Russia can either decisively “escalate to de-escalate” in its own right to swiftly end the conflict on as many of its terms as possible, carry on as usual amidst this new “war of attrition” at tremendous risk to itself, or freeze the conflict.
Russia has to know that the goal of the US/UK has always been the strategic defeat of the Soviet Union and now Russia since 1945 at least. It has to be obvious with all that Andrew listed above, plus the "cordon sanitare" around Russia with the goal to inflict a first strike on Russia. If Russia does not act forcefully very soon, the pressure will increase and humanity faces the unthinkable. Si vis bellum, para bellum...i.e. nuclear war!
So why did Biden remove Trump’s sanctions on NS2?? Biden wanted Putin to make tens of billions of euros a year for at least another 10 years before solar and wind and batteries made Russian gas obsolete.
Petroleum products will never be obsolete. That is sheer fantasy. They touch everything you touch. They are necessary to mine the alternative energy you listed. You can’t move a ship without them, or make car tires, move a long distance truck, produce pharmaceuticals, etc etc.
We still use horses. China probably hit peak oil consumption which is why oil prices didn’t spike that high from Trump’s Iran blunder….so American oil companies won’t be investing in production and if oil prices get too low then we will have another mini recession like in 2016. Be careful what you wish for! 😉
China built up significant reserves prior to the Iran conflict. The US has been exporting from the SPR to backstop other nations. Meanwhile Cushing is headed towards “tank bottoms” with an estimated 60 days diesel supply reserve. Once that’s gone, you can expect a spike yet again in diesel prices that filters through to all corners of the economy.
I get thr feeling you really don’t know much about the oil complex… at all,
I know a lot about oil and gas. You know about 2008 oil, you know nothing about fracking as you are stuck in the past…or maybe you fell into a coma in July 2008 and recently awoke from it! 😉
Yet the marxist takeover of the US education cartel is having incredible success. Over 50% of college students surveyed prefer socialism over capitalism. New York city has just voted in more DSA candidates.
My number one constructive critique of Russia is that it's plagued by broken feedback loops that lead to the formulation of inefficient or even sometimes counterproductive policies. There's also a cultural preference for telling superiors whatever someone thinks that they want to hear, not holding anyone to account whenever they're wrong, and failing to fix problems whenever they're finally identified.
I'm absolutely confident that every single person who told Putin to stick with the "Spirit of Anchorage" will get off scot-free, not even with a tongue-lashing, and everyone single one of them will now pretend a la 1984 that they always knew it was a ruse.
That's just the way that things are around here, and you'll likely also see top "Non-Russian Pro-Russian" (NRPR) influencers doing the same, they always without exception toe whatever the Kremlin line may be.
What makes you think that Trump might have intended to deceive Russia this time, given the possibility—as you have said before—that he is just forgetful and impressionable?
I'm personally undecided about whether or not he meant to mislead Putin, but at the end of the day, he had 10 months to coerce Zelensky into withdrawing from Donbass if the reports about the "Spirit of Anchorage's" quid pro quo are to be believed, he was regularly reminded in the media and during his envoys meetings in Moscow, yet he didn't do it so I understand why Russia is very disappointed.
Obviously divining intent is hard, but this situation is eerily similar to the failed peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in early 2022. Both UK PM Johnson's visit and the Bucha false flag coincided, so there is some question as to whether the latter played a role in persuading key Western elites to scuttle a deal.
If that is the case, then it shows how high-ranking officials can be duped by rather crude PSYOPs—spread by third parties or even subordinates—and react illogically, notably so if personal idiosyncrasies such as Trump's are at work as well. At any rate, it does not bode well for mankind in general and confirms my cynicism.
As an aside: is there any sign that Russia told Trump (who blamed Putin for "tapping me along") that Ukrainian provocations and lies were responsible for the failure of last summer's talks? I, personally, have not seen this, which would be a rather glaring omission on Putin and his team's part, knowing Trump's personality.
Some people say that Putin was just balancing between the oligarchic arm, encouraging repproachment with the US, a la Kiril Dimitrievv, the oligarchs, Nabulina sabotaging Russian economy, and the General Staff and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who wanted to take a hard stance. Obviously, Lavrov cannot say, I told Vladimir Vladimirovich many many times but he wouldn't budge from his "balancing" act. Putin seems to have a great memory but not matched by same level of wisdom and understanding of how the west and the US operates. As such, Putin himself will get scot-free from pursuing this ghost of the unexistent spirit of Anchorage. But, if he allowed the military to prepare for some contingencies, then not all is lost.
