Imran Hosein on Iran

Two short videos.

1. Judaism on Trial. Rabbis have to answer for how Iranian Embassy was struck, like a thief in the night! Is this consistent with moral law?
2. The honorable position of Iran in Islamic civilization and their vanguard position in Armageddon, alongside Russia and China. And chess grandmaster Iran finessed the nuclear-weapon card…

Iran’s ‘New Equation’ Soars Beyond The Holy Land

‘Anything that was good and true about Western civilization is preserved and thriving in Russia.’ And after a millennium of playing catch-up, she now has the dominant military heft and osmotic alliance with Iran and China to help craft new civilizational calculations.

By Pepe Escobar at Sputnik International.

A Holy of the Holies was shattered in the Holy Land as Iran staged a quite measured, heavily choreographed response to the Israeli terror attack against its consulate/ambassador residence in Damascus, a de facto evisceration of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity.

This game-changer will directly interfere on how the Anglo-American system manages its simultaneous conflagration with Russia, China and Iran – three top BRICS members.

The key problem is escalations are already built in – and will be hard to remove. The Total Cancel War against Russia; the genocide in Gaza – with its explicit policy masterfully decoded by Prof. Michael Hudson; and the decoupling/shaping the terrain against China won’t simply vanish – as all communication bridges with the Global Majority keep being torched.

Yet the Iranian message indeed establishes a “New Equation” – as Tehran christened it, and prefigures many other surprises to come from West Asia.

Iran wanted to – and did send – a clear message. New equation: if the biblical psychopathic entity keeps attacking Iranian interests, from henceforth it will be counter-attacked inside Israel. All that in a matter of “seconds” – as the Security Council in Tehran has already cleared all the procedures.

Escalation though seems inevitable. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak: “Netanyahu is influenced by his [fundamentalist] political partners to go into an escalation so he can hold onto power and accelerate the coming of the Messiah.”

Compare it to Iranian President Raisi: “The smallest act against Tehran’s interests will be met with a massive, extensive, and painful response against all its operations.”

Goodbye to Your ‘Invincible’ Defense Maze

For Tehran, regulating the intensity of the clash in West Asia between Israel and the Axis of Resistance while simultaneously establishing strategic deterrence to replace “strategic patience” was a matter of launching a triple wave: a drone swarm opening the path for cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

The performance of the much-vaunted Iron Dome, Arrow-3 and David’s Sling – aided by F-35 fighter jets and the US and the UK naval force – was not exactly stellar. There’s no video of the “outer-layer” Arrow-3 system shooting down anything in space.

At least 9 ballistic missiles penetrated the dense Israeli defense network and hit the Nevatim and Ramon bases. Israel is absolutely mum on the fate of its Golan Heights intel installation – hit by cruise missiles.

Amidst classic fog of war, it’s irrelevant whether Tehran launched hundreds or dozens of drones and missiles. Regardless of NATOstan media hype, what’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the supposedly “invincible” Israeli defense maze – ranging from US-made AD/ABM systems to Israeli knockoffs – is helpless in real war against a technologically advanced adversary.

What was accomplished by a single operation did raise quite a few professional eyebrows. Iran forced Israel to furiously deplete its stock of interceptors and spend at least $1.35 billion – while having its escalatory dominance and deterrence strategy completely shattered.

The psychological blow was even fiercer.

What if Iran had unleashed a series of strikes without a generous previous warning lasting several days? What if US, UK, France and – traitorous – Jordan were not ready for coordinated defense? (The – startling – fact they were all directly dispensing firepower on Tel Aviv’s behalf was not analyzed at all). What if Iran had hit serious industrial and infrastructural targets?

Establishing an Equation Without Disturbing a Pivot

Predictably, there has been less than zero debate across NATOstan about the sudden collapse of the Fortress Israel Myth – which underpins the larger myth of Zionism offering Impregnable Security for those living in Israel. No more. This narrative spin is D.O.A.

Iran, for its part, could not care less about what NATOstan spins. The shift towards the New Equation in fact was generous enough to offer Tel Aviv a de-escalation escape route – which will not be taken, at Israel’s peril.

For Tel Aviv, everything that happened so far spells out Strategic Defeat across the spectrum: in Gaza, in Lebanon, with the economy tanking, totally losing legitimacy around the world, and now with the added painful loss of deterrence.

All eyes are now on what may happen next: will it finally become clear whether the Hegemon prevails or whether Israel runs the “wag the dog” show?

It’s essential to consider the Russia-China strategic partnership view. The consensus among Chinese scholars is that the Hegemon prefers not to commit too many resources to West Asia, as this would affect the – already collapsing – Project Ukraine and the strategic planning to counter China in the Asia-Pacific.

When it comes to Russia, President Raisi personally called President Putin and they discussed all relevant details over the phone. Cool, calm and collected.

Additionally, later this week Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani – who said Iran will respond “within seconds” to any new Israeli attack – visits Moscow for the Conference on Nonproliferation and will also meet with the top echelons of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

It’s quite remarkable that Iran managed to establish the New Equation without disturbing its own pivot to Eurasia – after the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal – while protecting the complex framework engaged in the defense of Palestine.

The Hegemon’s options are dire. They run from being eventually expelled from West Asia and the Persian Gulf to an unwinnable existential clash against three civilization-states – Russia, China, Iran.

What’s left as the number one feasible scenario is a carefully calculated retreat to an easily controlled backyard: Latin America, especially South America, manipulating new, convenient, sovereign-deprived asset Argentina.

And of course maintaining control over a de-industrialized and sovereignty-deprived Europe.

That does not change the fact that US power projection on the wane, globally, is the way the wind is blowing. The Straussian neocon psycho-dementia is unsustainable. The question is whether they can be progressively purged from the US power structure before they attempt to plunge the Global Majority into their irrational depths of doom.

And Don’t Forget the New BRICS Equation

By contrast, on the Global Majority front, over 40 nations want to join BRICS – and counting, according to the head of the Russian Council Committee on International Affairs, Grigory Karasin.

After a meeting of the chairmen of the international affairs committees of BRICS Parliaments last week in Moscow, Karasin noted how many BRICS member-nations understand that they should not rush to create a rigid charter, “seeing how counterproductive and even provocative the European Union is acting.” The name of the game is flexibility.

Alastair Crooke has touched on a key theme that runs through my new book, Eurasia v. NATOstan: “Anything that was good and true about Western civilization is preserved and thriving in Russia. This is the unspoken insight that so infuriates the western elites. And it is also why, in part, BRICS states so evidently look to Russia for leadership.”

The New Equation established by Iran, a sovereign BRICS member, will do wonders to solidify this – multilateral, multicultural – state of cooperation as the Empire and its “aircraft carrier” in West Asia, except in the covert ops department, are increasingly reduced to the role of a paper tiger.

Iran’s ‘Strategic Patience’ lifts to Serious Deterrence

Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel were not conducted alone. Strategic partners Russia and China have Tehran’s back, and their role in West Asia’s conflict will only grow if the US doesn’t keep Israel in check.

By Pepe Escobar at The Cradle.

Eurasia versus NATOstan

In this interview, we are joined by the renowned geopolitical expert Pepe Escobar, who delves into the pages of his latest book “Eurasia v. NATOstan”. Brace yourself for an insightful exploration of the imminent collision between the Western Empire of Chaos and the emerging multipolar world order led by Eurasia. @SyrianaAnalysis

Russia and China Sketch the Future

… as the whole planet awaits with bated breath the avowedly inevitable Iranian response to the attack against its consulate/ambassador residence in Damascus by the biblical psychopaths responsible for the Gaza genocide.

By Pepe Escobar at Sputnik International.

Enveloped in an aura of secrecy, each passing day betrays the immensity of the challenge: the possibly asymmetrical response must be, simultaneously, symbolic, substantive, cogent, convincing, reasonable and rational. That is driving Tel Aviv totally hysterical and the deciding instances of the Hegemon extremely itchy.

Everyone with a functioning brain knows this wet dream of a stunt from the point of view of hardcore Zionists and US Christian zio-cons was a serious provocation, designed to draw the US to the long-cherished Israeli plan of striking a decisive blow against both Hezbollah and Tehran.

The IDF’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi all but gave away the game, when he said this past Sunday that “we are operating in cooperation with the USA and strategic partners in the region.”

Translation: never trust the Hegemon even as the notion is floated – via Swiss mediators – that Washington won’t interfere with Tehran’s response to Tel Aviv. One just needs to remember Washington’s “assurances” to Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War.

It’s impossible to take Hegemon back-channel assurances at face value. The White House and the Pentagon occasionally dispense these “assurances” to Moscow every time Kiev strikes deep inside the Russian Federation using US-UK satellite intel, logistics, weaponry and with NATO in de-facto operational control.

The state terror attack on Damascus, which shredded the Vienna convention on diplomatic immunity, crucially was also an attack on both the expanded BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran is a member of both multilateral bodies, and on top of it is engaged in strategic partnerships with both Russia and China.

"If Iran attacks from its territory – Israel will respond and attack in Iran," Israel's foreign minister threatened Iran with strikes, tweeting in Hebrew and Persian and tagging Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Iran's supreme leader, for his part, later said that the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/eWq4XDmu3Y

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) April 10, 2024

 

So it’s no wonder the leadership in both Beijing and Moscow carefully consider all possible repercussions of the next Iranian move.

Tel Aviv’s purposeful escalation – when it comes to expanding war in West Asia – happens to mirror another escalation: NATO’s no way out in Ukraine except by doubling down, with no end in sight.

That started with the invariably out of his depth Secretary of State Little Tony Blinken affirming, on the record, that Ukraine will (italics mine) join NATO. Which any functioning brain knows is translatable as the road map towards a Russia-NATO hot war with unbelievably dire consequences.

Little Blinkie’s criminal irresponsibility was duly picked up and reverberated by the Franco-British duo, as expressed by British FM David “of Arabia” Cameron and French FM Stephane Sejourne: “If Ukraine loses, we all lose”.

At least they got that (italics mine) right – although that took ages, when it comes to framing NATO’s approaching cosmic humiliation.

“Dual Opposition” to “Dual Deterrence”

Now let’s switch from clownish bit players to the adults in the room. As in Russian FM Sergei Lavrov and Chinese FM Wang Yi discussing literally every incandescent dossier together earlier this week in Beijing.

Lavrov and Wang could not be clearer on what’s ahead for the Russia-China strategic partnership.

They will engage together on all matters regarding Eurasian security.

They will go, in Lavrov’s words, for “dual opposition” to counterpunch the West’s “dual deterrence”.

They will be countering every attempt by the usual suspects to “slow down the natural course of history”.

Add to it the confirmation that President Putin and President Xi will hold at least two bilaterals in 2024: at the SCO summit in June and at the BRICS summit in October.

In a nutshell: the dogs of Forever Wars bark while the Eurasian integration caravan marches on.

Both Lavrov and Wang made it very clear that while steering through “the natural course of history”, the Russia-China strategic partnership will keep seeking a way to resolve the Ukraine tragedy, taking into account Russia’s interests.

Translation: NATO better wake up and smell the coffee.

This bilateral at the FM level in Beijing is yet another graphic proof of the current tectonic shift in what the Chinese usually describe as the “world correlation of forces”. Next month – already confirmed – it will be Putin’s turn to visit Beijing.

It’s never enough to remember that on February 4, 2022, also in Beijing, Putin personally explained to Xi why NATO/Hegemon expansion into Ukraine was totally unacceptable for Russia. Xi, for all practical purposes, understood the stakes and did not subsequently oppose the SMO.

This time, Lavrov could not but refer to the 12-point peace plan on Ukraine proposed by Beijing last year, which addresses the root causes “primarily in the context of ensuring indivisible security, including in Europe and the world over.”

Your “Overcapacity” is Driving Me Nuts

Both Tehran and Moscow face a serious challenge when it comes to the Hegemon’s intentions. It’s impossible to definitely conclude that Washington was not in the loop on Tel Aviv’s attack on Iran in Damascus – even though it’s counter-intuitive to believe that the Democrats in an election year would willingly fuel a nasty hot war in West Asia provoked by Israel.

Yet there’s always the possibility that the White House-endorsed genocide in Gaza is about to extrapolate the framework of a confrontation between Israel and Iran/Axis of Resistance – as the Hegemon is de facto implicated in myriad levels.

To alleviate such tension, let’s introduce what under the circumstances can be understood as comic relief: the “Yellin’ Yellen goes to China” adventure.

US Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen went to Beijing to essentially deliver two threats (this is the Hegemon, after all).

1. Yellen said that Chinese companies could face “significant consequences” if they provided “material support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

2. Yellen accused Chinese companies of “overcapacity” – especially when it comes to the electric-vehicle (EV) industry (incidentally, 18 of the top 20 EV companies around the world are Chinese).

The Chinese, predictably, dismissed the whole show with barely a yawn, pointing out that the Hegemon simply cannot deal with China’s competitive advantage, so they resort to yet another instance of “de-risking” hype.

In sum: it’s all about barely disguised protectionism. Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao went straight to the point: China’s advantage is built on innovation, not subsidies. Others added two extra key factors: the efficiency of supply chains and ultra-dynamic market competition. EVs, in China, along with lithium batteries and solar cells, are known as the new “three major items.”

Yellin’ Yellen’s theatrics in Beijing should be easily identified as yet another desperate gambit by a former hyperpower which no longer enjoys military supremacy; no dominant MICIMATT (the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex, in the brilliant formulation by Ray McGovern); no fully controlled logistics and sea lanes; no invulnerable petrodollar; no enforced, indiscriminate fear of sanctions; and most of all, not even the fear of fear itself, replaced across the Global South by rage and utter contempt for the imperial support for the genocide in Gaza.

Just a Tawdry Greek Tragedy Remix

Once again it’s up to the inestimable Michael Hudson to succintly nail it all down:

“The official US position recognizes that it can’t be an industrial exporter anymore, though how is it going to balance the international payments to support the dollar’s exchange rate? The solution is rent-seeking. That’s why the United States says, well, what’s the main new rent-seeking opportunity in world trade? Well, it’s information technology and computer technology.

That’s why the United States is fighting China so much, and why President Biden has said again and again that China is the number one enemy. It moved first against Huawei for the 5G communications, and now it’s trying to get Europe and American and Taiwanese exporters not to export a computer chip to China, not for the Dutch to export chip-engraving machinery to China. There’s a belief that somehow the United States, if it can prevent other countries from producing high-technology intellectual property rents, then other countries will be dependent.

Rent-seeking really means dependency of other countries if they don’t have a choice to pay you much more money than the actual cost of production. That’s rent, the price over value. Well, the United States, since it can’t compete on value because of the high cost of living and labor here, it can only monopolize rent.

Well, China has not been deterred. China has leapfrogged over the United States and is producing its own etching machinery, its own computer chips. The question is, what is the rest of the world going to do? Well, the rest of the world means, on the one hand, the global majority, Eurasia, the BRICS+, and on the other hand, Western Europe. Western Europe is right in the middle of all this. Is it really going to forego the much less expensive Chinese exports at cost, including normal profit, or is it going to let itself be locked into American rent-extraction technology, not only for computer chips but for military arms?”

Graphically, this eventful week provided yet another howler: Xi officially received Lavrov when Yellin’ Yellen was still in Beijing. Chinese scholars note how Beijing’s position in a convoluted triad is admirably flexible, compared to the vicious deadlock of US-Russia relations.

No one knows how the deadlock may be broken. What is clear is that the Russia-China leadership, as well as Iran’s, know full well the dangers roaming the chessboard when the usual suspects seem to go all out gambling everything, even knowing that they are outgunned; outproduced; outnumbered; and outwitted.

It’s a tawdry Greek tragedy remix, alright, yet without the pathos and grandeur of Sophocles, featuring just a bunch of nasty, brutish specimens plunging into their unblinking, self-inflicted doom.

Fallout from Moscow’s Crocus City Hall

Was the US behind the Moscow terror attack? The US and Ukraine will pay a high price. And that, I have been reliably informed, will extend to our Arab world.

By Abdel Bari Atwan at Rai Al Youm.

The Ukraine war could be poised to take a dramatic new turn

The terrorist operation in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall centre, which killed 143 people and injured hundreds of others, mostly concertgoers, was clearly carried out by a group that had been given serious military training. It could mark a paradigm shift in the Ukraine war presaging a strategic escalation and NATO’s official entry into the war.

Two weeks earlier, the US embassy in Moscow had warned its citizens that extremists were planning imminent attacks on large gatherings, including concerts, in the Russian capital, and warned them to stay away. That foreknowledge of the planning and execution of the operation raised suspicions about a degree of complicity. Washington’s denunciation of the atrocity, and swift disavowal of involvement, cannot be taken at face value.

When the initial warning was made, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked that if the US had information about terrorist actions of such enormity, it should have shared it with Russia. That was the first official hint from Moscow of suspected American complicity.

Two years into the Ukraine war, the US has begun to sense defeat. Russia has made a succession of gains, taking control of the Donbas region and annexing it after holding referendums.

Large-scale US and NATO intervention — on the material, military, and intelligence fronts — failed to achieve any major success. Russia did not collapse under the weight of draconian sanctions. Its economy remains strong. The predicted colour revolution never happened, nor the anticipated military coup to depose Putin.

The opposite occurred, with the Russian president getting re-elected with an 87% majority on a 74% turnout.

The resort to terrorist attacks in Moscow could be a mark of the US’ frustration and a response aimed at expanding the scope of the war. But that would not only be a losing bet. It could bring the prospect of a catastrophic nuclear war closer.

Putin announced on Saturday night that the eleven people involved in the attack, including four direct participants, had been apprehended.
Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of the Russia Today broadcast network, Margarita Simonyan, published video excerpts of the interrogation of one of the suspects. He identified himself as Feredoun Shamsedin, born in 1988, who arrived in Russia from Turkey on 4 March. He said he had been recruited via Telegram after following an extremist preacher, by someone who offered him 5 million roubles ($5,000) to conduct a mass killing in Moscow. Half of the money was transferred to him in advance.

I met Ms. Simonyan when I visited Moscow recently. She was constantly accompanied by a security detail because she had been subjected to death threats. She said she believed the Crocus atrocity was masterminded by the Ukrainian regime, rather than by ISIS as the US media were claiming. Putin’s subsequent assertion that the perpetrators were arrested while heading towards the Ukrainian border reinforced that accusation.

Russia’s fingers of blame pointed at Ukraine were a portent of fierce retaliation. It seems to have already begun. Former president and current deputy national security chief Dmitri Medvedev warned immediately after the massacre that Russia would hunt down any Ukrainian leaders proven to have been involved.

Reading between the lines, that may imply that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky could be top of the target list.

Two days before the Crocus attack, Putin threatened Ukraine with ”war’—abandoning the term special military operation’ — in response to French President Emanual Macron’s hint that NATO could send 90,000 fully equipped troops to Ukraine. Under Russian military doctrine, a declaration of war authorises the use of all available means, including nuclear weapons.

The US administration, disoriented and defeated in Ukraine and (so far) the Middle East, is fueling this escalation against Russia. It is the primary beneficiary of the Crocus attack. Not just to destabilise Russia by stoking ethnic tensions, but also to divert international attention away from its collusion in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the failure of its cynical attempt at the UN Security Council to sustain it under the guise of favouring (but not actually calling for) a cease-fire.

Putin won’t forgive this assault on his capital while it was celebrating the renewal of his presidential term. He is likely to make the US and Ukraine pay a high price. And that, I have been reliably informed, will extend to our Arab world.

VVP’s Announced Telephone Conversations in Last Two Days

Per Newton’s third law, Hell cometh to the demented Anglo-Zionist satanists in Greater Syria….

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.

The President of the Republic of Belarus expressed his heartfelt condolences on the monstrous terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, conveyed words of sympathy and support to the victims’ families and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured, emphasising that the people of Belarus stand together with the people of Russia in this time of sorrow.

Alexander Lukashenko offered any assistance that may be needed, and expressed his confidence that the organisers and perpetrators of this heinous crime will face inevitable punishment.

For his part, Vladimir Putin informed his counterpart about the detention of the terrorists directly involved in the attack, as well as about the ongoing investigation.

Both leaders expressed mutual readiness to continue close cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

During his telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev expressed his deep condolences over numerous victims of the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, stressing that he resolutely condemns this barbaric crime, and asked to convey words of sympathy and support to the victims’ families and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured.

Both Leaders reaffirmed their intention to step up anti-terror cooperation.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev

Shavkat Mirziyoyev strongly condemned the heinous terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, expressed his sincere condolences in connection with the tragedy, and asked to convey words of support to the victims’ families and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured.

Both Sides reaffirmed their intention to continue close cooperation to counter terrorism.

On March 23, President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a telephone conversation.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered his deep and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the heinous terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. He noted that the Republic of Türkiye stands with the people of Russia in this dark hour.

Vladimir Putin emphasised that Russia appreciates the support of the Turkish people and informed his Turkish counterpart on the status of the investigation into the terrorist attack.

During the conversation, the Turkish Leader stressed the urgent need for closer bilateral cooperation in the fight against the terrorist threat.

President Putin expressed gratitude for the condolences and supported the idea of stepping up cooperation in countering terrorism.

On March 23, President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad held a telephone conversation.

The President of Syria strongly condemned the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, stressing that Syrian citizens share the pain and grief of the Russian people. He wished fortitude to the victims’ families and friends and a speedy recovery to the injured.

Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad discussed the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the current situation in Syria, which is directly facing the terrorist threat.

The Leaders agreed to intensify contacts both in addressing counterterrorism and in all other areas of bilateral cooperation.

ADDENDUM:

President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon telephoned Vladimir Putin to express deep condolences and solidarity with the Russian people over the death of innocent civilians in the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. The President of Tajikistan emphasised that there was no nor could not be any justification for that crime.

During the conversation, Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rahmon noted that the security services of Russia and Tajikistan were working closely together to counter terrorism and that they would build up their cooperation.

Tajikistan’s President Rahmon during phone conversation with Russia’s Putin condemns terrorist attack in Russia, says terrorists have neither nationality nor religion

During the conversation, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev strongly condemned the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, which claimed the lives of over 100 innocent civilians, expressed deep condolences to their families and friends, and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.

Ilham Aliyev stressed that the people of Azerbaijan stand together with the Russian people on this day of national mourning and expressed confidence that the severe punishment of the criminals and those who masterminded that crime was unavoidable.

Vladimir Putin thanked the President of Azerbaijan for his words of support and expressed readiness to further strengthen practical interaction in the spirit of strategic partnership and alliance between Russia and Azerbaijan.

The Day the combined West committed Suicide

Twenty-five years ago, NATO started bombing Yugoslavia

On March 24, 1999, Western countries launched a series of devastating airstrikes on Belgrade, the capital of the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia, which had been already suffering from a political crisis. The US and its allies declared that the Noble Anvil military op was motivated by “humanitarian” reasons and targeted only the military – but in reality, NATO airstrikes killed at least 2,500 people, ruined national infrastructure and sped up the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
@geopolitics_live

Sergey Lavrov at the UNSC

Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Sergey Lavrov’s address to the President of the Security Council (March 24, 1999)

The Russian Federation is profoundly outraged at the use by the NATO of military force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Those who are involved in this unilateral use of force against the sovereign Federal Republic of Yugoslavia — carried out in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and without the authorization of the Security Council — must realize the heavy responsibility they bear for subverting the Charter and other norms of international law and for attempting to establish in the world, de facto, the primacy of force and unilateral diktat.

The members of NATO are not entitled to decide the fate of other sovereign and independent States. They must not forget that they are not only members of their alliance, but also Members of the United Nations.

Attempts to justify the NATO strikes with arguments about preventing a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo are completely untenable.

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Attempts to apply a different standard to international law and to disregard its basic norms and principles create a dangerous precedent that could cause acute destabilization and chaos on the regional and global level.

The fact that NATO has opted to use force in Kosovo raises very serious questions about the sincerity of the repeated assurances that that alliance was not claiming the role of the world’s policeman and was prepared to cooperate in the interests of common European security.

The Russian Federation vehemently demands the immediate cessation of this illegal military action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Read in full

Nuremberg and the Crime of Wars of Aggression

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Primakov’s ‘U-Turn over Atlantic’

How Russian PM Primakov showed Moscow won’t be US satellite

On March 24, 1999, Yevgeny Primakov’s plane was en route to the US where the then-Russian prime minister was due to discuss an IMF loan to the tune of $5 billion for his country. But after then-US Vice President Al Gore told Primakov about NATO starting to bomb Yugoslavia, he decided to turn his plane around and go back to Moscow.

Despite Gore’s desperate attempts to persuade Primakov to backtrack on his decision and come to Washington, the Russian prime minister was undeterred.

“If I had accepted Gore’s terms, I would have been a real traitor,” Primakov later said.

Dr. Samuel Hoff, a professor of history and political science at Delaware State University, points to the significant expansion of NATO after the March 1999 incident.

“It is a fact that in 1999, NATO had 16 countries. And as we sit here in 2024, there are 32 members,” Hoff notes in an interview with Sputnik.

Peter Kuznick, a professor of history at the American University, tells Sputnik that Primakov’s U-turn over the Atlantic added significantly to tarnishing the already “strained” US-Russian relations at the time.

Referring to current “terrible” ties between Moscow and Washington, “the lack of trust” and a bilateral “polarization,” the professor says that one is “beginning to see signs of that certainly with Primakov’s mission in 1999.”

“So it certainly can be seen as an important turning point in terms of the deterioration of potential friendship between the US and Russia and creating a much more positive kind of multipolar world,” he concludes.

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NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia: A ‘culmination of negligence’ that opened Pandora’s box

Twenty-five years ago, NATO kicked off its 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. According to various sources, up to 2,500 people were killed and over 6,000 more injured during the bombing, which was not approved by the UN.

In an interview with Sputnik, Dr. Stevan Gajic, a Balkans expert and research associate at the Belgrade-based Institute of European Studies, says that the beginning of NATO’s “illegal attack” against Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999, was “a precedent that opened Pandora’s box.”

“It was a culmination of negligence of the international law that started since the end of the Cold War. Absolutely, [the] 1999 [NATO campaign] was a precedent. We can even say that the international law was in a way abolished at that moment and, of course, after that chaos was introduced into the system of international relations,” Gacic points out.

The expert also didn’t rule out launching a “real investigation against NATO crimes” in Yugoslavia, which he says can only happen after the serious geopolitical changes following the collapse of NATO in one way or the other. He was echoed by Dr. Srdjan Sljukic, a professor of sociology at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, who tells Sputnik that “NATO aggression against Yugoslavia” reflected “two sorts of crimes,” such as “breaking the international law” and “bombing civilian objects and killing many civilians.”

Sljukic also warns that “as long as the key Western countries are ruled by the current liberal elites, NATO countries will not be put on fair trial because of their crimes in Yugoslavia and all over the world.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry Statement in connection with the 25th anniversary of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia

History knows many events which, by virtue of their profound impact on the international order, marked a change of eras.

The NATO attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999 is certainly one such event. It went beyond being a tragic milestone in the life of the Serbian people with thousands of ruined lives and desecrated national dignity, and included a devastating blow to international law and European security foundations that had been laid after World War II. The United States and the EU got finally convinced in their own impunity and moral superiority which was bad news for those who prefer to choose their own path rather than become someone’s tool in their efforts to realise their own interests. The strategic balance of power collapsed, and a drawn-out crisis of international relations ensued which continues to worsen.

The US and its allies who assaulted a peaceful European country trampled on the UN Charter and the CSCE/OSCE principles, and desecrated the very notion of sovereignty. They have thus made it clear that they will stoop to anything, including radioactive contamination of vast swathes of land, to achieve global dominance. The widespread use of depleted uranium munitions by NATO has led to a multifold increase in cancer cases in that region, contaminated the environment where millions of people had lived for many years, and went down in history as a separate dark chapter on the list of NATO crimes.

During the 78 days of military aggression 14,000 bombs were dropped on Yugoslavia and over 2,000 missiles were fired, including cluster and demolition shells. Under the mocking front of a “humanitarian intervention,” mostly civilian targets were hit, including residential districts, hospitals, schools, bridges, mass transit vehicles, and refugee convoys. Thousands of civilians were killed, including 89 children, whom the Western coalition cynically referred to as “collateral damage.” No one has ever been held accountable for these atrocities, and international justice turned a deaf ear to the suffering of the Serbs and let NATO atrocities go unnoticed.

Not only the bombed-out buildings of the Yugoslav General Staff and Defence Ministry in central Belgrade which irritate the US officials to this day remind us of those terrible days. Serbia has many other unhealed wounds. A portion of the country’s ancestral territory, Kosovo and Metohija, has been forcibly taken away. The West has taken under its wing terrorists from the Kosovo Liberation Army, gave the province the status of a pseudo-state, and encourages the expulsion of the indigenous Serbian population.

This inevitably begs the question: was the “Kosovo project” worth the sacrifice and destruction that the alliance brought upon Yugoslavia? Has the self-proclaimed “republic” added stability or prosperity to the Balkan region?

There is no doubt that the United States’ concern for the rights of Kosovo Albanians is a fake claim from the get-go. It is nothing but a false pretext for the crackdown on Serbs.

The West’s goal was to turn the provisional self-governing bodies in Pristina into a tool for anti-Serb ethnic cleansing and a festering trouble spot to put pressure on Belgrade. At the end of the day, the Kosovo settlement is in a deadlock, and the situation on the ground threatens to escalate into an armed conflict.

This is what the Western “peacemaking” is all about. Its disastrous ramifications can now be seen in Ukraine, where a neo-Nazi regime has been nurtured on the basis of Washington and its supporters’ rejection of the principles of equality and mutual respect in international affairs, a regime that committed genocide against the Russian population and plunged the country into a military face-off.

We can hear the US and the EU increasingly call on Serbs to “turn the page” and forgive NATO for the invasion that took place 25 years ago. On top of that, they lay the bulk of the blame on the Serbs for the dramatic events during the breakup of Yugoslavia, including the 1999 bombing attacks. I’d be hard pressed to find proper words to describe the extent of Western shamelessness and lack of self-criticism.

The Alliance will never be able to wash off the shame of war crimes. No one believes its demagoguery about defending freedom and democracy anymore. The United States and the rest of NATO have no right whatsoever to talk about implementing an obscure new “rules-based order.” Their every effort to put together some kind of “global security architecture” is by definition malevolent and toxic, and aimed solely at perpetrating the neocolonial hegemony of the West.

Russia and its partners in Belgrade will continue to oppose the attempts to distort the history of the Yugoslav crisis and to shift the emphasis to demonising Serbs and justifying the 1999 aggression. The attempts to insult the memory of the innocent victims of NATO hangmen are unacceptable.

Turkey takes its Seat in Rules-based Terrorism Inc.

Turkey starts to drift into view, as NATO becomes officially activated in Europe.. Turkish elites, in spite of antipathy of its working peoples for post-modern western values, remain at the heart of NATO.

To woo Washington, Erdogan will sell out Palestine

After Ankara and Washington successfully swapped Sweden’s NATO accession for an F-16 fighter jet deal, Turkiye is focused on accelerating that rapprochement and is willing to sweep divisive issues – like genocide in Gaza – under the rug.

By Mohamad Hasan Sweidan at The Cradle.

On 7–8 March, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Intelligence Chief Ibrahim Kalin visited Washington. The trip garnered attention as it marked Turkiye’s first official visit to the US following the conclusion of the ‘Sweden for F-16’ deal, whereby Ankara accepted Stockholm’s accession to NATO in exchange for US Congressional approval of the sale of 40 F-16s to Turkiye.

During the visit, the two Turkish officials met with their US counterparts Antony Blinken and William Burns, along with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and their respective foreign ministers chaired the seventh meeting of the US–Turkiye Strategic Mechanism.

US–Turkish rapprochement

The thaw in US–Turkish relations has been palpable, as noted by Jeff Flake, the US Ambassador to Ankara, during a televised interview: “Especially in recent months, the two countries have developed shared areas. We observe improvements in defense, trade, and interpersonal relations.”

