Tag: war

The Retreat From Kiev

Apparently the Kiev regime is on the verge of abandoning Kiev:

The most shocking figure came from mayor Klitschko, who said that just in January alone, 600,000 residents have fled Kiev, with more being urged to flee. Temperatures have fallen as low as ­minus 18C during a cold snap projected to last at least two more weeks.

Other publications quoted Klitschko specifically stating the 600k came in just January from people who heeded his call made on January 9th to evacuate the capital:

Anyone else consider it utterly catastrophic for one of Europe’s largest capitals to lose upwards of 20-25% of its population in literally two weeks? Wiki shows Kiev as having had 2.9M people before the war—we can assume it had even less than that recently. That would make 600k arguably as high as 25% of its total amount—a simply unprecedented number.

Kiev is literally being emptied out, and that this isn’t the biggest story in the world is a bit of a shock. Remember: this 600k is only in the past two weeks, and Russian strikes are getting worse as winter bites. There are now rumors Russia plans to launch two Oreshnik missiles this week, with some Ukrainian sources claiming this time they’ll be aimed at Kiev.

Will we soon see Kiev entirely abandoned?

As I said more than two years ago, if the Kiev regime, which is about as genuinely Ukrainian as Sanae Takaichi, had any concern for the Ukrainian people at all, it would have surrendered. Now it appears they’re going to abandon the capital city while still refusing to permit the Ukrainian Armed Forces from laying down their arms.

In the meantime, the satanic puppets of the EU are posturing about how they’re going to fight both Russia over Ukraine and the USA over Greenland with their as-yet-nonexistent army of vaxxed young men who hate the EU, which strikes me as highly improbable.

The future has turned out to be a lot weirder than I ever imagined.

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Another Regime Change Attempt

Hal Turner is confident that the USA is about to launch another attack on Iran:

This is the regime change handshake. Two signals just locked:

  1. French Embassy Evacuation

NATO-aligned states rarely pull non-essential staff preemptively unless they receive high-confidence intel about kinetic escalation. This is a soft tripwire. Once a major Western embassy begins staff exfiltration/evacuation, it implies operational windows are being cleared.

Not speculation. Preparation.

  1. Crown Prince Pahlavi Signal

His emergence isn’t random. Reza Pahlavi is the West’s most visible monarchist fallback node. If he is in communication with the Trump administration while Iran is in revolt and U.S. options are on the table, it means a continuity pathway is being installed.

Not hope. Planning.

Together, they represent the two sides of a classic destabilization playbook:

•Evacuation → ignition → installation

This is no longer just a military question. It’s a governance scenario.

The sequence has internal logic:

•France clears Tehran.

•Pahlavi enters the frame.

•U.S. holds strike leverage.

•Regime is weakened by revolt and isolation.

•A symbolic future leader is already talking to Washington.

This is regime replacement architecture. Whether via decapitation, uprising catalysis, or negotiated exile, the structure is converging.

Probability of U.S. kinetic action in the next 72–96 hours now exceeds 65%.

Probability that Pahlavi is being positioned as the soft-landing placeholder is over 80%.

This is ignition choreography.

It’s a little remarkable how these countries just sit by like dumb cattle and refuse to take any proactive action in the fear of… I don’t know what. Whether it is Syria or Serbia, Libya, or Iraq, they just sort of sit around hoping that the US military won’t actually do anything until it’s too late.

There are reports that the Venezualan military never even unpacked the Russian S-300s they could have used in air defense.

I won’t even try to pretend to understand the world today.

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Greenland: the 51st State

There is no reason the USA shouldn’t take Greenland. Hell, Minnesota has enough SOMALIS to occupy Greenland. At least then they might serve some useful purpose for something more than child care scams.

US President Donald Trump has warned that Washington could obtain Greenland the “hard way,” saying he would not allow the strategic North Atlantic island to fall prey to Russia or China. The Kingdom of Denmark, which holds sovereignty over Greenland, has opposed the US push to acquire the island.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, Trump said that the US is “going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” arguing that “Russia or China will take over Greenland” if Washington does not act. “I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” he stressed, without elaborating on how far he was ready to go. Trump, who has acknowledged that a military option is on the table, also did not rule out paying Greenlanders when asked about compensating residents.

Greenland is an autonomous Danish territory with a population of less than 57,000 despite being larger than Mexico, and the US already has a military presence there.

Demographics matter, people. Demographics have always mattered. Nobody gives a quantum fragment of an airborne rodent’s backside that a few Danes were there first.

