Ukraine can't win, but Russia has already lost. It failed to take Ukraine. It also showed its military to be a Potemkin village, irreparably harming its status. Putin will soon face the music at home.
I’ve been following this conflict since the coup in 2014. If you knew anything about this conflict AND/OR if you were being honest, you would know that Russia has been engaged in attritional warfare. Russia and Putin are clearly on record stating their objectives in this conflict. Nowhere has Putin or any of his military ever said that their objective was to take Kiev. Just laughable. This nonsense was all carefully created by the Biden Administration (e.g., Nuland, Blinken), General Milley, etc. to discredit the Russia and their military. For Russia, it has never been about seizing vast amounts of Ukrainian territory albeit that has been a byproduct of attriting the Ukrainian military personnel trained and weapons provided by NATO. And you damn well know that. Russian objectives have been clearly documented outside of Western propaganda media outlets. Additionally, many current and former U.S. military brass, CIA analysts, etc. are on record saying this as well. So you may be able to fool the uneducated or ignorant westerner but sure as hell not me.
More of what we’ve come to expect from them: say the exact opposite of reality. In this case, the Deep State globalists claim victory in the face of defeat.
It’s a blessing to see their collapse as we take back our Country.
“You can deny reality. But you can’t deny the consequences of denying reality.” - Ayn Rand
It is sheer lunacy to suggest that attritional warfare is ever a sound strategy.
It was lunacy when Field Marshal Haig used it at the Battle of the Somme.
It was lunacy when the Russians tried it in the Brusilov Offensive.
It has been lunacy for Russia today. It has cost Russia dearly in blood. It has cost Russia dearly in treasure. It will continue to cost Russia in both.
Europe and NATO have been willing to sacrifice Ukraine in order to, as former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated bluntly early on, "grind down" the Rusisan military.
Just because Ukraine has not won is an irrational basis for presuming Russia will win. For Ukraine and Russia alike the prognosis is war without victory.
Your military history leaves much to be desired. Neither the battle of the Somme nor the Brusilov offensive were attritional schemes (Haig was in fact fixated upon restoring manoeuvre to the western front), and both arguably achieved their goals, the Somme diverting a great deal of German strength away from Verdun and Brusilov destroying the offensive potential of the Austro-Hungarians. An actual example of a failed attritional strategy from the Great War was the battle of Verdun. And one must remember ultimately that the Great War was won by attrition, the combination of the blockade and battle stretched the Central Powers to the breaking point until they could no longer hold, and their lines folded every which way.
Well, George, Russia has the most nuclear weapons in the world, United States is second. It’s in the best interest of the world for the two nations which have 90% of the nuclear arsenal to have a good relationship, not a bad one. So to those warmongers who want to continue to fund an unwinnable war, that’s a deluded and irrational position, which only pushes Russia closer to China increasing the likelihood for World War III. The best chance for peace, prosperity, and liberty in the world is for the United States and Russia to normalize relations.
I haven’t read all the other essays from you or your site on this topic. I’m saying that it’s in America’s best interest to normalize relations with Russia; it would be good for Russia, too. That’s difficult to do, though when you have many globalist leaders in the EU and warmonger politicians in the United States calling Putin a war criminal, liar, fascist, etc. Russia has never attacked the United States. And the Soviet Union and America were allies during World War II, even if it wasn’t for the most altruistic of reasons.
Billions of dollars have been wasted on this war, hundreds of thousands of lives needlessly lost. And I may be in the minority on this, but I think Russia was provoked into attacking Ukraine because of all of the loose talk by the Biden administration about Ukraine, having the right to pursue NATO membership. Russia has made it clear that NATO membership for Ukraine was unacceptable; every NATO member knows this. And Russia didn’t attack Ukraine when Trump was president, because they knew Trump clearly opposed Ukraine joining NATO.
The Ukrainian Nazis attacked the Russian peoples of eastern Ukraine, so Putin counter-attacked the Ukrainian Nazis to save the Russian peoples of eastern Ukraine.
This has literally nothing to do with Russia's war objectives. In fact, if you're right, Russia would want (as Putin said it did) to occupy the country to carry out a program of "denazification".
You are trying to oversimplify this conflict. And that is almost always a mistake.
Putin has no desire of re-conquering the rest of Ukraine. Putin will keep and protect the eastern portion of Ukraine and Crimea that are predominantly populated with Russian peoples.
That’s going to be Ukraine’s new reality, and the UK-EU-NATO new reality is that Ukraine will never be a member of NATO.
It's not necessary to occupy Ukraine to achieve denazification. It suffices for the Ukrainisn people to recognize that that ideology has led the country to ruin.
You Fucking Idiot, the Russians have turned all known war theory related to invading force losses on its head.
The conventional theory and wisdom of an attacking force vs a dug in force prescribes a 3 : 1 ratio of manpower for the attacking force to achieve success.
The Russians have completely destroyed that theory, with a 1 Russian to 10.34 Ukrainian loss ratio, due to a diligent approach to warfare and not the typical blundering approach.
Likewise the loss ration of materiële has followed a similar pattern.
Putin sent in an initial 90 000 men which was an intended shock treatment and anybody who watched the early videos, would have seen that the Russians were laying down old tyres on the asphalt roads and having their tanks cross the roads at right angles to preserve the asphalt from damage.
Putins initial shock treatment was perfectly successful as it at the Ukrainians at the negotiating table within weeks which was the purpose of the initial invasion, with an offer which would have lost the Ukraine no territory whatsoever, but then of course they succumbed to Western stupidity, and now their country is a hole in the ground, and Putin will take whatever he deems necessary, to maintain the safety and security of Russians in both the existing, and new parts ( formerly Ukraine ) of the Russian Federation.
NATO has thrown everything they had without formally anouncing boots on the ground, at the Russians, and have lost virtually All of it,bincluding most of their undercover manpower who were instructors and advisors with technical expertise.
Right now NATO is a blustering bullshitter, which now realises the might of the Russian military which they so badly underestimated.
It is not just the Ukraine screaming for peace, but NATO too, but too bad their ears ate still filled with wax, that will lead to their further annihilation at the hands of the Russians.
The crowning glory being that Ukraine has had a string of continuous mobilisations and are dragging men off the streets and taking them away in vans, only to return them in body bags, while Russia has had only one mobilisation over the past three years, while having their rabks filled by motivated volunteers,bwhich clearly indicates the positive sentiment if the Russian people to Putin's approach and proves that he is under No political threat whatsoever.
This is a fantastic counterpoint and one that NO ONE wants to discuss. I am referring to the ethnic cleansing and beat down of the Russian Ethnic regions in Ukraine.
Why does no one ever mention this? It would take away any moral justification for supporting Ukraine - that is why.
"The distance from the Ukraine border to Moscow, on highway M3, is only about 300 miles (480 kilometers). Russia’s nightmare was that Germany could surge its way to Moscow. Three hundred miles by a massive force staging a surprise attack is not a huge distance. He rationally needed Ukraine to widen the gap."
I'm sorry, but times do change, even if American prognosticators' prejudices don't. Putin's "nightmare" might have been realistic almost a century ago, but today it's beyond preposterous to expect Germany's rulers to order their Leopard tanks up that road to seize Moscow. They don't even have the stones to expel the Muslim troublemakers that Mutti Merkel invited in; and that's without considering that a long line of hostile tanks and other vehicles moving up any highway is extremely vulnerable to attack -- as the Ukrainians amply demonstrated in 2022.