A closer examination of the joint statement released following the meeting illustrates the transition of Turkish–American relations into a more favorable and cooperative phase.

Established in 2021 and inaugurated on 4 April 2021 amidst escalating discord between Turkiye and the US, the strategic mechanism was conceived to address and improve the strained bilateral relations.

The joint statement issued by the Strategic Mechanism this month included several crucial points, each carrying significant implications:

Both parties addressed the ongoing war in Ukraine, condemning Russia’s actions as ‘unacceptable’ while emphasizing the importance of upholding Ukraine’s unity and sovereignty. However, it is worth noting that Ankara’s endorsement of the statement’s rhetoric aligns more closely with Kiev’s perspective, a deviation from Turkiye’s previous neutral stance. This marked shift will undermine President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aspirations to mediate the conflict impartially.

Playing to the audience

On Israel’s brutal military assault in Gaza, the statement merely referred to an “ongoing crisis” and “underlined the importance of finding a path towards ending the conflict and addressing the humanitarian crisis immediately.” This is a war that Erdogan has, on the record, framed as a “genocide” and called its aggressors in Tel Aviv “war criminals.”

While both parties expressed support for the “two-state solution” as an end goal to the war, the statement’s release coincided with a fiery speech by Erdogan in Istanbul in which he attacked Israel, calling it “the Nazis of our time.” The contrast between the two statements is a real-time reflection of how Turkiye addresses its different target audiences.

On the issue of combating terrorism, the statement endorses joint US–Turkish efforts against organizations like the PKK, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda across regions spanning from Africa to Central Asia. They also recommitted to counterterrorism consultations and discussions on the Syria file, including the adherence to UN Resolution 2254 and supporting a “Syrian-led, Syrian-owned political process.”

The two parties addressed a multitude of regional issues in West Asia and Africa in alignment with the broader US strategy outlined by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, which focuses on partnership-building, deterrence, diplomacy, regional integration, and “democracy promotion” in these geographies.

This includes cooperation in military industry, energy, and trade development, reflecting the existing $30 billion trade volume between Washington and Ankara.

Significantly, the parties discussed leveraging financing opportunities under the Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership – a western initiative intended to rival China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This partnership includes the controversial India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), aimed at enhancing regional connectivity and economic development very much to the benefit of Israel.

New Turkish military action in Syria and Iraq?

As the municipal elections in Turkiye draw near – with Erdogan seeking to reclaim his Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) control of Istanbul and Ankara after notable previous losses – there’s a tangible resurgence in Turkish rhetoric advocating for military action in northern Syria and Iraq.

According to reports from the Turkish news agency T24, the Turkish armed forces are gearing up for an operation against the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) inside its neighboring states following local elections on 31 March.

After a 4 March cabinet meeting, Erdogan spoke of Turkiye’s readiness for a comprehensive operation against the Kurdish separatist groups and reiterated Ankara’s objective of establishing a security corridor spanning 30 to 40 kilometers along the Turkish–Syrian border.

Although the military rhetoric is undoubtedly influenced by Erdogan’s bid to attract nationalist voters in the upcoming elections, it is also connected to the recent Turkish–Iraqi diplomatic breakthrough following a high-level Turkish delegation’s visit to Baghdad.

The meeting in the Iraqi capital led to a security deal in which both countries committed to take action against the PKK. A joint statement read:

Both sides stressed that the PKK organization represents a security threat to both Turkiye and Iraq, and it is certain that the presence of the organization on Iraqi territory represents a violation of the Iraqi constitution … Turkiye welcomed the decision taken by the Iraqi National Security Council to list the PKK as a banned organization in Iraq. The two sides consulted on the measures that must be taken against the organization and its banned extensions [PKK’s alleged offshoots] that target Turkiye from within Iraq’s territory.

Fidan’s senior adviser, Nuh Yilmaz, praised the move, saying, “Turkiye and Iraq decided for the first time to fight jointly against PKK terrorism.” In a post on platform X, he added: “A decision that will mark a turning point! We will see results gradually!”

Strategic interests come first 

According to a well-informed Turkish source:

Turkey’s main purpose is very clear. The presence of the PKK in Metina and Gara [in northern Iraq] has the potential to seriously threaten the Iraq Development Road Project … We both would like to remove PKK from these two areas as well as secure the area for the construction of the project, reaching both objectives in one step.

Ankara and Baghdad seek to counter any threat to this development road project, a land corridor linking the port of Faw in Basra to the Turkish border and from there to Europe.

In this context, Erdogan is expected to visit Baghdad for the first time since 2012, where, some speculate, he will try to conclude a border control security agreement with the Iraqi government and seek to convince Baghdad to support future Turkish military operations against the PKK.

Despite Turkiye and Erdogan’s vocal criticism of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, recent interactions between Ankara and Washington indicate a pragmatic approach in their dealings, through which Turkiye hopes to be reinstated as an important US strategic partner.

While the Turkish president is stepping up anti-Zionist rhetoric on his domestic front, his administration maintains substantial economic ties with Israel, exporting various vital goods and services to the occupation state.

Although a Washington–Ankara rapprochement is still in its nascent stage, recent developments reveal the old allies are on a positive trajectory to repair bilateral relations after a period of strained diplomatic ties.

Erdogan’s foreign policy approach – as exemplified by his rhetorical Gaza stance and material support for Israel – makes clear Turkiye’s shift toward prioritizing strategic interests over ideological ones.

≈≈≈

Nuclear Threat, World War III and Turkey: Balance Policy or a Game?

Is Turkey’s rhetorical stance of “balancing” a genuine attempt at strategic equilibrium, or merely an endeavor to occupy multiple positions simultaneously?

By Erkin Öncan at Strategic Culture Foundation.

Alexander Stubb, the newly elected president of Finland, has made several noteworthy statements regarding the current geopolitical climate. He emphasized the escalating tensions amidst discussions of a World War III. Stubb, representing the center-right National Coalition Party, expressed openness to the possibility of allowing the transportation and storage of U.S. nuclear weapons in Finnish territory, branding them as a “guarantee of peace.” This stance remained consistent throughout his election campaign and was reiterated upon assuming office. Stubb underscored the necessity for Finland to possess a tangible nuclear deterrent force, citing NATO membership as pivotal in providing multiple layers of deterrence, including military, munitions, and nuclear deterrence from the USA. He further asserted that Finland’s alignment with NATO signifies a definitive step towards embracing Western values, a sentiment echoed by the inclusion of Turkey as an enthusiastic participant in the anticipated third major conflict.

However, Finland’s enthusiasm for NATO membership has not gone unnoticed by Russia, which shares a significant border with the country. In response to Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, Russian President Putin announced plans to bolster military presence along the Western borders to counteract perceived threats stemming from NATO’s eastward expansion. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov conveyed Moscow’s acknowledgment of the democratic choice made by the Finnish people but indicated pessimism regarding potential improvements in Russo-Finnish relations.

The most explicit reaction to Stubb’s nuclear policy came from Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mariya Zakharova. Addressing the issue during a weekly press conference at the World Youth Festival in Sochi, Zakharova outlined Russia’s stance on the placement of U.S. nuclear weapons in Northern Europe. She asserted that such deployments would be considered a direct threat and would consequently be designated as legitimate targets in the event of a direct military conflict between Russia and NATO. Zakharova underscored Russia’s awareness of the desires of the United States and its allies in this regard.

The primary source of concern regarding nuclear capabilities is now widely recognized to stem from the potential for World War III to be nuclear in nature. When discussing nuclear power, the focus often turns to Russia, acknowledged as the “world’s largest nuclear power”.

Western media consistently highlights the perceived “nuclear threat emanating from the authoritarian Kremlin”. However, to truly address the concept of a “nuclear danger”, it is essential to consider the United States, which has transformed Europe into a depot for nuclear weapons, rather than Russia, which does not maintain nuclear forces beyond its borders, apart from the neighboring Belarus.

The United States and its NATO allies do not disclose precise figures regarding the stockpiles deployed in Europe. Nevertheless, estimates from the U.S.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in 2021 suggest that around 100 U.S. nuclear weapons are stored across six bases in five NATO member countries.

These weapons are kept in inactive states within underground vaults at national air bases. Notably, the “permissive action link” (PAL) codes required to activate these weapons are under American control. In the event of their use, the weapons would be loaded onto warplanes designated by NATO.

This situation is intricately tied to the “modernization” efforts undertaken by nations operating F-35A, F-18 Super Hornet, or Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft.

U.S. nuclear weapons have been stationed in Europe since the mid-1950s, authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for storage at NATO bases on the continent as a deterrent against the Soviet Union.

Stored in warehouses across Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and other countries, these weapons are maintained for potential deployment when required. Additionally, countries such as Czechia, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland, and Romania participate in SNOWCAT operations, facilitating NATO partner involvement in nuclear missions.

Meanwhile, Finland, under the leadership of Stubb, is positioning itself as a significant player in the ongoing ’nuclear preparedness’ measures originally aimed at countering the USSR and persisting in response to Russia.

This dynamic persists alongside ongoing military actions initiated by NATO against Russia. Notably, the commencement of Steadfast Defender-24, hailed as NATO’s largest military exercise since the Cold War, marks a significant development. This exercise aims to test the transfer of military forces to Eastern Europe and beyond, encompassing regions where Russia’s influence is perceived as encroaching.

This exercise constitutes a series of 15 maneuvers rather than a singular major military operation.

Steadfast Defender encompasses various other exercises conducted at national or regional levels, including Joint Warrior, Solid Approach, Arctic Dolphin, Northern Response, Immediate Response, Brilliant Jump, Movable Defender, Slovak Shield, Saber Strike, Trojan Trail-24, and Spring Storm.

Turkey actively participates in these exercises, with the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) playing a pivotal role in Brilliant Jump, Nordic Response, Saber Strike, and Immediate Response exercises.

Turkey’s involvement extends beyond military participation; it also hosts one of NATO’s most crucial commands. The permanent headquarters of NATO Land Forces, known as Allied Land Command (LANDCOM), is situated in Izmir.

Decisions regarding NATO’s land maneuvers are made at the command post within the General Vecihi Akın Barracks in Buca, Izmir. Given its historical significance, Izmir, where the first shot was fired against invaders a century ago, could potentially be remembered as the site where the decision to initiate the first shot of a world-engulfing war was made if a new global conflict were to erupt on Russia’s borders.

This prompts consideration of Turkey’s rhetorical stance of “balancing”. Is it a genuine attempt at strategic equilibrium, or merely an endeavor to occupy multiple positions simultaneously?

How could Russia respond to NATO invasion?

Will France/NATO invade Ukraine? How will Russia respond?

Will France invade Ukraine? How will Russia respond?

Scott Ritter goes nuclear on French President Emmanuel Macron, Poland, and the Baltic States (“over-fed chihuahuas”). Don’t watch this episode if you’re a NATO fanboy! #NewRulesPodcast pic.twitter.com/Zb3s90VxES

— NewRulesGeopolitics (@NewRulesGeo) March 21, 2024

In this week’s episode of the New Rules podcast, we’re discussing the potential of a French/NATO military intervention in Ukraine. Longtime friend of the program, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter goes NUCLEAR on French President Emmanuel Macron, Poland, and the Baltic States.

“France is the equivalent of an overfed Chihuahua, and you don’t want to get in the ring with the really beefed up Rottweilers, especially when they’ve been trained to eat overfed Chihuahuas their entire life,” he told the New Rules podcast.

 

WHAT?! Yemen Just Closed the Indian Ocean to USUK Ships too

“… and all linked to zionists…”

Richard connects a terrible dot on the back of my mind! Yemen didn’t merely extend the Gauntlet to the Indian Ocean for the zionists, but to the same western parties they currently fight in the Red Sea. They closed the South Africa route to USUK and those of the combined West that partake of the aggression against Palestine and/or themselves in the Red Sea or hinder the Gauntlet in the Red Sea! They emphasized this on day one by droning or missiling two US ships in the Indian Ocean………..

Let’s see if they can carry it off. Assuming they will be as resourceful as only motivated Yemenis can be.. and that several civilizational-states work to ensure they get accurate targeting and manifests of cargo ships to be targetted, what would be the consequences for severing the India/China sea trade to Europe and to the eastern US seaboard?? The US has the Pacific coast option, but Europe.. would be reduced to railroads, mostly through.. Russia as they helped torch West Asia, the Ukraine, and currently stoke Transcaucasia. This is unliveable

The Terms of Surrender

Putin presented the West with a bill of exchange that it is not able to repay

By Irina Alksnis, RIA Novosti columnist.

“In an interview with Dmitry Kiselyov, Vladimir Putin stressed that the West will not just have to offer Russia guarantees of compliance with the agreements, but these guarantees: a) must be spelled out; b) suit Moscow; and c) the Russian leadership must actually believe in them.”

In an interview with Dmitry Kiselyov, Vladimir Putin paid great attention to the issue of potential negotiations with the West over Ukraine. At first glance, this might even seem somewhat unexpected, but the topic is really becoming more and more relevant and is increasingly heard in the public field, which means that it is time to clarify Russia’s position as clearly as possible. Which the president did.

The reality of the situation on the Ukrainian front, which is unpleasant for the West, is reaching more and more people on the other side. This entails quite natural consequences: the voices demanding to negotiate with Moscow are getting louder and louder. And if initially they were mostly marginal figures, on whom it was very convenient to hang the label “Russian agent” or “useful idiot of the Kremlin”, now the most mainstream and very influential forces – the media, think tanks, politicians and statesmen – up to the Pope are saying the same thing.

This point of view has not yet become dominant there and still meets impressive resistance, but it can no longer be called marginal. And judging by the way events are developing in Ukraine, the moment when it will become dominant on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean is not very long away.

However, these changes worry the politically active patriotic part of Russian society. The reason is obvious: people fear that in the course of negotiations, Russia will lose the achievements for which our soldiers pay with their blood and lives. Either the West will simply deceive us, as it has done so many times in the past, or a part of the Russian elite that remains pro-Western will be inclined to make concessions, surrendering our military victory. But no one is immune from mistakes and failures in the negotiation process – even the most ardent patriot of his country.

This is probably why the president gave a detailed and detailed commentary on this issue, touching on very different aspects that affect Russia’s position. And this is the answer primarily for us-the citizens of the country. But it can also be very useful for the West, if there are still smart enough and qualified people there who are able to hear and understand what is said, and not invent their own version of Putin’s answer in accordance with the agenda and personal beliefs (and with this there are more and more problems lately). Well, for the insufficiently nationalized representatives of the domestic establishment, who are hoping to turn the stuffing back, the president’s answer is also very useful – and makes them understand that you should not dream of the impossible.

The West, in the form of Ukraine as anti-Russia, prepared a very powerful weapon against our country, but when it did not work as expected, it had to openly enter the war itself – and this became its huge, downright fatal mistake, because it turned on the patriotic war regime in our people. Putin said that “deep Russian society”, ordinary citizens, had long been waiting for their demand for the country and the state, and the war of the West against us was exactly the situation that turned on the mechanism of national consolidation.

This means that the state has a free hand in relying on powerful and active (literally combative) popular support. He is not under pressure from public opinion, which insists on ending the fighting at any cost and as soon as possible – on the contrary, citizens consider it right to solve the issue radically, eliminating the threat to Russia in the south-western direction once and for all. This means that the SVO can continue for as long as it takes, until the West is not just ripe for negotiations (this will happen soon), but reaches the point where it hears Moscow’s position and accepts its conditions (but this may take much longer).

By the way, the president’s words made it clear why Russian officials are so actively pedaling the topic of deception on the part of the West, which Moscow has encountered many times in recent decades. You can often hear criticism of this position – saying that it exposes Russia as weak and stupid. However, it has now provided the state with an extremely comfortable and strong negotiating position: what are your guarantees, gentlemen? Because the old and, alas, unkind principle of “gentlemen take their word for it” has finally broken down.

Putin stressed that the West should not just offer Russia guarantees of compliance with the agreements, but these guarantees should: a) be spelled out; b) suit Moscow; and c) the Russian leadership should actually believe in them.

In fact, in the sphere of reputation and moral authority, the West finds itself in exactly the same situation as with the American debt, which is storming to astronomical heights and whose mere maintenance is increasingly shaking the financial system. Everyone has already realized that this is just a pyramid scheme, but it still holds, and the world is watching with curiosity (although not without concern about the consequences) what will become the “pebble” that will start the crash.

Well, by demanding guarantees at the talks, Putin swung the “pebble” of another tower – the tower of Babel of Western hypocrisy and lies.

Perhaps this is understood by American and European hawks, who are now actively rocking the topic of the need to introduce a Western contingent to Ukraine. Realizing that Moscow will not be able to push through or deceive in negotiations, they see direct participation in the conflict as the only remaining option to try to reduce the conflict to a more or less acceptable outcome for NATO countries.

However, Putin also had words for these hotheads – in particular, the word “interventionists”. Moreover, the president explicitly stated that it is precisely as an intervention on the territory of Russia that we will regard the entry of Western troops into Ukraine. And he reminded that our country has a rich experience of successfully solving this problem, which everyone in the West should remember.

In essence, Ukraine has become a conflict in which the bankruptcy of Europe and the United States – military, moral, economic – threatens to turn from expected to actual. And in his interview, Putin presented the West with a bill of exchange, which in principle it is not able to repay.

Nuclear Forces

West in 404: Nuke or Kneel

And both options lead to same defeat.. Brian Berletic breaks down the Ukraine’s Manpower Crisis: No Amount of Money or Aid Can Solve It

He uses the US Army’s own [admittedly inadequate] doctrine to explain why the Ukraine is finished in terms of manpower, even if further financing and weapons resupply were possible. They lack the time, especially seasoning top cadre, in order to be combat effective. And the ideal environment in which to train within the Ukraine, already involved and enveloped in the hellscape of war. No place on the Ukraine is safe from Russian stand-off weaponry.

The options confronting the sinking West are bitter indeed: double down into nuclear war, as NATO itself lacks the tools and manpower to halt much less defeat the Russian Armed Forces. Or accept defeat and the end of their centuries-old Hegemony.

More detail from The New Atlas:
Ukraine is suffering from a growing military manpower crisis in addition to a lack of arms and ammunition;
Trained military manpower takes up to half a year to produce, new brigade-sized units can take up to 30 months to stand up;
Ukraine and its Western sponsors simply cannot produce trained military manpower faster than Russia is removing it from the battlefield;
This leaves the collective West with the choice of either accepting it has lost its proxy war with Russia, or attempting to intervene more directly;

References:
NEO – Ukraine’s Manpower Crisis: No Amount of Money or Aid Can Solve It (March 5, 2024):
The Kyiv Independent – Ukraine struggles to ramp up mobilization as Russia’s war enters 3rd year (March 3, 2024):
The Washington Post – Front-line Ukrainian infantry units report acute shortage of soldiers (February 8, 2024):
US Department of Defense – The National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) (2023-2024):
NEO – Fatal Flaws Undermine America’s Defense Industrial Base (February 15, 2024):
US Department of Defense – Press Release: Evaluation of Sustainment Strategies for the Patriot Air Defense Systems Transferred to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (DODIG-2024-056) and Evaluation of the DoD’s Sustainment Plan for Bradley, Stryker, and Abrams Armored Weapon Systems (February 20, 2024):
Reuters – Ukraine considers proposal by army to mobilise another 500,000 for war (December 2023):
Reuters – Who are the forces involved in Ukraine’s counteroffensive? (June 2023):
US DoD – Defense Officials Hold Media Brief on the Training of Ukrainian Military (March 2022):
The US Army War College Quarterly – Expanding Brigade Combat Teams: IS the Training Base Adequate? (2017):

Where to Find My Work:
Website: https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/
Telegram: https://t.me/brianlovethailand
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianJBerletic

Russia Rising; West outta Options

PEPE ESCOBAR Interview: Ukrainian PR Stunt on the Russian Border, NATO in Ukraine, Multipolarity and More

The ‘Rockstar of Geopolitics’ Returns to the DDG Show! Discussing Desperate Attempts to Create Chaos Before Russian Elections, NATO Troops in Ukraine, the Collective West Running Out of Options for ‘Project Ukraine,’ and More!

War is chosen

About the new plans of the West in Ukraine

By Rotislav Ishchenko

(machine translation)

It all started with the announced resignation of Victoria Nuland. Given the age of the lagged, this may be the end of the successfully developed career of the granddaughter of the local emigrants and the daughter of Yale professor, who made his way to the highest echelon of American politics, moreover, in its most closed and corporate part – under the auspices of the State Department.

The political analyst and columnist of the MIA “Russia Today” Rostislav Ishchenko expressed his opinion about the new plans of the West in Ukraine.

Until recently, Nuland was seen as a potential candidate for the post of First Deputy Secretary of State and a candidate for the Secretary of State in the event of the unlikely victory of the Democrats in the upcoming presidential election. Given that it was Nuland who was the “engineering” that pulled out American politics in the Russian direction, overcoming all possible difficulties (from reformatting the 2014 Maidan under the USA in its final phase, before the sabotage and breakdown of the Minsk agreements, which would have been impossible without the stubborn but flexible tactics of Nuland at the same time), its further career growth would not only be a fair reward for efforts, but also corresponded to the interests of the Biden administration’s policies.

It can be assumed that Nuland went around at the turn of majors from more decent families. Nevertheless, the hereditary American aristocracy, whose ancestors arrived at the Mayflower, never finally accepts middle-class immigrants. No matter how rich and successful they are, unless their grandchildren can claim relative equality. But Victoria has a very difficult husband, and the time is difficult – at such times, qualified personnel are not scattered, and majors from “good families” are not in a hurry to take responsibility.

Nuland could get tired, get sick, even just want to jump from the ship of the Democratic Party, which is in full swing to the reefs. But all her previous activities are contrary to such assumptions. She looks more like a man who dies at a combat post for the sake of realizing his idea, who will fight for a doomed ship even if the captain and most of the team have already left him. She is one of the people living under the motto “Win or die”.

And suddenly, on the eve of the most difficult elections, the Democrats, without any reflection, refuse such a valuable frame. One could have guessed the reasons for a long time, but the next event happened here.

Zaluzhny, who allegedly stubbornly refused the post of ambassador to Britain, suddenly joyfully accepted this appointment. By the way, hello to those who for a year and a half said that the Zelensky creation of the British (they showed him the MI-6 headquarters and put his special forces to guard him), and the Hollow – Americans (they overlaid it with advisers). And all that happened in Kiev as part of Zelensky’s alleged conflict with the Hollow – is the struggle of the Americans with the British for control over the remnants of the Ukrainian garbage, in which Zaluzhny allegedly represented the Americans, and Zelensky English. It is harmful for some people to watch Western political blockbusters, they begin to perceive life as a movie. Now the same figures say that the English Hall Creativity turns out to be and they “saved” it by taking the ambassador – will be taught there to work as president.

In general, the simplicity, optimism and flight of the imagination of some people are unlimited. But the fact remains – Zaluzhny was offered to leave as ambassador to London somewhere since the end of December 2023. He was in no hurry to accept this offer even after his formal resignation. And suddenly agreed.

Finally, as a cherry on the cake, it just as suddenly became clear that Zelensky was allegedly dissatisfied with his absolutely obedient Kuleba, who zealously defended the position of the Presidential Office in the international arena. Kuleba begins to quickly resolve his team in new positions (it’s hard to find suitable embassies right away, so while Kuleba’s employees leaving office do not announce their plans, simply making it clear, that remain in the diplomatic service). Allegedly in a couple of weeks (may be a little faster or a little later) should also resign Kuleba himself.

What do we see?

Against the background of sharply increased militaristic rhetoric of the West, openly threatening a direct military clash with Russia in the event of a military defeat of Ukraine (most recently, the West has completely denied such an opportunity) people resign in Ukraine and the United States, whose task (and in the case of Nuland and the idea) was to ensure a proxy war with Russia are being dismissed in Ukraine and the United States in the framework of which the West finances supplies and politically supports all those who fight against Russia, but itself remains outside the battlefield. The main task of these people was to achieve the defeat of Russia and its consent to peace on the terms of the West, without dragging the West itself into a direct military conflict with Moscow.

It is clear that Kuleba, in principle, was not aware of what role he plays – he was only one of the cogs in the political mechanism created by Nuland, diplomatic and quasi-military ( including through the organization of putsch and the threat of putsch ) pressure on Russia. But each leader selects a team of people most suitable for a specific function. Kuleba, like Nuland, was a proxy war diplomat.

Masks are dropped, the West is preparing in the near future to do without a proxy prefix. Therefore, Zaluzhny suddenly decided to become a diplomat. Perhaps in London (by tradition and by agreement with Washington, where the Democrats are not confident in their future due to the likely victory of Trump) they are preparing to establish the Ukrainian government in exile on British soil, and, as long as possible, candidates are collected for future “ministers” and “presidents”. But the root cause of Zaluzhny’s departure is also the choice of the United States and its NATO allies in favor of the war.

While the West was hesitant, Zaluzhny remained in Ukraine as the banner of the opposition to Zelensky. It was not as a leader (Zaluzhny himself did not lead anything and could not lead anyone anywhere), but as a banner that at the right time was going to erect an intra-mode opposition to Zelensky (Poroshenko and the company), in order not to intercept, then paralyze the regime’s control over the army, remove Zelensky and try to enter into negotiations with Russia with the task of preserving at least the right-bank Ukraine for the regime at the cost of any concessions.

If the West agreed to such a deal, the opposition would launch a mechanism for the overthrow of Zelensky, in which the Executive was assigned a representative role. He had to be present somewhere in the background and be silent. Everything that the opposition themselves would have said and written by their media. To launch this mechanism, only one – ban on Americans from the regime to include a mechanism of repression against the opposition (planting, arrests, criminal cases and killing the most dangerous).

I wrote that the West is likely to choose a war, because the Russian conditions of the world (assuming guarantees of Russia’s security, which the West cannot violate even if it wants, and it wants to) were unacceptable to the West. About a month was spent on a general probe of the situation, on attempts to put pressure on Russia and its allies, launch new sanctions mechanisms, show the West’s readiness for an open clash and, due to this, get Russia to agree to be satisfied with territorial concessions at the expense of Ukraine (in this regard, the West was extremely generous and was ready to consider any requests, even I was going desperately).

Somewhere in the last decade of February, the West finally made a choice in favor of war. After which all these permutations began. One resignation could be an accident. But when changes take place in the space from Washington to London and Kiev, when Paris, London and Prague participate in the formulation of a new position (Scholz has so far dodged, but for how long?), when all these changes line up into one logical chain, the conclusion is clear – these are not maneuvers or blackmail, the West chose a war.

Apparently, the final choice in favor of the war was the “successes” of Syrsky, who, at the cost of the last reserves, managed to slow down the Russian offensive near Avdeevka and launched a campaign in the country for an emergency mass recruitment of cannon fodder. In addition to intensifying the work of the TCK, which will increase the irritation of the population, but is unlikely to provide much more mobilized, the process of forming women’s battalions has been launched and, in principle, the recruitment of women in the Armed Forces, including into combat units.

Already now, according to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, 13.5 thousand women – four full-blood brigades have the status of a participant in hostilities. The number of women killed is not specified, but it is also measured at least a dozen thousand. In total, more than 45 thousand women wear the form of the Armed Forces, together with their civil servants in the Armed Forces of about 65 thousand. Moreover, these figures may be underestimated, since before his resignation Zaluzhny boasted that there were already 63 thousand women in combat positions in the Armed Forces. One way or another, but women – is one of the additional sources of replenishment of the thinned ranks of the Armed Forces, which Syrsky intends to actively develop. Basically, the calculation is made that in this environment you can recruit a couple more tens of thousands of volunteers.

Another know-how to build mobilization capacity was also noted. The rear brigades of the TRP are beginning to actively form reserve battalions of people unsuitable for military service. Against the background of the lawlessness of the TCK and the preparation of a new law on mobilization, which will translate unsuitable into suitable ones, many try to play it safe by registering with the TRP. Such a “receipt” makes it possible to send the main composition of the TOR to the front, replacing disabled people in the rear. True, information is received from Ukraine that some combines intend to send disabled people to the front, retaining the main staff until better times.

I don’t think it really excites Syrsky. The main thing for him is that the conveyor for the delivery of cannon fodder works smoothly. For simple replenishment of losses, Syrsky needs to receive 35-40 thousand replenishment people monthly. This is at this stage. Daily losses of the Armed Forces are growing rapidly. So within spring-summer, the average replenishment supply will have to reach 50 thousand people per month.

In order not to allow the front to collapse (albeit without a guarantee), the Syrsky must mobilize at least 200 thousand people by the end of July. He will not refuse from 250 thousand, and from 300 thousand, and from half a million, but each higher figure is less real, and by 200 thousand, if you use all the improvised sources, you can go out.

Syrsky and Zelensky were able to convince the Americans that they had enough resource to keep the front from collapse until at least the end of summer. The United States has made a bet that during this time they will prepare and send a European expeditionary force of comparable strength to Ukraine, and when Europe gets involved in hostilities with Russia – it will have nowhere to go, it will have to think for itself how to replenish its contingents, and the chancellor will not be so comfortable denying the “Taurus” to NATO allies. if not the Ukrainians (although they will fight in Ukraine).

The move is straightforward, quite in the American spirit. There are more breakouts in this “minuscule” than the Americans have cards in their hands, but the Americans will not sit down to play anything, they get poker, in which the main thing is to bluff.

In the meantime, Zelensky was cleared of space in Ukraine so that the local opposition would not prevent him from fighting. The banner of the upcoming rebellion (Zaluzhny) was sent to the UK, showing everyone else who and what the United States relied on. Now Zelensky will rightfully declare all his internal enemies “the agents of the Kremlin,” they are not only against him, but also against the will of the United States.

As for Nuland and her diplomatic team, Victoria, although she played blackmail diplomacy, when NATO forces and fifth columns looked out from behind her back, ready to organize colored riots, nevertheless, her task was to achieve victory peacefully (by blackmail and pressure, but without crossing the line of war). If they decided to cross this line, the need for professional diplomats came to naught. Now we need Ribbentrops – mouthpieces of war, justifying the corresponding actions of their state. They will come out on top.

Does this mean that war is inevitable?

No, it doesn’t. It is also necessary that the new replenishment of the Syrsky be able to at least imitate resistance, and do not immediately begin to scatter and surrender, after the first bombing, the first shelling. It is necessary that Ukraine does not really last [only] until the summer (the West will not have time to gather until the summer), but until the beginning of next year. It is very long, almost so long to hold out for Kiev is unrealistic. It is necessary to find ready to send troops not in words, but in practice, and there are a lot of troops, and not two sanitary platoons with four field kitchens and one bath and laundry complex. It is necessary to assemble these troops, conduct their military coordination, provide a sufficient amount of weapons, equipment and supplies.

The West may not be in time, especially considering how fast we are building up the scale of missile and bomb attacks, both at the front and at the rear of the enemy. And Russia will certainly do everything so that the West does not have time. But we need to proceed from the fact that the West has made the decision to fight and will abandon it only under the pressure of force majeure circumstances. So the war is getting closer.

≈≈≈

Another considered PoV… the mooted transfer to China “hawks”, appears less likely as the dominant consideration, given the abruptness of the transfer and in correlation with Taurus missiles scandal and a new phase of war against Russia. Perhaps a harder approach against Russia, where even her limited “skillset” are of reduced use! Among metrics to follow are continuing softening up of Russian border regions using drone barrages as we just saw; and the absolute horrendous total sacrifice of all able-bodied Ukrainians, sent to the meatgrinder.. One thing we can say — the Empire is in deep turmoil and angst. And its hour is late indeed

Danny & Pepe: NATO’s march to WWIII

China and Geopolitics is LIVE with journalist and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar TODAY March 8th at 10am eastern, 6pm Moscow!

We discuss a series of events hosted in Russia and attended by our guest on multipolarity, and how they contrast with NATO’s march to WWIII which has intensified in recent weeks.