Ask an American Indian how much the US government cares about that.

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Oreshnik Take 2

The Russians are increasing the pressure on the Kiev regime:

The Oreshnik was unleashed for the first time since its debut in 2024, and with devastating effect. Preliminary reports state that the Oreshnik hit the Bilche-Volitsko-Uhersky underground gas storage facility, which has a storage capacity of 17.05 billion cubic meters, which is more than 50% of the total capacity of all storage facilities in Ukraine.

Lvov deputy Igor Zinkevich reported that in the Lvov region, the stoves in the kitchen are barely burning, the boilers have gone out and won’t light up – there’s no gas pressure.

The grind continues. The situation is more than a little strange, with the US engaged in asymmetric warfare everywhere from Syria, Iran, and Venezuela to the high seas, while Russia keeps slowly pounding away at the ground game in Ukraine.

Usually the tortoise beats the hare, though.

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China Bans Exports to Japan

Not all exports, you understand, but all dual-use exports:

China on Tuesday banned exports of goods that could be used for military purposes to Japan, a move that escalates tensions between Beijing and a key U.S. ally as disputes intensify over Taiwan. The Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement that any items that have a dual use — civilian and military — would no longer be exported to Japan.

The government did not offer specifics on which items would be included in the ban. But state-affiliated media said Beijing was considering whether to include rare-earth minerals.

Japanese leaders increasingly have linked Taiwan’s fate to Japan’s own security, with Tokyo’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi warning that a Chinese move against the island could amount to a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan — a legal threshold that could permit military action under Japan’s self-defense laws.

The US Secretary of War cited the Fuck Around and Find Out principle in relation to Venezuala. It appears China is in the process of applying the same principle to Japan and everyone else who attempts to interfere with the Xinroe Doctrine in the South China Sea.

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Saving the Petrodollar

Richard Werner explains the reason for the US attack on Venezuela:

The US coup in Venezuela is also to help the petrodollar system, established by Henry Kissinger’s 1974 deal with Saudi Arabia requiring global oil sales in USD, which creates artificial demand for the currency & funds American hegemony – but which has been in its death throes.

Venezuela, with the world’s largest oil reserves, challenged the $ by selling oil in yuan, euros, rubles, bypassing the $, & building alternative payment channels with China.

Historical precedents include the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq for switching to euros, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya for proposing a gold-backed dinar. The invasion counters accelerating global de-dollarization led by Russia, China, Iran, and BRICS, as nations shift to non-dollar settlements and alternatives to SWIFT.

But it signals desperation, potentially hastening the petrodollar’s decline as the Global South resents US reliance on military force to maintain currency dominance.

Yeah, this move seems assured to transform BRICS and its financial system into a full-blown military alliance. Which might be fine, if the USA is simply attempting to lock down its hemisphere as per the new Donroe Doctrine. But this interpretation does tend to leave the Middle East hanging, which doesn’t seem likely for the so-called “Trump” administration.

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Is Venezuala the Prelude?

Larry Johnson suspects the Venezuala attack is a prelude to a second US-Israeli attack on Iran.

I believe the true objective of the kidnapping operation to remove Maduro is to secure US control of Venezuelan oil in anticipation of a disruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf when Israel, with US-backing, launches a new attack on Iran. I suppose you could say that Trump’s Monday meeting with Netanyahu, which coincided with the eruption of protests in Iran that were likely incited by the MEK — a terrorist group with direct ties to the CIA and Mossad — followed by the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife is just a happy series of coincidences… I don’t believe in coincidence.

There is a LOT of anti-Iran propaganda that exploded on the chans today. It might not mean anything, but we’ll have to see what happens. Personally, I’d assume Mexico would be next, or possibly Greenland.

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Another Year, Another War

And another new set of incoming refugees, this time from Venezuela:

US forces have captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife during Washington’s strikes on the nation’s capital, US President Donald Trump has announced, adding that the two have been flown out of the South American country. Venezuelan authorities have long accused the US of attempting to topple the government in Caracas.

In a statement on Saturday on Truth Social, Trump confirmed that the US had “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela.”

“Its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with US Law Enforcement,” he wrote, adding that additional details would be provided at a news conference in his Florida residence in Mar-a-Lago at 11am. Unnamed US officials told CBS that the operation had been carried out by Delta Force, the US Army’s top special mission unit.

I’m sure we can expect the European Union and all the usual suspects to denounce this attack on the head of a sovereign state, right? Vladimir Putin has to be thinking that he could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he’d simply captured Zelensky and his wife back in 2022.