In fairness, all of the elements of your critique apply equally to the U.S. government, though maybe for different reasons. There is no accountability whatsoever. Success is defined by other terms - sociability, attending the right university, having the right social circle. Fixing identified problems is the last goal of anyone in the government. Why would for example someone overseeing programs to eradicate homeless ever want to see it eradicated (and their job made unnecessary)? Counterproductive policies aren't a bug - they're a feature, a "success" to list on your annual performance report.
I suspect Russia and the U.S. aren't the only government bureaucracies like that, either.
I agree that it's not exclusive to Russia, but at least in the US, different policy ideas are thought up, shared, and lobbied for, plus the Intelligence Community makes reference in their public reports to which agencies disagree with certain claims.
None of that happens here. There aren't several policy tracks that decisionmakers can move between as circumstances change. There's just one track, and deviating from it risks professional problems.
Only once it's clear that the official policy isn't working or requires change does another policy appear, and then that becomes the new dogma, and so on and so forth. There's very little public debate among experts too.
I used to participate in conferences and related events here and was sorely disappointed when I realized that it's just people reading off their reports, talking over one another, and basically just saying the same thing but in different ways.
Moreover, in the US at least, there's at least public shaming if someone gets something very, very wrong; that too is unknown here, all experts "circle the wagons" since they're all mostly saying the same thing anyhow.
For a creative thinker, it can be incredibly frustrating working in this field at times since it's all about amplifying talking points, not actually thinking, discovering new solutions, identifying latent problems, etc.
Few people have any sense of initiative here, "fatalism" ("avos") rules the roost in the sense of everyone thinking everything will be okay and someone else will do whatever must be done. For someone like me, it's a very irresponsible attitude.
I know we have the same thing in the US too, but we still have some (very imperfect!) checks and balances to try to address this, while no such system exists here. It's really only a handful of people formulating policy.
Everyone else then does whatever this "brain trust" decides must be done, and they honestly don't even do it all that well anymore nowadays as proven by Russia's recent spree of setbacks abroad.
Think about it: Lavrov is half-Armenian and he's been in his job for something like two decades, how can it be that Russia "loses" Armenia under his watch of all people!? It boggles the mind but nobody cares to address the root causes.
Russia took Armenia for granted, convinced itself with "wishful thinking" that Pashinyan would remain loyal, and was once again "led by the nose" as always, over and over again, always duped and always none the wiser.
Is Lavrov basically saying that Russia did not fight on the battlefield as hard as they could have because of Anchorage? This is the first time I hear this. I always thought the Russians were doing all they could to win the war. If this is true, then the Russians are absolute fools and have no one to blame but themselves. You would think they would have learned something after being deceived for years by the Minsk agreements.
Any path taken would've presented its own set of quandaries.
Putin and Lavrov have dealt with this insane situation better than any two other leaders in the world ever could have. And they've done a very difficult job, probably that has entirely consumed them for 4 years now, with grace and dignity. The entire world is blessed that these men didn't wreck everything and for that we owe them our respect and gratitude.
Today's world just keeps reminding me of Kafka's novel, "The Trial."
The problem is that any escalation from Russia is clearly pushing the conflict toward nuclear.
Just like the war in Iran had a critical issue that is hard to gap for the negotiations – the issue of enriched uranium – the same goes with the Russian-Ukraine conflict. There the major problem is Ukraine’s status after a ceasefire. The entry of NATO forces is the elephant in the room. Russia cannot live with it and Ukraine/NATO/US does not want live without it. Again, the Russian view is obvious; it is better to mitigate the conflict and live with an ongoing low level warfare than giving Ukraine the opportunity to open the door for NATO/US. A NATO/US direct entry can easily take the war to the level of a nuclear conflict and if anybody, Russia knows the nature of that beast. They were living and playing with it since the 1950s. There you have it, this war was designed by US/NATO to never end and they took decades to advance and warm it up to that point. The Ukrainians together with their gain of function biolabs are surely not going to win nothing here. Half their population is already outside of the country and with each year less likely to return. This war is already longer than the Soviet involvement was against Germany from 1941 to 1945. Ukrainian industry and agriculture was miserable low level corrupted and downgraded and there will be no money and people to reconstruct it. America was sucked in by Zion Don and Ukraine by the Servant of the People, the third grade piano player and both nations are paying the price for these substandard, surrealistic decisions.
Life and history can surprise. Putin is a man of negotiation. Pragmatic. This supose to have a counterpart. When the politicians of the west do not hear what he says, Russia remains only the way to let the people in west know and understand who is responsible for the comming war and the suffering. Same about the people in Russia.
