The reality is that Russia has proven itself reluctant to escalate after every one of Ukraine’s major US-backed provocations, of which there’s now a laundry list, perhaps because it truly fears that the US might provoke World War III over whatever provocation it may be that prompts Russia to escalate.
"...the way in which President Putin will continue approaching this dilemma."
He's right, of course, as he always has been — the adult in the room.
I'd like nothing more than to see the endless diatribe of awful adjectives used to describe them, which the UK/NATO/US Axis elicits and deserves, somehow vindicated, to see them suffer in some meaningful way, although there really isn't any way their suffering could ever equate to the suffering they've caused and continue to cause. It's childish, as old as humanity itself: 'An eye for an eye!'.
Unpopular though Christianity and many ideas from the Christian Bible have become (And I'm not a bible basher!) there would seem to be good reason why they underpinned several hundred years of gradual development to make us what we are today. There is sense in the idea, 'Turn the other cheek,'.
There was a Scot(t?) someone-or-other on Solovyov Live this morning (Вести ФМ). Solovyov played that awful game, when he demonstrates how fluent he is in English, so they get an interpreter to do a live translation from English to Russian, and I was still half-asleep (BST is two hours behind Moscow time.) so I missed a lot of what was said. I did catch one important point: this 'Scot' (Apparently, he was born in Scotland.) from Yankee Doodle (La-La) Land pointed out the main goal of the US in their use of the Ukraine was to provoke a war with Russia with the specific intention of using this to control the American people. Yes, he's right, of course; and that does make the danger of escalation to nuclear apocalypse very real. The Americans, after all, have nothing to lose.
It's really just a waiting game: if the Russians can turn the other cheek until the spoilt-brat American bully has ranted and raved and run out of steam, until some other distraction attracts the attention of their delusion, Russia may thus save the world. Difficult though I've found it to come to terms with (I do SO want to see them suffer!) Putin IS right.
Thanks for your reply. I find it sincerely gratifying to learn I am not alone in my sentiment.
Please forgive me for contradicting you, and please don't take this as patronising, but despite the admiration I have for the man and his work, I WOULDN'T like to meet him. However gratifying a life milestone meeting him might be for me, I'm afraid it might take some of the energy he uses to do other things away from the very much more important things he has to do. I wouldn't be happy with myself for having done that; I don't think we can afford it.
But I certainly appreciate and share your sentiment.
Putin is the problem. He has always thought that he had an understanding of German/French politics and that they would eventually agree something with Russia. In 2014, he agreed to the stupid Minsk agreement at a time when the Ukraine had only 4,000 battle-ready troops and had no Western weaponry and training at all. He stood in the way. In 2022, it was he who decided not to go in shock and awe style and take out all power stations, and other infrastructure, before invading. It was he who decided never to bomb any railway tracks to Poland carrying Western weapons (this remains the case till today). It was he who decided never to attack Zelensky (although he occasionally says "I may find my balls and attack decision-making centres one day") and to allow a constant parade of visits of Western leaders to Kiev without risk of attack. He decided in 2022 not to mobilise when it was clearly needed. Then at the end of the year, it was he who decided to attack power transmission architecture - which seemed like a big step , but was not in fact an attack on power generation facilities and could be repaired in days. He decided not to attack the bridges over the Dniepr. He decided to allow Global Hawk to direct attacks on Russia. He decided that his red lines on the Crimea were to be worthless. It was he who agreed a draft treaty in Turkey and agreed to pull his troops back before it was signed by Zelensky. It was he who offered to give back conquered territories in that draft treaty and to not demand sovereignty over the Crimea either. It was he who has decided not to respond to terrorist attacks within Russia itself. For me, the fact that Russia is a country you can attack at will with no repercussions is new information. I didn't realise that. Even now, he is angling to get the Ukraine to negotiate on the basis of the 4 oblasts - apparently Putin doesn't even want Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa. But there are 8, not 4, Russian-speaking provinces. I mean, the guy is fixing to lose. Whatever happens will be a strategic defeat for Russia.
I think Russia does not want Ukraine. In any way. Because it would mean having to control millions of incipient terrorists.
I mean Russia. Not Putin, not this guy, that guy, Russia. Russia does not need or want Ukraine.
Russia did not want and does not need the Donbas even.
I can see sense in Putin's reluctance to take them onboard. It is your problem, he said, way back, you solve it, you are part of Ukraine. I think that's fair enough. Good politics even. For the people had the option always open to move to Russia.
Not easy to do, I know, I'm not pretending otherwise.
But if the place is so unpleasant that they're actually targeting you for what we might call 'low grade' ethnic cleansing then if it were me I'd give very serious thought to migrating family and all to Russia
And Russia needs the population.