In short, Putin's "fears" were convenient rationalizations for his grandiose ambitions. Oh, he will use them again, to cover his butt, but it's a cardinal mistake to take them seriously.
I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would think Putin would be okay with NATO on his doormat (Ukraine). The warmongers knew that and threw it in his face anyway. Any US President with a pair would have the same reaction to Russia or China moving into Mexico. We only need to look to the example of Cuba for this stark reality. I really can't fathom what is so difficult about this concept. Do I think Putin is scared of the EU? Hell no, why would anyone be? Does he want the corruptokrats from there and here in the US moving in (all in the name of NATO don't you know) and doing as they please? Also a big fat NO. I have no idea why he has been so leisurely about this entire event, possibly he was waiting for someone to come to their senses about what exactly would be GOOD about lobbing nukes at each other. Dunno. I for one am grateful for his restraint. What is awful however is the absolute inhumanity of force conscripting men aged 18-60 into that meat grinder and calling it anything except a tragedy that needs to be stopped yesterday. I am sure my uneducated opinion on the matter won't mean much to anyone but I really don't see this whole mess as a win for anyone, unless you work in the defense industry or are party to the millions if not billions in kickbacks that I am sure is happening. But those people can suck a bag of .....something.
It's a disaster for everyone directly involved. There's potential for it to be a win for NATO, the EU, and China as I have detailed elsewhere, but that would still be at Russia's expense.
It's not insignificant that this war did NOT happen under Trump, but DID happen in two stages under Obama and then Biden. Ukraine could have been Finlandized. The Obama-Biden team didn't want that: they wanted to push Russia into war, in hopes that Russia could be shattered into multiple successor states. And they may yet get their wish (not saying that wouldn't serve U.S. interests, just that it's a dangerous game to play). That's oversimplifying, but it's essential. Trump had and has no interest in any of that: he legitimately wants peace.
The problem for Russia is that unlike American pundits, Russians know they've lost. This was supposed to be a cake walk: three years later, the only hope for "victory" is to outlast Ukraine in a war of attrition. They can do that, but it will be awfully ugly for everyone.
In any case, yes, putting NATO forces 300 miles from downtown Moscow was always going to be Russia's Cuban Missile Crisis. I really cannot fathom why Americans struggle to understand this. This doesn't put Russia in the right. But we have to understand it to have any chance of a durable peace. Americans can pretend otherwise, but until and unless they're willing to invade a nuclear power and somehow occupy it, they're smoking crack.
I doubt Obama-Biden did anything as foolish as that. A Russian success would mean a significantly bigger Russia, and who could at that time predict they would fail? Ukraine was, and still is, the underdog.. You root for it, but you don't bet your money on it winning.
That the invasion took place under Bidens presidency is mere coincidence. The world doesn't stop revolving because the president goes to bed. If anything the path that led to this war. began with a wish to get closer to EU, which would diminish the Russian influence (which maybe was the whole point).
You are mistaken, my friend. If anything, you are adopting "American prognosticators' prejudices", to wit, that Russia need not fear Germany and thus does not fear Germany; and also, that the German government is benevolent and incapable of doing what it's historically always done.
If I'm the leader of Russia, I'm always going to fear Germany, as a result of geography alone. And after two invasions in the last century, and the rapid change from Weimar to Hitler (and from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to full-scale war), they're not wrong to do so, especially while NATO presses ever closer to the Russian heartland.
Ukraine in NATO is Russia's Cuban Missile Crisis. We would be very negligent not to at least factor that into our thinking.
None of the foregoing changes who invaded whom. But we cannot afford a simplistic understanding of this conflict.
I find it odd that the Baltic states and Finland joining NATO has not produced a similar response from Russia. The obvious difference is that Russia does not want to fight NATO directly. Though they have been effectively fighting NATO indirectly in Ukraine for the past 3 years.
Still, the main difference is twofold: Ukraine is necesary for the strategic depth Russia needs to defend its heartland ("necessary" not being the same as "Russia is therefore entitled to it"), and in the alternative, a German army sitting 300 miles from downtown Moscow is unthinkable. It reverses the outcome of World War II, bought at the price of 27 million Russian dead.
Ukraine in NATO is Russia's equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We are crazy not to recognize this.
At the same time, that doesn't mean Russia is in the right here. They are not. But had Trump remained President, this war would not have happened.
By contrast, an invasion from Finland would be quite difficult, and it's NATO that lacks strategic depth in the Baltics. The Russians are horrified by these developments of course, but not nearly so threatened by them.
Who was, Finland and the Baltics? I would be glad to see the old news about that.
Ukraine otoh was absolutely committing ethnic cleansing. It wasn't even just a handful of Azov-et al militias gone uncontrolled, but "not reflective of Ukraine" as some want to persuade us of. After the coup, ultra right parliamentarians passed ethnic cleansing *law*. It was later struck down, but not by their choice.
For anyone doubting this: it's useful to know that not all the ultra right politicians stay in neat little identifiable parties. They show up in "peace order and prosperity" type parties that aren't ID'd as the worst offenders in outside primers on the subject. Ukrainian politics are a hot mess, one has to basically look up neo nazi affiliations as they swim into view in reports, or indeed any politician's name past or present as they also tend to move in and out of formal power.
The Banderites are relentless. They are one of a couple holdovers from the fin de siècle ethnofascism inspired by Nietzschean philosophy.
Correction. I meant that Ukraine was committing ethnic cleaning against Russian speakers in Odessa and Don bass. The Baltics were doing ethnic harassment but not murder. One video from Azov in 2015 showed them hanging a man and his 8 month pregnant wife out in the forest. I can never forget that. My friend from Donetsk list her 14 year old female best friend from Ukrainian shelling in 2016. It was real.
My god. That's horrific, both those discrete atrocities. I'm so sorry. Thank you for speaking plainly about it. Western audiences are so willing to presume that unpleasantness is exaggerated and that everyone surely is getting along fine: it's intensely willful blindness, given that western Ukrainians living elsewhere might even voice their contempt, if that's their subculture and they're in the mood.
I didn't know the Baltics were involved in ethnic harassment! I will look into that. Thank you.
I know there has been tension about language chauvinism in more than just Ukraine. They're not the only site of neo nazis/ultra rightists either--in general eastern Europe has 'em, is my understanding.
Ps It was something like tens of thousands killed, people prevented from functioning in the only language they speak, all sorts of oppression and murder whether individually or en masse by bombs, isn't that so? I did not mean to imply small numbers by saying "discrete", rather that they are two separate types--both types happened many times is my understanding. Even during the recent 3 years Russia conflict, I saw reports that Azovites would do stuff like that while moving through an area.
And more to the point, if the underlying issues are not resolved, there is usually going to be a rematch. "Resolved" doesn't have to be to everyone's liking: Japan certainly doesn't love that it lost World War II. But it no longer feels threatened by the United States, no longer has imperial ambitions in China, and no longer needs a large navy to defends its sea lanes (though it's rebuilding one currently for other reasons). So we don't have any realistic chance of getting in a fight with Japan anytime vaguely soon.
By contrast, the 2022 war is just a continuation of the 2014 war. The underlying issues were not resolved, and indeed, the color revolution intensified them.