What is the U.S. and its NATO vassals offering via Biden’s SOTU speech and Macron’s threats, and how does it compare to the Russia and China-led alternative?

A Nuclear Drang?

NATO headed for Nuclear war with Russia? Scott Ritter, Steve Starr, and Jose Vega with Diane Sare

https://web.archive.org/web/20220722045349/https://southfront.org/u-s-game-plan-to-conquer-russia-china-is-clarified/

[42:50] “… what that tells Russia now is that you have to strike EVERYTHING in Europe..”

A cornered Hegemon finds itself in a desperate cul-de-sac at a time of inflexion. Not being alarmist, but the moment is so acutely on the brink. Listen to Ritter carefully. The lunatic adherence to Exceptionalism of the West inexorably leads to the self-fulfilling and forced demonstration of the long-voiced “Nuclear Primacy Doctrine.” 

Each inadequate technocrat is so focused on the immediate square meter around his portfolio and specific role that the larger ramifications and linked consequences are lost. Politicians are busy demonstrating “strength” to Russia; military brass are busy drawing up “limited deep-strikes” which they trust will not provoke Russia into nuclear war; the media is busy obfuscating and lying to all, earning their daily bread as usual, crucially denying insight to those who can stop the madness or to the larger population.

In all this, Russia’s clearly stated warnings of triggers of spread of war to NATO countries and then likely nuclear war are ignored. Its right to self-defense and willingness and ability to escalate remain duly ignored. Europe is sleep-walking into predictable catastrophe. What good will it do the madmen if they state they do not intend to use nuclear weapons, but the cumulative actions they undertake so lower the threshold that it leads to a nuclear response?

The neo-Reich’s Acts of War

The suicide of Europe in motion is astonishing! This is beyond mere malice or Anglo-American spoiling of Russo-German relations, or even mass psychosis formation — this is mass raving lunacy as admitted by the despairing Mercouris.

Mercouris devotes a shocking session to reviewing the intercept of the German military officers, Anglo-French connivance and outrage at revelation of their intrigue (not outrage or denial at the substance!), refusal of the West to negotiate in any meaningful way with Russia, determination to defeat Russia (if symbolically through burning bridges and other terrorism) and the early implications. All Russians have warned these deranged infantile megalomaniacs on the severe potential consequences, including Prez Putin in his last speech at the Federation council.

The Empire ensures Russia has to strike NATO proper, come what may. This Russia has carefully avoided to date. This is the next maneuver underway.

@ Medvedev (today):

“I think that the whitewashing of the ruling political alliance in Germany will now begin in order to soften the public indignation from the conversation of the Luftwaffe officers. Like, this is all the machinations of the military, they love such talk, don’t feed them bread – let them play a war game. And civilian political leadership has nothing to do with it at all. Moreover, at the head of this leadership is a peace-loving guy (aka liverwurst) Scholz, who refuses to hand over extended-range missiles to the Banderaites. He doesn’t know and will figure it out.

Nobody knows whether the political leadership and the Liver Chancellor personally are aware. But even if they are not aware and have not ordered anything like this, history knows many examples when the military is able to make decisions for civilian commanders about the start of wars or stimulate them. They’ll come to Scholz and say: “Herr (Reich) Chancellor, a missile was shot down in Ukraine. According to its type and trajectory, it was flying to Berlin.” What will Scholz answer, huh?
Clear as day.

So attempts to present the conversation of Bundeswehr officers as a game of rockets and tanks are a malicious lie.

Germany is preparing for war with Russia.”

State of Play in the Sandbox

“The only nation in the world that won a naval war without having a single ship!”

Two of my favorites review the unedifying remains of the day. Some go to art galleries or the beach, listen to music or watch a movie — these two savants relax me. After listening to Smoothie you will understand (1) the  reason for supreme calm & confidence of Putin and Medvedev and (2) the panic and verbal enuresis of Macron & Crew.

Last soundbite for the scrapbook:

“NATO is not going to back down, it’s going to dissolve .. unh .. that is the best way of going about it!”

Russia’s Victory in Ukraine resonates in Central Asia

Russian victory against NATO and personal approach won over the Taliban and Central Asian stans

By Amb. MK Bhadrakumar at Indian Punchline

Russia’s stunning victory in the battle of Avdeevka and the rout of the Ukrainian military, boosts the credibility of Russia as provider of security for the Central Asian region. The point is not lost on the erudite Central Asian mind that Russia has single-handedly put the NATO on the back foot. 

This becomes a defining moment, as it complements the comfort level stemming out of the new normalcy in Afghanistan, thanks to Russia’s effective diplomatic engagement with the Taliban.

Yet another vicious cycle of western propaganda is petering out  — predicated on the false assumptions that Russia’s influence in Central Asia is in “decline” (Wilson Centre); that the Central Asian states are “are emerging from Russia’s shadow and asserting their independence in ways not seen since the collapse of communism in 1991” (Financial Times); that in the wake of the war in Ukraine, Central Asian leaders “might well be now considering how long Putin will be able to remain in power in Russia” (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty).

In reality, the economic performance of the region in 2023  registered an impressive GDP growth of 4.8%. And Russia contributed to this success story. The Ukraine war led to the vacation of western firms from the Russian market, which created new opportunities for regional states. At the same time, the conditions under sanctions prompted Russian firms and capital and Russian citizens to relocate their businesses to the Central Asian region.

Central Asian entrepreneurs haven’t missed the lucrative opportunities to source Western goods and technology for the Russian market — walking a very tight rope by ensuring compliance with Western sanctions, while also nurturing their interdependence and integration with Russian markets. The recovery of the Russian economy and its 3.6% growth last year created business opportunities for Central Asian countries.

Moscow’s policies aim at a ‘Renaissance’ in the region’s relations with Russia. The new thinking in Moscow meant that Putin took a hands-on role to maintain a high momentum of contacts with the Central Asian leaderships at a personal level, making use of all available formats of interaction bilateral as well as regional. The Russian approach allowed space for the regional states to adopt a ‘neutral’ stance on the war.

A comprehension problem for outsiders is very often that the Central Asian attitudes are seldom in overt mode, and under specific circumstances (such as Ukraine war), they need to be discerned in terms of preferences. Thus, the political message out of the May 9 parade in Moscow last year when all the Central Asian presidents joined Putin at the ceremonies on the Red Square was a massive gesture of support for Russia — and for Putin personally.

Throughout 2023, the Central Asian states found themselves targeted in an unprecedented diplomatic effort by the West to uphold the sanctions against Russia. The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and French President Emmanuel Macron visited the region. Two historic summits in the ‘C5+1’ format were hosted by President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz respectively in Washington and Berlin.

But the western interlocutors refused to see the writing on the wall. Blinken’s Kazakh counterpart told him that Astana ‘does not feel any threats or risks from the Russian Federation.’ The joint statements issued after the two ‘C5+1’ summits did not even mention Ukraine!

Putin’s new thinking puts the great game on the back burner and instead prioritises the accretion of content in Russia’s relations with the Central Asian states, especially in economic and humanitarian spheres. This approach has palpably dissipated the ‘Big Brother’ syndrome. Putin’s meetings with his counterparts from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in Kazan  on Wednesday took place in a palpably relaxed atmosphere. (here, here and here)

Interestingly, Emomali Rahmon, Tajik president, wished not only Putin’s success “in everything you do” but his “nerves of steel” as well. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kazakh president underscored meaningfully that “under your (Putin’s) distinguished leadership, Russia has achieved notable, impressive successes. In fact, your statements and actions are shaping the global agenda.” Tokayev’s remark is particularly noteworthy, as western analysts had spotted him as a potential mutineer against Putin in the steppes!

However, in the final analysis, if Russia’s security relationship with the Central Asian region has transformed during the past couple of years, it is because Moscow’s coordinated efforts to forge ties with the Taliban has gained traction lately. They helped diminish the threat perceptions regarding Afghanistan in the Central Asian region.

If the traditional pattern of addressing the threat perceptions was to resort to military means and by sequestering the region from Afghanistan, Russian diplomacy switched to a radically different approach by constructively engaging with the Taliban (although Taliban continues to be a proscribed organisation under Russian law) and strove to make the latter a stakeholder in building cooperative ties within a matrix of mutual interests. It paid off.

Moscow estimated that Taliban rule has stabilised the Afghan situation significantly and it is in Russian interests to help the Kabul administration to effectively counter the extremist elements in the country (especially the Islamic State, which is known to be a legacy of the US occupation of Afghanistan.) Russia leveraged its influence with the Central Asian states to ensure that western-backed anti-Taliban ‘resistance’ forces did not get sanctuaries. 

Of course, the strategic objective is that the western intelligence will not be able to manipulate free-wheeling Afghan elements to destabilise the Central Asian region or the Caucasus all over again.

Taliban has been most receptive to the Russian overtures aimed at strengthening the Afghan statehood. Recently, Taliban went to the extent of boycotting a UN-sponsored conference on Afghanistan on February 18-19 in Qatar, which was, in reality, an invidious attempt by the US to re-engage the Taliban on the pretext of promoting “intra-Afghan dialogue” (which essentially meant the return of the West’s Afghan proxies living in exile in Europe and America.)

To be sure, the Taliban saw through the western game plan to rebuild their intelligence network in Afghanistan and countered it by setting conditions for its participation in the Doha conference, including that it be the sole representative of Afghanistan at the meeting. The Taliban also opposed the appointment of a UN special envoy to Afghanistan, whose main task would be to promote “intra-Afghan dialogue”.

The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement ahead of the Doha meeting, accused the international community of “unilateral impositions, accusations, and pressurisation.” The most interesting part of the pantomime playing out in Doha was that at the Taliban’s request, the Russian delegation that participated in the Doha meeting refused to meet the so-called ‘civil society representatives’ from Afghanistan. It signalled that Russia has begun working with the Taliban as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan.

Indeed, the Central Asian states heartily welcome this brilliant diplomatic initiative by Russia to strengthen regional security and stability. The region’s confidence level vis-a-vis the Taliban rulers has already reached a point that at the meeting with Putin in Kazan on Wednesday, Uzbek president Mirziyoyev raised the “important question” of Uzbekistan and Russia moving ahead with the construction of a new railway via Afghanistan connecting Central Asia with the adjacent regions and the world market.

 

Two Years after 22.2.22, the West is Paralyzed

Two years after the start of the SMO, the West is totally paralyzed … The geopolitical moment: “You are irrelevant, and the Global South / Global Majority don’t care”

by Pepe Escobar at the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Exactly two years ago this Saturday, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the launching – and described the objectives – of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. That was the inevitable follow-up to what happened three days before, on February 21 – exactly 8 years after Maidan 2014 in Kiev – when Putin officially recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

During this – pregnant with meaning – short space of only three days, everyone expected that the Russian Armed Forces would intervene, militarily, to end the massive bombing and shelling that had been going on for three weeks across the frontline – which even forced the Kremlin to evacuate populations at risk to Russia. Russian intel had conclusive proof that the NATO-backed Kiev forces were ready to execute an ethnic cleansing of Russophone Donbass.

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, in several complex ways. Above all, it marked the beginning of a vicious, all-out confrontation, “military-technical” as the Russians call it, between the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, its easily pliable NATOstan vassals, and Russia – with Ukraine as the battleground.

There is hardly any question Putin had calculated, before and during these three fateful days, that his decisions would unleash the unbounded fury of the collective West – complete with a tsunami of sanctions.

Ay, there’s the rub; it’s all about Sovereignty. And a true sovereign power simply cannot live under permanent threats. It’s even feasible that Putin had wanted (italics mine) Russia to get sanctioned to death. After all, Russia is so naturally wealthy that without a serious challenge from abroad, the temptation is enormous to live off its rents while importing what it could easily produce.

Exceptionalists always gloated that Russia is “a gas station with nuclear weapons”. That’s ridiculous. Oil and gas, in Russia, account for roughly 15% of GDP, 30% of the government budget, and 45% of exports. Oil and gas add power to the Russian economy – not a drag. Putin shaking Russia’s complacency generated a gas station producing everything it needs, complete with unrivalled nuclear and hypersonic weapons. Beat that.

Ukraine has “never been less than a nation”

Xavier Moreau is a French politico-strategic analyst based in Russia for 24 years now. Graduated from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy and with a Sorbonne diploma, he hosts two shows on RT France.

His latest book, Ukraine: Pourquoi La Russie a Gagné (“Ukraine: Why Russia has Won”), just out, is an essential manual for European audiences on the realities of the war, not those childish fantasies concocted across the NATOstan sphere by instant “experts” with less than zero combined arms military experience.

Moreau makes it very clear what every impartial, realist analyst was aware of from the beginning: the devastating Russian military superiority, which would condition the endgame. The problem, still, is how this endgame – “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, as established by Moscow – will be achieved.

What is already clear is that “demilitarization”, of Ukraine and NATO, is a howling success that no new wunderwaffen – like F-16s – will be able to change.

Moreau perfectly understands how Ukraine, nearly 10 years after Maidan, is not a nation; “and has never been less than a nation”. It’s a territory where populations that everything separates are jumbled up. Moreover, it has been a – “grotesque” – failed state ever since its independence. Moreau spends several highly entertaining pages going through the corruption grotesquerie in Ukraine, under a regime that “gets its ideological references simultaneously via admirers of Stepan Bandera and Lady Gaga.”

None of the above, of course, is reported by oligarch-controlled European mainstream media.

Watch out for Deng Xiao Putin

The book offers an extremely helpful analysis of those deranged Polish elites who bear “a heavy responsibility in the strategic catastrophe that awaits Washington and Brussels in Ukraine”. The Poles actually believed that Russia would crumble from the inside, complete with a color revolution against Putin. That barely qualifies as Brzezinski on crack.

Moreau shows how 2022 was the year when NATOstan, especially the Anglo-Saxons – historically racist Russophobes –  were self-convinced thar Russia would fold because it is a “poor power”. Obviously, none of these luminaries understood how Putin strengthened the Russian economy very much like Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese economy. This “self-intoxication”, as Moreau qualifies it, did wonders for the Kremlin.

By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb, and blind that the destruction of the European economy has been a massive tactic, historic victory for the Hegemon – as much as the blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has been an abysmal failure.

All of the above brings us to the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers this week in Rio. That was not exactly a breakthrough. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it very clear that the collective West at the G20 tried by all means to “Ukrainize” the agenda – with less than zero success. They were outnumbered and counterpunched by BRICS and Global South members.

At his press conference, Lavrov could not be more stark on the prospects of the war of the collective West against Russia. These are the highlights:

• Western countries categorically do not want serious dialogue on Ukraine.
• There were no serious proposals from the United States to begin contacts with the Russian Federation on strategic stability; trust cannot be restored now while Russia is declared an enemy.
• There were no contacts on the sidelines of the G20 with either Blinken or the British Foreign Secretary.
• The Russian Federation will respond to new Western sanctions with practical actions that relate to the self-sufficient development of the Russian economy.
• If Europe tries to restore ties with the Russian Federation, making it dependent on their whims, then such contacts are not needed.

In a nutshell – diplomatically: you are irrelevant, and we don’t care.

That was complementing Lavrov’s intervention during the summit, which defined once again a clear, auspicious path towards multipolarity. Here are the highlights:

• The forming of a fair multipolar world order without a definite center and periphery has become much more intensive in the past few years. Asian, African and Latin American countries are becoming important parts of the global economy. Not infrequently, they are setting the tone and the dynamics.
• Many Western economies, especially in Europe, are actually stagnating against this background. These statistics are from Western-supervised institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD.
• These institutions are becoming relics from the past. Western domination is already affecting their ability to meet the requirements of the times. Meanwhile, it is perfectly obvious today that the current problems of humanity can only be resolved through a concerted effort and with due consideration for the interests of the Global South and, generally, all global economic realities.
• Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EIB are prioritizing Kiev’s military and other needs. The West allocated over $250 billion to tide over its underling thus creating funding shortages in other parts of the world. Ukraine is taking up the bulk of the funds, relegating Africa and other regions of the Global South to rationing.
• Countries that have discredited themselves by using unlawful acts ranging from unilateral sanctions and the seizure of sovereign assets and private property to blockades, embargoes, and discrimination against economic operators based on nationality to settle scores with their geopolitical opponents cannot be considered guarantors of financial stability.
• Without a doubt, new institutions that focus on consensus and mutual benefit are needed to democratize the global economic governance system. Today, we are seeing positive dynamics for strengthening various alliances, including BRICS, the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union, LAS, CELAC, and the EAEU.
• This year, Russia chairs BRICS, which saw several new members join it. We will do our best to reinforce the potential of this association and its ties with the G20.
• Considering that 6 out of 15 UN Security Council members represent the Western bloc, we will support the expansion of this body solely through the accession of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Call it the real state of things, geopolitically, two years after the start of the SMO.

Nordstream 3 unter Avdeevka

“Nord Stream Three” and the Russian capture of Avdeevka

by Gilbert Doctorow

In the past several weeks, I have complained that the Vesti news programs on Russian state television had become formulaic. They opened with micro-snapshots of the war from the front without giving an overview. They then featured the misery of civilians in Donbas under Ukrainian fire. They largely ignored all international news.

This evening’s 20.00 o’clock prime time broadcast was a wholly different story. It opened with interviews taken with those who just completed one of the most daring military operations of modern times, the so-called “Nord Stream Three” which we will discuss in a minute. This operation all by itself helps to explain the sudden loss of Avdeevka by Ukraine over the past weekend. And then the program moved on to show lengthy excerpts from a video of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s report earlier in the day to Vladimir Putin that covered a great many topics and will be studied in detail by the global intelligence community. Naturally, I ask why the CIA alone should know this:  I use this opportunity to share with you what I heard and saw. I caught all of this on the fly and cannot say that every number I record below is perfectly correct, but in the contest between speed and accuracy, tonight I knowingly opt for speed.

*****

In my preceding report on Russia’s capture of Avdeevka, I repeated the emphasis on their artillery shell advantage that you will see and hear in Western media accounts.  However, there is another very important side to the victory: outstanding bravery and inventiveness.

Anyone listening to Western media has heard the constant refrain about the outstanding bravery of Ukrainian soldiers.  And there is certainly truth to that assertion.  What you will not have heard at all is the incredible courage of Russian soldiers and officers, who are highly motivated, know why they are fighting and are ready to defend their country’s interests at all costs. The “Nord Stream 3” adventure this past weekend demonstrates that point perfectly. And it further shows that brains are very much at work to complement the brawn.

What we are talking about was the passage of a full Russian brigade through a 3-km long pipe measuring 1.2 to 1.5 meters in diameter leading from their positions outside Avdeevka straight under the enemy lines into the city center.  They managed this passage unheard and unsuspected, so that when they emerged from the pipe-tunnel they overwhelmed the nearby Ukrainian troops and took possession of 19 buildings from which they fought on.  Because of the pipe as conduit, it has been dubbed “Nord Stream 3” but the principle involved was pure “Trojan horse’ tactics.

As the soldier interviewed by Vesti insisted, this operation has the makings of a great film. No doubt one or another producer at Mosfilm will follow this up.

*****

In his report to Putin, Shoigu said that Kiev’s assertions that the surrender of Avdeevka was an orderly strategic withdrawal are a bald-faced lie. This was бегство, chaotic flight in which the Ukrainian troops left behind their hand weapons, not to mention armored personnel carriers and other military equipment. They also left their many wounded behind to die.  Shoigu estimates that the Ukrainians lost 2,300 men in Avdeevka in the two days 17-18 February.

As for Avdeevka itself, he remarked that it had been built and re-built over the course of 9 years to be one of the strongest defense sites in Ukraine, with extensive use of reinforced concrete and defense lines.

Shoigu went on to speak about the latest intelligence conclusions regarding Ukraine’s spring and summer long Counter-Offensive. It is now clear that the entire Counter-Offensive was planned and directed from the United States, which used NATO instructors to instill in the Ukrainians NATO military doctrine and techniques.  The result was an unmitigated military disaster which cost Ukraine 130,000 soldiers dead and seriously wounded. The whole experience left the States and its NATO allies in shock: their doctrine, techniques and hardware had all been overwhelmed and destroyed by the Russians!

Shoigu also reported on the dismal results for Ukraine of its repeated efforts to establish a bridgehead on the Eastern (Left) bank of the Dnieper river in the area of Krynki.  He explained that the hopelessness of this mission did not prevent multiple repetitions of the same landing parties which were first cut off from their supplies by the Russians and then were decimated. The entire area is now fully under RF control.

For his part, Putin moved the discussion to the latest howls coming out of Washington over alleged Russian development of nuclear devices to be stationed in earth orbit.  He rejected this as pure imagination. ‘We don’t have such weapons or such plans.’ Putin believes this sounding of the alarm is intended to frighten legislators into passing the requested new appropriations for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Washington says nothing about the genuinely threatening cutting-edge strategic weapons systems that Russia is developing and deploying, such as the Poseidon underwater nuclear armed drone, the Sarmat and Burevestnik ICBMs and much more that have no equivalent in the West, that overcome all existing and planned defensive equipment and that constitute Russia’s true deterrent.

In conclusion, Putin reiterated recent statements that Russia is always ready to enter into strategic arms limitations talks as a matter of principle, however the talks must take into account all factors. The unacceptable present day factor is that the United States is openly seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia on the field of battle. Putin is wary of what he calls the never-ending attempts of the United States and its allies to impose one-sided solutions favorable to themselves in all negotiations.

Rand Corp: Postwar 404 Hardline Scenario

According to the Rand Corporation, there are two scenarios for the United States: “after” the less favorable war or “after” the more favorable war.

Sonja van den Ende at the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The prominent think tank for U.S. policymaking recently published a long report on the so-called aftermath of the war in Ukraine.

Washington and its NATO allies have to admit that the U.S. is losing another proxy war together with its satellite states of Europe. Previously they lost in Afghanistan (after more than 20 years, a second Vietnam), also recently in Syria and Iraq, and now in Ukraine.

Even so-called “Russia experts” in Europe admit that Ukraine is losing.

“I do not rule out that Ukraine will lose the war this year. Europe has misjudged the Russian army,” says Belgian “Russia expert” Joris van Blade to De Standaard.

Russia has the initiative again and the Russian people are not going to stop the war, he thinks. “We have missed historic opportunities to make Europe safer.”

According to the Rand study, two scenarios are possible: a so-called “hardline” or a “softline” postwar. Of course, the U.S. prefers a softline postwar outcome, where they still have room for manipulation and possible coup d’état and Balkanization (partition) of Russia just like they did in former Yugoslavia. According to Rand, the U.S. military presence in Europe has increased to around 100,000 personnel since the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in February 2022.

The United States deployed attack aviation from Germany to Lithuania; Patriot air defense systems from Germany to Slovakia and Poland; and F-15 tactical fighters from the United Kingdom to Poland. In addition, European countries are sending F-16s to Romania, as the Netherlands recently indicated. These F-16s are capable of attacking Russian cities. Washington characterized these deployments as part of a wartime surge to deter Russia from expanding its aggression beyond Ukraine to attack U.S. allies in Europe.

Leaders in Europe are almost hysterical. One after another, they proclaim that Russia is going to invade Europe, starting with Moldova, the Baltic States, and Poland. The Netherlands, Germany, and France are warning their people to expect an attack from Russia, as is Sweden, which recently joined NATO.

The population is being frightened by the unhinged rhetoric of their politicians. Conscription must be reactivated and Germany even has a concept ready to recruit migrants (about 1.5 million serviceable men) and entice them to get a passport.

European leaders are also concerned about the upcoming elections in the U.S. after Republican contender Donald Trump made comments suggesting he would quit NATO and let Europe fend for itself. They are worried that the U.S. might abandon them.

During a recent NATO conference in Brussels, a lot of war rhetoric was spoken. “We live in an era where we have to expect the unexpected,” said Dutch NATO Admiral Rob Bauer. Meanwhile, the Danish and German defense ministers have warned of a potential war with Russia within five years.

The U.S. and European leaders assume the “hardline” scenario is likely in the next few years. They proclaim through their mouthpieces in the corporate-controlled news media that Russia is becoming much more “risk-acceptant”. Therefore, it is calculated that a hardline approach may increase NATO’s ability to deter purported Russian aggression.

It’s that time of year again for the hawkish Munich Security Conference, in Bavaria, Germany. This is the forum where President Putin provoked alarm when he gave his famous speech in 2007, making it clear that the unipolar world was over and a multipolar world would emerge in the foreseeable future. Putin’s prognosis caused much chagrin for Western leaders.

This year’s theme at Munich is animated by Trump’s supposed undermining of NATO. The appeal for support from the U.S. has become more urgent among some European politicians. Ukraine lacks weapons and ammunition, they openly say. Russia is sometimes five times superior on the battlefield. In addition, a U.S. support package worth around $60 billion was approved by the Senate last week but the Republican-dominated House of Representatives could reject it – and so far it looks like it will.

Europe, in turn, would not be able to fill this gap and, therefore, Ukraine will lose the proxy war for the U.S. and the West.

In addition to the presence of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the European leaders and lobbyists will also use the opportunity in Munich to lobby Republican Senators and Representatives to support Ukraine (with money). Nowhere outside the U.S. can you find as many American politicians in one place as at the Munich Security Conference this year.

Zelensky’s participation in the conference had been expected for some time but had not yet been officially confirmed.

Last year, he opened the most important meeting of Western politicians and experts on security policy via video address. Now he is taking part in person for the first time since the Russian Special Military Operation began almost two years ago. He is afraid for his position; he is losing the proxy war on behalf of the U.S. and EU/NATO.

The actor-President of Ukraine Zelensky desperately wants to secure future European support.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is attending the Munich conference instead of Joe Biden. Rumors are circulating in the Western media that Biden’s cognitive condition has deteriorated even more and he is unable to come. If Biden wins the November presidential election, will Harris become the next president upon his inevitable retirement during a second term? That’s probably the intention.

As President Putin said, he would rather have Biden than Trump as the winner. In his diplomatic way, he said that Biden is an “old school” politician, meaning of course that a Democratic government with Biden/Harris is easier to understand and estimate than Trump, who is capricious and unpredictable.

These are the facts: the presumed hegemony of the Western states is falling to pieces. The “Collective West” is losing its wars. Their status and economies are in a downward spiral, even before the Special Military Operation.

The politicians and the elites who stand behind them, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and other semi-international organizations (usually Western-oriented) want to compensate for this historic loss of the unipolar world with a new system, away from fossil energy, ostensibly for the climate, but actually to try to weaken and isolate Russia by destroying its economy based on copious oil and gas resources.

European so-called leaders, in fact, “vassals” of the U.S., have slavishly followed the agenda of creating a new Cold War, which could turn into a hot war. Instead of betting on diplomacy, they have chosen the path of war, in contradiction to the (Western) UN Agenda 2030, where Western countries have forced this agenda on the Global South. This agenda also states that we must strive for peace and prosperity for everyone. So it is yet another lie from the Global West, or rather the empire of lies, which is now submerged in its own lies.

Transcending Avdeevka

“… Civilians are the true heroes of the full liberation of Novorossiya, as much as the people scattered across Greater Syria – encompassing Palestine, Syria and Lebanon – Iraq and Yemen … there’s the road followed by the poet, or spiritual warrior, whose soul is the Aeolian harp summoning vast, unseen, miraculous forces.”

by Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
Your empty-handed armies are going home

Bob Dylan, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

Avdeevka. The name sounds like an incantation. Like Debaltsevo, or Bakhmut. The incantation summons the figure of a cauldron.

As it stands, and it’s all moving at lightning speed, it takes only 2 km for the cauldron to be closed. Virtually all roads and muddy trails are under massive Russian fire control. There may be up to 6,000 Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) soldiers left. They have nowhere to go. They are already in – or are going straight to – Hell.

“The Butcher” Syrsky, who has just been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the AFU amidst a nasty dog fight in Kiev, immediately got himself a fresh cauldron. Old habits die hard.

The morale and psychological state of AFU fighters is in tatters. Azov batallion neo-nazis are being decimated by massive artillery, FPVs and FABs.

Still, AFU generals are setting up the P.R. stage for another “victory” – a replay of Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo, even as the actual retreat, evacuation or “extraction” will proceed through the Corridors of Hell.

In fact, the only player who has successfully extracted himself from Hell, just in time, was Gen Zaluzhny. To quote Dylan: “Strike another match/ go start anew.”

The Axis of Resistance and its Slavic mirror

During my vertiginous journey across Donbass, only a few days ago, Avdeevka – the incantation – was omnipresent. At a meeting in a secret compound plunged in darkness in the western outskirts of Donetsk, two top commanders of Orthodox Christian batallions, while discussing tactics, noted that the fall of Avdeevka would be a matter of days, maximum weeks

The symbology is quite transcendental. Kiev has been fortifying Avdeevka non-stop for nearly 10 years – essentially to keep shelling civilians in Donetsk and other parts of Donbass with impunity, ad infinitum. Donetsk remains extremely vulnerable – and the shelling persists. The strength, resilience and faith of the residents of this historic mining town – and the surrounding countryside – are deeply moving.

In a very special conversation with Alexander Dugin,  we both made it clear, directly and indirectly, that the working classes of Novorossiya are spiritual brothers of the oppressed in Palestine and Yemen. Yes, the Axis of Resistance in West Asia is mirrored by the Slavic Axis of Resistance in the black soil of the steppes.

As much as Russia may have been drawn to a civilizational war against the collective West, that is also a spiritual war. The proxy war by the Hegemon against Russia in Ukraine is as much a geopolitical gamble as a war of Western nihilism against Russian Orthodoxy.

I did mention the parallel between Orthodox Christianity and Shi’ism to a top commander; he may have been bemused, but he definitely got the message.

After all, he must have instinctively noticed it was the rejected, harassed and bombed in Orthodox Christianity and Islam who have re-awakened the Orthodox and Islamic civilizations for a transcendental war of survival – supported by faith.

Way beyond the Avdeevka incantation – a sort of catalyst of all these times of trouble, as Mother Mary of God eventually comes offering solace – what struck me in this vertiginous journey in Donbass is Almighty People Power. Civilians are the true heroes of the full liberation of Novorossiya, as much as the people scattered across Greater Syria – encompassing Palestine, Syria and Lebanon – Iraq and Yemen.

These are the souls who have endured a Hell on Earth much more toxic and much longer than the Avdeevka cauldron, since Zionism and its subsequent eschatological garrison-settler colonial offspring took over the Holy Land.

The people of Novorossiya, as much as Yemeni Houthis, have Faith imprinted in their DNA. Those deeply committed commanders and soldiers that I met in Novorossiya close to the front lines mirror the popular consensus.

Gamblers on the Highway of Hope

For a baby boomer Westerner, it’s inevitable to refer to Dylan when we’re back on the road: “The highway is for gamblers / better use your sense”. Somehow the ultimate gamblers across the black soil of Novorossiya are these volunteer, contract-signed soldiers who summon the power of unbreakable Faith to defend their land.

As for those pawns in the Western game who will perish or surrender when the cauldron is boiling to the max, it’s a case of “the sky too is falling under you”.

Shelley intuitively understood that we all rebel against oblivion – to which death condemns us. Yet this rebellion can follow two completely different road maps.

The man intoxicated with power wrecks everything before him, and is wrecked in turn (that’s the fate of the current Empire of Lies).

Then there’s the road followed by the poet, or spiritual warrior, whose soul is the Aeolian harp summoning vast, unseen, miraculous forces.

Of course the proxy war in Ukraine won’t end with Avdeevka, and the battle across the Donetsk foothills, nearly a decade old, will continue.

There will be more P.R. terror attacks, the civilian plight may be prolonged for quite a while. But what’s already crystal clear is that any sub-par “rules-based order” chess player who dreams of defeating the Russian soul on thousand-year-old Russian lands is inexorably doomed.

Putin, 2022 “Satanism Speech”

This Speech is best bracketed with his Munich Security Council Speech of 10.02.2007 (here). It tracks the evolution of President Putin’s thought, and the final turning of the Russian Mir from the Old Order built by the combined West. 