You need a clean conscience before you hit hard. At least normal people have to be fully convinced that is no other solution.
This takes time. With Iran happened the same. You try to avoid the impossible. It is up to each person when he reached limit of trying to trust one. Putin needs more time because he cares. The war is the worst solution but sometimes you cannot avoid it.
For now Putin seams to be the right person. Seams to be balanced. When the war is here ams killing for surviving will become necessary then you will need a killer like Stalin.
Karaganov was right back in 2023 and he’s right now. Like any big bully, the only thing to stop the U.S. is punching it back. Iran has proven this. Putin’s hope that he could defeat Ukraine, without having to attack the West directly has turned out to be a major miscalculation. I don’t think this was because he trusted Trump, but that he didn’t want to risk a major European war, perhaps involving the U.S. , if he could avoid it. The first step should be the one suggested by Gilbert Doctorow, and that is taking off the head of the monster in Ukraine. Without Zelensky and his band of Nazis the NATO, will have no one to deal with and the EU will have no one to launder their money.
Let’s say russia escalate , if Russia were to escalate deep strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and water systems, it could cause a severe humanitarian crisis and a lasting reputational blow that directly contradicts the Kremlin’s narrative of “liberating a brotherly nation.” Such actions would also likely strengthen Western public support for Ukraine ..
Then how russia can establish deterrence? like iran did in the Persian gulf ??
I see some parallels between Putin and our current government (BJP) in India.
Both appear to take their adversaries at face value, and both have a slow legalistic approach to confrontations.
Whereas NATO et al invented their "rules based order" which I like to call rules based disorder: "we do dis, you no do dis."
High time the global majority acts together to break out of this trap.
Russia has to know that the goal of the US/UK has always been the strategic defeat of the Soviet Union and now Russia since 1945 at least. It has to be obvious with all that Andrew listed above, plus the "cordon sanitare" around Russia with the goal to inflict a first strike on Russia. If Russia does not act forcefully very soon, the pressure will increase and humanity faces the unthinkable. Si vis bellum, para bellum...i.e. nuclear war!
So why did Biden remove Trump’s sanctions on NS2?? Biden wanted Putin to make tens of billions of euros a year for at least another 10 years before solar and wind and batteries made Russian gas obsolete.
Petroleum products will never be obsolete. That is sheer fantasy. They touch everything you touch. They are necessary to mine the alternative energy you listed. You can’t move a ship without them, or make car tires, move a long distance truck, produce pharmaceuticals, etc etc.
We still use horses. China probably hit peak oil consumption which is why oil prices didn’t spike that high from Trump’s Iran blunder….so American oil companies won’t be investing in production and if oil prices get too low then we will have another mini recession like in 2016. Be careful what you wish for! 😉
China built up significant reserves prior to the Iran conflict. The US has been exporting from the SPR to backstop other nations. Meanwhile Cushing is headed towards “tank bottoms” with an estimated 60 days diesel supply reserve. Once that’s gone, you can expect a spike yet again in diesel prices that filters through to all corners of the economy.
I get thr feeling you really don’t know much about the oil complex… at all,
I know a lot about oil and gas. You know about 2008 oil, you know nothing about fracking as you are stuck in the past…or maybe you fell into a coma in July 2008 and recently awoke from it! 😉
https://x.com/chrismartzwx/status/2070800690931257642?s=46&t=G-kXXBF42z220X6Hrp6f1w
Don't feed the troll.
Yet the marxist takeover of the US education cartel is having incredible success. Over 50% of college students surveyed prefer socialism over capitalism. New York city has just voted in more DSA candidates.
Don't confuse marxism, which is an economic theory with the idiocracy seeping through all levels in the US.
The idiocracy is sourced from the marxist ideology being promulgated in the education cartel. The purpose is to divide and conquer the US from within.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
And more than three time?
Sometimes I ask myself if Poutine doesn't like that?
For more than ten years, neocons say always: " Come on, push forward, Poutine is a pussy, he will not dare"
Was they right?
Lavrov is being kind, in the manner that suits his style.
He knows he was tricked.
The question is :
how could that happen ?
Is the KGB that out of touch with realitiy?
The current losses on the Eastern Front are amazing.
Particularly in Crimania.
Could it be Putin is somehow complacent?
My number one constructive critique of Russia is that it's plagued by broken feedback loops that lead to the formulation of inefficient or even sometimes counterproductive policies. There's also a cultural preference for telling superiors whatever someone thinks that they want to hear, not holding anyone to account whenever they're wrong, and failing to fix problems whenever they're finally identified.