Using your definition of “winning a war,” the US hasn’t been on the winning side of a war since WWII, and don’t forget that the USSR was our ally during WWII and it is certainly debatable if the US could’ve defeated Germany without the USSR. Did we win the Korean War? The Vietnam War? The Afghanistan (Taliban) War? The Iraq, now ISIS, War?
It seems to me that the central question that the US (i.e. Biden Administration) did not answer before using Ukraine as a proxy war against Russia was to define our goal. Was our goal to defeat Russia, drive them out of Ukraine, make them pay reparations to rebuild Ukraine, and force a change of Russian leadership? If so, then we have failed. So, the reality of the situation is that like most wars, nobody has “won” and it is time to stop throwing young men on both sides into a meat grinder so the “elites” on both sides can beat their chests and act tough! It’s time to negotiate peace - let’s hope President Trump is successful.
Yes, the United States has won exactly one hot war since World War II: the first Gulf War.
Is that really controversial?
I think the Obama-Biden team had pretty clear aims in this war (which I've written about elsewhere on this site), and it remains to be seen whether they achieve those. But their aim was never outright Ukrainian victory. That's clear from the things they withheld from Ukraine.
Peace is the humanitarian outcome at this point. Ukraine can't push Russia all the way out, and the truth is, if they held the now-flattened Donbas they'd face a guerilla war for years, so losing it may hurt their pride but will help their future. Crimea was irretrievably lost in 2014, and Obama didn't lift a finger to stop that, which tells you how serious the Democrats really are.
We'll see if Zelensky gets on board or bleeds his country out. For now it's up to him.
The author clearly does not understand Russia's objectives when it began the SMO in 2022. Their objective was for Kiev to commit to neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification. This was nearly agreed to at the Istanbul peace talks in March 2022. Bonus Johnson went to Ukraine to convince Zelensky to fight rather than sign the peace agreement, which would have, at that point, seen no further loss of territory than Crimea.
It was only after Zelensky chose to fight that Russia conducted the referenda in the Donbas, Zaporhyzia, and Kherson, annexing those territories.
Russia's objective was never to annex all of Ukraine but to see Ukraine demilitarized and committed to neutrality like Finland and Switzerland.
Taking the airport was a feint that forced Kiev to withdraw forces from the Donbass line to defend the capital. Russia never used its full armor divisions. It held them back to defend against any possible NATO invasion of Russia. The SMO was done using special operations forces mainly because they had a law that prevented the deployment of conscripts outside of Russian territory. They changed that law around the same time they did the referendums in Kherson and Zaporhyzia, late 2022.
The big discovery in this war was that drones have completely changed armored warfare. It is impossible to make the large arrow movements of the past until the enemy's air defenses and drones have been neutralized. Ukrainian defenses have broken down to the point that we may see such rapid maneuver warfare this Spring or Summer. But it took three years of grinding attritional warfare to get to this point. The lesson is that fast wars are a thing of the past, if they ever truly existed.
Perhaps some of the issue here is your definition of “denazify” versus that of Putin. This goal is NOTHING like the goal of the Allies for Germany after WWII. What was to be eradicated there was an entire world view that was at all nationalistic with a positive identity of the German people and a negative one of Jews, who after all had declared war against them in 1933.
Furthermore, National Socialist Germany did not call themselves “Nazis,” and they certainly weren’t a caricature of a prior conquered world view of another people.
It is only a small portion of the population of the Ukraine that has this neo-Nazi perspective, which itself is only a relatively small portion of the ethic Ukrainian population, which resides in the western 1/3 of the Ukraine. The Azov battalion reflects this view, and it was encouraged by Western powers as a means to get them to be willing to hate Russia and fight and die for “their people.” It involved a civil war between them and those ethnic Russians living in the east of Ukraine in a war they started in 2014 that Putin’s SMO merely entered after nearly a decade of diplomacy failed.
Finally, getting the non-ethic Russian population of Ukraine as a whole not to act as neo nazis really only requires the removal of Western dominance there that pushes it and the loss of the war, which has also attrited a huge portion of the costumed neo nazi faction as represented by Azov battalion.
I agree that the “nazi” faction has an outsized role in this war, but it is not as if they caused all of this. They merely help perpetuate it.
Those who planned this war from the beginning, which goes back to before the coup the West instigated (led by Jews, tbh), supported and amplified the Nazi faction as part of its operation.
People don’t choose to fight and die in wars to support the degenerate rainbow culture. They do so for their people.
By supporting (a cartoonish caricaturized) version of nazism for Ukraine, it created a hyper nationalistic faction who would be willing to fight to the death and HATE Russia.
This is why the counterintuitive notion of Jews supporting nazis exists. In actuality, the Jews will support anything that helps them destroy the groups they hate, which ultimately is every non-Jewish group in the world.
If Russia wanted to keep Ukraine out of NATO. I think they succeeded. Russia may have actually started the end of NATO. What the hell was the US objective? What are we getting out of our alliances with Europe at this point? I think the founders had it right. Europe is in an eternal pissing match against one another.
Yes, Russia was the designated enemy, and this is set to become China. At that point we are supposed to forget about Russia. Or something like that (as per 1984, LOL)
I don’t think Putin ever said the objective was to take and conquer Ukraine. His issue seemed to be in the east and Crimea. The ultimate objective was to keep NATO Nuclear weapons off his southern border, which would have happened if Crimea and its navy base fell to Ukraine and the EU.
Actions speak louder than words, as I think George demonstrates quite clearly in his essay.
But yes, the objective was to keep NATO at a distance, which Putin hoped to achieve by reversing the 2014 color revolution. I doubt very much he would have actually annexed Ukraine, but he clearly wanted to control it.
The vision of Russian control and influence of Ukraine is a true statement in my opinion. But like chinas belt and road initiative, friendly local and national politicians along with economic investment is cheaper than a military occupation. 2014 was the game changer and mistakes were made on both sides, by all parties involved, directly or indirectly in my readings up to this point. We’re suffering from bad politicians, they’re unread and lazy
An excellent article by the esteemed George Friedman! Russia completely failed in their goal of conquering Ukraine and their military was dealt a crushing blow by the Ukrainians. One thing this war certainly proved was that Russia is a paper Tiger and without its nuclear weapons, would not be a feared or respected nation. Vladimir Putin doesn’t have absolute power like Josef Stalin did. He has to take into account what the oligarchs want. This war has been terrible for business and has been a military, economic and demographic disaster for Russia. They lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, drew the condemnation of the world and committed heinous atrocities the likes of which have seldom been seen in history. The Russians committed mass murder, mass rape, used germ warfare, tortured Ukrainian soldiers, blew up Ukrainian POWs, shot and killed dogs for fun, used ethnic minorities and people from the third world as cannon fodder, and fired missiles at apartment buildings full of people. Whatever Ukraine’s flaws, one must admit Russia committed the worst atrocities on the continent since the Yugoslavian Civil War in the 1990s. Russia is indeed in decline and it shows no signs of stopping. In fact the disastrous results of the war will only speed it up. They have a rapidly aging population and plummeting birth rate. Drug addiction and alcoholism are quite rampant in Russia. At last count, one-third of Russians have STDs. Going into debt because of massive medical bills is quite common in the country. Russians suffer from multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis. Racism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and homophobia are all rampant in the country. Sex trafficking is quite widespread in Russia. Russia is in terrible shape and is a living nightmare. Putin was able to ward off the Wagner Group’s attempt to topple him and killed its leadership off in a plane crash arranged by him. What the Wagner Group’s failed uprising did prove however despite its failure, is that Putin’s position is not as ironclad as he would have us believe. It fact it’s paper thin! All it would take would be a well-planned invasion by a foreign power, a withdraw of the oligarch’s support and the support of the Russian populace and he’d be done for! Putin must sign a peace deal with Ukraine and end this war because if he doesn’t, the Oligarchs will abandon him and then he’s really in trouble. Donald Trump holds all the cards in this situation. Putin knows that Donald Trump is the only way out he has from this war. Trump has masterfully engineered the situation so he looks weak. The weaker Trump appears, the more desperate Putin will be to cut a deal with Ukraine to end the war. It’s really a masterclass in diplomacy President Trump is putting on here! He’s got no other path to salvaging this situation. At home, the Oligarchs are p****d with him and his people are becoming bolder in their opposition to him. Nor can he do some sort of reign of terror to shut them up as it’s far too late for that. On another note, yes, Zelensky tried to prosecute political opponents and introduced controversial wartime measures at home, yes, corruption is rampant in Ukraine in the government and military, yes, the prescience of armed Neo-Nazi militias and the fairly widespread nostalgia for and hero worship of Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera in Ukraine is worrying. All those things are true. But Ukraine and Zelensky’s flaws don’t change the fact that it is and always was clear who (warts and all) the good guys in this war were and who were the bad guys.
