the Eurocrat, over 40% of EU gas imports come from Russia, while the EU provides over 60% of Russia’s import revenues.

“However, in recent years, Russia has enhanced its resilience against economic sanctions, by increasing its foreign currency reserves, more than we have done to enhance our capacity to face potential gas supply cuts,” he explained, calling on the bloc to begin developing EU strategic gas reserves and boost investment in renewable sources of energy.

Russia faces the same challenge as every Western dissident, albeit on a much larger scale. China knows it will too, which is why both nations are not only building their own platforms, but assiduously refusing to use the platforms and products of their evil enemies in the West.

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No More Soros Games

Vladimir Putin warns the neocons to stop destabilizing nations:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he will not allow governments allied with Moscow to be toppled in so-called “color revolutions,” a reference to the series of popular uprisings that have shaken former Soviet republics.

“We will not allow the boat to be rocked,” Putin said.

During an online meeting with leaders of a Russian-led collective security alliance, Putin blamed last week’s violent unrest in Kazakhstan on “destructive internal and external forces.” He added, “Of course, we understand the events in Kazakhstan are not the first and far from the last attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of our states from the outside.”

It just became a lot more safe to ally with Russia and China than to remain unaligned. Especially since China is fully onboard with the anti-neocon approach.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday afternoon, stressing the further deepening of “back-to-back” strategic coordination in upholding international fairness and justice and adhering to the four consensuses in supporting each other’s sovereignty, security and development interests to better tackle external interference and regional threats, as they exchanged views on a series of major issues regarding global strategic security and stability.

And, of course, there is nothing more dangerously unstable than to be an ally of the imperial USA.

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Russia Rejects Globohomo

It’s pretty obvious who is the Evil Empire now, and it obviously isn’t ruling over the Russians anymore:

Russia’s Ministry of Culture has published a draft order setting out “traditional values” that it says must be protected from encroachment by foreign ideas, terrorists, and extremists amid a “global crisis” for public morality.

The document was posted on the ministry’s website this week for consultation, ahead of being presented to President Vladimir Putin for his signature, and is designed to provide “the foundations of government policy for the protection and strengthening of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.” The ordinance lays out what the authors see as integral Russian values and puts forward strategies for defending them against alleged incursion by foreign perspectives.

The draft text defines “traditional values” as “moral guidelines that form Russian citizens’ worldview, transferring from generation to generation, guaranteeing civil unity, forming the base of Russian civilizational identity and the nation’s unified cultural space, and manifesting uniquely and distinctly in the spiritual, historical, and cultural development of the multiethnic people of Russia.”

According to the order, examples of these values include “life, dignity, human rights and freedom, patriotism, civic consciousness, service to the Fatherland and responsibility for its fate, high moral ideals, a strong family, creative work, prioritizing the spiritual over the material, humanism, charity, justice, collectivism, mutual support and respect, historical memory and continuity between generations, and the unity of the peoples of Russia.”

The report claims, however, that these values are under threat from outside forces including terrorist and extremist organizations, multinational corporations, NGOs, and the US and its allies.

Remember, the US Empire is even more aggresssively anti-American than it is anti-Russian or anti-Chinese.

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And Here… We… Go

NATO and the USA reject Russia’s perfectly reasonable demands:

NATO has said it “will not compromise” on potential expansion into Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics, as this clashes with the “core principles” of the alliance, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Wednesday.

Moscow proposed eight points in the draft, and expected a detailed reply to each one.

The US was asked to stop any further NATO expansion to the east, halt military programs in non-member countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union – and pledge Ukraine and Georgia would “never” join the bloc – remove its nuclear weapons from Europe, and not deploy any offensive weapons capable of targeting Russia along its borders. Moscow demanded legally binding guarantees on all of those matters.

The alliance’s response, which Stoltenberg said all 30 members agreed upon, was delivered to Moscow earlier in the day by the US ambassador, alongside Washington’s separate written note.

The US has asked Russia to keep the contents of its response private.

The great accomplishment of the Trump administration was to avoid war with Russia, which was looking very likely in 2015 after Hillary Clinton made it clear that she intended to invite both Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO.

The difference is that now Russia – and China – have had an additional seven years to prepare for war with the New Neo-Liberal Rules-Based World Order, and they have no shortage of additional motivation for it.

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