I'm absolutely confident that every single person who told Putin to stick with the "Spirit of Anchorage" will get off scot-free, not even with a tongue-lashing, and everyone single one of them will now pretend a la 1984 that they always knew it was a ruse.
That's just the way that things are around here, and you'll likely also see top "Non-Russian Pro-Russian" (NRPR) influencers doing the same, they always without exception toe whatever the Kremlin line may be.
What makes you think that Trump might have intended to deceive Russia this time, given the possibility—as you have said before—that he is just forgetful and impressionable?
I'm personally undecided about whether or not he meant to mislead Putin, but at the end of the day, he had 10 months to coerce Zelensky into withdrawing from Donbass if the reports about the "Spirit of Anchorage's" quid pro quo are to be believed, he was regularly reminded in the media and during his envoys meetings in Moscow, yet he didn't do it so I understand why Russia is very disappointed.
Obviously divining intent is hard, but this situation is eerily similar to the failed peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in early 2022. Both UK PM Johnson's visit and the Bucha false flag coincided, so there is some question as to whether the latter played a role in persuading key Western elites to scuttle a deal.
If that is the case, then it shows how high-ranking officials can be duped by rather crude PSYOPs—spread by third parties or even subordinates—and react illogically, notably so if personal idiosyncrasies such as Trump's are at work as well. At any rate, it does not bode well for mankind in general and confirms my cynicism.
As an aside: is there any sign that Russia told Trump (who blamed Putin for "tapping me along") that Ukrainian provocations and lies were responsible for the failure of last summer's talks? I, personally, have not seen this, which would be a rather glaring omission on Putin and his team's part, knowing Trump's personality.
Some people say that Putin was just balancing between the oligarchic arm, encouraging repproachment with the US, a la Kiril Dimitrievv, the oligarchs, Nabulina sabotaging Russian economy, and the General Staff and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who wanted to take a hard stance. Obviously, Lavrov cannot say, I told Vladimir Vladimirovich many many times but he wouldn't budge from his "balancing" act. Putin seems to have a great memory but not matched by same level of wisdom and understanding of how the west and the US operates. As such, Putin himself will get scot-free from pursuing this ghost of the unexistent spirit of Anchorage. But, if he allowed the military to prepare for some contingencies, then not all is lost.
In fairness, all of the elements of your critique apply equally to the U.S. government, though maybe for different reasons. There is no accountability whatsoever. Success is defined by other terms - sociability, attending the right university, having the right social circle. Fixing identified problems is the last goal of anyone in the government. Why would for example someone overseeing programs to eradicate homeless ever want to see it eradicated (and their job made unnecessary)? Counterproductive policies aren't a bug - they're a feature, a "success" to list on your annual performance report.
I suspect Russia and the U.S. aren't the only government bureaucracies like that, either.
I agree that it's not exclusive to Russia, but at least in the US, different policy ideas are thought up, shared, and lobbied for, plus the Intelligence Community makes reference in their public reports to which agencies disagree with certain claims.
None of that happens here. There aren't several policy tracks that decisionmakers can move between as circumstances change. There's just one track, and deviating from it risks professional problems.
Only once it's clear that the official policy isn't working or requires change does another policy appear, and then that becomes the new dogma, and so on and so forth. There's very little public debate among experts too.
I used to participate in conferences and related events here and was sorely disappointed when I realized that it's just people reading off their reports, talking over one another, and basically just saying the same thing but in different ways.
Moreover, in the US at least, there's at least public shaming if someone gets something very, very wrong; that too is unknown here, all experts "circle the wagons" since they're all mostly saying the same thing anyhow.
For a creative thinker, it can be incredibly frustrating working in this field at times since it's all about amplifying talking points, not actually thinking, discovering new solutions, identifying latent problems, etc.
Few people have any sense of initiative here, "fatalism" ("avos") rules the roost in the sense of everyone thinking everything will be okay and someone else will do whatever must be done. For someone like me, it's a very irresponsible attitude.
I know we have the same thing in the US too, but we still have some (very imperfect!) checks and balances to try to address this, while no such system exists here. It's really only a handful of people formulating policy.
Everyone else then does whatever this "brain trust" decides must be done, and they honestly don't even do it all that well anymore nowadays as proven by Russia's recent spree of setbacks abroad.
Think about it: Lavrov is half-Armenian and he's been in his job for something like two decades, how can it be that Russia "loses" Armenia under his watch of all people!? It boggles the mind but nobody cares to address the root causes.