Below is one of the prophecies (of many btw) from the "Lost Prophecies of the Future of America" book that concerns me given the Bidens got rich in the last four years. Could they have given away our nuke locations to China and/or Russia? Could this be the first few trumpet judgments? I hope not and had I not read the book I'd think he had too much to drink, but multiple dreams and visions in the book are saying the same, and if Joel 2:28/Acts2:17 are correct, then they may be worth considering. I don't think we have anything to stop ICBM's but correct me if I'm wrong...and look up Poseidon (which can also create tsunamis).
Dumitru Duduman: He said, “Remember this, Dumitru. The Russian spies have discovered where the nuclear warehouses are in America. When the Americans will think that it is peace and safety – from the middle of the country, some of the people will start fighting against the government. The government will be busy with internal problems. Then from the ocean, from Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico,,..” (He told me two other countries, but I didn’t remember what they were.) “…they will bomb the nuclear warehouses. When they explode, America will burn!”
How Cecil Rhodes Fathered the Modern Globalist Movement: a Timeline
Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table led to the founding in 1921 of both the US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Chatham House in London, Bilderberg founded in 1954, the Club of Rome (1968) and the Trilateral Commission (1973). All of these organisations are dedicated to global governance, and there is extensive overlap in terms of the principle players. The same forces created the United Nations.
Five Eyes Intelligence Oversight and Review Council (FIORC)
FIORC is composed of the following non-political intelligence oversight, review, and security entities of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
ECFR has offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Warsaw and Sofia.
ECFR was founded in 2007 by Mark Leonard together with a council of fifty founding members, chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer, and Mabel van Oranje, with initial funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Communitas Foundation, Sigrid Rausing, Unicredit and Fundación Para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE).
The British Oligarchy have been the instigators of all of the death and destruction perpetrated upon humanity ever since the Venetian takeover of England with the in-Glorious Revolution of 1688!
BRICS is a joke. That's exactly what it deserves.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
You’re deluded
So what's your ETA for Russian forces to take Kiev?
I’ve been following this conflict since the coup in 2014. If you knew anything about this conflict AND/OR if you were being honest, you would know that Russia has been engaged in attritional warfare. Russia and Putin are clearly on record stating their objectives in this conflict. Nowhere has Putin or any of his military ever said that their objective was to take Kiev. Just laughable. This nonsense was all carefully created by the Biden Administration (e.g., Nuland, Blinken), General Milley, etc. to discredit the Russia and their military. For Russia, it has never been about seizing vast amounts of Ukrainian territory albeit that has been a byproduct of attriting the Ukrainian military personnel trained and weapons provided by NATO. And you damn well know that. Russian objectives have been clearly documented outside of Western propaganda media outlets. Additionally, many current and former U.S. military brass, CIA analysts, etc. are on record saying this as well. So you may be able to fool the uneducated or ignorant westerner but sure as hell not me.
I don't think the author is seeking out independent or even historical sources. Putin's objectives were clear, as his actions demonstrated, but no one seems to know about them unless they dared stray from MSM propaganda. NBC even admitted they were publishing Ukrainian propaganda. https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/07/us-officials-admit-theyre-literally-just-lying-to-the-public-about-russia/
More of what we’ve come to expect from them: say the exact opposite of reality. In this case, the Deep State globalists claim victory in the face of defeat.
It’s a blessing to see their collapse as we take back our Country.
“You can deny reality. But you can’t deny the consequences of denying reality.” - Ayn Rand
Russia has been engaged in attritional warfare. That much you have correct.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/the-waste-of-putins-war-video
It is sheer lunacy to suggest that attritional warfare is ever a sound strategy.
It was lunacy when Field Marshal Haig used it at the Battle of the Somme.
It was lunacy when the Russians tried it in the Brusilov Offensive.
It has been lunacy for Russia today. It has cost Russia dearly in blood. It has cost Russia dearly in treasure. It will continue to cost Russia in both.
Europe and NATO have been willing to sacrifice Ukraine in order to, as former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated bluntly early on, "grind down" the Rusisan military.
Just because Ukraine has not won is an irrational basis for presuming Russia will win. For Ukraine and Russia alike the prognosis is war without victory.
Spoken like a true neocon retard🖕
Ad hominems are not an argument.
Your military history leaves much to be desired. Neither the battle of the Somme nor the Brusilov offensive were attritional schemes (Haig was in fact fixated upon restoring manoeuvre to the western front), and both arguably achieved their goals, the Somme diverting a great deal of German strength away from Verdun and Brusilov destroying the offensive potential of the Austro-Hungarians. An actual example of a failed attritional strategy from the Great War was the battle of Verdun. And one must remember ultimately that the Great War was won by attrition, the combination of the blockade and battle stretched the Central Powers to the breaking point until they could no longer hold, and their lines folded every which way.
When Russia decide to send a nuke. You are a clown. Russia HAS WON, as the purpose was never taken all Ukraine. Its a matter of time.
Putin never intended to take Kiev. Did you not read the objectives of the SMO?
They had no intention of taking Kiev, in the first place Asshole, you've been listening to far too much General Milley Bullshit!
Putin said on day one he never intended to take Kiev; he wants independent states in the east of Ukraine.
I second that diagnosis!!
Putin did his duty this kind of garbage sandwich nobody wants
God Save the women & children🙏🙏🙏
Well, George, Russia has the most nuclear weapons in the world, United States is second. It’s in the best interest of the world for the two nations which have 90% of the nuclear arsenal to have a good relationship, not a bad one. So to those warmongers who want to continue to fund an unwinnable war, that’s a deluded and irrational position, which only pushes Russia closer to China increasing the likelihood for World War III. The best chance for peace, prosperity, and liberty in the world is for the United States and Russia to normalize relations.
You seem to imply that there's some part of this essay, or the countless others we've published on this topic, that suggests otherwise. Why is that?