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A ceremony for signing the treaties on the accession of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhye Region and the Kherson Region to the Russian Federation took place in of the Grand Kremlin Palace’s St George Hall. [source]

• 01:46 Article 1 of the UN Charter
• 02:35 The neo-Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014
• 04:16 Common destiny and thousand-year history of Russia and Ukraine
• 04:54 Termination of Soviet Union
• 06:04 Determination of millions of people to return to historical homeland
• 06:30 Genocide in Donbass
• 07:02 Appeal to Kiev authorities and their true handlers in the West to end the war and return to the negotiating table
• 07:52 The choice of the people will not be discussed at the negotiating table
• 08:24 Russia will restore the affected facilities and social systems
• 09:19 Appeal to the military and their families
• 10:17 Dictate of the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union
• 10:49 West continued looking for another chance to break up Russia
• 11:19 The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system
• 12:11 Coercion to surrender sovereignty in favor of the United States
• 12:52 Real causes of the hybrid war that the collective West is waging against Russia
• 14:16 Broken Promises of the West
• 14:44 False «rules-based order» against international law
• 15:56 Totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid of the West behind the screen of democracy
• 16:17 Western racism and false labels
• 17:23 Historical crimes of the West that contrary to the very human nature, truth, freedom and justice
• 18:22 Russia’s pride for the leading role in the anti-colonial movement of the 20th century
• 18:37 Russia’s success is based on creating a strong centralised state and traditional values
• 19:31 Memory of the plunder of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union
• 19:53 Thanks to the new regions
• 20:13 Centuries-old lies of the West about freedom and democracy
• 20:40 Demonstrative unnecessary cruelty of the US in military conflicts (nuclear weapons, cities annihilation, carpet bombings, use of napalm and chemical weapons)
• 21:28 Occupation of Germany, Japan, Republic of Korea and other countries in our time
• 22:22 Migration Crisis
• 22:37 Grain from Ukraine
• 23:15 Europe deindustrialisation by forcing to impose anti-Russian sanctions
• 23:44 Betrayal of their peoples by European elites
• 24:00 Sabotage on the Nord Stream – the destruction of the entire energy infrastructure of Europe
• 24:25 The law of the fist
• 25:18 The deterrence of Russia, China and Iran and other countries
• 25:57 US sanctions against their allies
• 26:22 Unexpectedly failed sanctions blitzkrieg against Russia
• 27:11 «Information hunger» in the West – ocean of myths, illusions and fakes, aggressive Goebbels like propaganda
• 27:40 Economic, financial, energy crises – Western elite crisis
• 28:59 Solving the problems of the West through wars and plunder
• 30:26 Russia’s responsibility to the international community
• 30:34 The current neocolonial model is ultimately doomed
• 31:02 Radical denial of moral, religious, and family values
• 32:09 Dictatorship of the Western elites targets all societies, including the citizens of Western countries themselves
• 32:17 «Religion in reverse» – pure Satanism – «By their fruits ye shall know them»
• 32:49 New centres of power, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony
• 34:23 The ongoing collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible
• 34:34 The battle for the great historical Russia
• 35:40 The words of a true patriot of Russia Ivan Ilyin
• 36:53 The truth is with us, and behind us is Russia

During the ceremony for signing the treaties on the accession of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions to Russia. From left to right: Head of the Kherson Region Vladimir Saldo, Head of the Zaporozhye Region Yevgeny Balitsky, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushylin, Head of the Lugansk People’s Republic Leonid Pasechnik. Photos: Grigoriy Sisoev, RIA Novosti

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Transcript

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Citizens of Russia, citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, residents of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, deputies of the State Duma, senators of the Russian Federation,

As you know, referendums have been held in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. The ballots have been counted and the results have been announced. The people have made their unequivocal choice.

Today we will sign treaties on the accession of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Lugansk People’s Republic, Zaporozhye Region and Kherson Region to the Russian Federation. I have no doubt that the Federal Assembly will support the constitutional laws on the accession to Russia and the establishment of four new regions, our new constituent entities of the Russian Federation, because this is the will of millions of people. (Applause.)

It is undoubtedly their right, an inherent right sealed in Article 1 of the UN Charter, which directly states the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.

I repeat, it is an inherent right of the people. It is based on our historical affinity, and it is that right that led generations of our predecessors, those who built and defended Russia for centuries since the period of Ancient Rus, to victory.

Here in Novorossiya, [Pyotr] Rumyantsev, [Alexander] Suvorov and [Fyodor] Ushakov fought their battles, and Catherine the Great and [Grigory] Potyomkin founded new cities. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought here to the bitter end during the Great Patriotic War.

We will always remember the heroes of the Russian Spring, those who refused to accept the neo-Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, all those who died for the right to speak their native language, to preserve their culture, traditions and religion, and for the very right to live. We remember the soldiers of Donbass, the martyrs of the “Odessa Khatyn,” the victims of inhuman terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime. We commemorate volunteers and militiamen, civilians, children, women, senior citizens, Russians, Ukrainians, people of various nationalities; popular leader of Donetsk Alexander Zakharchenko; military commanders Arsen Pavlov and Vladimir Zhoga, Olga Kachura and Alexei Mozgovoy; prosecutor of the Lugansk Republic Sergei Gorenko; paratrooper Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov and all our soldiers and officers who died a hero’s death during the special military operation. They are heroes. (Applause.) Heroes of great Russia. Please join me in a minute of silence to honour their memory.

(Minute of silence.)

Thank you.

Behind the choice of millions of residents in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, is our common destiny and thousand-year history. People have passed this spiritual connection on to their children and grandchildren. Despite all the trials they endured, they carried the love for Russia through the years. This is something no one can destroy. That is why both older generations and young people – those who were born after the tragic collapse of the Soviet Union – have voted for our unity, for our common future.

In 1991 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, representatives of the party elite of that time made a decision to terminate the Soviet Union, without asking ordinary citizens what they wanted, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their homeland. This tore apart and dismembered our national community and triggered a national catastrophe. Just like the government quietly demarcated the borders of Soviet republics, acting behind the scenes after the 1917 revolution, the last leaders of the Soviet Union, contrary to the direct expression of the will of the majority of people in the referendum of 1991, destroyed our great country, and simply made the people in the former republics face this as an accomplished fact.

I can admit that they didn’t even know what they were doing and what consequences their actions would have in the end. But it doesn’t matter now. There is no Soviet Union anymore; we cannot return to the past. Actually, Russia no longer needs it today; this isn’t our ambition. But there is nothing stronger than the determination of millions of people who, by their culture, religion, traditions, and language, consider themselves part of Russia, whose ancestors lived in a single country for centuries. There is nothing stronger than their determination to return to their true historical homeland.

For eight long years, people in Donbass were subjected to genocide, shelling and blockades; in Kherson and Zaporozhye, a criminal policy was pursued to cultivate hatred for Russia, for everything Russian. Now too, during the referendums, the Kiev regime threatened schoolteachers, women who worked in election commissions with reprisals and death. Kiev threatened millions of people who came to express their will with repression. But the people of Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson weren’t broken, and they had their say.

I want the Kiev authorities and their true handlers in the West to hear me now, and I want everyone to remember this: the people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, in Kherson and Zaporozhye have become our citizens, forever. (Applause.)

We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire and all hostilities; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, as we have said more than once. But the choice of the people in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson will not be discussed. The decision has been made, and Russia will not betray it. (Applause.) Kiev’s current authorities should respect this free expression of the people’s will; there is no other way. This is the only way to peace.

We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people. This is the great liberating mission of our nation.

We will definitely rebuild the destroyed cities and towns, the residential buildings, schools, hospitals, theatres and museums. We will restore and develop industrial enterprises, factories, infrastructure, as well as the social security, pension, healthcare and education systems.

We will certainly work to improve the level of security. Together we will make sure that citizens in the new regions can feel the support of all the people of Russia, of the entire nation, all the republics, territories and regions of our vast Motherland. (Applause.)

Friends, colleagues,

Today I would like to address our soldiers and officers who are taking part in the special military operation, the fighters of Donbass and Novorossiya, those who went to military recruitment offices after receiving a call-up paper under the executive order on partial mobilisation, and those who did this voluntarily, answering the call of their hearts. I would like to address their parents, wives and children, to tell them what our people are fighting for, what kind of enemy we are up against, and who is pushing the world into new wars and crises and deriving blood-stained benefits from this tragedy.

Our compatriots, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine who are part of our united people have seen with their own eyes what the ruling class of the so-called West have prepared for humanity as a whole. They have dropped their masks and shown what they are really made of.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the West decided that the world and all of us would permanently accede to its dictates. In 1991, the West thought that Russia would never rise after such shocks and would fall to pieces on its own. This almost happened. We remember the horrible 1990s, hungry, cold and hopeless. But Russia remained standing, came alive, grew stronger and occupied its rightful place in the world.

Meanwhile, the West continued and continues looking for another chance to strike a blow at us, to weaken and break up Russia, which they have always dreamed about, to divide our state and set our peoples against each other, and to condemn them to poverty and extinction. They cannot rest easy knowing that there is such a great country with this huge territory in the world, with its natural wealth, resources and people who cannot and will not do someone else’s bidding.

The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology, to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract its primary source of unearned prosperity, the rent paid to the hegemon. The preservation of this annuity is their main, real and absolutely self-serving motivation. This is why total de-sovereignisation is in their interest. This explains their aggression towards independent states, traditional values and authentic cultures, their attempts to undermine international and integration processes, new global currencies and technological development centres they cannot control. It is critically important for them to force all countries to surrender their sovereignty to the United States.

In certain countries, the ruling elites voluntarily agree to do this, voluntarily agree to become vassals; others are bribed or intimidated. And if this does not work, they destroy entire states, leaving behind humanitarian disasters, devastation, ruins, millions of wrecked and mangled human lives, terrorist enclaves, social disaster zones, protectorates, colonies and semi-colonies. They don’t care. All they care about is their own benefit.

I want to underscore again that their insatiability and determination to preserve their unfettered dominance are the real causes of the hybrid war that the collective West is waging against Russia. They do not want us to be free; they want us to be a colony. They do not want equal cooperation; they want to loot. They do not want to see us a free society, but a mass of soulless slaves.

They see our thought and our philosophy as a direct threat. That is why they target our philosophers for assassination. Our culture and art present a danger to them, so they are trying to ban them. Our development and prosperity are also a threat to them because competition is growing. They do not want or need Russia, but we do. (Applause.)

I would like to remind you that in the past, ambitions of world domination have repeatedly shattered against the courage and resilience of our people. Russia will always be Russia. We will continue to defend our values and our Motherland.

The West is counting on impunity, on being able to get away with anything. As a matter of fact, this was actually the case until recently. Strategic security agreements have been trashed; agreements reached at the highest political level have been declared tall tales; firm promises not to expand NATO to the east gave way to dirty deception as soon as our former leaders bought into them; missile defence, intermediate-range and shorter-range missile treaties have been unilaterally dismantled under far-fetched pretexts.

And all we hear is, the West is insisting on a rules-based order. Where did that come from anyway? Who has ever seen these rules? Who agreed or approved them? Listen, this is just a lot of nonsense, utter deceit, double standards, or even triple standards! They must think we’re stupid.

Russia is a great thousand-year-old power, a whole civilisation, and it is not going to live by such makeshift, false rules. (Applause.)

It was the so-called West that trampled on the principle of the inviolability of borders, and now it is deciding, at its own discretion, who has the right to self-determination and who does not, who is unworthy of it. It is unclear what their decisions are based on or who gave them the right to decide in the first place. They just assumed it.

That is why the choice of the people in Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson makes them so furiously angry. The West does not have any moral right to weigh in, or even utter a word about freedom of democracy. It does not and it never did.

Western elites not only deny national sovereignty and international law. Their hegemony has pronounced features of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid. They brazenly divide the world into their vassals – the so-called civilised countries – and all the rest, who, according to the designs of today’s Western racists, should be added to the list of barbarians and savages. False labels like “rogue country” or “authoritarian regime” are already available, and are used to stigmatise entire nations and states, which is nothing new. There is nothing new in this: deep down, the Western elites have remained the same colonisers. They discriminate and divide peoples into the top tier and the rest.

We have never agreed to and will never agree to such political nationalism and racism. What else, if not racism, is the Russophobia being spread around the world? What, if not racism, is the West’s dogmatic conviction that its civilisation and neoliberal culture is an indisputable model for the entire world to follow? “You’re either with us or against us.” It even sounds strange.

Western elites are even shifting repentance for their own historical crimes on everyone else, demanding that the citizens of their countries and other peoples confess to things they have nothing to do with at all, for example, the period of colonial conquests.

It is worth reminding the West that it began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, followed by the worldwide slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India and Africa, the wars of England and France against China, as a result of which it was forced to open its ports to the opium trade. What they did was get entire nations hooked on drugs and purposefully exterminated entire ethnic groups for the sake of grabbing land and resources, hunting people like animals. This is contrary to human nature, truth, freedom and justice.

While we – we are proud that in the 20^th century our country led the anti-colonial movement, which opened up opportunities for many peoples around the world to make progress, reduce poverty and inequality, and defeat hunger and disease.

To emphasise, one of the reasons for the centuries-old Russophobia, the Western elites’ unconcealed animosity toward Russia is precisely the fact that we did not allow them to rob us during the period of colonial conquests and forced the Europeans to trade with us on mutually beneficial terms. This was achieved by creating a strong centralised state in Russia, which grew and got stronger based on the great moral values​​of Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as Russian culture and the Russian word that were open to all.

There were numerous plans to invade Russia. Such attempts were made during the Time of Troubles in the 17^th century and in the period of ordeals after the 1917 revolution. All of them failed. The West managed to grab hold of Russia’s wealth only in the late 20^th century, when the state had been destroyed. They called us friends and partners, but they treated us like a colony, using various schemes to pump trillions of dollars out of the country. We remember. We have not forgotten anything.

A few days ago, people in Donetsk and Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye declared their support for restoring our historical unity. Thank you! (Applause.)

Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of bringing democracy they suppressed and exploited, and instead of giving freedom they enslaved and oppressed. The unipolar world is inherently anti-democratic and unfree; it is false and hypocritical through and through.

The United States is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. And they created a precedent.

Recall that during WWII the United States and Britain reduced Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities to rubble, without the least military necessity. It was done ostentatiously and, to repeat, without any military necessity. They had only one goal, as with the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities: to intimidate our country and the rest of the world.

The United States left a deep scar in the memory of the people of Korea and Vietnam with their carpet bombings and use of napalm and chemical weapons.

It actually continues to occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, which they cynically refer to as equals and allies. Look now, what kind of alliance is that? The whole world knows that the top officials in these countries are being spied on and that their offices and homes are bugged. It is a disgrace, a disgrace for those who do this and for those who, like slaves, silently and meekly swallow this arrogant behaviour.

They call the orders and threats they make to their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity, and the creation of biological weapons and the use of human test subjects, including in Ukraine, noble medical research.

It is their destructive policies, wars and plunder that have unleashed today’s massive wave of migrants. Millions of people endure hardships and humiliation or die by the thousands trying to reach Europe.

They are exporting grain from Ukraine now. Where are they taking it under the guise of ensuring the food security of the poorest countries? Where is it going? They are taking it to the self-same European countries. Only five percent has been delivered to the poorest countries. More cheating and naked deception again.

In effect, the American elite is using the tragedy of these people to weaken its rivals, to destroy nation states. This goes for Europe and for the identities of France, Italy, Spain and other countries with centuries-long histories.

Washington demands more and more sanctions against Russia and the majority of European politicians obediently go along with it. They clearly understand that by pressuring the EU to completely give up Russian energy and other resources, the United States is practically pushing Europe toward deindustrialisation in a bid to get its hands on the entire European market. These European elites understand everything – they do, but they prefer to serve the interests of others. This is no longer servility but direct betrayal of their own peoples. God bless, it is up to them.

But the Anglo-Saxons believe sanctions are no longer enough and now they have turned to subversion. It seems incredible but it is a fact – by causing explosions on Nord Stream’s international gas pipelines passing along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, they have actually embarked on the destruction of Europe’s entire energy infrastructure. It is clear to everyone who stands to gain. Those who benefit are responsible, of course.

The dictates of the US are backed up by crude force, on the law of the fist. Sometimes it is beautifully wrapped sometimes there is no wrapping at all but the gist is the same – the law of the fist. Hence, the deployment and maintenance of hundreds of military bases in all corners of the world, NATO expansion, and attempts to cobble together new military alliances, such as AUKUS and the like. Much is being done to create a Washington-Seoul-Tokyo military-political chain. All states that possess or aspire to genuine strategic sovereignty and are capable of challenging Western hegemony, are automatically declared enemies.

These are the principles that underlie US and NATO military doctrines that require total domination. Western elites are presenting their neocolonialist plans with the same hypocrisy, claiming peaceful intentions, talking about some kind of deterrence. This evasive word migrates from one strategy to another but really only means one thing – undermining any and all sovereign centres of power.

We have already heard about the deterrence of Russia, China and Iran. I believe next in line are other countries of Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, as well as current US partners and allies. After all, we know that when they are displeased, they introduce sanctions against their allies as well – against this or that bank or company. This is their practice and they will expand it. They have everything in their sights, including our next-door neighbours – the CIS countries.

At the same time, the West has clearly been engaged in wishful thinking for a long time. In launching the sanctions blitzkrieg against Russia, for example, they thought that they could once again line up the whole world at their command. As it turns out, however, such a bright prospect does not excite everyone – other than complete political masochists and admirers of other unconventional forms of international relations. Most states refuse to ”snap a salute“ and instead choose the sensible path of cooperation with Russia.

The West clearly did not expect such insubordination. They simply got used to acting according to a template, to grab whatever they please, by blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and convinced themselves that these methods would work forever, as if they had fossilised in the past.

Such self-confidence is a direct product not only of the notorious concept of exceptionalism – although it never ceases to amaze – but also of the real ”information hunger“ in the West. The truth has been drowned in an ocean of myths, illusions and fakes, using extremely aggressive propaganda, lying like Goebbels. The more unbelievable the lie, the quicker people will believe it – that is how they operate, according to this principle.

But people cannot be fed with printed dollars and euros. You can’t feed them with those pieces of paper, and the virtual, inflated capitalisation of western social media companies can’t heat their homes. Everything I am saying is important. And what I just said is no less so: you can’t feed anyone with paper – you need food; and you can’t heat anyone’s home with these inflated capitalisations – you need energy.

That is why politicians in Europe have to convince their fellow citizens to eat less, take a shower less often and dress warmer at home. And those who start asking fair questions like “Why is that, in fact?” are immediately declared enemies, extremists and radicals. They point back at Russia and say: that is the source of all your troubles. More lies.

I want to make special note of the fact that there is every reason to believe that the Western elites are not going to look for constructive ways out of the global food and energy crisis that they and they alone are to blame for, as a result of their long-term policy, dating back long before our special military operation in Ukraine, in Donbass. They have no intention of solving the problems of injustice and inequality. I am afraid they would rather use other formulas they are more comfortable with.

And here it is important to recall that the West bailed itself out of its early 20^th century challenges with World War I. Profits from World War II helped the United States finally overcome the Great Depression and become the largest economy in the world, and to impose on the planet the power of the dollar as a global reserve currency. And the 1980s crisis – things came to a head in the 1980s again – the West emerged from it unscathed largely by appropriating the inheritance and resources of the collapsed and defunct Soviet Union. That’s a fact.

Now, in order to free itself from the latest web of challenges, they need to dismantle Russia as well as other states that choose a sovereign path of development, at all costs, to be able to further plunder other nations’ wealth and use it to patch their own holes. If this does not happen, I cannot rule out that they will try to trigger a collapse of the entire system, and blame everything on that, or, God forbid, decide to use the old formula of economic growth through war.

Russia is aware of its responsibility to the international community and will make every effort to ensure that cooler heads prevail.

The current neocolonial model is ultimately doomed; this much is obvious. But I repeat that its real masters will cling to it to the end. They simply have nothing to offer the world except to maintain the same system of plundering and racketeering.

They do not give a damn about the natural right of billions of people, the majority of humanity, to freedom and justice, the right to determine their own future. They have already moved on to the radical denial of moral, religious, and family values.

Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. Now I would like to return to what I said and want to address also all citizens of the country – not just the colleagues that are in the hall – but all citizens of Russia: do we want to have here, in our country, in Russia, “parent number one, parent number two and parent number three” (they have completely lost it!) instead of mother and father? Do we want our schools to impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, perversions that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want to drum into their heads the ideas that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery? Is that what we want for our country and our children? This is all unacceptable to us. We have a different future of our own.

Let me repeat that the dictatorship of the Western elites targets all societies, including the citizens of Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism. Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” These poisonous fruits are already obvious to people, and not only in our country but also in all countries, including many people in the West itself.

The world has entered a period of a fundamental, revolutionary transformation. New centres of power are emerging. They represent the majority – the majority! – of the international community. They are ready not only to declare their interests but also to protect them. They see in multipolarity an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means gaining genuine freedom, historical prospects, and the right to their own independent, creative and distinctive forms of development, to a harmonious process.

As I have already said, we have many like-minded people in Europe and the United States, and we feel and see their support. An essentially emancipatory, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is taking shape in the most diverse countries and societies. Its power will only grow with time. It is this force that will determine our future geopolitical reality.

Friends,

Today, we are fighting for a just and free path, first of all for ourselves, for Russia, in order to leave dictate and despotism in the past. I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exceptionalism of whoever it may be and the suppression of other cultures and peoples is inherently criminal, and that we must close this shameful chapter. The ongoing collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible. And I repeat: things will never be the same.

The battlefield to which destiny and history have called us is a battlefield for our people, for the great historical Russia. (Applause.) For the great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them against enslavement and monstrous experiments that are designed to cripple their minds and souls.

Today, we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, or our culture can be erased from history. Today, we need a consolidated society, and this consolidation can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values ​​are humanity, mercy and compassion.

And I want to close with the words of a true patriot Ivan Ilyin: “If I consider Russia my Motherland, that means that I love as a Russian, contemplate and think, sing and speak as a Russian; that I believe in the spiritual strength of the Russian people. Its spirit is my spirit; its destiny is my destiny; its suffering is my grief; and its prosperity is my joy.”

Behind these words stands a glorious spiritual choice, which, for more than a thousand years of Russian statehood, was followed by many generations of our ancestors. Today, we are making this choice; the citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the residents of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions have made this choice. They made the choice to be with their people, to be with their Motherland, to share in its destiny, and to be victorious together with it.

The truth is with us, and behind us is Russia!

(Applause.)

 

Putin, 2007 Munich Security Conference

17 years ago, on February 10, 2007, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference, addressing points that continue to hold relevance today.

Let us recall the key highlights from the President’s historic speech:

I believe that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. <…> What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed.

What is happening in today’s world is an attempt to introduce exactly this concept into international affairs, the concept of a unipolar world.

• Certain legal norms are becoming increasingly similar to one state’s legal system. One state, and, of course, first and foremost the US, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is evident in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.

I believe that we’ve reached a point where we need to carefully consider the entire architecture of global security.

• The role of multilateral diplomacy is significantly increasing. The need for principles such as openness, transparency and predictability in politics is undisputed.

• The stones and concrete blocks of the Berlin Wall have long been distributed as souvenirs. But we shouldn’t forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to a historic choice – one that was also made by the people of Russia – a choice in favour of democracy, freedom, openness and a sincere partnership with all members of the big European family.

Today, they’re trying to impose new dividing lines and walls on us. These lines may be virtual but they’re still dividing and cutting through our continent. Is it possible that we’ll once again need many years and decades, as well as several generations of politicians, to dismantle these new walls?

Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always exercised the privilege of conducting an independent foreign policy. We’re not going to change this tradition today.  (emphasis on TG channel of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) 

Tucker Interviews Prez Putin

Ep. 73 The Vladimir Putin Interview pic.twitter.com/67YuZRkfLL

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 8, 2024

The Vladimir Putin Interview (timestamp on Telegram)

00:00:00
Introduction

00:02:00
Putin gives a history of Russia & Ukraine

00:25:04
NATO Expansion

00:30:40
NATO & Bill Clinton

00:41:10
Ukraine

00:48:30
What triggered this conflict?

01:02:37
A peaceful solution?

01:11:33
Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?

01:24:13
Re-establishing communication with the US

01:36:33
How powerful is Zelensky?

01:48:36
Elon Musk & AI

01:51:07
Imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich

≈≈

Tucker: The following is an interview with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Shot February 6th, 2024, at about 7 p.m in the building behind us, which is, of course, the Kremlin. The interview, as you will see if you watch it, is primarily about the war in progress, the war in Ukraine, how it started, what’s happening, and most pressingly how it might end. One note before you watch. At the beginning of the interview, we asked the most obvious question, which is why did you do this? Did you feel a threat, an imminent physical threat, and that’s your justification. And the answer we got shocked us. Putin went on for a very long time, probably half an hour, about the history of Russia going back to the eighth century. And honestly, we thought this was a filibustering technique and found it annoying and interrupted him several times, and he responded. He was annoyed by the interruption. But we concluded in the end, for what it’s worth, that it was not a filibustering technique. There was no time limit on the interview. We ended it after more than two hours. Instead, what you’re about to see seemed to us sincere whether you agree with it or not. Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historic claim to parts of western Ukraine. So our opinion would be to view it in that light as a sincere expression of what he thinks. And with that, here it is. Mr. President, thank you. On February 22nd, 2022, you addressed your country in a nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started, and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States, through NATO, might initiate a, quote, surprise attack on our country and too American ears, that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?

Vladimir Putin: It’s not that America, the United States was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia. I didn’t say that. Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?

Tucker: Here’s the quote. Thank you. It’s a formidable serious talk.

Vladimir Putin: Because your basic education is in history, as far as I understand.

Tucker: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: So if you don’t mind, I will take only 30 seconds or one minute to give you a short reference to history for giving you a little historical background.

Tucker: Please.

Vladimir Putin: Let’s look where our relationship with Ukraine started from. Where did Ukraine come from? The Russian state started gathering itself as a centralized statehood. And it is considered to be the year of the establishment of the Russian state in 862. But when the townspeople of Novgorod invited a Virangian Prince Rurik from Scandinavia to reign. In 1862, Russia celebrated the 1000th anniversary of its statehood. And in Novgorod there is a memorial dedicated to the 1000 anniversary of the country. In 882 Rurik’s successor, Prince Oleg, who was actually playing the role of regent at Rurik’s young son. Because Rurik had died by that time, came to Kiev. He ousted two brothers who apparently had once been members of Rurik’s squad. So Russia began to develop with two centers of power Kiev and Novgorod. The next very significant date in the history of Russia was 988, this was the baptism of Russia when Prince Vladimir, the great grandson of Rurik, baptized Russia and adopted Orthodoxy, or Eastern Christianity. From this time, the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. Why? Because of the single territory. Integrated economic ties. One and the same language. And after the baptism of Russia, the same faith and rule of the Prince, the centralized Russian state began to take shape. Back in the Middle Ages, Prince Yaroslav the Wise introduced the order of succession to a throne. But after he passed away, it became complicated for various reasons. The throne was passed not directly from father to eldest son, but from the prince who had passed away to his brother. Then to his sons in different lines. All this led to the fragmentation and the end of Rus as a single state. There was nothing special about it. The same was happening then in Europe. But the fragmented Russian state became an easy prey to the empire created earlier by Genghis Khan. His successors, namely Batu Khan plundered and ruined nearly all the cities. The southern part, including Kiev, by the way, and some other cities, simply lost independence. While northern cities preserved some of their sovereignty. They had to pay tribute to the horde, but they managed to preserve some part of their sovereignty. And then a unified Russian state began to take shape with its center in Moscow. The southern part of Russian lands, including Kiev begun to gradually gravitate towards another magnet, the center that was emerging in Europe. This was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and it was even called the Lithuanian Russian Duchy because Russians were a significant part of this population. They spoke the old Russian language and were Orthodox. But then there was a unification, the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. A few years later. Another union was signed, but this time already in the religious sphere, some of the Orthodox priests became subordinate to the Pope. Thus these lands became part of the Polish-Lithuanian state. During decades the Poles were engaged in colonization of this part of the population. They introduced a language there, tried to entrench the idea that this population was not exactly Russians, that because they lived on the fringe, they were Ukrainians. Originally the word Ukrainian meant that the person was living on the outskirts of the state, along the fringes, or was engaged in a border patrol service. It didn’t mean any particular ethnic group. So the poles were trying to, in every possible way, to colonize this part of the Russian lands and actually treated it rather harshly, not to say cruelly, all that led to the fact that this part of the Russian lands began to struggle for their rights. They wrote letters to Warsaw demanding that their rights be observed and people be commissioned here, including to Kiev.

Tucker: I beg your pardon. Could you tell us what period, I’m losing track of where in history, we are in the Polish oppression of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin: It was in the 13th century. Now, I will tell you what happened later. And give the dates so that there is no confusion. And in 1654, even a bit earlier this year. The people who were in control of the authority over that part of the Russian land, addressed war so, I repeat, demanding that they send them to rulers of Russian origin and Orthodox faith. But Warsaw did not answer them, and in fact rejected their demands, they turned to Moscow so that Moscow took them away. So that you don’t think that I’m inventing things. I’ll give you these documents.

Tucker: Well, I, it doesn’t sound like you’re inventing. And I’m not sure why it’s relevant to what happened two years ago.

Vladimir Putin: But still, these are documents from the archives. Copies. Here’s the letters from Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the man who then controlled the power in this part of the Russian lands, that is now called Ukraine. He wrote to Warsaw demanding that their rights be upheld. And after being refused, he began to write letters to Moscow. Asking to take them under the strong hand of the Moscow Tsar. There are copies of these documents. I will leave them for your good memory. There is a translation into Russian. You can translate it into English later. But Russia would not agree to admit them straight away, assuming that the war with Poland would start. Nevertheless, in 1654, the Russian assembly of top clergy and landowners, headed by the Tsar, which was the representative body of the power of the old Russian state, decided to include a part of the old Russian lands into Moscow Kingdom. As expected, the war with Poland began. It lasted 13 years, and then in 1654, a truce was concluded. And 32 years later, I think a peace treaty with Poland, which they called eternal peace, was signed. And these lands, the whole left bank of Dnieper, including Kiev, went to Russia. And the whole right bank of Dnieper remained in Poland. Under the rule of Catharina the Great Russia reclaimed all of its historical lands, including in the south and west, this all lasted until the Revolution. Before World War 1, Austrian General Staff relied on the ideas of Ukrainization, and started actively promoting the ideas of Ukraine and the Ukrainization. The motive was obvious. Just before World War 1, they wanted to weaken the potential enemy and secure themselves favorable conditions in the border area. So the idea which had emerged in Poland, that people residing in that territory were allegedly not really Russians, but rather belong to a special ethnic group, Ukrainians started being propagated by the Austrian General Staff. As far back as the 19th century, theorists calling for Ukrainian independence appeared. All those, however, claimed that Ukraine should have a very good relationship with Russia. They insisted on that. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to restore the statehood, and the civil war began, including the hostilities with Poland. In 1921, peace with Poland was proclaimed. And under that treaty, the right bank of Dnieper River once again was given back to Poland. In 1939, after Poland cooperated with Hitler. It did collaborate with Hitler, no, Hitler offered Poland peace and a treaty of friendship. An alliance, demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany the so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Konigsberg. After World War One, this territory was transferred to Poland. And instead of Danzig, a city of Gdasnk emerged. Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused. Of course, still they collaborated with Hitler and engaged together in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.

Tucker: But may I ask, you’re making the case that Ukraine, certainly parts of Ukraine, eastern Ukraine is in effect Russia has been for hundreds of years. Why wouldn’t you just take it when you became president 24 years ago? You have nuclear weapons. They don’t. It’s actually your land. Why did you wait so long?