Russia took Armenia for granted, convinced itself with "wishful thinking" that Pashinyan would remain loyal, and was once again "led by the nose" as always, over and over again, always duped and always none the wiser.
Russia could have endeded the war early by taking KIEV. What is going on is a civil war between 2 identical people.
Russia could have ended the war early by capturing Washington D.C., also.
Neither has any connection to real possibilities.
One cannot take a city of 3M with just some 50K soldiers
Is Lavrov basically saying that Russia did not fight on the battlefield as hard as they could have because of Anchorage? This is the first time I hear this. I always thought the Russians were doing all they could to win the war. If this is true, then the Russians are absolute fools and have no one to blame but themselves. You would think they would have learned something after being deceived for years by the Minsk agreements.
Any path taken would've presented its own set of quandaries.
Putin and Lavrov have dealt with this insane situation better than any two other leaders in the world ever could have. And they've done a very difficult job, probably that has entirely consumed them for 4 years now, with grace and dignity. The entire world is blessed that these men didn't wreck everything and for that we owe them our respect and gratitude.
Today's world just keeps reminding me of Kafka's novel, "The Trial."
The problem is that any escalation from Russia is clearly pushing the conflict toward nuclear.
Just like the war in Iran had a critical issue that is hard to gap for the negotiations – the issue of enriched uranium – the same goes with the Russian-Ukraine conflict. There the major problem is Ukraine’s status after a ceasefire. The entry of NATO forces is the elephant in the room. Russia cannot live with it and Ukraine/NATO/US does not want live without it. Again, the Russian view is obvious; it is better to mitigate the conflict and live with an ongoing low level warfare than giving Ukraine the opportunity to open the door for NATO/US. A NATO/US direct entry can easily take the war to the level of a nuclear conflict and if anybody, Russia knows the nature of that beast. They were living and playing with it since the 1950s. There you have it, this war was designed by US/NATO to never end and they took decades to advance and warm it up to that point. The Ukrainians together with their gain of function biolabs are surely not going to win nothing here. Half their population is already outside of the country and with each year less likely to return. This war is already longer than the Soviet involvement was against Germany from 1941 to 1945. Ukrainian industry and agriculture was miserable low level corrupted and downgraded and there will be no money and people to reconstruct it. America was sucked in by Zion Don and Ukraine by the Servant of the People, the third grade piano player and both nations are paying the price for these substandard, surrealistic decisions.
Russian dithering and indecision are what are driving the escalation of this war.
Life and history can surprise. Putin is a man of negotiation. Pragmatic. This supose to have a counterpart. When the politicians of the west do not hear what he says, Russia remains only the way to let the people in west know and understand who is responsible for the comming war and the suffering. Same about the people in Russia.
You need a clean conscience before you hit hard. At least normal people have to be fully convinced that is no other solution.
This takes time. With Iran happened the same. You try to avoid the impossible. It is up to each person when he reached limit of trying to trust one. Putin needs more time because he cares. The war is the worst solution but sometimes you cannot avoid it.
For now Putin seams to be the right person. Seams to be balanced. When the war is here ams killing for surviving will become necessary then you will need a killer like Stalin.
This was obvious from the outset. Russia fell for the okey doke.
Again.
Karaganov was right back in 2023 and he’s right now. Like any big bully, the only thing to stop the U.S. is punching it back. Iran has proven this. Putin’s hope that he could defeat Ukraine, without having to attack the West directly has turned out to be a major miscalculation. I don’t think this was because he trusted Trump, but that he didn’t want to risk a major European war, perhaps involving the U.S. , if he could avoid it. The first step should be the one suggested by Gilbert Doctorow, and that is taking off the head of the monster in Ukraine. Without Zelensky and his band of Nazis the NATO, will have no one to deal with and the EU will have no one to launder their money.
Hell yes, stall and build inventory. Difficult to believe how they all bought into this. No one at SVR profiled Trump?
I expect that pretty much all Ukrainian energy will now come under relentless assault.
Fool me once.......... The West cannot be trusted, time to treat them as such.
Draw the lines early, clearly, and then defend the line fiercely. Perhaps it is time for the missiles to do the persuasions.
Let’s say russia escalate , if Russia were to escalate deep strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and water systems, it could cause a severe humanitarian crisis and a lasting reputational blow that directly contradicts the Kremlin’s narrative of “liberating a brotherly nation.” Such actions would also likely strengthen Western public support for Ukraine ..
Then how russia can establish deterrence? like iran did in the Persian gulf ??