I haven’t read all the other essays from you or your site on this topic. I’m saying that it’s in America’s best interest to normalize relations with Russia; it would be good for Russia, too. That’s difficult to do, though when you have many globalist leaders in the EU and warmonger politicians in the United States calling Putin a war criminal, liar, fascist, etc. Russia has never attacked the United States. And the Soviet Union and America were allies during World War II, even if it wasn’t for the most altruistic of reasons.
Billions of dollars have been wasted on this war, hundreds of thousands of lives needlessly lost. And I may be in the minority on this, but I think Russia was provoked into attacking Ukraine because of all of the loose talk by the Biden administration about Ukraine, having the right to pursue NATO membership. Russia has made it clear that NATO membership for Ukraine was unacceptable; every NATO member knows this. And Russia didn’t attack Ukraine when Trump was president, because they knew Trump clearly opposed Ukraine joining NATO.
Completely agree.
Putin is not seeking to conquer Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Nazis attacked the Russian peoples of eastern Ukraine, so Putin counter-attacked the Ukrainian Nazis to save the Russian peoples of eastern Ukraine.
Watch the Oliver Stone documentaries on Ukraine.
Ukraine on Fire (2016)
Revealing Ukraine (2019)
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=oliver+stone+documentary+ukraine&ia=web
The Putin Interviews (4-Parts)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=oliver+stone+interview+putin&t=h_&ia=web
This has literally nothing to do with Russia's war objectives. In fact, if you're right, Russia would want (as Putin said it did) to occupy the country to carry out a program of "denazification".
You are trying to oversimplify this conflict. And that is almost always a mistake.
Facts are facts. Watch the Oliver Stone documentaries and learn the facts.
Personally, I support Putin’s demand for the denazification of Ukraine, and so should you and everyone else.
Again, if you are correct, that would make my point regarding Russia's war aims.
No. You are absolutely undeniably WRONG!!!
Putin has no desire of re-conquering the rest of Ukraine. Putin will keep and protect the eastern portion of Ukraine and Crimea that are predominantly populated with Russian peoples.
That’s going to be Ukraine’s new reality, and the UK-EU-NATO new reality is that Ukraine will never be a member of NATO.
The Vladimir Putin Interview (Tucker Carlson)
https://tuckercarlson.com/the-vladimir-putin-interview
It's not necessary to occupy Ukraine to achieve denazification. It suffices for the Ukrainisn people to recognize that that ideology has led the country to ruin.
You Fucking Idiot, the Russians have turned all known war theory related to invading force losses on its head.
The conventional theory and wisdom of an attacking force vs a dug in force prescribes a 3 : 1 ratio of manpower for the attacking force to achieve success.
The Russians have completely destroyed that theory, with a 1 Russian to 10.34 Ukrainian loss ratio, due to a diligent approach to warfare and not the typical blundering approach.
Likewise the loss ration of materiële has followed a similar pattern.
Putin sent in an initial 90 000 men which was an intended shock treatment and anybody who watched the early videos, would have seen that the Russians were laying down old tyres on the asphalt roads and having their tanks cross the roads at right angles to preserve the asphalt from damage.
Putins initial shock treatment was perfectly successful as it at the Ukrainians at the negotiating table within weeks which was the purpose of the initial invasion, with an offer which would have lost the Ukraine no territory whatsoever, but then of course they succumbed to Western stupidity, and now their country is a hole in the ground, and Putin will take whatever he deems necessary, to maintain the safety and security of Russians in both the existing, and new parts ( formerly Ukraine ) of the Russian Federation.
NATO has thrown everything they had without formally anouncing boots on the ground, at the Russians, and have lost virtually All of it,bincluding most of their undercover manpower who were instructors and advisors with technical expertise.
Right now NATO is a blustering bullshitter, which now realises the might of the Russian military which they so badly underestimated.
It is not just the Ukraine screaming for peace, but NATO too, but too bad their ears ate still filled with wax, that will lead to their further annihilation at the hands of the Russians.
The crowning glory being that Ukraine has had a string of continuous mobilisations and are dragging men off the streets and taking them away in vans, only to return them in body bags, while Russia has had only one mobilisation over the past three years, while having their rabks filled by motivated volunteers,bwhich clearly indicates the positive sentiment if the Russian people to Putin's approach and proves that he is under No political threat whatsoever.
This is a fantastic counterpoint and one that NO ONE wants to discuss. I am referring to the ethnic cleansing and beat down of the Russian Ethnic regions in Ukraine.
Why does no one ever mention this? It would take away any moral justification for supporting Ukraine - that is why.
One quote from Friedman's piece:
"The distance from the Ukraine border to Moscow, on highway M3, is only about 300 miles (480 kilometers). Russia’s nightmare was that Germany could surge its way to Moscow. Three hundred miles by a massive force staging a surprise attack is not a huge distance. He rationally needed Ukraine to widen the gap."
I'm sorry, but times do change, even if American prognosticators' prejudices don't. Putin's "nightmare" might have been realistic almost a century ago, but today it's beyond preposterous to expect Germany's rulers to order their Leopard tanks up that road to seize Moscow. They don't even have the stones to expel the Muslim troublemakers that Mutti Merkel invited in; and that's without considering that a long line of hostile tanks and other vehicles moving up any highway is extremely vulnerable to attack -- as the Ukrainians amply demonstrated in 2022.
In short, Putin's "fears" were convenient rationalizations for his grandiose ambitions. Oh, he will use them again, to cover his butt, but it's a cardinal mistake to take them seriously.
I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would think Putin would be okay with NATO on his doormat (Ukraine). The warmongers knew that and threw it in his face anyway. Any US President with a pair would have the same reaction to Russia or China moving into Mexico. We only need to look to the example of Cuba for this stark reality. I really can't fathom what is so difficult about this concept. Do I think Putin is scared of the EU? Hell no, why would anyone be? Does he want the corruptokrats from there and here in the US moving in (all in the name of NATO don't you know) and doing as they please? Also a big fat NO. I have no idea why he has been so leisurely about this entire event, possibly he was waiting for someone to come to their senses about what exactly would be GOOD about lobbing nukes at each other. Dunno. I for one am grateful for his restraint. What is awful however is the absolute inhumanity of force conscripting men aged 18-60 into that meat grinder and calling it anything except a tragedy that needs to be stopped yesterday. I am sure my uneducated opinion on the matter won't mean much to anyone but I really don't see this whole mess as a win for anyone, unless you work in the defense industry or are party to the millions if not billions in kickbacks that I am sure is happening. But those people can suck a bag of .....something.
It's a disaster for everyone directly involved. There's potential for it to be a win for NATO, the EU, and China as I have detailed elsewhere, but that would still be at Russia's expense.
It's not insignificant that this war did NOT happen under Trump, but DID happen in two stages under Obama and then Biden. Ukraine could have been Finlandized. The Obama-Biden team didn't want that: they wanted to push Russia into war, in hopes that Russia could be shattered into multiple successor states. And they may yet get their wish (not saying that wouldn't serve U.S. interests, just that it's a dangerous game to play). That's oversimplifying, but it's essential. Trump had and has no interest in any of that: he legitimately wants peace.
The problem for Russia is that unlike American pundits, Russians know they've lost. This was supposed to be a cake walk: three years later, the only hope for "victory" is to outlast Ukraine in a war of attrition. They can do that, but it will be awfully ugly for everyone.