Vladimir Putin: I’ll tell you, I’m coming for that. This briefing is coming to an end. It might be boring, but it explains many things.

Tucker: It’s not boring. Just not sure how it’s relevant.

Vladimir Putin: Good, good. I’m so gratified that you appreciate that. Thank you. So before World War 2, Poland collaborated with Hitler. And although it did not yield to Hitler’s demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler, as the Poles had not given the Danzig corridor to Germany, and went too far, pushing Hitler to start World War 2 by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom the war started, on 1st September 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland. Sobieski. By the way, the USSR, I have read some archive documents, behaved very honestly, and it asked Poland’s permission to transit its troops through the Polish territory to help Czechoslovakia. But the then Polish foreign minister said that if the Soviet planes flew over Poland, they would be downed over the territory of Poland. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the war begun and Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia. This under the well known Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a part of the territory including western Ukraine was to be given to Russia, thus Russia, which was then named the USSR regained its historical lands. After the victory in the Great Patriotic War, as we call World War 2, and all those territories were ultimately enshrined as belonging to Russia, to the USSR. As for Poland, it received, apparently in compensation, the lands which had originally been German. The eastern parts of Germany. These are now western lands of Poland. Of course, Poland regained access to the Baltic Sea and Danzig. Which was once again given its Polish name. So this was how this situation developed. In 1922 when the USSR was being established, the Bolsheviks started building the USSR and established the Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before.

Tucker: Right.

Vladimir Putin: Stalin insisted that those republics be included in the USSR as autonomous entities. For some inexplicable reason, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, insisted that they be entitled to withdraw from the USSR. And again, for some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands, together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine, and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever. Even if we go as far back as 1654, when these lands returned to the Russian Empire. That territory was the size of 3 to 4 regions of modern Ukraine, with no Black Sea region. That was completely out of the question.

Tucker: In 1654.

Vladimir Putin: Exactly.

Tucker: I’m just, you obviously have encyclopedic knowledge of this region. But why didn’t you make this case for the first 22 years as president, that Ukraine wasn’t a real country?

Vladimir Putin: The Soviet Union was given a great deal of territory that had never belonged to it, including the Black Sea region. At some point when Russia received them as an outcome of the Russo Turkish wars, they were called New Russia or another Russia. But that does not matter. What matters is that Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, established Ukraine that way. For decades, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic developed as part of the USSR. And for unknown reasons, again, the Bolsheviks were engaged in Ukrainization. It was not merely because the Soviet leadership was composed to a great extent of those originating from Ukraine. Rather, it was explained by the general policy of indigenization pursued by the Soviet Union. Same things were done in other Soviet republics. This involved promoting national languages and national cultures, which is not a bad, in principle. That is how the Soviet Ukraine was created. After the World War 2, Ukraine received, in addition to the lands that had belonged to Poland before the war, part of the lands that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania. So Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Soviet Ukraine, and they still remain part of Ukraine. So in this sense, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will.

Tucker: Do you believe Hungary has a right to take its land back from Ukraine, and that other nations have a right to go back to their 1654 borders?

Vladimir Putin: I’m not sure whether they should go back to their 1654 borders. But given Stalin’s time, so-called Stalin’s regime, which, as many claim, saw numerous violations of human rights and violations of the rights of other states. One can say that they could claim back those lands of theirs while having no right to do that. It is at least understandable.

Tucker: Have you told Viktor Orban that he can have part of Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: Never. I have never told him. Not a single time. We have not even had any conversation on that. But I actually know for sure that Hungarians who live there wanted to get back to their historical land. Moreover, I would like to share a very interesting story with you. I digress, it’s a personal one. Somewhere in the early 80s, I went on a road trip in a car from then Leningrad, across the Soviet Union through Kiev. Made a stop in Kiev and then went to western Ukraine. I went to the town of Beregovoy and all the names of towns and villages there were in Russian and in the language I did not understand in Hungarian, in Russian and in Hungarian. Not in Ukrainian, in Russian and in Hungarian. I was driving through some kind of village, and there were men sitting next to their houses, and they were wearing black three piece suits and black cylinder hats. I asked, are they some kind of entertainers? I was told no, they were not entertainers, they were Hungarians. I said, what are they doing here? What do you mean? This is their land. They live here. This was during the Soviet time in the 1980s. They preserved the Hungarian language, Hungarian names and all their national costumes. They are Hungarians and they feel themselves to be Hungarians. And of course, when now there is an infringement.

Tucker: What that is, and there’s a lot of that, though I think many nations are upset about Transylvania as well as you obviously know. But many nations feel frustrated by the redrawn borders of the wars of the 20th century and wars going back a thousand years, the ones that you mentioned. But the fact is that you didn’t make this case in public until two years ago, February. And in the case that you made, which I read today, you explain at great length that you felt a physical threat from the West in NATO, including potentially nuclear threat. And that’s what got you to move. Is that a fair characterization of what you said?

Vladimir Putin: I understand that my long speeches probably fall outside of the genre of the interview. That is why I asked you at the beginning, are we going to have a serious talk or a show? You said a serious talk. So bear with me, please. We’re coming to the point where the Soviet Ukraine was established. Then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and everything that Russia had generously bestowed on Ukraine was dragged away by the latter. I’m coming to a very important point of today’s agenda.

Tucker: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union was effectively initiated by the Russian leadership. I do not understand what the Russian leadership was guided by at the time, but I suspect there were several reasons to think everything would be fine. First, I think that then Russian leadership believed that the fundamentals of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine were in fact a common language. More than 90% of the population there spoke Russian. Family ties, every third person there had some kind of family or friendship ties. Common culture. Common history, finally, common faith, coexistence with a single state for centuries and deeply interconnected economies. All of these were so fundamental. All these elements together make our good relationships inevitable. The second point is a very important one. I want you as an American citizen and your viewers to hear about this as. The former Russian leadership assumed that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and therefore there were no longer any ideological dividing lines. Russia even agreed voluntarily and proactively to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and believed that this would be understood by the so-called civilized West as an invitation for cooperation and association. That is what Russia was expecting, both from the United States and this so-called collective West as a whole. There were smart people, including in Germany, Egon Bahr, a major politician of the Social Democratic Party, who insisted in his personal conversations with the Soviet leadership on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that they knew security systems should be established in Europe. Help should be given to unified Germany, but a new system should be also established to include the United States, Canada, Russia and other Central European countries. But NATO needs not to expand. That’s what he said. If NATO expands, everything would be just the same as during the Cold War, only closer to Russia’s borders. That’s all. He was a wise old man, but no one listened to him. In fact, he got angry once. If, he said, you don’t listen to me, I’m never setting my foot in Moscow once again. Everything happened just as he had said.

Tucker: Of course, it did come true. And I and you’ve mentioned this many times. I think it’s a fair point. And many in America thought that relations between Russia and the United States would be fine with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the opposite happened. But you’ve never explained why you think that happened, except to say that the West fears a strong Russia. But we have a strong China the West does not seem very afraid of. What about Russia do you think, convinced policymakers they had to take it down?

Vladimir Putin: The West is afraid of strong China more than it fears a strong Russia, because Russia has won 150 million people and China has 1.5 billion population. And its economy is growing by leaps and bounds, or 5% a year. It used to be even more, but that’s enough for China. As Bismarck once put it, potentials are the most important. China’s potential is enormous. It is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. It is already overtaking the United States quite a long time ago, and it is growing at a rapid clip. Let’s not talk about who is afraid of whom. Let’s not reason in such terms. And let’s get into the fact that after 1991, when Russia expected that it would be welcomed into the brotherly family of civilized nations, nothing like this happened. You tricked us. I don’t mean you personally when I say you. Of course I’m talking about the United States. The promise was that NATO would not expand eastward. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion. We tolerated all that. We were trying to persuade them. We were saying, please don’t. We are as bourgeois now as you are. We are a market economy and there is no Communist Party power. Let’s negotiate. Moreover, I have also said this publicly before. There was a moment when a certain rift started growing between us. Before that, Yeltsin came to the United States. Remember, he spoke in Congress and said the good words: God bless America. Everything he said were signals, let us in. Remember the developments in Yugoslavia before that, Yeltsin was lavished with praise. As soon as the developments in Yugoslavia started, he raised his voice in support of Serbs. And we couldn’t but raise our voices for Serbs in their defense. I understand that there were complex processes underway there. I do, but Russia could not help raising its voice in support of Serbs, because Serbs are also a special and close to us nation, with Orthodox culture and so on. It’s a nation that has suffered so much for generations. Well, regardless. What is important is that Yeltsin expressed his support. What did the United States do? In violation of international law and the UN charter it started bombing Belgrade. It was the United States that led the genie out of the bottle. Moreover, when Russia protested and expressed its resentment, what was said? The UN charter and international law have become obsolete. Now everyone invokes international law, but at that time they started saying that everything was outdated. Everything had to be changed. Indeed, some things need to be changed as the balance of power has changed. It’s true, but not in this manner. Yeltsin was immediately dragged through the mud, accused of alcoholism, of understanding nothing, of knowing nothing. He understood everything, I assure you. Well, I became president in 2000. I thought, okay, the Yugoslav issue is over, but we should try to restore relations. Let’s re-open the door that Russia had tried to go through. And moreover, I said it publicly, I can reiterate. At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I said to him, I asked him: Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?” Suddenly he said, “you know, it’s interesting. I think so.” But in the evening, when we met for dinner, he said: You know, I’ve talked to my team, no, it’s not possible now. You can ask him. I think he will watch our interview, he’ll confirm it. I wouldn’t have said anything like that if it hadn’t happened. Okay, well, it’s impossible now.

Tucker: Were you sincere? Would you have joined NATO?

Vladimir Putin: Look, I asked the question, is it possible or not? And the answer I got was no. If I was insincere in my desire to find out what the leadership position was….

Tucker: But if he had said yes, would you have joined NATO?

Vladimir Putin: If he had said yes, the process of rapprochement would have commenced, and eventually it might have happened if we had seen some sincere wish on the side of our partners. But it didn’t happen. Well, no means no, okay, fine.

Tucker: Why do you think that is? Just to get to motive. I know, you’re clearly bitter about it. I understand. But why do you think the West rebuffed you then? Why the hostility? Why did the end of the Cold War not fix the relationship? What motivates this from your point of view?

Vladimir Putin: You said that I was bitter about the answer. No, it’s not bitterness. It’s just the statement of fact. We’re not bride and groom, bitterness, resentment, it’s not about those kind of matters in such circumstances. We just realized we weren’t welcome there, that’s all. Okay, fine. But let’s build relations in another manner. Let’s look for common ground elsewhere. Why we received such a negative response, you should ask your leaders. I can only guess why, too big a country, with its own opinion and so on. And the United States, i have seen how issues are being resolved in NATO. I will give you another example now concerning Ukraine. U.S. leadership exerts pressure and all NATO members obediently vote. Even if they do not like something. Now, I’ll tell you what happened in this regard with Ukraine in 2008. Although it’s being discussed, I’m not going to open a secret to you say anything new.Nevertheless, after that, we try to build the relations in different ways. For example, the events in the Middle East, in Iraq, we were building relations with the United States in a very soft, prudent, cautious manner. I repeatedly raised the issue that the United States should not support separatism or terrorism in the North Caucasus’s? But they continue to do it anyway. And political support, information support, financial support, even military support came from the United States and its satellites for terrorist groups in the Caucasus. I once raised this issue with my colleague, also the president of the United States. He says it’s impossible. Do you have proof? I said yes, I was prepared for this conversation, and I gave him that proof of motive. He looked at it and you know what he said? I apologize, but that’s what happened. I’ll quote, he says, “well, I’m gonna kick their ass.” We waited and waited for some response. There was no reply. I said to the FSB director: Write to the CIA”. What is the result of the conversation with the president? He wrote once, twice. And then we got a reply. We have the answer in the archive. The CIA replied: We have been working with the opposition in Russia. We believe that this is the right thing to do and we will keep on doing it.” It’s just ridiculous. Well, okay. We realized that it was out of the question.

Tucker: Forces in opposition to you? So you’re saying the CIA is trying to overthrow your government?

Vladimir Putin: Of course they meant in that particular case, the separatists, the terrorists who fought with us in the Caucasus. That’s who they call the opposition. This is the second point. The third moment is a very important one, is the moment when the US missile defense system was created at the beginning. We persuaded for a long time not to do it in United States. Moreover, after was invited by Bush Juniors Father Bush senior to visit his place on the ocean.I had a very serious conversation with President Bush and his team. I propose that the United States, Russia and Europe jointly create the missile defense system that we believe, if created, unilaterally threatens our security. Despite the fact that the United States officially said that it was being created against missile threats from Iran. That was the justification for the deployment of the missile defense system. I suggested working together: Russia, the United States and Europe. They said it was very interesting. They asked me, “Are you serious?” I said, “Absolutely”.

Tucker: May I ask what year was this?

Vladimir Putin: I don’t remember. It is easy to find out on the internet. When I was in the USA at the invitation of a Bush Sr.. It is even easier to learn from someone I’m going to tell you about. I was told it was very interesting. I said, “Just imagine if we could settle such a global strategic security challenge together. The world will change. We’ll probably have disputes, probably economic and even political ones. But we could drastically change the situation in the world.” He says “Yes, and asks, “Are you serious? I said, “Of course”. “We need to think about it.” I said, “Go ahead please”. Then Secretary of Defense Gates, former Director of CIA and Secretary of State Rice came in here in this cabinet, right here at this table. They sat on this table. Me, the Foreign Minister, the Russian Defense Minister on that side. They said to me, yes, we have thought about it. We agree. I said, “Thank God, great”. “But with some exceptions.”

Tucker: So, twice you’ve described U.S. presidents making decisions and then being undercut by their agency heads. So it sounds like you’re describing a system that’s not run by the people who are elected, in your telling.

Vladimir Putin: That’s right, that’s right. And then they just told us to get lost. I’m not going to tell you the details because I think it’s incorrect. After all, it was confidential conversation, but our proposal was declined. That’s a fact. It was right then when I said, “Look, but then we will be forced to take counter measures. We will create such strike systems that will certainly overcome missile defense systems. The answer was, “We are not doing this against you, and you do what you want. Assuming that it is not against us, not against the United States. I said, “Okay”. Very well. That’s the way it went. And we created hypersonic systems with intercontinental range, and we continue to develop them. We are now ahead of everyone, the United States and the other countries in terms of the development of hypersonic strike systems. And we are improving them every day. But it wasn’t us. We proposed to go the other way and we were pushed back. Now about NATO’s expansion to the east. Well, we were promised no NATO to the east, not an inch to the east, as we were told. And then what? They said, well, it’s not enshrined on paper, so we’ll expand. So there were five waves of expansion. The Baltic states, the whole of Eastern Europe, and so on. And now I come to the main thing. They have come to the Ukraine. Ultimately, in 2008, at the summit in Bucharest, they declared that the doors for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO were open. Now, about how decisions are made there. Germany, France seemed to be against it, as well as some other European countries. But then, as it turned out later, President Bush and he’s such a tough guy, a tough politician, as I was told later, he exerted pressure on us and we had to agree. It’s ridiculous. It’s like kindergarten. Where are the guarantees? What kindergarten is this? What kind of people are these? Who are they? You see, they were pressed. They agree. And then they say Ukraine won’t be in the NATO. You know, I say I don’t know. I know you agreed in 2008. Why won’t you agree in the future? Well, they pressed us then I say, why won’t they press you tomorrow and you’ll agree again? Well. It’s nonsensical. Who’s there to talk to? I just don’t understand. We’re ready to talk. But with whom? Where are the guarantees? None. So they started to develop the territory of Ukraine. Whatever is there? I have told you the background, how this territory develops. What kind of relations? They were with Russia. Every second or third person there has always had some ties with Russia. And during the elections in already independent sovereign Ukraine, which gained its independence as a result of the declaration of independence. And by the way, it says that Ukraine is a neutral state. And in 2008, suddenly the doors or gates to NATO were opened to it. Oh come on. This is not how we agreed. Now, all the presidents that have come to power in Ukraine, they relied on the electorate with a good attitude to Russia in one way or the other. This is the southeast of Ukraine. This is a large number of people. And it was very difficult to persuade this electorate, which had a positive attitude towards Russia. Viktor Yanukovych came to power. And how, the first time he won, after President Kuchma, they organized the third round, which is not provided for in the Constitution of Ukraine. This is a coup d’etat. Just imagine someone in the United States wouldn’t like the outcome….

Tucker: In 2014?

Vladimir Putin: No, this was before that. After President Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovych won the elections. However, his opponents did not recognize that victory. The US supported the opposition and the third round was scheduled. But what is this? This is a coup. The US supported it and the winner of the third round came to power. Imagine if in the US something was not to someone’s liking and the third round of election, which the US Constitution does not provide for, was organized. Nonetheless, it was done in Ukraine. Okay. Viktor Yushchenko, who was considered the pro-Western politician, came to power, but fine we have built relations with him as well. He came to Moscow with visits. We visited Kiev. I visited it too, we met in an informal setting. If he’s pro-Western, so be it. It’s fine. Let people do their job.The situation should have developed inside independent Ukraine itself as a result of Kuchma leadership. Things got worse and Viktor Yanukovych came to power. Maybe he wasn’t the best president and politician, I don’t know. I don’t want to give assessments. However, the issue of the association with the EU came up. We have always been leanent into this. Suit yourself. But when we read through the treaty of association, it turned out to be a problem for us since we had the free trade zone and open customs borders with Ukraine, which under this association had to open its borders for Europe, which would have led to flooding of our market. But we said, no, this is not going to work. We shall close our borders with Ukraine then the customs borders, that is. Yanukovych started to calculate how much Ukraine was going to gain, how much to lose and said to his European partners, I need more time to think before signing. The moment he said that, the opposition began to take destructive steps which were supported by the West. It all came down to Maidan and a coup in Ukraine.

Tucker: So he did more trade with Russia than with the EU? Ukraine did.

Vladimir Putin: Of course. It’s not even the matter of trade volume, although for the most part it is. It is the matter of cooperation size which the entire Ukrainian economy was based on. A cooperation size between the enterprises were very close since the times of the Soviet Union. Yeah. One enterprise there used to produce components to be assembled both in Russia and Ukraine and vice versa. They used to be very close ties. A coup d’etat was committed. Although I shall not delve into details now as I find doing it inappropriate. The US told us, calm Yanukovych down and we will calm the opposition. Let the situation unfold. In the scenario of a political settlement. We said, all right, agreed, let’s do it this way. As the Americans requested, Yanukovych did use neither the armed forces nor the police. Yet the armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? Who do you think you are? I wanted to ask the then US leadership.

Tucker: With the backing of whom?

Vladimir Putin: With the backing of CIA, of course, the organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. We should thank God they didn’t let you in. Although it is a serious organization, I understand. My former is a V in the sense that I served in the First Main Directorate, Soviet Union’s intelligence service. They have always been our opponents. A job is a job. Technically, they did everything right. They achieved their goal of changing the government. However, from political standpoint, it was a colossal mistake. Surely it was political leadership’s miscalculation. They should have seen what it would evolve into. So in 2008, the doors of NATO were opened for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup. They started persecuting those who did not accept the coup. And it was indeed a coup. They created the threat to Crimea, which we had to take under our protection. They launched the war in Donbas in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it all started. There’s a video of aircraft attacking Donetsk from above. They launched a large scale military operation. Then another one. When they failed, they started to prepare the next one. All this against the background of military development of this territory and opening of NATO’s doors. How could we not express concern over what was happening? From our side this would have been a culpable negligence. That’s what it would have been. It’s just that the US political leadership pushed us to the line we could not cross because doing so could have ruined Russia itself. Besides, we could not leave our brothers in faith. In fact, just part of Russian people in the face of this “war machine”.

Tucker: So that was eight years before the current conflict started. So what was the trigger for you? What was the moment where you decided you had to do this?

Vladimir Putin: Initially, it was the coup in Ukraine that provoked the conflict. By the way, back then, the representatives of three European countries Germany, Poland and France aligned, they were the guarantors of the signed agreement between the government of Yanukovych and the opposition. They signed it as guarantors. Despite that, the opposition committed a coup and all these countries pretended that they didn’t remember that they were guarantors of the peaceful settlement. They just threw it in the snow right away. And nobody recalls that. I don’t know if the US knew anything about the agreement between the opposition and the authorities and its three guarantors, who, instead of bringing this whole situation back in the political field supported the coup. Although it was meaningless, believe me, because President Yanukovych agreed to all conditions, he was ready to hold an early election, which he had no chance of winning frankly speaking. Everyone knew that. Then, why the coup? Why the victims? Why threatening Crimea? Why launching an operation in Donbas? This I do not understand. That is exactly what the miscalculation is. CIA did its job to complete the coup. I think one of the deputy secretaries of state said that they cost a large sum of money. Almost 5 billion. But the political mistake was colossal. Why would they have to do that? All this could have been done legally, without victims, without military action, without the losing Crimea. We would have never considered to even lift the finger if it hadn’t been for the bloody developments on Maidan. Because we agreed with the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, our borders should be along the borders of former union republics. We agreed to that, but we never agreed to NATO’s expansion, and moreover, we never agreed that Ukraine would be in NATO. We did not agree to NATO bases there without any discussion with us. For decades we kept asking, don’t do this, don’t do that. And what triggered the latest events? Firstly, the current Ukrainian leadership declared that it would not implement the Minsk agreements which had been signed, as you know, after the events of 2014 in Minsk where the plan of peaceful settlement in Donbas was set forth. But no, the current Ukrainian leadership, foreign minister, all other officials and then president himself said that they don’t like anything about the Minsk agreements. In other words, they were not going to implement it. A year or a year and a half ago, former leaders of Germany and France said openly to the whole that they indeed signed the Minsk agreements, but they never intended to implement them, they simply led us by the nose.

Tucker: Was there anyone for you to talk to? Did you call us President and Secretary of State and say, if you keep militarizing Ukraine with NATO forces, this is going to get, we’re going to act.

Vladimir Putin: We talked about this all the time. We addressed the United States and European countries leadership to stop these developments immediately. To implement the Minsk agreements. But frankly speaking, I didn’t know how we were going to do this. But I was ready to implement them. These agreements were complicated for Ukraine. They included lots of elements of those Donbas territories independence. That’s true. However, I was absolutely confident. And I’m saying this to you now. I honestly believe that if we managed to convince the residents of Donbas and we had to work hard to convince them to return to the Ukrainian statehood, then gradually the wounds would start to heal. But when this part of territory reintegrated itself into a common social environment, when the pensions and social benefits were paid again, all the pieces would gradually fall into place. No, nobody wanted that. Everybody wanted to resolve the issue by military force only. But we could not let that happen. And the situation got to the point when the Ukrainian side announced, no, we will not do anything. They also started preparing for military action. It was they who started the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022. This is an attempt to stop it.

Tucker: Do you think you’ve stopped it now? I mean, have you achieved your aims?

Vladimir Putin: No. We haven’t achieved our aims yet because one of them is de-nazification. This means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements. This is one of the problems that we discussed during the negotiation process, which ended in Istanbul early this year. And it was not our initiative because we were told by the Europeans in particular that it was necessary to create conditions for the final signing of the documents. My counterparts in France, in Germany said, How can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev. I said, all right. We withdrew the troops from Kiev. As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and got prepared for a long standing armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe. That is how the situation has developed, and that is how it looks now.

Tucker: Pardon my ignorance. What is what is de-nazification? What would that mean?

Vladimir Putin: That is what I want to talk about right now. It is a very important issue. De-nazification. After gaining independence, Ukraine began to search, as some Western analysts say, its identity. Well, if the intuitionist, you know. And it came up with nothing better than to build this identity upon some false heroes who collaborated with Hitler. I have already said that in the early 19th century, when the theorists of independence and sovereignty of Ukraine appeared, they assumed that an independent Ukraine should have very good relations with Russia. But due to the historical development, those territories were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland, where Ukrainians were persecuted and treated quite brutally as well as were subject to cruel behavior. There were also attempts to destroy their identity. All this remained in the memory of the people. When World War 2 broke out, part of this extremely nationalist elite collaborated with Hitler, believing that he would bring them freedom. The German troops, even the SS troops made Hitler’s collaborators do the dirtiest work of exterminating the Polish and Jewish population. Hence this brutal massacre of the Polish and Jewish population, as well as the Russian population too. This was led by the persons who are well known, Bandera, Shukhevych. It was those people who were made national heroes. That is the problem. And we are constantly told that nationalism and neo-Nazism exists in other countries as well. Yes, they are seedlings, but we uproot them. And other countries fight against them. But Ukraine is not the case. These people have been made into national heroes in Ukraine. Monuments to those people have been erected. They are displayed on flags. Their names are shouted by crowds that walk with torches, as it was in Nazi Germany. These were people who exterminated Poles, Jews and Russians. It is necessary to stop this practice and prevent the dissemination of this concept. I say that the Ukrainians are part of the one Russian people. They say, no, we are a separate people. Okay, fine. If they consider themselves a separate people, they have the right to do so. But not on the basis of Nazism, the Nazi ideology.

Tucker: Would you be satisfied with the territory that you have now?

Vladimir Putin: I will finish answering the question. You just asked the question about neo-Nazism and denazification. The president of Ukraine visited Canada. The story is well known, but being silenced in the Western countries. The Canadian Parliament introduced the man who, as the speaker of the Parliament said fought against the Russians during the World War II. Well, who fought against the Russians during the World War two. Hitler and his accomplices. And it turned out that this man served in the SS troops, he personally killed the Russians, Poles and Jews. The US troops consisted of Ukrainian nationalists who did this dirty work. The president of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined? The President of Ukraine himself, by the way, is a Jew by nationality.

Tucker: Really my question is, what do you do about it? I mean, Hitler has been dead for 80 years. Nazi Germany no longer exists. And so, true. And so I think what you’re saying is you want to extinguish or at least control Ukrainian nationalism. But how? How do you do that?

Vladimir Putin: Listen to me. Your question is very subtle, and I can tell you what I think. Do not take offense.

Tucker: Of course.

Vladimir Putin: This question appears to be subtle. It is.

Tucker: Quite pesky.

Vladimir Putin: You say Hitler has been dead for so many years, 80 years. But, his example lives on. The people who exterminate the Jews, Russians or poles are alive. And the president, the current president of today’s Ukraine, applauds him in the Canadian Parliament, gives a standing ovation. Can we say that we have completely uprooted this ideology? If what we see is happening today, that is what De-nazification is in our understanding. We have to get rid of those people who maintain this concept and support this practice and try to preserve it. That is what De-nazification is. That is what we mean.

Tucker: Right. My question was more specific. It was, of course, not a defense of Nazis, new or otherwise. It was a practical question. You don’t control the entire country. You don’t control Kiev. You don’t seem like you want to. So how do you will eliminate a culture or an ideology or feelings or a view of history in a country that you don’t control. What do you do about that?

Vladimir Putin: You know, as strange as it may seem to you during the negotiations at Istanbul, we did agree that we have it all in writing. Neo-Nazism would not be cultivated in Ukraine, including that it would be prohibited at the legislative level. Mr. Carlson, we agreed on that. This, it turns out, can be done during the negotiation process. And there’s nothing humiliating for Ukraine as a modern, civilized state. Is there any state allowed to promote Nazism? It is not, is it? Oh, that is it.

Tucker: Will there be talks? And why haven’t there been talks about resolving the conflict in Ukraine? Peace talks.

Vladimir Putin: There have been they reached a very high stage of coordination of positions in a complex process, but still they were almost finalized. But after we withdrew our troops from Kiev, as I have already said, the other side threw away all these agreements and obeyed the instructions of Western countries, European countries and the United States to fight Russia to the bitter end. Moreover, the President of Ukraine has legislated a ban on negotiating with Russia. He signed a decree forbidding everyone to negotiate with Russia. But how are we going to negotiate if he forbade himself and everyone to do this? We know that he is putting forward some ideas about this settlement, but in order to agree on something, we need to have a dialog. Is that not right?

Tucker: Well, but you wouldn’t be speaking to the Ukrainian president. You’d be speaking to the American president. When was the last time you spoke to Joe Biden?

Vladimir Putin: Well, I cannot remember when I talked to him. I do not remember. We can look it up.

Tucker: You don’t remember?

Vladimir Putin: No.

Tucker: Why? Do I have to remember everything? I have my own things to do. We have domestic political affairs.

Tucker: Well, he’s funding the war that you’re fighting, so I would think that would be memorable.

Vladimir Putin: Well, yes, he funds, but I talked to him before the special military operation, of course. And I said to him then, by the way, I will not go into details, I never do. But I said to him, then, I believe that you are making a huge mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that is happening there, in Ukraine, by pushing Russia away. I told him, told him repeatedly, by the way, I think that would be correct if I stop here.

Tucker: What did he say?

Vladimir Putin: Ask him, please, it is easier for you. You are a citizen of the United States. Go and ask him. It is not appropriate for me to comment on our conversation.

Tucker: But you haven’t spoken to him since before February of 2022.

Vladimir Putin: No, we haven’t spoken. Certain contacts are being maintained, though. Speaking of which. Do you remember what I told you about my proposal to work together on a missile defense system?

Tucker: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: You can ask all of them. All of them are safe and sound. Thank God. The Former President. Condoleezza is safe and sound. And I think Mr. Gates and the current director of the intelligence agency, Mr. Burns, the then ambassador to Russia, in my opinion, are very successful, ambassador. They were all witnesses to these conversations. Ask them. Same here. If you are interested in what Mr. President Biden responded to me, ask him. At any rate, I talk to him about it.

Tucker: I’m definitely interested. But from the outside, it seems like this could devolve or evolve into something that brings the entire world into conflict and could, um, initiate some nuclear launch. And so why don’t you just call Biden and say, let’s work this out.

Vladimir Putin: What’s there to work out? It’s very simple. I repeat, we have contacts through various agencies. I will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the US leadership. If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks. That’s it. And then we can agree on some terms before you do that, stop. What’s easier? Why would I call him? What should I talk to him about? Or beg him for what?

Tucker: And what messages do you get back?

Vladimir Putin: You were going to deliver such and such weapons to Ukraine. Oh, I’m afraid, I’m afraid. Please don’t. What is there to talk about?

Tucker: Do you think NATO is worried about this becoming a global war or a nuclear conflict?

Vladimir Putin: At least that’s what they’re talking about. And they’re trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat. This is an obvious fact. And thinking people, not philistines, but thinking people, analysts, those who are engaged in real politics, just smart people, understand perfectly well that this is a fake. They’re trying to fuel the Russian threat.

Tucker: The threat I think you’re referring to is a Russian invasion of Poland. Latvia. Expansionist behavior. Can you imagine a scenario where you send Russian troops to Poland?

Vladimir Putin: Only in one case, if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest. It’s just threat mongering.

Tucker: Well, the argument, I know you know this is that, well, he invaded Ukraine. He has territorial aims across the continent. And you’re saying unequivocally you don’t.

Vladimir Putin: It is absolutely out of the question. You just don’t have to be any kind of analyst. It goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of a global war and a global war will bring all humanity to the brink of destruction. It’s obvious. There are certainly means of deterrence. They have been scaring everyone with us all along. Tomorrow, Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons. Tomorrow Russia will use that. No, the day after tomorrow. So what. In order to extort additional money from U.S. taxpayers and European taxpayers in the confrontation with Russia in the Ukrainian theater of war. But the goal is to weaken Russia as much as possible.

Tucker: One of, our Senior United States senators from the state of New York, Chuck Schumer, said yesterday, I believe, that we have to continue to fund the Ukrainian effort, or U.S. soldier citizens could wind up fighting there. How do you assess that?