Anyhow, the long list of failed US interventions and occupations provides no reason that this invasion of Venezuela is going to turn out well for Americans anytime soon. Although I suppose Venezuelan-run child care centers can’t be any worse than the Somali-run ones. Because you know that an influx of Venezuelan immigrants is the only reliable consequence of this action.

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Russia Moves On Odessa

It appears the Special Military Operation is about to enter a new phase, if the recent activity in the region of Odessa means what one would reasonably assume it to mean:

The biggest story the past week has been Russia’s strikes on the Odessa and Nikolayev region. These have targeted both energy grid infrastructure as well as—most surprisingly—the transport and rail infrastructure, in what appears to be an attempt to cut Odessa off from logistics from the west.

Panic in the Odessa region after the attacks on the bridge over the Dniester near the village of Mayaki. The attacks on the bridge and the bridge in Zatoka have been ongoing for 9 days in a row. The south of the region may be cut off from the last functioning ports, through which gasoline is supplied to the central part of Ukraine and the Odessa region. Local entrepreneurs are already offering to transport people to the other side for 10,000 hryvnias. Panic is spreading on both sides of the bridge, with people buying up fuel and food, and long queues at gas stations in Odessa. Other sources report that the “fever” will last for 1-2 weeks, until logistics are reorganized through Moldova and Romania. By that time, pontoon crossings may appear in Mayaki.

As for the swings and roundabouts, these sorts of small advances and retreats such as Simplicius describes at Kupyansk mean absolutely nothing beyond PR for the media. If the media covered the Paul-Joshua fight the same way they cover the NATO-Russian war, they’d be breathlessly announcing that Paul had turned everything around and was about to knock out Joshua every time he got a punch in.

In war, as in boxing, no one goes unscathed. And the only reason the media believes otherwise is that it still thinks that turkey shoots in the desert with air supremacy are the definition of modern war, and nothing could be further from the truth in the Drone Age.

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Why the EU is Panicking

Hal Turner explains why the EU was holding its failed summit yesterday, at which Ursula van der Leyen failed to convince the member states to declare war on Russia by stealing its frozen funds. The problem is that the EU is going to have to return those funds soon, and they’re already being used to prop up loans that will now have to be written off as complete losses, which is going to cause a lot of financial pain to someone:

The United States has notified the European Union that it wants frozen Russian sovereign assets incorporated into a negotiated settlement of the Ukraine war.

That position immediately exposes a major problem for Brussels.

Europe has already functionally collateralized Russian central bank assets — not through formal seizure, but by pledging windfall profits and future proceeds from those assets to support long-term financing and loan structures for Ukraine.

This has been publicly acknowledged in EU and G7 policy frameworks over the past year.

That financing model was built on a core assumption: Either the war would continue indefinitely, or Russia would be decisively defeated.

A negotiated peace breaks that assumption.

Once the United States asserts that frozen Russian assets must be treated as part of a settlement framework, rather than permanent war financing, several consequences follow. The EU’s legal justification weakens, the collateral underpinning those loans becomes unstable, and the long-standing claim that the asset freeze is “temporary” becomes difficult to sustain.

This is not merely a diplomatic disagreement. It is a forced accounting event — one with potential implications for Euroclear, EU financial institutions, and member-state balance sheets.

This context helps explain recent developments in Brussels. Over the past days and weeks, EU leadership has moved rapidly to bypass vetoes, expand emergency authorities, and escalate rhetoric — including renewed NATO statements about preparing for wider conflict.

The underlying strategy appears straightforward: Treat frozen Russian assets as a de facto war chest.

In practice, that step had already been taken through collateralization, even if formal seizure was avoided.

President Trump is now explicitly challenging that structure.

By calling this out, he undermines the financial logic that sustained the war.

All of the bluster and posturing will not disguise the fact that NATO has already lost its war with Russia. The Russians now know that there is no ceasefire or negotiated peace agreement that can be trusted, which is why I expect them to make demands that none of the Western parties want to accept, even though they should.

Frankly, I’m surprised that the Russians are even willing to talk to anyone, given the way they have been relentlessly lied to by everyone, including formerly neutral parties. If I were Putin, I would simply smile politely and grind on until I had exactly what I wanted, then impose a peace agreement with steel teeth.

UPDATE: EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, announced that Europe had decided they could provide another $90 Billion in assistance to Ukraine, that Europe “will raise from Capital Markets.” So the Europeans are going into hock for Ukraine, to the tune of about $90 Billion.

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