In any case, yes, putting NATO forces 300 miles from downtown Moscow was always going to be Russia's Cuban Missile Crisis. I really cannot fathom why Americans struggle to understand this. This doesn't put Russia in the right. But we have to understand it to have any chance of a durable peace. Americans can pretend otherwise, but until and unless they're willing to invade a nuclear power and somehow occupy it, they're smoking crack.
I doubt Obama-Biden did anything as foolish as that. A Russian success would mean a significantly bigger Russia, and who could at that time predict they would fail? Ukraine was, and still is, the underdog.. You root for it, but you don't bet your money on it winning.
That the invasion took place under Bidens presidency is mere coincidence. The world doesn't stop revolving because the president goes to bed. If anything the path that led to this war. began with a wish to get closer to EU, which would diminish the Russian influence (which maybe was the whole point).
You are mistaken, my friend. If anything, you are adopting "American prognosticators' prejudices", to wit, that Russia need not fear Germany and thus does not fear Germany; and also, that the German government is benevolent and incapable of doing what it's historically always done.
If I'm the leader of Russia, I'm always going to fear Germany, as a result of geography alone. And after two invasions in the last century, and the rapid change from Weimar to Hitler (and from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to full-scale war), they're not wrong to do so, especially while NATO presses ever closer to the Russian heartland.
Ukraine in NATO is Russia's Cuban Missile Crisis. We would be very negligent not to at least factor that into our thinking.
None of the foregoing changes who invaded whom. But we cannot afford a simplistic understanding of this conflict.
I find it odd that the Baltic states and Finland joining NATO has not produced a similar response from Russia. The obvious difference is that Russia does not want to fight NATO directly. Though they have been effectively fighting NATO indirectly in Ukraine for the past 3 years.
They absolutely do not.
Still, the main difference is twofold: Ukraine is necesary for the strategic depth Russia needs to defend its heartland ("necessary" not being the same as "Russia is therefore entitled to it"), and in the alternative, a German army sitting 300 miles from downtown Moscow is unthinkable. It reverses the outcome of World War II, bought at the price of 27 million Russian dead.
Ukraine in NATO is Russia's equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We are crazy not to recognize this.
At the same time, that doesn't mean Russia is in the right here. They are not. But had Trump remained President, this war would not have happened.
By contrast, an invasion from Finland would be quite difficult, and it's NATO that lacks strategic depth in the Baltics. The Russians are horrified by these developments of course, but not nearly so threatened by them.
Those states weren't committing ethnic cleansing against ethnic Russians or anyone else; Ukraine was and essentially, still is.
False. Above were absolutely committing ethnic cleansing against native Russian speakers from 2014 to 2022.
Who was, Finland and the Baltics? I would be glad to see the old news about that.
Ukraine otoh was absolutely committing ethnic cleansing. It wasn't even just a handful of Azov-et al militias gone uncontrolled, but "not reflective of Ukraine" as some want to persuade us of. After the coup, ultra right parliamentarians passed ethnic cleansing *law*. It was later struck down, but not by their choice.
For anyone doubting this: it's useful to know that not all the ultra right politicians stay in neat little identifiable parties. They show up in "peace order and prosperity" type parties that aren't ID'd as the worst offenders in outside primers on the subject. Ukrainian politics are a hot mess, one has to basically look up neo nazi affiliations as they swim into view in reports, or indeed any politician's name past or present as they also tend to move in and out of formal power.
The Banderites are relentless. They are one of a couple holdovers from the fin de siècle ethnofascism inspired by Nietzschean philosophy.
Correction. I meant that Ukraine was committing ethnic cleaning against Russian speakers in Odessa and Don bass. The Baltics were doing ethnic harassment but not murder. One video from Azov in 2015 showed them hanging a man and his 8 month pregnant wife out in the forest. I can never forget that. My friend from Donetsk list her 14 year old female best friend from Ukrainian shelling in 2016. It was real.
My god. That's horrific, both those discrete atrocities. I'm so sorry. Thank you for speaking plainly about it. Western audiences are so willing to presume that unpleasantness is exaggerated and that everyone surely is getting along fine: it's intensely willful blindness, given that western Ukrainians living elsewhere might even voice their contempt, if that's their subculture and they're in the mood.
I didn't know the Baltics were involved in ethnic harassment! I will look into that. Thank you.
I know there has been tension about language chauvinism in more than just Ukraine. They're not the only site of neo nazis/ultra rightists either--in general eastern Europe has 'em, is my understanding.
Ps It was something like tens of thousands killed, people prevented from functioning in the only language they speak, all sorts of oppression and murder whether individually or en masse by bombs, isn't that so? I did not mean to imply small numbers by saying "discrete", rather that they are two separate types--both types happened many times is my understanding. Even during the recent 3 years Russia conflict, I saw reports that Azovites would do stuff like that while moving through an area.
So by your logic, once two population groups, or two tribes, or two countries, have been at war, they're forever likely to go to war again.
It doesn't take a great deal of studying history to kill that idea.
It does raise the chances of hostilities.
And more to the point, if the underlying issues are not resolved, there is usually going to be a rematch. "Resolved" doesn't have to be to everyone's liking: Japan certainly doesn't love that it lost World War II. But it no longer feels threatened by the United States, no longer has imperial ambitions in China, and no longer needs a large navy to defends its sea lanes (though it's rebuilding one currently for other reasons). So we don't have any realistic chance of getting in a fight with Japan anytime vaguely soon.
By contrast, the 2022 war is just a continuation of the 2014 war. The underlying issues were not resolved, and indeed, the color revolution intensified them.
Using your definition of “winning a war,” the US hasn’t been on the winning side of a war since WWII, and don’t forget that the USSR was our ally during WWII and it is certainly debatable if the US could’ve defeated Germany without the USSR. Did we win the Korean War? The Vietnam War? The Afghanistan (Taliban) War? The Iraq, now ISIS, War?
It seems to me that the central question that the US (i.e. Biden Administration) did not answer before using Ukraine as a proxy war against Russia was to define our goal. Was our goal to defeat Russia, drive them out of Ukraine, make them pay reparations to rebuild Ukraine, and force a change of Russian leadership? If so, then we have failed. So, the reality of the situation is that like most wars, nobody has “won” and it is time to stop throwing young men on both sides into a meat grinder so the “elites” on both sides can beat their chests and act tough! It’s time to negotiate peace - let’s hope President Trump is successful.
Yes, the United States has won exactly one hot war since World War II: the first Gulf War.
Is that really controversial?
I think the Obama-Biden team had pretty clear aims in this war (which I've written about elsewhere on this site), and it remains to be seen whether they achieve those. But their aim was never outright Ukrainian victory. That's clear from the things they withheld from Ukraine.
Peace is the humanitarian outcome at this point. Ukraine can't push Russia all the way out, and the truth is, if they held the now-flattened Donbas they'd face a guerilla war for years, so losing it may hurt their pride but will help their future. Crimea was irretrievably lost in 2014, and Obama didn't lift a finger to stop that, which tells you how serious the Democrats really are.
We'll see if Zelensky gets on board or bleeds his country out. For now it's up to him.
The author clearly does not understand Russia's objectives when it began the SMO in 2022. Their objective was for Kiev to commit to neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification. This was nearly agreed to at the Istanbul peace talks in March 2022. Bonus Johnson went to Ukraine to convince Zelensky to fight rather than sign the peace agreement, which would have, at that point, seen no further loss of territory than Crimea.