Vladimir Putin: This is a provocation and a cheap provocation at that. I do not understand why American soldiers should fight in Ukraine. They are mercenaries from the United States. They’re the bigger number of mercenaries comes from Poland, with mercenaries from the United States in second place and mercenaries from Georgia in third place. Well, if somebody has the desire to send regular troops, that would certainly bring humanity to the brink of a very serious global conflict. This is obvious. Do the United States need this? What for? Thousands of miles away from your national territory. Don’t you have anything better to do? You have issues on the border. Issues with migration, issues with the national debt. More than $33 trillion. You have nothing better to do. So you should fight in Ukraine. Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement. Already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end. And realizing this actually a return to common sense, start respecting our country and its interests and look for certain solutions. It seems to me that this is much smarter and more rational.

Tucker: Who blew up Nord Stream?

Vladimir Putin: You for sure.

Tucker: I was busy that day. I did not blow up Nord Stream. Thank you though.

Vladimir Putin: You personally may have an alibi, but the CIA has no such alibi.

Tucker: Did you have evidence that NATO or the CIA did it?

Vladimir Putin: You know, I won’t get into details, but people always say in such cases, look for someone who is interested. But in this case, we should not only look for someone who is interested, but also for someone who has capabilities, because there may be many people interested, but not all of them are capable of sinking to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and carrying out this explosion. These two components should be connected. Who is interested and who is capable of doing it?

Tucker: But I’m confused. I mean, that’s the biggest act of industrial terrorism ever, and it’s the largest emission of CO2 in history. Okay, so if you had evidence and presumably given your security services or Intel services, you would that NATO, the US, CIA, the West did this, why wouldn’t you present it and win a propaganda victory?

Vladimir Putin: In the war of propaganda, it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media. The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions. Don’t you know that? So it is possible to get involved in this work, but it is cost prohibitive, so to speak. We can simply shine the spotlight on our sources of information and we will not achieve results. It is clear to the whole world what happened then. Even American analysts talk about it directly. It’s true.

Tucker: Yes I, but here’s a question you may able to answer. You worked in Germany famously. The Germans clearly know that their NATO partner did this, but they. And it damaged their economy greatly. It may never recover. Why are they being silent about it? That’s very confusing to me. Why wouldn’t the Germans say something about it?

Vladimir Putin: This also confuses me, but today’s German leadership is guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its national interests. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the logic of their action or inaction. After all, it is not only about Nord Stream one, which was blowing up and the Nord Stream two was damaged, but one pipe is safe and sound and gas can be supplied to Europe through it. But Germany does not open it. We are ready. Please. There is another route through Poland called Yamal Europe, which also allows for large flow. Poland has closed it, but Poland pecks from the German hand. It receives money from the pan European funds, and Germany is the main donor to these pan-European funds. Germany feeds Poland to a certain extent and they close their route to Germany. Why? I don’t understand Ukraine, to which the Germans supply weapons and give money. Germany is the second sponsor of the United States in terms of financial aid to Ukraine. There are two gas routes through Ukraine. They simply closed one route. The Ukrainians. Open the second route. And please get gas from Russia. They do not open it. Why don’t the Germans say, look, guys, we give you money and weapons. Open up the valve. Please let the gas from Russia pass through for us. We are buying liquefied gas at exorbitant prices in Europe, which brings the level of our competitiveness and economy in general down to zero. So do you want us to give you money? Let us have the decent existence to make money for our economy, because this is where the money we give you comes from.They refuse to do so. Why? Ask them. That is what is like in their heads. Those are highly incompetent people.

Tucker: Well, maybe the world is breaking into two hemispheres. One with cheap energy, the other without. And I want to ask you that if we’re now a multipolar world, obviously we are. Can you describe the blocks of alliances? Who is in each side. Do you think?

Vladimir Putin: Listen, you have said that the world is breaking into two hemispheres. A human brain is divided into two hemispheres. At least one is responsible for one type of activities. The other one is more about creativity and so on. But it is still one and the same head. I the world should be a single whole. Security should be shared rather than a meant for the golden billion. That is the only scenario where the world could be stable, sustainable and predictable. Until then, while the head is split in two parts, it is an illness, a serious adverse condition. It is a period of severe disease that the world is going through now. But I think that thanks to honest journalism, this work is akin to the work of the doctors. This could somehow be remedied.

Tucker: Well, let’s just give one example. The U.S. dollar, which has kind of united the world, in a lot of ways, maybe not to your advantage, but certainly to ours. Is that going away as the reserve currency, the com the universally accepted currency? How have sanctions do you think changed the dollar’s place in the world?

Vladimir Putin: You know, to use the dollar as a tool of foreign policy struggle is one of the biggest strategic mistakes made by the US political leadership. The dollar is the cornerstone of the United States power. I think everyone understands very well that no matter how many dollars are printed, they’re quickly dispersed all over the world. Inflation in the United States is minimal. It’s about 3 or 3.4%, which is, I think, totally acceptable for the US. But they won’t stop printing. What does the debt of $33 trillion tell us about? It is about the emission. Nevertheless, it is the main weapon used by the United States to preserve its power across the world. As soon as the political leadership decided to use the US dollar as a tool of political struggle, a blow was dealt to this American power. I would not like to use any strong language, but it is a stupid thing to do and a grave mistake. Look at what is going on in the world. Even the United States allies are now downsizing their dollar reserves. Seeing this, everyone starts looking for ways to protect themselves. But the fact that the United States applies restrictive measures to certain countries, such as placing restrictions on transactions, freezing assets, etc., causes grave concern and sends a signal to the whole world. What did we have here? Until 2022, about 80% of Russian foreign trade transactions were made in US dollars and euros. U.S. dollars accounted for approximately 50% of our transactions with third countries. Well, currently it is down to 13%. It wasn’t us who banned the use of the US dollar. We had no such intention. It was the decision of the United States to restrict our transactions in U.S. dollars. I think it is complete foolishness from the point of view of the interests of the United States itself and its taxpayers, as it damages the U.S. economy, undermines the power of the United States across the world. By the way, our transactions in yuan accounted for about 3%. Today, 34% of our transactions are made in rubles and about as much. A little over 34% in yuan. Why did the United States do this? My only guess is self conceit. They probably thought it would lead to full collapse, but nothing collapsed. Moreover, other countries, including oil producers, are thinking of and already accepting payments for oil in yuan. Do you even realize what is going on or not? Does anyone in the United States realize this. What are you doing? You are cutting yourself off. All experts say this. Ask any intelligent and thinking person in the United States what the dollar means for the US. But you are killing it with your own hands.

Tucker: I think that’s. I think that’s a fair assessment. The question is what comes next? And maybe you trade one colonial power for another, much less sentimental and forgiving colonial power. I mean, or is the the BRICs, for example, in danger of being completely dominated by the Chinese, the Chinese economy? In a way that’s not good for their sovereignty. Do you worry about that?

Vladimir Putin: Well, we have heard those boogeyman stories before. It is a boogeyman story. We’re neighbors with China. You cannot choose neighbors, just as you cannot choose close relatives. We share a border of 1000km with them. This is number one. Second, we have a centuries long history of coexistence. We’re used to it. Third, China’s foreign policy philosophy is not aggressive. Its idea is to always look for compromise. And we can see that. And that’s the next point is as follows. We are always told the same boogeyman story. And here it goes again through in euphemistic form. But it is still the same boogeyman story. The cooperation with China keeps increasing the pace at which China’s cooperation with Europe is growing is higher and greater than that of the growth of Chinese Russian cooperation. If you ask Europeans, aren’t they afraid they might be? I don’t know. But they are still trying to access China’s market at all costs, especially now that they are facing economic problems. Chinese businesses are also exploring the European market. Do Chinese businesses have small presence in the United States? Yes. The political decisions are such that they are trying to limit the cooperation with China. It is to your own detriment, Mr. Tucker, that you are limiting cooperation with China. You are hurting yourself. It is a delicate matter and there are no silver bullet solutions, just as it is with the dollar. So before introducing any illegitimate sanctions, illegitimate in terms of the charter of the United Nations, one should think very carefully for decision makers. This appears to be a problem.

Tucker: So you said a moment ago that the world would be a lot better if it weren’t broken into competing alliances, if there was cooperation globally. One of the reasons you don’t have that is because the current American administration is dead set against you. Do you think if there were a new administration after Joe Biden, that you would be able to reestablish communication with the U.S. government? Or does it not matter who the president is?

Vladimir Putin: I will tell you. But let me finish the previous thought. We, together with my colleague and friend President XI Jinping, set their goal to reach $200 billion of mutual trade with China this year. We have exceeded this level. According to our figures, our bilateral trade with China totals already 230 billion. And the Chinese statistics says it is $240 billion. One more important thing. Our trade is well balanced, mutually complementary in high tech, energy, scientific research and development. It is very balanced. As for BRICs, where Russia took over the presidency this year, the BRICs countries are by and large developing very rapidly. Look, if memory serves me right, back in 1992, the share of the G7 countries in the world economy amounted to 47%, whereas in 2022 it was down to, I think, a little over 30%. The BRICs countries accounted for only 16% in 1992, but now their share is greater than that of the G7. It has nothing to do with the events in Ukraine. This is due to the trends of global development and world economy, as I mentioned just now. And this is inevitable. This will keep happening. It is like the rays of the sun. You cannot prevent the sun from rising. You have to adapt to it. How do the United States adapt with the help of force sanctions, pressure, bombings and use of armed forces? This is about self conceit. Your political establishment does not understand that the world is changing under objective circumstances. And in order to preserve your level, even if someone aspires, pardon me to the level of dominance. You have to make the right decisions in a competent and timely manner. Such brutal actions, including with regard to Russia and say other countries, are counterproductive. This is an obvious fact. It has already become evident. You just asked me if another leader comes and changes something? It is not about the leader. It is not about the personality of a particular person. I had a very good relationship with say Bush. I know that in the United States, he was portrayed as some kind of a country boy who does not understand much. I assure you that this is not the case. I think he made a lot of mistakes with regard to Russia, too. I told you about 2008 and the decision in Bucharest to open the NATO’s doors to for Ukraine and so on. That happened during his presidency. He actually exercised pressure on the Europeans. But in general, on a personal human level, I had a very good relationship with him. He was no worse than any other American or Russian or European politician. I assure you he understood what he was doing as well as others. I had such personal relationship with Trump as well. It is not about the personality of the leader. It is about the elites mindset, leader deal. If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful actions dominates the American society, nothing will change. It will only get worse. But if in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to the objective circumstances, and that one should be able to adapt to them in time using the advantages that the US still has today, then perhaps something may change. Look, China’s economy has become the first economy in the world than purchasing power parity in terms of volume. It’s over to the US a long time ago. The USA comes second, then in the 1.5 billion people, and then Japan with Russia in the fifth place. Russia was the first economy in Europe last year, despite all the sanctions and restrictions. Is it normal from your point of view, sanctions, restrictions and possibility of payments in dollars being cut off from Swift services sanctions against their ships carrying oil? Sanctions against airplanes. Sanctions in everything, everywhere. The largest number of sanctions in the world which are applied, are applied against Russia. And we have become Europe’s first economy during this time. The tools that U.S. uses don’t work. Well, one has to think about what to do. If this realization comes to the ruling elites, then yes, then the first person of the state will act in anticipation of what the voters and the people who make decisions at various levels expect from this person. Then maybe something will change.

Tucker: But you’re describing two different systems. You say the leader acts in the interest of the voters, but you also say these decisions are not made by the leader, they’re made by the ruling classes. You’ve run this country for so long, you’ve known all these American presidents. What are those power centers in the United States? do you think? Like who actually makes the decisions?

Vladimir Putin: I don’t know. America is a complex country. Conservative on one hand, rapidly changing on the other. It’s not easy for us to sort it all out. Who makes decisions in the elections? Is it possible to understand this when each state has its own legislation? Each state regulates itself. Someone can be excluded from elections at the state level. It is a two stage electoral system. It is very difficult for us to understand it. Secondly, there are two parties that are dominant: the Republicans and the Democrats. And within this party system, the centers that make decisions that prepare decisions. Then look, why, in my opinion, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such an erroneous, crude, completely unjustified policy of pressure was pursued against Russia. After all, this is a policy of pressure. NATO expansion, support for the separatists in Caucasus. Creation of a missile defense system. These are all elements of pressure. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Then dragging Ukraine into NATO is all about pressure, pressure, pressure. Why? I think, among other things, because excessive production capacities were created. During the confrontation with the Soviet Union. There were many centers created and specialists on the Soviet Union who could not do anything else. They convinced the political leadership that it is necessary to continue chiseling Russia, to try to break it up, to create on this territory several quasi state entities, and to subdue them in a divided form, to use their combined potential for the future struggle with China. This is a mistake, including the excessive potential of those who worked for the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It is necessary to get rid of this. There should be new, fresh forces, people who look into the future and understand what is happening in the world. Look at how Indonesia is developing. 600 million people. Where can we get away from that? Nowhere. We just have to assume that Indonesia will enter. It is already in the club of the world’s leading economies. No matter who likes it or dislikes. Yes, we understand and are aware that in the United States, despite all the economic problems, the situation is still normal with the economy growing decently. The GDP is growing by 2.5%, if I’m not mistaken. But if we want to ensure the future, then we need to change our approach to what is changing. As I already said, the world would nevertheless change regardless of how the developments in Ukraine end. The world is changing and the United States themselves. Experts are writing that the United States are nonetheless gradually changing their position in the world. It is your experts who write that. I just read them. The only question is how this would happen. Painfully and quickly or gently and gradually. And this is written by people who are not anti-American. They simply follow global development trends. That’s it. And in order to assess them and change policies, we need people who think, look forward, can analyze and recommend certain decisions at the level of political leaders.

Tucker: I just have to ask you, you’ve said clearly that NATO expansion eastward is a violation of the promise you all were made in 1990. It’s a threat to your country. Right before you send troops into Ukraine, the Vice President of the United States, went to the Munich Security Conference and encouraged the president of Ukraine to join NATO. Do you think that was an effort to provoke you into military action?

Vladimir Putin: I repeat, once again, we have repeatedly, repeatedly proposed to seek a solution to the problems that arose in Ukraine after 2014 coup d’etat through peaceful means. But no one listens to us. And moreover, the Ukrainian leaders who were under the complete US control suddenly declared that they would not comply with the Minsk agreements. They disliked everything there and continued military activity in that territory. And in parallel, that territory was being exploited by NATO military structures under the guise of various personnel training and retraining centers. They essentially began to create bases there. That’s all. Ukraine announced that the Russians were a non titular nationality, while passing the laws that limit the rights of non titular nationalities in Ukraine. Ukraine having received all the southeastern territories as a gift from the Russian people, suddenly announced that the Russians were a non titular nationality in that territory. Is that normal? All this put together led to the decision to end the war. That neo-Nazi started in Ukraine in 2014.

Tucker: Do you think Zelensky has the freedom to negotiate a settlement to this conflict?

Vladimir Putin: I don’t know the details. Of course, it’s difficult for me to judge, but I believe he has. In any case, he used to have. His father fought against the fascists Nazis during World War Two. I once talked to him about this. I said, Volodymyr, what are you doing? Why are you supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine today while your father fought against fascism? He was a frontline soldier. I will not tell you what he answered. This is a separate topic, and I think it’s incorrect for me to do so. But as to the freedom of choice. Why not? He came to power on the expectations of Ukrainian people that he would lead Ukraine to peace. He talked about this. It was thanks to this that he won the elections overwhelmingly. But then when he came to power, in my opinion, he realized two things. Firstly, it is better not to clash with neo-Nazis and nationalists because they are aggressive and very active. You can expect anything from them. And secondly, the U.S. Led West supports them and will always support those who antagonize with Russia. It is beneficial and safe. So he took the relevant position despite promising his people to end the war in Ukraine. He deceived his voters.

Tucker: But do you think at this point, as of February 2024, he has the latitude, the freedom, to speak with you or your government directly about putting an end to this, which clearly isn’t helping his country or the world. Can he do that, do you think?

Vladimir Putin: Why not? He considers himself a head of state. He won the elections. Although we believe in Russia that the coup d’etat is the primary source of power for everything that happened after 2014. And in this sense, even today, government is flawed. But he considers himself the president and he is recognized by the United States, all of Europe, and practically the rest of the world in such a capacity. Why not? He can. We negotiated with Ukraine in Istanbul. We agreed. He was aware of this. Moreover, the negotiation group leader, Mr. Arakhamia, his last name I believe, still heads the faction of the ruling party, the party of the president in the Rada. He still heads the presidential faction in the Rada, the country’s parliament. He still sits there. He even put his preliminary signature on the document. I am telling you. But then he publicly stated to the whole world, we were ready to sign this document but Mr. Johnson, then the Prime Minister, came and dissuaded us from doing this, saying it was better to fight Russia. They would give everything needed for us to return what was lost during the clashes with Russia. And we agreed with this proposal. Look, his statement has been published. He said it publicly. Can they return to this or not? The question is, do they want it or not? Further on, president of Ukraine issued a decree prohibiting negotiations with us. Let him cancel that decree. And that’s it. We have never refused negotiations indeed. We hear all the time, is Russia ready? Yes. We have not refused. It was them who publicly refused. Well, let him cancel his decree and enter into negotiations. We have never refused. And the fact that they obey the demand or persuasion of Mr. Johnson, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, seems ridiculous. And it’s very sad to me because, as Mr. Arakhamia put it, we could have stopped those hostilities with war a year and a half ago already. But the British persuaded us and we refused this. Where is Mr. Johnson now? And the war continues.

Tucker: That’s a good question. Where do you think he is, and why did he do that?

Vladimir Putin: Who knows. I don’t understand it myself. There was a general starting point. For some reason, everyone had the illusion that Russia could be defeated on the battlefield. Because of arrogance, because of a pure heart, but not because of a great mind.

Tucker: You’ve described the connection between Russia and Ukraine. You’ve described Russia itself a couple of times as orthodox. That’s central to your understanding of Russia. You’ve said you’re Orthodox. What does that mean for you? You are a Christian leader by your own description. So what effect does that have on you?

Vladimir Putin: You know, as I already mentioned, in 988 Prince Vladimir himself was baptized following the example of his grandmother, Princess Olga. Then he baptized his squad. And then gradually, over the course of several years, he baptized all the Rus. It was a lengthy process from pagans to Christians. It took many years but in the end, this orthodoxy, Eastern Christianity, deeply rooted itself in the consciousness of the Russian people. When Russia expanded, then absorbed other nations who profess Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, Russia has always been very loyal to those people who profess other religions. This is our strength. This is absolutely clear. And the fact is that the main postulates main values are very similar. Not to say the same in all the world religions I have just mentioned, and which are the traditional religions of the Russian Federation. By the way, Russian authorities were always very careful about the culture and religion of those people who came into the Russian Empire. This, in my opinion, forms the basis of both security and stability of the Russian statehood. All the peoples inhabiting Russia basically consider it their motherhood. If, say, people move over to you or to Europe from Latin America and even clearer and more understandable example, people come, but yet they have come to you or to European countries from their historical homeland. And people who profess different religions in Russia consider Russia their motherland. They have no other motherland. We are together. This is one big family and our traditional values are very similar. ‘ve just mentioned one big family, but everyone has his or her own family. And this is the basis of our society. And if we say that the motherland and the family are specifically connected with each other, it is indeed the case, since it is impossible to ensure a normal future for our children and our families unless we ensure a normal, sustainable future for the entire country, for the motherland. That is why patriotic sentiment is so strong in Russia.

Tucker: The one way in which the religions are different is that Christianity is specifically a nonviolent religion. Jesus says, turn the other cheek. Don’t kill. How can a leader who has to kill – of any country – how can a leader be a Christian? How do you reconcile that to yourself?

Vladimir Putin: It is very easy when it comes to protecting oneself and one’s family, one’s homeland. We won’t attack anyone. When did the developments in Ukraine start? Since the coup d’etat and the hostilities in Donbas began. That’s when they started. And we were protecting our people, ourselves, our homeland and our future. As for religion in general, you know, it’s not about external manifestations. It’s not about going to church every day or banging your head on the floor. It is in the heart, and our culture is so human oriented. Dostoyevsky, who was very well known in the West and the genius of Russian culture, Russian literature, spoke a lot about this, about the Russian soul. After all, Western society is more pragmatic. Russian people think more about the eternal, about moral values. I don’t know, maybe you won’t agree with me, but Western culture is more pragmatic after all. I’m not saying this is bad. It makes it possible for today’s golden billion to achieve good success in production, even in science and so on. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just saying that we kind of look the same.

Tucker: So do you see the supernatural at work as you look out across what’s happening in the world now? Do you see God at work? Do you ever think to yourself, these are forces that are not human?

Vladimir Putin: No, to be honest. I don’t think so. My opinion is that the development of the world community is in accordance with inherent laws, and those laws are what they are. It’s always been this way in the history of mankind. Some nations and countries rose, became stronger and more numerous and then left the international stage, losing the status they had accustomed to. There’s probably no need for me to give examples, but we could start with Genghis Khan and horde conquers, the Golden Horde and then end with the Roman Empire. It seems that there has never been anything like the Roman Empire in the history of mankind. Nevertheless, the potential of the barbarians gradually grew, as did their population. In general, the barbarians were getting stronger and begun to develop economically, as we would say today. This eventually led to the collapse of the Roman Empire and the regime imposed by the Romans. However, it took five centuries for the Roman Empire to fall apart. The difference with what is happening now is that all the processes of change are happening had been much faster paced than in Roman times.

Tucker: So when does the AI empire start do you think?

Vladimir Putin: You’re asking increasingly more complicated questions. To answer them you need to be an expert in big numbers, big data and AI. Mankind is currently facing many threats due to the genetic researchers, it is now possible to create this superhuman. A specialized human being. A genetically engineered athlete, scientist, military man. There are reports that Elon Musk has already had the chip implanted in the human brain in the USA.

Tucker: What do you think of that?

Vladimir Putin: I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk. He will do as he sees fit. Nevertheless, you’ll need to find some common ground with him. Search for ways to persuade him. I think he’s a smart person. I truly believe he is. So you’ll need to reach an agreement with him because this process needs to be formalized and subjected to certain rules. Humanity has to consider what is going to happen due to the newest development in genetics or in AI? One can make an approximate prediction of what will happen. Once mankind felt an existential threat coming from nuclear weapons. All nuclear nations begun to come to terms with one another, since they realized the negligent use of nuclear weaponry could drive humanity to extinction. It is impossible to stop research in genetics or AI today, just as it was impossible to stop the use of gunpowder back in the day. But as soon as we realize that the threat comes from unbridled and uncontrolled development of AI or genetics or any other field, the time will come to reach an international agreement on how to regulate these things.

Tucker: I appreciate all the time you’ve given us. I just gotta ask you one last question. And that’s about someone who is very famous in the United States. Probably not here. Evan Gershkovich who’s the Wall Street Journal reporter. He’s 32. And he’s been in prison for almost a year. This is a huge story in the United States. And I just want to ask you directly, without getting into the details of it or your version of what happened, if, as a sign of your decency, you would be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States.

Vladimir Putin: We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them. We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner. However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps. When I talk about the partners, I first of all refer to special services. Special services are in contact with one another. They are talking about the matter in question. There is no taboo to settle this issue. We are willing to solve it but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached.

Tucker: So typically, I mean this stuff has happened for obviously centuries. One country catches another spy within its borders. It trades it for one of its own intel guys in another country. I think what makes and it’s not my business, but what makes this different is the guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a super spy and everybody knows that. And he’s being held hostage in exchange, which is true with respect. It’s true. And everyone knows it’s true. So maybe he’s in a different category. Maybe it’s not fair to ask for, you know, somebody else in exchange for letting him out. Maybe it degrades Russia to do that.

Vladimir Putin: You know, you can give a different interpretations to what constitutes a spy. But there are certain things provided by law. If a person gets secret information and does that in conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage. And that is exactly what he was doing. He was receiving classified, confidential information, and he did it covertly. Maybe he did that out of carelessness or his own initiative. Considering the sheer fact that this is qualify this espionage. The fact has been proven as he was caught red handed when he was receiving this information. If it had been some farfetched excuse, some fabrication, something not proven, it would have been a different story then. But he was caught red handed when he was secretly getting confidential information. What is it then?

Tucker: But are you suggesting he was working for the U.S. government or NATO, or he was just a reporter who was given material he wasn’t supposed to have? Those seem like very different, very different things.

Vladimir Putin: I don’t know who he was working for. But I would like to reiterate that getting classified information in secret is called espionage. And he was working for the US special services, some other agencies. I don’t think he was working for Monaco as Monaco is hardly interested in getting that information. It is up to the special services to come to an agreement. Some groundwork has been laid. There are people who, in our view, are not connected with special services. Let me tell you a story about a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the U.S. That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals. During the events in the Caucasus, do you know what he was doing? I don’t want to say that, but I will do it anyway. He was laying our soldiers taken prisoner on the road and then drove his car over their heads. What kind of person is that? Can he even be called human? But there was a patriot who eliminated him in one of the European capitals. Whether he did it of his own volition or not. That is a different question.

Tucker: I mean, that’s a completely different. He’s a 32 year old newspaper reporter.

Vladimir Putin: He committed something different. He’s not just a journalist. I reiterate. He’s a journalist who is secretly getting confidential information. Yes, it is different, but still, I’m talking about other people who are essentially controlled by the US authorities, wherever they are serving a sentence.

Tucker: There is an ongoing dialog between the special services. This has to be resolved in a calm, responsible and professional manner. They’re keeping in touch, so let them do their work.

Vladimir Putin: I do not rule out that the person you refer to, Mr. Gershkovich, may return to his motherland. But at the end of the day, it does not make any sense to keep him in prison in Russia. We want the U.S. Special Services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing. We are ready to talk. Moreover, the talks are underway and there have been many successful examples of these talks crowned with success. Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well. But we have to come to an agreement.

Tucker: I hope you let him out. Mr. President, thank you.

Vladimir Putin: I also want him to return to his homeland at last. I’m absolutely sincere. But let me say once again, the dialog continues. The more public we render things of this nature, the more difficult it becomes to resolve them. Everything has to be done in calm manner.

Tucker: I wonder if that’s true with the war though. I guess I want to ask one more question, which is and maybe you don’t want to say so for strategic reasons, but are you worried that what’s happening in Ukraine could lead to something much larger and much more horrible? And how motivated are you just to call the U.S. government and say, let’s come to terms?

Vladimir Putin: I already said that we did not refuse to talk. We’re willing to negotiate. It is the western side, and Ukraine is obviously a satellite state of the US. It is evident. I do not want you to take it as if I am looking for a strong word or an insult. But we both understand what is happening. The financial support. 72 billion U.S. dollars was provided. Germany ranks second, then other European countries come. Dozens of billions of U.S. dollars are going to Ukraine. There’s a huge influx of weapons. In this case, you should tell the current Ukrainian leadership to stop and come to a negotiating table, rescind this absurd decree. We did not refuse.

Tucker: Sure, but you already said it. I didn’t think you meant it is an insult because you already said correctly, it’s been reported that Ukraine was prevented from negotiating a peace settlement by the former British Prime Minister acting on behalf of the Biden administration. So, of course they’re a satellite. Big countries control small countries. That’s not new. And that’s why I asked about dealing directly with the Biden administration, which is making these decisions, not President Zelensky of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin: Well if the Zelensky administration in Ukraine refused to negotiate, I assume they did it under the instruction from Washington. If Washington believes it to be the wrong decision, let it abandon it. Let it find the delicate excuse so that no one is insulted. Let it come up with a way out. It was not us who made this decision. It was them. So let them go back on it. That is it. However, they made the wrong decision. And now we have to look for a way out of this situation to correct their mistakes. They did it, so let them correct it themselves. We support this.

Tucker: So I just want to make sure I’m not misunderstanding what you’re saying. I don’t think that I am. I think you’re saying you want a negotiated settlement to what’s happening in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin: Right. And we made it. We prepared the huge document in Istanbul that was initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He had fixed his signature to some of the provisions, not to all of it. He put his signature and then he himself said, we were ready to sign it, and the war would have been over long ago. 18 months ago. However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talk to us out of it and we missed that chance. Well, you missed it. You made a mistake. Let them get back to that. That is all. Why do we have to bother ourselves and correct somebody else’s mistakes? I know one can say it is our mistake. It was us who intensified the situation and decided to put an end to the war that started in 2014, in Donbas. As I have already said by means of weapons. Lt me get back to furthering history. I already told you this. We were just discussing it. Let us go back to 1991, when we were promised that NATO would not expand to 2008, when the doors to NATO opened to the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, declaring Ukraine a neutral state. Let us go back to the fact that NATO and U.S. military bases started to appear on the territory, Ukraine creating threats to us. Let us go back to coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless, though, isn’t it? We may go back and forth endlessly, but they stopped negotiations. Is it a mistake? Yes. Correct it. We are ready. What else is needed?

Tucker: Do you think it’s too humiliating at this point for NATO to accept Russian control of what was two years ago Ukrainian territory?

Vladimir Putin: I said let them think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will. Up until now, there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat to Russia on the battlefield. But now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible, at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition. It is never going to happen. It seems to me that now those who are in power in the West have come to realize this as well. If so, if the realization has set in, they have to think what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue.

Tucker: Would you be willing to say congratulations, NATO, you won and just keep the situation where it is now?

Vladimir Putin: You know, it is a subject matter for the negotiations. No one is willing to conduct or, to put it more accurately… they’re willing, but do not know how to do it. I know they want to. It is not just I see it, but I know they do want it, but they are struggling to understand how to do it. They have driven the situation to the point where we are at. It is not us who have done that. It is our partners, opponents who have done that. Well now let them think how to reverse the situation. We’re not against it. It would be funny if it were not so sad that. This endless mobilization in Ukraine, the hysteria, the domestic problems, sooner or later it will result in an agreement. You know, this probably sounds strange given the current situation. But the relations between the two peoples will be rebuilt anyway. It will take a lot of time, but they will heal. I’ll give you very unusual examples. There is a combat encounter on the battlefield. Here is a specific example. Ukrainian soldiers get encircled. This is an example from real life. Our soldiers were shouting to them. There is no chance. Surrender yourselves. Come out and you will be alive. Suddenly the Ukrainian soldiers were screaming from there in Russian. Perfect Russian. Saying Russians do not surrender. And all of them perished. They still identify themselves as Russian. What is happening is, to a certain extent, an element of a civil war. Everyone in the West thinks that the Russian people have been split by hostilities forever, and now they will be reunited. The unity is still there. Why are the Ukrainian authorities dismantling the Ukrainian Orthodox Church? Because it brings together not only the territory. It brings together our souls. No one will be able to separate the soul. Shall we end here, or is there anything else?

Tucker: Thank you, Mr. President.

The Federation Council of Russia warns the West

February 07, 2024

The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation firmly protests against the collective West countries continuing to supply the Kiev regime with weapons, munitions and military equipment, which are being used to murder civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure in the Russian Federation.

The attacks on Belgorod on December 30, 2023, and on Donetsk on January 21, 2024, were particularly cynical and cruel. The Ukrainian armed forces used multiple launch rocket systems to target crowded public places, killing more than 50 people and wounding over 130 others.

On February 3, 2024, the Ukrainian armed forces attacked the residential neighbourhoods and civilian infrastructure of Lisichansk, killing 28 people, including one child.

The Ukrainian armed forces conduct these heinous actions with the use of weapons, munitions and military equipment sent to Ukraine, in part, by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany, the French Republic, the Czech Republic and several other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union. The list of these weapons includes US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Franco-British Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles and depleted uranium rounds, German AT2 and French HPD F2 mines, which pose a danger to civilians, Czech-made Vampire multiple rocket launchers, and many other types of weapons made in the West.

The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation hereby declares that in continuing to deliver weapons, munitions and military equipment, the countries of the collective West are becoming direct accomplices in the crimes of the Kiev regime, responsible for the death of innocent civilians, including women and children, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and gross violations of international law.