It was only after Zelensky chose to fight that Russia conducted the referenda in the Donbas, Zaporhyzia, and Kherson, annexing those territories.
Russia's objective was never to annex all of Ukraine but to see Ukraine demilitarized and committed to neutrality like Finland and Switzerland.
Perhaps you could explain how Russia would "denazify" Ukraine without occupying it. You're contradicting yourself.
It was part of the peace agreement in 2022: disbanding territorial forces including the nazi ones like Azov. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/fact-sheet-istanbul-protocol-draft-document-april-15-2022
Which was only negotiated after Putin failed to take Kiev.
They only took the Kiev airport. It was not a serious attempt to capture Kiev.
Uh, sure. Kind of like San Jacinto was not a serious attempt by Santa Anna to beat the Texans.
Taking the airport was a feint that forced Kiev to withdraw forces from the Donbass line to defend the capital. Russia never used its full armor divisions. It held them back to defend against any possible NATO invasion of Russia. The SMO was done using special operations forces mainly because they had a law that prevented the deployment of conscripts outside of Russian territory. They changed that law around the same time they did the referendums in Kherson and Zaporhyzia, late 2022.
The big discovery in this war was that drones have completely changed armored warfare. It is impossible to make the large arrow movements of the past until the enemy's air defenses and drones have been neutralized. Ukrainian defenses have broken down to the point that we may see such rapid maneuver warfare this Spring or Summer. But it took three years of grinding attritional warfare to get to this point. The lesson is that fast wars are a thing of the past, if they ever truly existed.
Perhaps some of the issue here is your definition of “denazify” versus that of Putin. This goal is NOTHING like the goal of the Allies for Germany after WWII. What was to be eradicated there was an entire world view that was at all nationalistic with a positive identity of the German people and a negative one of Jews, who after all had declared war against them in 1933.
Furthermore, National Socialist Germany did not call themselves “Nazis,” and they certainly weren’t a caricature of a prior conquered world view of another people.
It is only a small portion of the population of the Ukraine that has this neo-Nazi perspective, which itself is only a relatively small portion of the ethic Ukrainian population, which resides in the western 1/3 of the Ukraine. The Azov battalion reflects this view, and it was encouraged by Western powers as a means to get them to be willing to hate Russia and fight and die for “their people.” It involved a civil war between them and those ethnic Russians living in the east of Ukraine in a war they started in 2014 that Putin’s SMO merely entered after nearly a decade of diplomacy failed.
Finally, getting the non-ethic Russian population of Ukraine as a whole not to act as neo nazis really only requires the removal of Western dominance there that pushes it and the loss of the war, which has also attrited a huge portion of the costumed neo nazi faction as represented by Azov battalion.
Nuance is important and glad you addressed this.
The Nazis in Ukraine are indeed a minority but they have a stranglehold on the government.
I agree that the “nazi” faction has an outsized role in this war, but it is not as if they caused all of this. They merely help perpetuate it.
Those who planned this war from the beginning, which goes back to before the coup the West instigated (led by Jews, tbh), supported and amplified the Nazi faction as part of its operation.
People don’t choose to fight and die in wars to support the degenerate rainbow culture. They do so for their people.
By supporting (a cartoonish caricaturized) version of nazism for Ukraine, it created a hyper nationalistic faction who would be willing to fight to the death and HATE Russia.
This is why the counterintuitive notion of Jews supporting nazis exists. In actuality, the Jews will support anything that helps them destroy the groups they hate, which ultimately is every non-Jewish group in the world.
👏👏👏
If Russia wanted to keep Ukraine out of NATO. I think they succeeded. Russia may have actually started the end of NATO. What the hell was the US objective? What are we getting out of our alliances with Europe at this point? I think the founders had it right. Europe is in an eternal pissing match against one another.
Great article. Cheers.
Collective west objective:
My guess- Wealth transfer?
Secondary guess - Something to do with all of the bio labs?
More than that, but not less. And don’t forget China.
Yes, Russia was the designated enemy, and this is set to become China. At that point we are supposed to forget about Russia. Or something like that (as per 1984, LOL)
I don’t think Putin ever said the objective was to take and conquer Ukraine. His issue seemed to be in the east and Crimea. The ultimate objective was to keep NATO Nuclear weapons off his southern border, which would have happened if Crimea and its navy base fell to Ukraine and the EU.
Actions speak louder than words, as I think George demonstrates quite clearly in his essay.
But yes, the objective was to keep NATO at a distance, which Putin hoped to achieve by reversing the 2014 color revolution. I doubt very much he would have actually annexed Ukraine, but he clearly wanted to control it.
The vision of Russian control and influence of Ukraine is a true statement in my opinion. But like chinas belt and road initiative, friendly local and national politicians along with economic investment is cheaper than a military occupation. 2014 was the game changer and mistakes were made on both sides, by all parties involved, directly or indirectly in my readings up to this point. We’re suffering from bad politicians, they’re unread and lazy
I would just add that the war has shown Russia likely couldn't have pulled off an occupation.
An excellent article by the esteemed George Friedman! Russia completely failed in their goal of conquering Ukraine and their military was dealt a crushing blow by the Ukrainians. One thing this war certainly proved was that Russia is a paper Tiger and without its nuclear weapons, would not be a feared or respected nation. Vladimir Putin doesn’t have absolute power like Josef Stalin did. He has to take into account what the oligarchs want. This war has been terrible for business and has been a military, economic and demographic disaster for Russia. They lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, drew the condemnation of the world and committed heinous atrocities the likes of which have seldom been seen in history. The Russians committed mass murder, mass rape, used germ warfare, tortured Ukrainian soldiers, blew up Ukrainian POWs, shot and killed dogs for fun, used ethnic minorities and people from the third world as cannon fodder, and fired missiles at apartment buildings full of people. Whatever Ukraine’s flaws, one must admit Russia committed the worst atrocities on the continent since the Yugoslavian Civil War in the 1990s. Russia is indeed in decline and it shows no signs of stopping. In fact the disastrous results of the war will only speed it up. They have a rapidly aging population and plummeting birth rate. Drug addiction and alcoholism are quite rampant in Russia. At last count, one-third of Russians have STDs. Going into debt because of massive medical bills is quite common in the country. Russians suffer from multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis. Racism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and homophobia are all rampant in the country. Sex trafficking is quite widespread in Russia. Russia is in terrible shape and is a living nightmare. Putin was able to ward off the Wagner Group’s attempt to topple him and killed its leadership off in a plane crash arranged by him. What the Wagner Group’s failed uprising did prove however despite its failure, is that Putin’s position is not as ironclad as he would have us believe. It fact it’s paper thin! All it would take would be a well-planned invasion by a foreign power, a withdraw of the oligarch’s support and the support of the Russian populace and he’d be done for! Putin must sign a peace deal with Ukraine and end this war because if he doesn’t, the Oligarchs will abandon him and then he’s really in trouble. Donald Trump holds all the cards in this situation. Putin knows that Donald Trump is the only way out he has from this war. Trump has masterfully engineered the situation so he looks weak. The weaker Trump appears, the more desperate Putin will be to cut a deal with Ukraine to end the war. It’s really a masterclass in diplomacy President Trump is putting on here! He’s got no other path to salvaging this situation. At home, the Oligarchs are p****d with him and his people are becoming bolder in their opposition to him. Nor can he do some sort of reign of terror to shut them up as it’s far too late for that. On another note, yes, Zelensky tried to prosecute political opponents and introduced controversial wartime measures at home, yes, corruption is rampant in Ukraine in the government and military, yes, the prescience of armed Neo-Nazi militias and the fairly widespread nostalgia for and hero worship of Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera in Ukraine is worrying. All those things are true. But Ukraine and Zelensky’s flaws don’t change the fact that it is and always was clear who (warts and all) the good guys in this war were and who were the bad guys.
The Vladimir Putin Interview (Tucker Carlson)
https://tuckercarlson.com/the-vladimir-putin-interview
Below is one of the prophecies (of many btw) from the "Lost Prophecies of the Future of America" book that concerns me given the Bidens got rich in the last four years. Could they have given away our nuke locations to China and/or Russia? Could this be the first few trumpet judgments? I hope not and had I not read the book I'd think he had too much to drink, but multiple dreams and visions in the book are saying the same, and if Joel 2:28/Acts2:17 are correct, then they may be worth considering. I don't think we have anything to stop ICBM's but correct me if I'm wrong...and look up Poseidon (which can also create tsunamis).
Dumitru Duduman: He said, “Remember this, Dumitru. The Russian spies have discovered where the nuclear warehouses are in America. When the Americans will think that it is peace and safety – from the middle of the country, some of the people will start fighting against the government. The government will be busy with internal problems. Then from the ocean, from Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico,,..” (He told me two other countries, but I didn’t remember what they were.) “…they will bomb the nuclear warehouses. When they explode, America will burn!”
https://a.co/d/0CkL3p9
https://x.com/glennbeck/status/1896640825049944096?s=61
Why is London so eager for a war with Russia?
LONDON IS THE ENEMY OF HUMANITY
How Cecil Rhodes Fathered the Modern Globalist Movement: a Timeline
Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table led to the founding in 1921 of both the US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Chatham House in London, Bilderberg founded in 1954, the Club of Rome (1968) and the Trilateral Commission (1973). All of these organisations are dedicated to global governance, and there is extensive overlap in terms of the principle players. The same forces created the United Nations.
[https://stovouno.org/2019/02/21/how-cecil-rhodes-fathered-the-modern-globalist-movement-timeline/](https://stovouno.org/2019/02/21/how-cecil-rhodes-fathered-the-modern-globalist-movement-timeline/)
THE CFR AND THE FIVE EYES INTELLIGENCE NETWORK
Five Eyes Intelligence Oversight and Review Council (FIORC)
FIORC is composed of the following non-political intelligence oversight, review, and security entities of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
[https://www.dni.gov/index.php/ncsc-how-we-work/217-about/organization/icig-pages/2660-icig-fiorc](https://www.dni.gov/index.php/ncsc-how-we-work/217-about/organization/icig-pages/2660-icig-fiorc)
What Is Five Eyes? Understanding the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance
[https://christophegaron.com/articles/mind/what-is-five-eyes-understanding-the-five-eyes-intelligence-alliance/](https://christophegaron.com/articles/mind/what-is-five-eyes-understanding-the-five-eyes-intelligence-alliance/)
THE CFR / FIVE EYES NETWORK
UK: The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) (Chatham House)
USA: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
Canada: Canadian International Council (CIC) formerly “The Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA)”
Australia: Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA)
New Zealand: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA)
YouTube Video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Describing The Council on Foreign Relations as “The Mothership”
[https://youtu.be/By61S9Q5Esc](https://youtu.be/By61S9Q5Esc)
[https://youtu.be/-6TXcQpgC9Q](https://youtu.be/-6TXcQpgC9Q)
YouTube Video of Dick Cheney Confessing that He was a Director of The Council on Foreign Relations
[https://youtu.be/BbnpN07J_zg](https://youtu.be/BbnpN07J_zg)
[https://www.c-span.org/clip/public-affairs-event/user-clip-dick-cheney-was-cfr-director/4873458](https://www.c-span.org/clip/public-affairs-event/user-clip-dick-cheney-was-cfr-director/4873458)
The European Council on Foreign Relations:
ECFR has offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Warsaw and Sofia.
ECFR was founded in 2007 by Mark Leonard together with a council of fifty founding members, chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer, and Mabel van Oranje, with initial funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Communitas Foundation, Sigrid Rausing, Unicredit and Fundación Para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council_on_Foreign_Relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council_on_Foreign_Relations)
[https://ecfr.eu/about/](https://ecfr.eu/about/)
The British Oligarchy have been the instigators of all of the death and destruction perpetrated upon humanity ever since the Venetian takeover of England with the in-Glorious Revolution of 1688!
Venice’s War on Western Civilization
https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/952_venice.html
The Venetian Conspiracy
https://lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/AgainstOligarchy/AgainstOligarchy.pdf
https://tarpley.net/online-books/against-oligarchy/
The American Almanac
https://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/contents.htm
Birth of the Nation State
https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fidelio_archive/2001/fidv10n02-2001Su/fidv10n02-2001Su_014-nicolaus_of_cusa_towering_genius-hzl.pdf
The Venetian Takeover of England:
A 200-Year Project
https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1994/eirv21n16-19940415/eirv21n16-19940415_015-the_venetian_takeover_of_england.pdf
The British Oligarchy’s Fourth War on America
https://open.substack.com/pub/william3n4z2/p/the-british-oligarchys-fourth-war?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
How the British Invented Globalism
Modern globalism was born in Victorian England. The plan was to merge the British Empire and the United States into a single superstate.
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardpoe/p/how-the-british-invented-globalism?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
How the British Sold Globalism to America
The Secret History of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Anglo-American Empire
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardpoe/p/how-the-british-sold-globalism-to?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
How the British Caused the American Civil War
Britain’s Scheme to Partition and Recolonize America in the 1860s
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardpoe/p/how-the-british-caused-the-american?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The Anglo-American Pilgrims Society (1902)
https://open.substack.com/pub/william3n4z2/p/the-anglo-american-pilgrims-society?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
How the British Invented Communism (and blamed it on the Jews)
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardpoe/p/how-the-british-invented-communism?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
To “Rescue the Republic” you must first know who actually is the enemy of the Republic.
Nationalism/Republicanism/Capitalism/Platonism
- Vs. -
Globalism/Oligarchism/Imperialism/Aristotelianism
The enemy of humanity has always been the British Imperialist Globalist Fascist Oligarchy headquartered in the City of London.
The first step on the path to defeating the British Oligarchy is to teach people the history of their mortal enemy.
Who Are the Globalist Fascist Oligarchy?
https://open.substack.com/pub/william3n4z2/p/who-are-the-globalist-fascist-oligarchy?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A Long History of British Machinations to Control the Content and Dissemination of News & Information
(Remember: Before Google, everyone used the Encyclopedia Britannica)
https://americans4innovation.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-secret-plot-in-1909-by-anglo.html
https://aim4truth.org/2019/09/13/origins-of-fake-news/
https://open.substack.com/pub/william3n4z2/p/a-long-history-of-british-machinations?r=1kb28q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
William Pritting’s Substack:
https://william3n4z2.substack.com/archive?sort=new
Richard Poe’s Substack:
https://richardpoe.substack.com/
The American Patriot History Project
https://patriot-project.weebly.com/anton-chaitkin.html#.Y5ZZjeROklR