The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation urges the parliaments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany, the French Republic, the Czech Republic and several other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union to acknowledge the direct responsibility of their countries for the death of innocent civilians in the course of attacks conducted by the Ukrainian armed forces on civilian infrastructure in the Russian Federation and to take urgent measures to stop the supply of weapons, munitions and military equipment to the Kiev regime. (emphasis in original, on the Telegram channel)

≈≈

These are extremely serious and consequential developments. The combined West, ostensibly democratic with accountable elected governance, is being held legally responsible for the limitless criminality of the Kiev regime. Both the weaponry and the specialized manning of these complex weaponry being used to kill and to wage systematic terrorism against Russian civilians, are western. The first (or last?) warning shots across the bow…… If there is no acceptable response, as is likely, how long until the tone and language hardens, transforming into declarative, as during December 2021??

Western Civilizational Catastrophe

A moment of truth for the West and the whole world

By Rotislav Ishchenko

In the spring, somewhere in March-April, but hardly later in May, a moment of truth comes for the West. The point is not only that while maintaining the current dynamics (and why would she change?) by this time, the Ukrainian front will roll back very noticeably (per kilometers per day along the entire or almost the entire line) and non-stop. In the worst case scenario, such a development of events was predicted and prepared for it.

We have repeatedly considered various options worked out by Washington, which came down to one general decision — due to the delay in hostilities in Ukraine, creating a new military conflict or without it (just by maintaining a high level of tension and deploying troops in border areas) to ensure post-Ukrainian deterrence of Russia by Europe, after which to switch to China.

Each time I considered the next option, I wrote: « If they succeed, but they will try very hard ». They tried. But the logic of the development of events turned out to be stronger than their efforts, and now all the plans to contain Russia in the West by creating a stalemate in a conflict situation turned out to be almost unrealizable.

To maintain the resistance of the Armed Forces by introducing the own forces of NATO countries to Ukraine, the West is catastrophically late with the deployment of new contingents in Poland and the Baltic states. New divisions cannot simply be placed in a clean field — it is necessary to provide them with military towns, a repair base, warehouses, training grounds, etc. All this is not, nor are there any troops ready for operational deployment on a long-term basis (American are needed in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East, and European armies, due to many years of chronic lack of recruits, were reduced to almost a trained composition).

The presence of certain parts of constant readiness does not change the essence of the matter. Today, the readiness of the armies of European NATO members for a real war is lower than that of the Russian army in the most difficult time « of the 90s ». The unfolding Russian offensive and the stubborn intransigence of Russian diplomacy ( not wanting to listen to any world if it is not on Russian conditions ) finally convinced the West that, that the introduction of symbolic contingents to Ukraine to designate the red line will not solve the problem. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will not stop, but simply move « allies » Ukraine together with the Armed Forces themselves, putting the West before the need to choose between recognition of a shameful defeat, with a defeat on the battlefield of NATO units proper, and the beginning with Russia of a full-fledged war, which the European armies cannot wage, and the Americans have no strength for it,for they are going to engage in China at this moment.

Perhaps the Europeans would have somehow solved this problem. But there is something worse than a shortage of troops. EU countries have run out of military equipment and shells. Everything that was gone to Ukraine. The rest is enough for a week or two (with a very economical approach for a month) of hostilities, industry is not only able to satisfy the needs of the front, but even to replenish the spent stocks it takes two to three years, according to optimistic estimates. The Americans have some reserves (it is not clear how large), but they are again needed in the Chinese direction and to help Israel, which, unlike the initial optimistic statements, said, that the Hamas war will last at least until 2025 (and there, except for Hamas, who want to pinch the Tel Aviv tail — car and small cart).

In general, there is no one to fight Europeans and nothing, and there is no one to help them in this grief. Hence, all American architecture « Russian containment » in the West is crumbling.

Moreover, there is no certainty even that European countries will be able to maintain the sanctions mechanism for a long time. US Allied governments are under severe pressure not only from the opposition, but also from the vast majority of their own citizens, who, in unison with French farmers, say: « We are for continuing to support Ukraine, but not at the expense of the interests of their own population. If there is not enough money for everything, then first the problems of our own citizens should be solved, and only then will it be possible to think if something remains for Ukraine ».

Among other things, it means, that even the late (for Kiev belatedly catastrophic) EU decision to allocate 50 billion euros to Ukraine for five years (which will need to be reapproved every year) with a high degree of probability may not be implemented. Mass strikes and protest marches of workers, on the one hand, and the growing popularity of the opposition, on the other, leave very little room for maneuver for pro-American governments in the EU. An attempt to follow the power path of the prohibitions of opposition parties, which the Scholz government in Germany is hinting at, fraught with the emergence in Europe of its « Texas » with unpredictable (but in any case catastrophic for the current system) results.

The United States cannot leave the Russian front unattended and focus on China. In this case, Russia without any war (military operations in Ukraine will quickly end, and Europe will pretend that it just passed by) will be the leader of Europe (at least most of it), much faster than the United States will be able to achieve some kind of hypothetical success in the Chinese direction. It is also impossible to postpone the suppression of China and focus on Russia. In this case, China will win in Asia much faster than the United States can hope to at least stabilize the situation in Europe, reaching a mutually blocked political position in the Russian direction (which they are not a fact, what can they create).

Failure in any of the directions devalues even victory in another, since the overall balance is not in favor of the United States. But the fact is that we can’t talk about Washington’s victory in this option: the best that Americans can hope for is — a draw in one direction (without peace, with armed confrontation, but without war) with an American defeat on the other.

The United States is in a strategic impasse, which is reinforced by the fact that the situation around Texas has shown: the White House does not control the situation within the United States and cannot count on consolidated support not only for the population, but also for elites, he decide on a big war.

The United States lost the main thing — they lost time. Donbass paid for this victory with his lives, while for many years the Russians in Ukraine who remained under Nazi occupation paid for it. During the Great Patriotic War, Smolensk and Kiev, for two years, Minsk for three years, part of the Baltic states were under occupation for four years (until the end of the war), and Leningrad survived the blockade for three years, so that the country can gather strength, exhaust the enemy and win not one battle, but the whole war.

The West has no good solution. He (in the person of the ruling elites) cannot agree to peace on Russian terms, but he does not have the strength to continue raising rates: he no longer pulls a big war not only on the outside, but also according to internal indicators (the population may rebel, and the army — will not fulfill the order if it comes to a big war, especially under the curtain of cadence of unpopular governments, on the eve of the elections they lost in advance).

Moreover, the West is not able to wage a proxy war against Russia beyond 2024. Ukrainian proxies are ending. Even if they manage to hold out not only until the fall, but until December 2024 (which is very doubtful), the end of Ukraine is still near, and to replace them, the West was not able to prepare yet another one who wanted to die for the United States in a proxy war with Russia.

This is a civilizational catastrophe — the first since the fall of the Roman Empire (except for the defeat of American Indian civilizations, which from the point of view of the traditional European approach to history were peripheral and did not affect global processes). The civilization of the traditional West is collapsing before our eyes. On his example, we can understand how not only Roman, but also Assyrian and other military civilizations collapsed, yesterday, still prosperous and in a matter of years, suddenly running from the masters of the world to garbage under the feet of new winners.

// //

There is another problem to which we have devoted a lot of discussions, but which is updated in connection with the sharp weakening of the West and its entry into the finish line leading to the civilizational catastrophe. Against the background of this huge tragedy, no one knows what to do with the remnants of Ukraine.

On the one hand, no one wants to set a precedent for the liquidation of the state — of the UN founder by decision of an international conference (will anyone else be lucky?) On the other hand, no one has the desire or resources to contain « independent Ukraine », which not only cannot exist independently, but tightly inscribed in the old outgoing civilizational system (as a resource of the dying part, used to restrain the growth of new forces) and without this old civilizational system, it is a political and historical misunderstanding, interfering with everything and not inspiring anyone.

Russia has no answer to this question (more precisely, there are many of them, but not one has yet been designated as the final solution). There is no answer to this question in the West. Perhaps against the background of « the death of Atlantis » of the modern West, this issue will be decided by itself (as the Angles, Saxons and Uuts decided in the 5th century the fate of Roman Britain left by legions). But not a fact.

At an interesting time we live.

(machine translation)

Five Variables Defining Our Future

What Putin, Xi and Raisi have been explaining to the Global South, explicitly or in quite subtle ways, is that we are right in the crux of a civilizational war.

by Pepe Escobar at Sputnik

In the late 1930s, with WWII in motion, and only months before his assassination, Leon Trotsky already had a vision of what the future Empire of Chaos would be up to.

“For Germany it was a question of ‘organizing Europe’. The United States must ‘organize’ the world. History is bringing mankind face to face with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism…Under one or another pretext and slogan the United States will intervene in the tremendous clash in order to maintain its world dominion.”

We all know what happened next. Now we are under a new volcano that even Trotsky could not have identified: a declining United States faced with the Russia-China “threat”. And once again the entire planet is affected by major moves in the geopolitical chessboard.

The Straussian neocons in charge of US foreign policy could never accept Russia-China leading the way towards a multipolar world. For now we have NATO’s perpetual expansionism as their strategy to debilitate Russia, and Taiwan as their strategy to debilitate China.

Yet in these past two years, the vicious proxy war in Ukraine only accelerated the transition towards a multipolar, Eurasia-driven world order.

With the indispensable help of Prof. Michael Hudson, let’s briefly recap the 5 key variables that are conditioning the current transition.

Losers Don’t Dictate Terms

1. The stalemate: That’s the new, obsessive US narrative on Ukraine – on steroids. Confronted with the upcoming, cosmic NATO humiliation in the battlefield, the White House and the State Dept. had to – literally – improvise.

Moscow though is unfazed. The Kremlin has set the terms a long time ago: total surrender, and no Ukraine as part of NATO. To “negotiate”, from the Russia point of view, is to accept these terms.

And if the deciding powers in Washington opt for turbo-charging the weaponization of Kiev, or to unleash “the most heinous provocations in order to change the course of events”, as asserted this week by the head of the SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, fine.

The road ahead will be bloody. In case the usual suspects sideline popular Zaluzhny and install Budanov as the head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU will be under total control of the CIA – and not NATO generals, as it’s still the case.

This might prevent a military coup against the sweaty sweatshirt puppet in Kiev. Yet things will get much uglier. Ukraine will go Total Guerrilla, with only two objectives: to attack Russian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Moscow, of course, is fully aware of the dangers.

Meanwhile, chatterbox overdrive in several latitudes suggest that NATO may even be getting ready for a partition of Ukraine. Whatever form that might take, losers do not dictate conditions: Russia does.

As for EU politicos, predictably, they are in total panic, believing that after mopping up Ukraine, Russia will become even more of a “threat” to Europe. Nonsense. Not only Moscow couldn’t give a damn to what Europe “thinks”; the last thing Russia wants or needs is to annex Baltic or Eastern European hysteria. Moreover, even Jens Stoltenberg admitted “NATO sees no threat from Russia toward any of its territories.”

2. BRICS: Since the start of 2024, this is The Big Picture: the Russian presidency of BRICS+ — which translates as a particle accelerator towards multipolarity. The Russia-China strategic partnership will be increasing actual production, in several fields, while Europe plunges into depression, unleashed by the Perfect Storm of sanctions blowback against Russia and German de-industrialization. And it’s far from over, as Washington is also ordering Brussels to sanction China across the spectrum.

As Prof. Michael Hudson frames it, we are right in the middle of “the whole split of the world and the turning towards China, Russia, Iran, BRICS”, united in “an attempt to reverse, undo, and roll back the whole colonial expansion that’s occurred over the last five centuries.”

Or, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defined at the UN Security Council this process of BRICS leaving Western bullies behind, the changing world order is like “a playground scuffle – which the West is losing.”

Bye Bye, Soft Power

3. The Lone Emperor: The “stalemate” – actually losing a war – is directly linked to its compensation: the Empire squeezing and shrinking a vassalized Europe. But even as you exercise nearly total control over all these relatively wealthy vassals, you lose the Global South, for good: if not all their leaders, certainly the overwhelming majority of public opinion. The icing in the toxic cake is to support a genocide followed by the whole planet in real time. Bye bye, soft power.

4. De-dollarization: All across the Global South, they did the math: if the Empire and its EU vassals can just steal over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves – from a top nuclear/military power – they can do it to anyone, and they will.

The key reason Saudi Arabia, now a BRICS 10 member, is being so meek on the genocide in Gaza is because their hefty US dollar reserves are hostage to the Hegemon.

And yet the caravan moving away from the US dollar will only keep growing in 2024: that will depend on crucial crossover deliberations inside the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and BRICS 10.

5. Garden and Jungle: What Putin and Xi have essentially been telling the Global South – including the energy-rich Arab world – is quite simple. If you want improved trade and economic growth, who’re you gonna link to?

So we’re back to the “garden and jungle” syndrome – first coined by imperial Britain orientalist Rudyard Kipling. Both the British concept of “white man’s burden” and the American concept of “Manifest Destiny” derive from the “garden and jungle” metaphor.

NATOstan, and hardly all of it, is supposed to be the garden. The Global South is the jungle. Michael Hudson again: as it stands, the jungle is growing, but the garden isn’t growing “because its philosophy is not industrialization. Its philosophy is to make monopoly rents, meaning rents that you make in your sleep without producing value. You just have a privilege of a right to collect money on a monopoly technology that you have.”

The difference now, compared to all those decades ago of an imperial free lunch, is “an immense shift of technological advance”, away from North America and the US, to China, Russia and selected nodes across Asia.

Forever Wars. And No Plan B

If we combine all these variants – stalemate; BRICS; the Lone Emperor; de-dollarization; garden and jungle – in search of the most probable scenario ahead, it’s easy to see that the only “way out” for a cornered Empire is, what else, the default modus operandi: Forever Wars.

And that brings us to the current American aircraft carrier in West Asia, totally out of control yet always supported by the Hegemon, aiming for a multi-front war against the whole Axis of Resistance: Palestine, Hezbollah, Syria, Iraqi militias, Ansarullah in Yemen, and Iran.

In a sense we’re back to the immediate post-9/11, when what the neocons really wanted was not Afghanistan, but the invasion of Iraq: not only to control the oil (which in the end they didn’t) but, in Michael Hudson’s analysis, “to essentially create America’s foreign legion in the form of ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Now, “America has two armies that it’s using to fight in the Near East, the ISIS/al-Qaeda foreign legion (Arabic-speaking foreign legion) and the Israelis.”

Hudson’s intuition of ISIS and Israel as parallel armies is priceless: they both fight the Axis of Resistance, and never (italics mine) fight each other. The Straussian neocon plan, as tawdry as it gets, essentially is a variant of the “fight to the last Ukrainian”: to “fight to the last Israeli” on the way to the Holy Grail, which is to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran (copyright John McCain) and provoke regime change.

As much as the “plan” did not work in Iraq or Ukraine, it won’t work against the Axis of Resistance.

What Putin, Xi and Raisi have been explaining to the Global South, explicitly or in quite subtle ways, is that we are right in the crux of a civilizational war.

Michael Hudson has done a lot to bring down such an epic struggle to practical terms. Are we heading towards what I described as techno-feudalism – which is the AI format of rent-seeking turbo-neoliberalism? Or are we heading to something similar to the origins of industrial capitalism?

Michael Hudson characterizes an auspicious horizon as “raising living standards instead of imposing IMF financial austerity on the dollar block”: devising a system that Big Finance, Big Bank, Big Pharma and what Ray McGovern memorably coined as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) cannot control. Alea jacta est.

The Ukraine Charade, Revisited

Zhuangzi: “You can’t talk about the ocean to a frog living in a well, you can’t describe ice to a summer midge, and you can’t reason with an ignoramus.”

by Pepe Escobar at  ZeroHedge

Selected players scattered around the Beltway silos of power, diligently working as messengers for the people who really run the show in the Hegemon, have concluded that a no holds barred confrontation with Russia would lead to the collapse of all of NATO; undo decades of US iron grip on Europe; and ultimately cause the Empire’s downfall.

Playing brinkmanship games sooner or later would meet the indestructible red lines inbuilt in the unmovable Russian object.

US elites are smarter than that. They may excel on calculated risk. But when the stakes are this high, they know when to hedge and when to fold.

The “loss” of Ukraine – now a graphic imperative – is not worth risking the loss of the whole Hegemonic ride. That would be too much for the Empire to lose.

So even as they get increasingly desperate with the accelerated imperial plunge into a geopolitical and geoeconomic abyss, they’re frantically changing the narrative – a domain in which they excel.

And that explains why discombobulated European vassals in NATO-controlled EU are now in total panic.

Davos this week offered bucketloads of Orwellian salad. The key, frantic messages: War is peace. Ukraine is not (italics mine) losing and Russia is not winning. Hence Ukraine needs way more weaponizing.

Yet even Norwegian Wood Stoltenberg was told to toe the new line that matters: “NATO is not moving into Asia. It’s China that is coming close to us.” That certainly adds a new wacky meaning to the notion of moving tectonic plates.

Keep the Forever Wars engine running

There is a total void of “leadership” in Washington. There is no “Biden”. Just Team Biden: a corporate combo featuring low-rent messengers such as de facto neocon Little Blinkie. They do what they’re told by wealthy “donors” and the financial-military interests that really run the show, reciting the same old cliché-saturated lines day after day, bit players in a Theatre of the Absurd.

Only one exhibit suffices.

Reporter: “Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?”

The President of the United States: “Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.”

The same in what passes for “strategic thinking” applies to Ukraine.

The Hegemon is not being lured into fighting in West Asia – as much as the genocidal arrangement in Tel Aviv, in tandem with US Zio-cons, wants to drag it into a war on Iran.

Still, the imperial machine is being steered to keep the Forever Wars engine running, non-stop, at varying speeds.

The elites in charge are way more clinical than the whole Team Biden. They know they will not win in what will soon be country 404. But the tactical victory, so far, is massive: enormous profits out of the frantic weaponizing; totally gutting European industry and sovereignty; reducing the EU to the sub-status of a lowly vassal; and from now on plenty of time to find new proxy warriors against Russia – from Polish and Baltic fanatics to the whole Takfiri-neo ISIS galaxy.

From Plato to NATO, it may be too early to state it’s all over for the West. What is nearly over is the current battle, centered on country 404. As Andrei Martyanov himself stresses, it was up to Russia, once again, “to start dismantling what today has become the house of demons and horror in the West and by the West, and she is doing it again in a Russian way – by defeating it on the battlefield.”

That complements the detailed analysis expressed on the new hand grenade of a book by French historian Emmanuel Todd.

Yet the war is far from over. As Davos once again made it quite clear, they will not give up.

Chinese wisdom rules that, “when you want to hit a man with an arrow, first hit his horse. When you want to capture all the bandits, first capture their chief.”

The “chief” – or chiefs – certainly are far from being captured. BRICS+ and de-dollarization may have a shot at it, starting this year.

The plutocratic endgame

Under this framework, even massive US-Ukraine corruption involving rings and rings of theft from lavish US “aid”, as recently revealed by former Ukrainian MP Andrey Derkach, is a mere detail.

Nothing has been done or will be done about it. After all, the Pentagon itself fails every audit. These audits, by the way, did not even include the income from the massive multi-billion dollar heroin operation in Afghanistan – with Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo set up as the distribution center for Europe. The profits were pocketed by US intel operatives off the books.

When fentanyl replaced heroin as a domestic US plague, it was pointless to continue occupying Afghanistan – subsequently abandoned after two decades in pure Helter Skelter mode, leaving behind over $7 billion in weapons.

It’s impossible to describe all these Empire-centric concentric rings of corruption and institutionalized organized crime to a brainwashed collective West. The Chinese, once again, to the rescue. Taoist Zhuangzi (369 – 286 B.C.): “You can’t talk about the ocean to a frog living in a well, you can’t describe ice to a summer midge, and you can’t reason with an ignoramus.”

NATO’s cosmic humiliation in Ukraine notwithstanding, this proxy war against Russia, against Europe and against China remains the fuse that could light up a WWIII before the end of this decade. Who will decide it is an extremely rarefied plutocracy. No, not Davos: these are only their clownish mouthpieces.

Russia has reactivated a military factory system at lightning speed – now standing at about 15 times the capacity of January 2022. Along the front line there are about 300,000 troops, plus in the back two pincer armies of hundreds of thousands of mobile troops in each pincer being prepared to create a double envelopment of the Ukrainian Army and annihilate it.

Even if country 404 is utterly defeated in 2024, once again it’s imperative to stress it: this is far from over. The leadership in Beijing fully understands that the Hegemon is such a disintegrating wreck, on the way to secession, that the only way to hold it together would be a world war. It’s time to re-read T.S. Eliot in more ways than one: “We had the experience but missed the meaning, / and approach to the meaning restores the experience.”

Michael Hudson on Russia, Iran and the Red Sea: NATO’s War Economy Collapses

Join us as the renowned economist discusses Russia’s new status as largest economy of Europe, the Red Sea economic crisis brewing and China’s forecasted collapse despite becoming the largest car producer in the world this year. All this and much much more!

In a new discussion with Danny Haiphong, Michael Hudson continues his analysis of why US policies aimed at hurting Russia, China, and Iran are damaging US allies, particularly Europe. That both shrinks US markets and the resource base the US has available were it to be so dumb as to act on its military escalation threat display.

HAIPHONG: Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the stream. It’s Danny Haiphong, your host. As you can see, I’m joined by the renowned economist and author, Professor Michael Hudson. You can find his website in the video description. Please do hit the like button as we begin. That helps boost this stream. And, of course, you can find not only Michael’s website, but all the ways you can support this channel in the video description. How are you doing today, Michael?

HUDSON: Pretty good. It’s snowing here in New York, so I’m pretty much snowed in.

HAIPHONG: Yep. Yes, yes, it is quite bad out there today. But I am glad to have you here because there’s a lot of economic news. But you emphasize, and this channel tries to emphasize, the relationship between geopolitics and economics, geopolitical economy, as you, Radhika [Desai], and Ben Norton, and other great journalists have attempted to do.

And so I wanted to start, then, let’s talk about Ukraine first. Let’s begin there. There’s all kinds of talks about there being a quote-unquote stalemate with regard to Ukraine.

However, the realities, especially economically and on the battlefield, are a lot different. So, Michael, I’m just going to let you go on what you would like to comment on with regard to Ukraine, because the situation is not as hot in the news, but there are massive changes happening in this conflict.

HUDSON: Well, it’s the United States that’s saying that it’s a stalemate in Ukraine. What they mean is that the Ukraine counter-offenses have been utterly ineffective. Ukraine has lost the war.

And there have been almost all of the discussions that you get, for instance, on Judge Napolitano’s interviews, and the European press, the Russian press, the Chinese press, they all say, Well, the war is over. Russia can just continue to take however much it wants, but there is no point in Russia trying to take more land right now because Ukraine, or rather Mr.

Zelensky, is sending all of the Ukrainians he can find, especially the Hungarian Ukrainians, the Russian-speaking Ukrainians, and the Romanian Ukrainians, in the fight to get killed.

So, maybe we can convince Russia, Don’t mop up, don’t lock in your victory. Why don’t we just say it’s a stalemate and leave things the way they are since you’re winning so strongly?

Well, obviously, Russia has already said, We’ve already given the terms for our peace. Of course, we can negotiate anytime. Our terms are simple, total surrender. We’re going to get rid of Nazism. We’re going to make sure that Ukraine will never join NATO. And we’re going to make sure that the Russian speakers and Crimea are part of Russia. So anytime you want to negotiate, meaning, say yes to our terms, we’ll be glad to. But meanwhile, we’re just going to sit here. And if you want to send more and more troops in, that’s fine.

Now, the Americans think that, okay, if Russia isn’t taking any more land, it’s a tie. But it’s really not a tie because if you read President Putin’s speeches and Foreign Secretary Lavrov’s speeches, he says, Well, Ukraine is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking about the big picture. The big picture is, for instance, that Russia on January 1st became the lead administrator of the BRICS+.

And the United States is meanwhile losing the fight all over the world. It’s losing the economic fight against Russia and China. Russia is increasing its industrial production, not only military, but in the production of aircraft, automobiles. China is growing and the United States is not. And most of all, Europe is going into a depression led by the collapse of, or I should say, the destruction of German industry as a result of the sanctions against Russia. And also the sanctions that the United States are insisting that Europe impose against China.

The United States has told Europe, you really can only trade with us and our NATO allies.

We want you to reduce your trade with China to what the head of the EU, Mr. Borrell, has said. He said, Well, you know, China, we import a lot more from you than we export. It’s got to be even. And China said, well, there are plenty of things we’d like to import from you, Europeans, such as the chip-making etching machinery for ultraviolet etching that’s made by Holland. And Borrell says, Oh, we can’t, the United States won’t let us send you, sell you anything that potentially is used in the military. And China says, well, anything that can be used economically can be military because the military is part of the economy.

So I guess we’re quite happy to agree with you and have balanced trade between China and Europe. We’ll just cut back our trade with you to maybe the $100 a year trade that you have to trade with us.

So Europe is voluntarily isolating, limiting its trade and investment to the United States, cutting off the trade with Russia. And without Russian gas and oil, you’re going to have the German, French, and Italian manufacturing industry, chemical industry, fertilizer industry, and agriculture continue to shrink.

And so the stalemate that America is talking about really means we’re shrinking our allies in Europe. We’re losing the third world. And what is happening in Ukraine, fighting to the last Ukrainian, now looks like a similar fight in the Near East, where it looks like there’s a similar stalemate, which really has been inflaming the world’s global majority and the global South into thinking that all of a sudden this is something awful. I’ll get to that later.

But the important thing is that I think the Americans have already realized that they’re going to lose the war in Ukraine. And the problem, as you read the New York Times and the Washington Post, and especially the Financial Times, is if we lose the war in Ukraine, how will Biden win the election in November? Because he’s been pushing, his whole policy is we can essentially wreck Russia. Our sanctions are going to lead to the collapse of Russian industry. The Russian people will get so upset with the war, there’s going to be a regime change. They’ll overthrow Mr. Putin and we can get another Boris Yeltsin in who is going to really wreck Russia in the way that our neoliberal advisors were able to wreck it in the 1990s.

Well, that hasn’t happened. So what’s going to happen? Well, the public relations people of the Democratic Party have got together and they’ve all decided, Okay, what we want to tell the people is, it really didn’t matter in Ukraine. It doesn’t matter because we don’t have to win in Ukraine because America can fight [with] a kind of soft power. And we have other ways of dominating the world and maintaining America number one, even though we’re de-industrializing our economy. Even though we’re the largest debtor in the world, we’re going to be able to dominate. And the new Democratic Party public relations push is what’s called “soft power”.

And in yesterday’s January 15th Financial Times, there was a long discussion. They had a whole page by a man who had been President Clinton’s advisor, National Intelligence Council advisor Joseph Nye. For a whole page. And it was Nye who coined the term soft power. A few decades ago, when he was arguing with Paul Kennedy, who was saying that the Americans were on the decline. And he came up with this idea to say, the United States can still be able to exert influence, but not of a military type, but of financial power, regime change.

And what he said, he gave five reasons why the United States would not necessarily be eclipsed by China or by Russia or by any other countries. And it’s hilarious to look at the five reasons that the Financial Times yesterday trotted forth for why there’s not going to be any threat to the United States.

The first reason he gave was geography and friendly neighbors. Well in the last few months, especially since the fighting and Israeli attacks on Gaza have occurred, America’s lost public opinion. And even Secretary Blinken has said that the fight in Israel is creating antagonism, not only against Israel, but America has lost its moral dominance as a result of backing the genocide and opposing any criticism of Israel within the United Nations. So it’s lost foreign support. There’s a growing anti-Americanism, not only in Asia, Africa, and the global South, but in Europe.

Well, the second reason that Nye cited was domestic energy supplies. America controls oil. Not only does it produce its own oil, but it’s just been able to block the rest of the world from importing Russian oil, and it’s been able to blow up Nord Stream. And now it’s pushing Israel to essentially act as another Ukraine. It’s pushing Israel to incite Lebanon and Iran into a provocation, into a military response to the Israeli attacks that is going to enable Israel to do what a Senate majority leader, the Republican leader, has been pushing for, and what Biden is pushing for, and what the neocons have been pushing for for 20 years, war with Iran to grab the oil reserves of what were Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. And if it can control the oil reserves of the Near East and be able to block off their energy exports to all the other countries, just as it’s been able to block Russia’s oil exports to Europe, then it can control the industrialization of other countries because industry basically runs on oil and gas. Industry is energy, and without energy, you’re not going to be able to have your own industrialization independently of the United States. So the U.S. foreign policy, as we’ve talked before, I think, in our last show, for 100 years, the United States has used oil as an attempt to control the world’s economy.

Well, the third point that Nye points out is the dollar-based financial system. Well, it’s amazing that he could say that in yesterday’s Financial Times when the whole world was trying to de-dollarize. You’re getting one speech after another, not only from Russia and from China, but from the global South countries. And even in the Near East, they’re saying now that America has grabbed Russia’s foreign exchange reserves, $300 billion, all of the money that we’ve saved in our domestic monetary reserves are subject to confiscation by the United States. And they’ve already told Saudi Arabia that if they do not keep their international reserves from oil exports in the form of United States stocks and bonds, that would be treated as an act of war. So here in the Near East, you’re having Saudi Arabia and Bahrain under increasing pressure to support the Arabs being attacked by Israel, and yet they’re afraid to act because the United States is holding their dollars hostage. Well, very quickly, you’re seeing other countries move out of dollars as quickly as they can.

And finally, the fifth argument that Nye points out for why America cannot lose is demo-graphic and technological leadership. But that’s the one fatal Achilles heel of the United States economy. Its hope, its idea of technological leadership is to get monopoly power over information technology, pharmaceuticals, and other areas that it can dominate for intellec-tual property through copyrighting and through essentially suing countries that will adopt the technology that’s developed in the United States.

Prof. Hudson steps away for a minute.

HAIPHONG: That summary, Joseph Nye outlined it, and Professor Hudson broke it down, broke down the facade, or the reality behind the facade that the neocons spread. And what’s so interesting about this piece is that, I mean, Joseph Nye, I mean, he is a Carter and then Clinton functionary, someone who served as an Undersecretary of State and Undersecretary of Defense for these administrations. And he is someone who actually has been considered less hawkish, but if we went through this article, you would see that what he is arguing with regard to soft power is actually regime change by other means.

And that regime change is heavily connected to the economic realm, as perhaps Professor Hudson outlined so eloquently. There is so many connections to be made. We have a lot of them I’m going to raise with Professor Hudson, including on Russia, Russia being now the biggest economy in Europe by purchasing power parity terms.

Also, the China collapse theory. There’s new news. There’s recent news about China actually surpassing Japan and leading the world now in car manufacturing and how its electric vehicle production is causing so much alarm.

Prof. Hudson returns

I wanted to now ask you about a development, given all that you outlined with regard to Joseph Nye’s assessment and analysis on soft power in the US’s so-called advantages. I wanted to talk to you about this story here. Vladimir Putin was just meeting with business leaders in the Far East, and he made a claim about Russia now being the biggest economy in Europe by purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, becoming Europe’s first economy, despite pressure from all sides.

And here’s what he said. He said, It seems that we are being strangled and pressured from every side, but still we are the largest economy in Europe. We left Germany behind and climbed into fifth in the world. China, the U.S., India, Japan and Russia. We are number one in Europe. And so there’s reports in that conversation with business leaders from the region that Russia is set to grow three percent year on year, and it’s likely to be even higher, maybe four and five percent.

Now, there’s also the news, you brought it up, but there is a huge stagnation going on in Europe. In an analysis also in Financial Times, there are 48 economists that talked about the eurozone set for weak growth this coming year. And the prediction was across these economists, zero point six percent on average, with many indicating less than that. And of course, some indicating more. But the vast majority said it was going to be less than half of one percent. So, Michael, your thoughts. How did this, how did this happen? And perhaps you can explain the economic intricacies on how this happened.

HUDSON: Well, we’ve discussed in the past how it happened. The United States, starting with President Clinton and actually with President Carter, decided to help American firms make higher profits by moving their labor force out of the United States, by trying to shift manufacturing first to Mexico, along the maquiladoras  under Carter, and then under Clinton to China and Asia.

And the idea was to create increasing industrial unemployment in the United States to prevent labor’s wages from rising. And the theory that has guided the Democratic Party’s economists is, if you can cut wages, there will be higher profits and higher profits will lead to more prosperity.

Well, the reality is that you cut wages by moving your industry outside of the country, by de-industrializing. And that is still the policy that America has taken. And it has replaced industrialization with financialization to make money financially, hoping that the companies that have now moved out towards China and Asia and other countries are going to be able to have higher profits and essentially become more prosperous for the donor class to the Democratic and also the Republican parties.

But what President Putin was talking about was something much more. Russia already, along with China, have begun to produce their own airplanes. Take a look at the last week’s news, all about Boeing, yet again, having other accidents on its airplanes. Boeing used to be a technological leader in aircraft, but then it was merged with McDonnell Douglas and became a financial company. So it broke up the Boeing system of making airplanes and began to outsource to various other companies, all the little parts. And all Boeing is now is assembling diverse parts that it buys from various suppliers, very much like television sets are made. You buy different parts from different suppliers.

Well, the reason Putin is making his speech in the Near East is Russia and China are working together for an enormous industrial development to take place in eastern Siberia, which has been obviously underpopulated because of the bad weather for many centuries now, but also is now beginning to warm up. And the idea is to integrate Chinese industry and Russian industry and technology and to design entire cities that are going to be technological complexes producing all sorts of interrelated parts together, computer parts, airplanes, trains, automobiles. China is already the largest automobile exporter in the world. And so you’re going to have this whole new center of industrial growth in eastern Asia.

Well, the idea is that this is going to be a great increase in prosperity. And the way in which these cities are developing, when I first went to Russia in 1994, I stayed at the home of the professor who had designed Togliatti City, the city where they were going to begin producing automobiles designed by the Italians. And he explained how he designed the whole city together to combine the factories and production to workers’ housing, to workers’ entertainment, to workers’ health, and all of the different forms of supplying materials and parts of cars all dovetailed together. Well, he was basically an industrial engineer. And that is how Russia and China are developing the cities that they’re creating along with universities, training systems in East Asia and Siberia.

So essentially, Putin is saying to the world, if you’re a global south country or an Arab country, and you want to have your economy grow and trade more, who are you going to tie your economy to? The world is being split into two parts, the US-NATO “garden” and the rest of the world, 85% jungle. The jungle is growing. The garden isn’t growing because its philosophy is not industrialization. Its philosophy is to make monopoly rents, meaning rents that you make in your sleep without producing value. You just have a privilege of a right to collect money on a monopoly technology that you have.

But China and Russia are way ahead of the United States in most of the growth technologies that we’re talking about, not yet in the ultraviolet etching of computer chips, but in many areas.

So you’re having the whole shift of technological advance move away from North America and the United States, where it was ever since World War I, to Russia and China.

How is the United States going to cope with the rest of the world industrializing and not needing any contact with the United States?

President Biden keeps saying China is our enemy. Ultimately, our military says we’re going to have war with China within two or three years. We’re at war with Russia right now in the Ukraine. That’s our objective, war.

But the rest of the world, essentially, its response is not a mirror image of this, is not to say, well, we can go to war. We’re going to have Russia fighting Europe.

Just in the last few days, you had numerous American military magazines and especially European spokesmen saying, if we lose in Ukraine, Russia is going to march right through Poland and Romania, right to retake Germany. It’s going to conquer Europe, and maybe it won’t even stop in England.

Well, that’s just nonsense. The reality is that Russia and China don’t need Europe anymore.

They don’t need the United States. Whereas under the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright said, America is the unique country. It’s the necessary country.

The fact is that the rest of the world not only finds America unnecessary, but America and its NATO allies to be the major threat to their own prosperity. So they’re essentially splitting into their own world. And the BRICS group is expanding its trade relations, its investment relations, and especially its financial clearing and monetary operations to be independent of the dollar, de-dollarizing, and certainly independent of the euro, which seems to have no visible means of support right now, and going their own way.

Now, that is exactly what has led the United States to push Israel [essentially] to follow Netanyahu’s belligerence, because the United States says, We realize we’re losing power.

We know that it’s really not a stalemate. We know that we’ve lost the chance for world dominance. We may be re-elected by telling people, you know, it doesn’t really matter.

But we know that it does matter. The last chance we have to assert American power is military. And the main military prize is the Near East now, just as it was after 9-11, when Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld pressed for an invasion of Iraq to begin grabbing its soil and to essentially create America’s foreign legion in the form of ISIS and al-Qaeda Iraq. So now America has two armies that it’s using to fight in the Near East, the ISIS/al-Qaeda foreign legion (Arabic-speaking foreign legion) and the Israelis. The plan is—and America is willing to fight to the last Israeli, just as it’s willing—it’s trying to fight to the last Ukrainian in order to make this final grab of the Near East in fighting Iran.

This is a crazy idea, but it seems that that’s exactly what is being planned.

General Petraeus, who lost the war in Afghanistan, has said, we’ve got to conquer Iran. That’s going to be—we can regain all the power that we’ve lost by attacking Iran. And so now it looks like President Biden is hoping to make a political comeback by saying, Well, we may not have blocked Russia and Ukraine, but at least we’ve conquered the Near East.

But the way in which it’s conquering it [somehow has] become a catalyst to make the whole global majority, the whole rest of the world, especially Africa, South America, and South Asia, to think, Wait a minute, what’s happening in Israel and Palestine today is exactly what happened to us at our beginning.

In the United States, what did the Americans do? The White people came, the Anglo-Saxons and the other Europeans, and they killed 90% of the Indians, drove them out, isolated them, put them in basically concentration camps. And then when they found out that there was oil under these concentration camps, they essentially murdered the Indians there or drove them out to grab the oil.

Same thing in Latin America. When the Spaniards came to Latin America, they grabbed the land, drew up land grants, and these land grants created latifundia, which has been the great problem of Latin America for the last five centuries, because it’s prevented Latin America from growing their own food. It’s fought against the indigenous population feeding itself to turn the land into export crops, largely under World Bank guidance for all of this.

Same thing in Africa. They say, wait a minute, what is happening in Israel is what happened to us, with the colonizing powers. This is what Germany did in Africa. It’s what the Dutch did in South Africa. It’s Germany in Namibia, the Dutch in South Africa, the English through Africa, and especially the French in its territories. All of this has occurred before.

And all of a sudden, just as Americans go to the movies and mourn more for the Westerns, they’re cheering for the Indians against the cavalry. You’re having the rest of the world cheering for the underdog because the underdog is who they were. The underdog is them today.

And this idea is turning into a feeling of, Let’s throw off all of the barriers to colonialism.

Let’s start with French Africa, which we’re throwing off the French there. We’re not going to let French banks, French mineral companies, mining companies, French oil companies simply take all of our wealth because they conquered it five centuries ago. We can identify with the—we know what the Palestinians are fighting for.

And yet, in a way, they’re also saying, well, wait a minute, look at what Israel’s doing.

Israel says, God gave us this land. We used to have it. Well, the South Americans and Africans and Asians are saying, Well, this is our land, but we never left it. We’re still on the land. And even though we’re on the land, we’re still locked up, like Israel is treating the Palestinians. We don’t have to live this way. We can decolonize.

And the whole split of the world and the turning towards the China, Russia, Iran, BRICS

access is an attempt to reverse, undo, and roll back the whole colonial expansion that’s occurred over the last five centuries.

HAIPHONG: You just gave an incredible summary in breaking down the interconnections of these developments, and I wanted to, given that the Near East, West Asia, is so “hot” right now.

Iran just launched numerous strikes in Erbil, in Iraq, against a Mossad headquarters, as well as other targets locating certain terrorist groups that Israel supported. There are reports now of Pakistan, also in northern Pakistan.

There also is the situation with regard to Yemen, the Red Sea crisis that is ongoing. The Ansar Allah movement has just hit an American ship. There’s constant activity there. And of course, there’s still the conflict you mentioned, the fighting going on in Gaza, the brutal attack on the people of Palestine that has been correctly labeled a genocide.

And here’s what Joseph Nye had to say, and I’ll kick it back to you, Michael. He said it with regard to U.S. soft power. In that Financial Times article, he said, The U.S., even so, can seem powerless. It has failed to convince its ally, Israel, to act with restraint in Gaza. Could it have done so in the past? It’s not clear they could have done it 20 years ago. George W. Bush intimated in 1991 that American aid could be cut and that they may have helped to stimulate the Oslo process, but that didn’t bring about two states. Israel is not only, not the only ally that has proved quite capable of resisting the U.S., pointing to Saudi Arabia and others. For the moment, Israel is hurting its own soft power and by extension hurting American soft power.

Kick it back to you, Michael.

HUDSON: This is the big lie that America is trying to promote. The idea that, the pretense that when Blinken goes to talk to Netanyahu, he says, when you drop the next bombs and kill the next 20,000 Gaza-era Palestinians, please be gentle with them. Please obey the laws of war and stop bombing the ambulances, stop bombing the hospitals.

That’s all public relations crap. The reality is that he’s telling Netanyahu to go forward.

It’s America. All these bombs that are dropping are made in America and sent to Israel to drop. Every week, America is saying, Here is a new delivery of bombs. Go to it. Here is billions of dollars more for you to get by while you’ve drafted your working population into the army. America is pushing Israel.

Beginning 50 years ago, I used to travel to work with Netanyahu’s main Mossad and now National Security Advisor, Uzi Arad. I remember, I think I’ve mentioned before on one occasion, we were going to Japan and stopped off in San Francisco for some discussions.

An army officer came up, threw his arms around Uzi and said, you Israelis are our landed aircraft carrier in the Near East. Well, that was 50 years ago.

Last week in the New York Times, I hear exactly the same phrase. Israel is our aircraft carrier. To the United States, Israel is America’s Ukraine in the Near East. It’s the United States that is pushing Israel to goad first Lebanon and then Iran into doing something that will justify a huge American attack, trying to do to Iran what Hillary Clinton did to Libya, utterly destroying it and destroying the population. In the process, grabbing its gold supply, we don’t know what’s happened to that, installing ISIS as its foreign legion in as much of Libya as possible and grabbing the Libyan oil supply.

In the New York Times, in the Wall Street Journal and on TV, whenever they talk about Hamas or Hezbollah, they don’t say Hamas and Hezbollah. They say “Iran-backed Hamas”,

“Iran-backed Hezbollah”. They don’t talk about the Yemeni army, the Houthis. They say the “Iranian-backed Houthis”. There is a huge public relations push to convince the American population that Iran is the big enemy and President Biden says again and again that Iran is the enemy. The army, Petraeus, and the neocons have said from the very beginning, Iraq and Syria are merely the dress rehearsal for where we really want to go, Iran.

Their hatred of Iran stems from the fact that they overthrew the Iranian government of Mosaddegh back in the 1950s, along with British help as usual. And they’re sure that, well, we’ve hurt you so much that we’re sure you must hate us. And since we know you hate us because of what we’ve done to you, we’ve got to attack you because we’ve made you an enemy by overthrowing your government when we grabbed your oil and put in the Shah that ran a murderous torture regime for a few decades in Iran. Well, that basically is the 7

American policy that is goading it into a war that probably will be more disastrous for the United States than the war in Ukraine was.

At least in Ukraine, all the Americans lost were Ukrainians. And I guess they had a few mercenary troops that they hired over there. But in the Near East, they’re going to lose a lot more than it was at stake in just Ukraine. They’ll probably lose Israel’s role as a landed aircraft carrier. And in fact, they’re going to lose a lot of their own floating aircraft carriers that are near there. And they’ve already lost control of the Red Sea and the oil gulf, basically, between Iran and Egypt.

And there’s also a possibility that they’ll even lose the support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Because even though in the Arab Spring, the Americans pulled a “color revolution”, Arab Spring, where they replaced the hated Egyptian President Mubarak with his own protege, Sisi, who is now running it. Sisi is totally in the US pockets. And yet, the Egyptian population, needless to say, being largely Arabic, is supporting Gaza, not the United States.

Similarly, in Saudi Arabia. Here, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine were in the process of making a rapprochement, actually an alliance with Israel, along sort of the same lines that Greece had been making with Israel for a Mediterranean military force. Well, now much of the Saudi population is Palestinian. They’ve found jobs in Saudi Arabia, and they’re outraged at Saudi Arabia’s trying to sit on the fence at the same time that it has joined the BRICS.

It realizes that all of its foreign reserves are held hostage by the United States. What’s going to be more important to Saudi Arabia? Fighting to protect the Islamic population under attack, or saving its own reserves that are kept in the United States, not to help Saudi Arabia at all.

Same thing with Egypt.

The population there, between Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, these were the main American bastions in the Near East. And now it’s in danger of losing them if, in the case of war, they’re under tremendous political pressure and instability.

And further to the West in Africa, you have the former French colonies also being Islamic.

You can imagine, you know, they’re breaking away not only from France and supporting the rest of Africa, Central Africa, from breaking away from France, but essentially moving into an alliance with the BRICS countries, with Russia and China.

So all of a sudden, the American decision to go to war with Russia in Ukraine after the 2015 Maidan massacre and regime change, putting in the neo-Nazis, you’re having the fighting in Israel. And those two US-sponsored attacks have had the exact opposite effect of what the United States politicians promised. Just as they promised that Russia would break up and essentially the economy would crash under the sanctions and under the force of war, they believed that Israel’s army was so strong that it was going to simply be able to wipe out Hamas.

And the big fighting — there’s not a word of this in the United States press — but the big fighting is on the West Bank. Netanyahu is saying, well, here while they’re all looking at what we’re bombing the civilians and the hospitals and the ambulances and starving Gaza, we’ve distracted the world and we can now wipe out the Arabs on the West Bank and move right into Syria on the Golan Heights. And apparently the United States has promised Israel that it can take whatever it wants of Syria, which it’s still opposing.

We don’t know what Russia is going to do in all of this. Russia, China have been completely silent in all of this. And I can understand they’re silent. China has moved naval ships into the area because it’s itself is very dependent on the Red Sea and the sea lanes to oil in Saudi Arabia.

When the United States keeps saying, threatening, oh, the Yemenis are going to bomb ships there and block the trade, that’s what they want. The United States realizes that if they can goad Yemen and Iran into blocking the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf, this will indeed stop the oil trade. And it’s true that as Yves Smith pointed out in Naked Capitalism today, the sea lanes to Saudi Arabia were closed for many years after the 1967 war. They were closed numerous times for many months. And it’s not unthinkable that they’re closed. But that was then.

Now, if you close them, it will be the main energy buyers in Asia, China, and other countries that are going to be hurt. And that is, from the United States point of view, that will give the United States even more power to control the oil supply of the world as a bargaining chip in trying to renegotiate this new international order.

So you’re having the United States basically play the only tactic that it can actually use.

It can’t use the tactic to say, “We’re the growing economy and you want to trade with us, not with China and Russia,” because they’re growing faster than the U.S. and Europe. They don’t really have anything to offer except the ability to disrupt foreign trade and foreign monetary and financial systems and agree to stop disrupting it if other countries will simply let the United States be the unipolar decision maker.

And I should have added the dimension before when we were talking about China and Russia and the Siberian development. The Eurasian countries have one great advantage over the United States and Europe. The United States and Europe have essentially privatized what was the whole public infrastructure system. And being privatized, they’re now natural monopolies. And they’re run in the way that, say, Thames Water is run in England. They’re run as monopolies that are under-investing and simply using a choke-hold to increase their monopoly rents, which they report as profits.

But China, Russia, Asian countries have kept the basic infrastructure—transportation, education, health care, communications—as public utilities. And they are investing, they are run by engineers, industrial engineers, not financial engineers. And they are run not only much more efficiently, but they don’t have the financial overhead and the monopoly rent overhead that plagues privatized infrastructure. So the cost of production in the non-neoliberalized world, I guess we can call it the world moving towards socialism, is so much more efficient than the neoliberal financialized West that you can see the magnetic pull of Africa and South America.

And as it happens, these are also the main raw material suppliers of the world. So if the United States and Europe don’t have raw materials, don’t produce their own oil, except what the Europeans have to pay enormous markups to American producers, you’re going to have Europe looking pretty much like post-Soviet Latvia and Estonia. The population is going to emigrate. They’re going to shrink. You’re going to have a flowering of interaction throughout all of Eurasia and Africa.

And essentially, the United States can try to stop this by triggering a new oil war in the Near East. But that’s really the last gasp. It’s very unlikely that this is going to lead Taiwan to say, Well, you know, we’re going to follow Ukraine and Israel and you can fight to the last Taiwanese, just as you’re fighting to the last Ukrainian, the last Israeli. I think that the United States is creating a turmoil that is demonstrating to the other world the need for essentially, I won’t call it an iron curtain, but for it to go its own way and for a break in economic systems.

And as President Putin has said again and again, this is a civilizational war. It’s a war to say in what direction is civilization going to go? Is it going to be towards neo-feudalism, back toward feudalism, which is the neoliberal rent-seeking 1%? Or is it going to be towards where industrial capitalism was originally evolving towards, towards socialism and towards raising living standards instead of imposing IMF financial austerity on the dollar block? So that’s the choice that America is seeing in the Near East and in other countries right now.

Are you going to have a future of austerity or essentially prosperity and economic growth?

HAIPHONG: I don’t think there’s a better way to connect all of those developments, especially with regard to what’s happening in the Near East, or what some call the Middle East, or what others call West Asia. I mean, the clashes are escalating. There’s clashes even between Egypt and Israel, which is almost unheard of.

With everything that you said, you’re saying that this is not going to work at all, that the United States won’t be able to wrestle control as it is seeking in the region. How do you see this playing out? Maybe we can close on this point, given that it’s not going to work.

And if it’s not going to work, then what other options do the United States and maybe the broader collective West have? Because you’ve outlined it perfectly, this is an economic war, this is a war for economic dominance and control. So will it just crumble on its own, or will the United States and whoever it can drag along with it, you know, escalate and maneuver in a manner that we should all be aware of?

HUDSON: The United States has one dynamic more than any other country of the world, and that is rage. That is the feeling that you have in Washington now. Not only rage, but as with most rage, it’s combined with fear. The Democrats fear that they’re going to lose the election and that Donald Trump is going to come in and clean up the FBI police state and to get rid of the CIA. That’s basically what he’s pledged to do, the deep state.

So the deep state is worried that it’s going to be, not that the United States is going to be left to stagnate, but that they themselves, their control of the United States will stagnate.

And the deep state is willing to destroy the U.S. economy. The Democratic Party, since Clinton, has the objective of destroying the U.S. economy in order to benefit the control of the 1% over the 99%. And it’s willing to use military war to fight, to escalate in the Near East, to escalate in Ukraine, and to escalate, presumably, in the China Sea to somehow provoke and essentially saying, Well, we’re going to go to war. We’re going to have a grab bag because who wants to live in a world that we don’t control?

Well, just, you know, this is like what Russia said when America was threatening to atom bomb it with its withdrawal from the arms agreements. Russia said, Don’t think that we won’t fight back. Who wants to live in a world without Russia? Well, the United States government is saying, who wants to live in America that we can’t control? That the banks and the military industrial complex and the pharmaceutical complex and basically the finance-monopolist sector can’t control. If we can’t control it, we’re willing to have the whole country go under. That’s really what it is. And they’re using the control of the press for any of this.

For instance, on Saturday and Sunday in Washington, there were huge demonstrations against the attacks on the Palestinians. Not a word of this in the New York Times or not a word of it on television. There’s not a word of what’s happening in the Near East or what President Putin and President Xi are saying in the news at all. It’s as if the world is already divided into a visible world, the deep state world and the invisible world, reality, of the 95% or 85%.

The fight politically towards November is, are people going to be able to really believe that the Biden administration is helping the economy instead of defending the CIA, the FBI, the national security state, the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical complex, real estate, and Wall Street against the population by de-industrializing? Or has all this been a detour that’s made us poor? That’s going to be the question.

And the fact that you’re already having on social media, blocking of any criticism of Israel or the United States, you’re having a kind of control here that is a very similar control that you’re having in the Ukraine.

HAIPHONG: It really is mind blowing how quickly all of these developments have, in many senses, spiraled out of control. Even if we can look at this in years, but even in just the last few months, of course, with October 7th being another breaking point.

HUDSON: I think you should say October 2nd. That was the destruction of the attempt to destroy the mosque. It’s October 2nd that triggered all of this. It was the Israeli attack on the mosque that was intended to say, We are going to destroy the Islamic presence in Palestine so that it can be entirely non-Islamic. That was the declaration of war. So don’t be suckered into the New York Times saying it’s all October 7th.

It began the week earlier, just as in Ukraine. The Ukraine war did not begin with Russia moving to protect its population, its Russian speaking population in Donetsk and Luhansk.

It began not only with Maidan, but with the Ukrainian army shelling, bombing civilian apartment buildings and civilians in the Russian speaking territories and refusing to pay any social security or healthcare to the Russian speaking territories and banning the Russian language. Russia was the country under attack, not the attacker.

So again, you have to be very careful as when you date the beginning of this. And the Americans want to date all wars as when after it attacks and when other countries are protecting themselves. They call other countries protecting themselves an attack on the United States. Yeah.

HAIPHONG: October 7th, February 22nd, 2022. I mean, it’s a tactic. So it’s a great point that you brought up.

And maybe, Michael, we could close our conversation with China because China, you mentioned earlier in your analysis. And, you know, I believe China is the end game here. And there are a few developments. You mentioned China surpassing, in terms of car exports, car manufacturing, Japan, and becoming number one in the world. There and I’m going to pull up the articles as you speak.

There’s also the boards of the major auto manufacturers, the monopolies in a state of shock over BYD, the car manufacturer in China that has essentially taken over the world market with regard to electric vehicles. And there’s also reports that China is going to meet its 5

percent growth target. Despite the fact I’m sure you’ve seen this, Michael, there is collapse after collapse after collapse theory being bandied about in the mainstream media by the deep state. “China’s on the collapse. China’s economy is flailing. It’s declining. It’s crashing.”

So, Michael, I’m going to pull up the pieces as you go. But perhaps you can give your take, your reaction to this development and the notion of China being the end game for the neocons and the monopoly system of post-industrial capitalism, finance capitalism that you write and analyze so much about.

HUDSON: Well, there are a number of reasons why China is becoming the main car producer. This is led by the shift towards electric vehicles. And there’s one key dimension of electric vehicles.

Number one is they’re electric. You need electricity. How are you going to produce the electricity: with American oil, with Russian oil? How are you going to make it with atomic power? The other thing is once you get the electricity into the car, how are you going to get a battery to run the car and not have to keep stopping at the filling station even more often than you have to go to the bathroom?

Well, the answer is you need lithium for that. And China has been controlling most of the lithium sites. And you also need to have computerized vehicles. You need all sorts of materials that are cobalt, the rare earths that also are controlled with China. And China has gained control of most of the metallurgy, of the refining of the key metals that are needed for automobile production and for other industrial production.

So you have China as an integrated economy producing all of these. And you have the West becoming dependent on achieving these same metals. Now, let’s look at what could have happened back in 1990. Suppose there had not been a Cold War. Suppose that America actually in 1990, when the Soviet Union disbanded, America would have disbanded NAT and really had a mutual kind of growth with open, continued international trade.

Well, without the world splitting into the two parts, somehow there wouldn’t have been enough motivation for other countries to explicitly make the civilizational break from neoliberalism to socialism. There would have been a kind of social democracy in Asia, but it could have been the social democracy going the oligarchic way that it’s gone in, say, Sweden, which used to be called a great social democracy. And now it’s the most unequal country in Europe. You could have had slowly that development, but there would have been world trade and anybody could have bought the various metals, lithium, the rare earths. There would have been oil. There would have been continued trade and the whole world economy could have grown.

All of that was broken up by the American insistence that if we can’t control world trade, there won’t be world trade. If we can’t control world international finance and make the whole world use the U.S. dollar that we can print on computers and print and issue to finance all of the military spending to encircle the rest of the world with military bases, if we can’t do that, then there won’t be a world financial system because the United States believed that without the dollar, there couldn’t be de-dollarization because there was no alternative.

They’re tricked into the Margaret Thatcher type slogan. There is no alternative. And they really believe that the rest of the world could not prosper without using the dollar. They could not prosper without selling off and privatizing their public utilities and making natural monopolies that would be bought up by American buyers printing the dollars to say, we’ll print the dollars and we’ll buy your transportation system, your communication system and your factories. They couldn’t believe that there was an alternative to neoliberalism. And yet you’re seeing this. They couldn’t believe that if they simply bombed another country, that somehow the population of that country would say, Oh, we don’t want to be bombed.

We’re going to overthrow our government and support a government that supports you so that you won’t bomb our country anymore.

Instead, the effect of bombing a country when the United States does it is the same as bombing a country when any other country does it. It galvanizes the population together to oppose the country that’s bombing it and defend the country that’s under attack. So the whole image that the United States has is, there’s only one actor in the world, and that’s us. And we can smash other countries. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll upset the chessboard and just wreck the whole game.

So the United States is acting in the role of wrecker and other countries are in the role of builder. And the whole global majority is saying, What side do you want to be on, the wreckers or the builders?

And you can look at Ukraine as an example of how the United States would like Russia, China, and the Arab countries to exist. You would suspend elections once you have your guys, your president in there. You would become the most corrupt country in your region, as Ukraine has been. You will ban local languages and religions that are not Judeo-Christian.

You will essentially prevent strikes.

And you know the joke, the aristocrats. A stage group of actors talks about a family coming on and doing all sorts of horrendously devious sexual acts and incest, and it goes on and on. The producer who’s being offered this act and said, what do you call this act? And the answer is, the aristocrats.

Well, what do you call the Ukrainian act of suspending elections, banning foreign languages, assassinating critics? We call it democracy. Well, that’s hilarious. That’s indeed what America calls it. America has two models of democracy, Ukraine and Israel. Again and again in the press, it says Ukraine is the model of democracy that we want for what used to be the whole Soviet Union. And you have Latvia and Estonia and Lithuania clapping, and we want the democracy in Israel. Israel is the only democratic country in the Near East.

We want Israel to be the model for the Near East.

Well, what are they saying? That there won’t be any more Arabs in the Near East? That they’ll all be Americans with dual citizenship? This is what it’s all come to. We’re living in an Orwellian world is trying to deter people’s consciousness from realizing the reality of work and the dynamics that are at work. And how long can you convince people that they’re really not doing well just because the 1% is doing well? How can you convince the people that America is really a model leader when it’s trying to destroy the whole rest of the world instead of helping it, as at least it could pose to be doing back in 1945 when World War II ended?

You’re having really unwinding of the whole world system of the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations, the whole diplomatic system of the world that was put together in 1945 is now being outmoded. And you could see the inability of the United Nations to cope with the war in the Near East, to cope with the war in Ukraine. This is the death knell of the old world. And you’re seeing a new world being created spontaneously, not ideologically, but basically spontaneously in an ad hoc fashion by China, Russia, and the 99%.

HAIPHONG: Yes. Yeah, yes, indeed, Michael. And, you know, final thoughts on the fact that given all that you said, and this reality, I mean, it’s this myth and reality, the myth, the idea, that China’s collapsing, you know, China’s economy is in decline. And yet you have not only these recent developments, but you also have these broader developments that you speak of.

So can you just give a sense, you’ve been to China, you’ve studied China’s economy very deeply. Just to close, help our audience here understand why China’s economy is able to industrialize like it is.

Europe is about to go through this probe. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, this probe of the, you know, Chinese auto manufacturing, especially around electric vehicles, because of these nefarious state subsidies. Can you talk about this, talk about China’s economy, how it works, and why Europe and the United States, of course, has been waging economic war as well, why they would resort to what seems to be counterproductive measures?

HUDSON: Well, the key to understanding the West is neoliberalism is privatization of basic needs and basic utilities. The most important public utility throughout history has always been the ability to create money and credit.

And what China has that no other country had was its central bank created the own money.

And when the government creates money through the treasury, spending money into the economy, it spends money in order to actually build things, mainly to build real estate, to house the Chinese, but also to build the high speed railroads, to provide an educational system, universities all over China, to build communications.

Other countries, such as the United States, don’t have this. Money is created, especially in the United States, by commercial banks, and they create money not to finance new construction of factories or new investment of any sorts. Banks lend money in the West against collateral that is already in place. You can go to a bank to get money to buy a building that exists, an office building, although the office building’s prices are all collapsing now. You can go and borrow money to buy a whole company. That’s what private capital does. It buys money to buy Sears. It drives it bankrupt, collapses it, and fires the [workers].

It can buy Toys R Us, drives it bankrupt, collapses it, and it’s gone. You can buy companies and loot them and essentially close them down and turn factories into gentrified buildings for the 1% of financial operatives who are doing the looting.

But banks in the West do not fund public utilities, and once you cut the taxes and force a government into deficit, you then finance the deficit by privatizing your roads, turning them into toll roads. You privatize your postal system. You privatize your health care system so that there’s not much health care anymore, as you have in England, for instance, the crisis that you’re having in English medicine and hospitals and privatization. You make the whole economy in the West look like England after Margaret Thatcher, where people who are actually wage earners can’t afford to live in London anymore. That’s for the foreign investors or the people who work in the financial sector. The wage earners have to live in suburbs to take privatized rail transportation.

In the United States, for instance, Greyhound, the bus system, was just bought out by private equity. They did exactly what Stagecoach, England’s largest bus company, did in England. They sold off the bus terminal that was in the center of the city that people would go to to catch the buses, and they sold it for gentrified real estate and told people, there’s now a parking lot we have on the outside of the city. You go and wait in the parking lot.

We hope it’s not raining or too cold or snowing, but we don’t have a terminal anymore. Well, you can just imagine this way of doing things. It turns into a race to the bottom.

Well, China, by [keeping control of] finance, really controls who is going to get the credit, and credit is really the economic planner. Neoliberalism in the West says the government shouldn’t do the planning. Wall Street should do the planning because Wall Street is what provides the credit that determines who is going to get the resources and what they’re going to do with it.

Well, Wall Street gives the credit to financial engineers that are trying to make money by increasing stock prices, increasing capital gains, and making money financially.

It’s true that China has made many billionaires. That was part of the Let 100 Flowers Grow, but now that it’s had that spontaneous growth, now it’s seen what forms work and what forms don’t work. Now it’s consolidating the economy to essentially create credit to finance tangible industrial growth, tangible infrastructure growth, tangible agricultural modernization, and general improvement of living standards.

The whole aim of the Chinese economy is growth, not looting and downsizing and a smash-up of corporate raiding. There’s no corporate raiding going on in China. There’s not going to be any financial interest that’s going to buy Huawei or the other Chinese developers. You don’t have the parasitical financial class that have become the central economic planners of the United States.

Because that’s what libertarianism is. Libertarians want a centralized economy, not run by government but run by Wall Street and the financial sector. The libertarians are essentially the advocates of what normally used to be called fascism, central planning by the wealthy financial and monopoly sector against the population at large.

You have the Republican and the Democratic Party both supporting a dismantling of government just with a different kind of rhetoric, but the same policies, the same military policies and the same anti-industrial policies. China, Russia and their now more and more BRICS countries are rejecting that whole self-defeating neo-feudal path of growth.

HAIPHONG: Well, Michael, you’ve been very generous with your time today. I really appreciate you giving this what was an incredible rundown of all the interconnections, all the developments geopolitically that have, at their base, economic roots. And so, Michael, thank you so much.

Where can people find you? I have your website in the video description.

HUDSON: My website is michael-hudson.com and there’s a Patreon list associated with that. But all my articles are on my website and the other sites that I publish on, Naked Capitalism and Counterpunch and other such sites.

HAIPHONG: Well, definitely check out his work. He has a number of books that are key reads. So, Michael, it was great to be with you. Thanks so much for joining me today and I’ll talk to you again soon.

HUDSON: Thanks for having me. We were lucky politically, but the whole world was at a turning point this week, it looks like.

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