Let them stay there and handle it and perhaps they could have arrived at a better government and a different situation. All the signs were there. Zelensky was elected on a peace platform.
Where's the real need for a war? Lose god knows how many of your own, Donbas people, over 10 years of fighting. Got to be 50,000 I'd say at a wild guess. And Russia has lost maybe 100,000 now for sure though they're not giving the figures. But everyone talks about 5:1. Well Kiev must have lost a good 600,000 DEAD by now.
I think it sane and sensible to avoid taking Ukraine.
If the war can be won by negotiation then good. There's something like 600,000 men lying in their graves: and all their families and friends, who'd be better off today if there'd been a negotiated settlement.
But I think as a normal man with a normal man's fears for life and safety of self and family. Not as some histrionic ideologue. I would rather be alive and free to move than dead.
And when it comes to 'strategic defeat' I think it is clear that Russia and the BRICS have won the greatest strategic victory for the forces of the people and free trade and multipolarity that anyone - more than anyone - could have imagined would have been possible a few years ago.
I can’t imagine the pressure Putin is under to retaliate. I think there is something else going on—what, I don’t know. Retaliation hardly means that the next step is WWIII. It would seem to an outsider that serious retaliation would expose the enemy’s next step, and that is an important piece of information for a commander.
I think they should wind up to shooting down the drones. Make much publicity about it. Spell it out widely and very very clearly and simply - even over simplify, put it as: 'these drones are the trigger and the targeting for these attacks' - and mention the period of time this has been going on, mention that Russia has always been able to bring them down - be slow, slow, slow - weeks, maybe even a couple of months... and then bring one down.
There has to be a stop to the pussy footing somewhere sometime and this looks good to me. It's only a drone after all. Over the water. To the average guy what the hell is it doing there anyway? The USA is thousands of miles away. F*** off to your own backyard.
Putin spelled out clearly already the essence of it all: the targeting, the munition and even the trigger pulling is all American.
His people particularly the 'alt media' or whatever who're active in Telegram, YT war vids etc, are vociferous increasingly with demands that he do something.
They want him to hit live targets, even with collateral damage. Some want especially collateral damage.
You would think at the least he would put up a drone offshore the USA. But in fact if he did that they would shoot it down and then of course he'd have to shoot theirs. That would be the beginning of a shooting war.
This way would be safer. I think. I think a yankee drone over the Black Sea means much much less to the Americans than a Russian drone offshore.
The British-made Storm Shadow missiles and the American-made Atacam missiles which have been deployed by NATO and Pentagon on the territory of Ukraine for hitting civilian targets inside Russia, are fully within operational control by NATO and Pentagon command centres and their operational control has not been transferred to Ukrainian hands by Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden. These missiles require a complex procedure for operation, relying on real time reconnaisance data from satellites for pinpointing the location of targets, and the feeding of a flight plan based on inertial coordinates into the on board computer. All of these steps are being performed by NATO and Pentagon directly without any participation by Ukrainian troops. For the past two and a half years, American drones flying over the Black Sea and the Ukraine have fired missiles and laser-guided bombs off and on at Russian civilian and military assetts, and have had their transponders which transmit IFOF frequencies, turned off, so that once they have hurled their payload of bombs on Russian targets, America can get away by saying that the incriminated drone belonged to the Ukrainian Airforce and not to America. On the other hand, if the drone gets shot down by a Russian missile before it could drop its bombs on Russia, American strategy is to create a ruckus by bemoaning that Russia has shot down a drone belonging to a third country, ie. America which is not a party to the conflict. Apart from dropping bombs on Russian assetts, American drones have also been transmitting reconnaisance data back to makeshift remote-command centres based deep inside the EU, in Germany and Czechia, from where EU civilians are directly remote-controlling missile batteries installed on Ukrainian soil and firing them at Russian targets. In this way, American and EU drones have been directly parricipating in aggression against Russia and Belarus, including the trecherous bombing of Russian ships from a designated peace corridor, and the shooting down of a Russian Awacs plane flying on routine peacetime mission over a third country, Belarus.
Thus, American and EU drones have been flying undaunted near Russia, with their identification-friend-or-foe frequencies turned ON on purpose until THE PENULTIMATE MOMENT when they fired their arsenal of bombs and missiles at Russian Targets after switching those transponders off suddenly. These drones also do not bear US Air Force or Navy markings. These drones have trecherously fired missiles and dropped bombs on Russian ships from the strategic nuclear fleet, from a "peace corridor" which had been agreed upon as a zone of no combat in triliteral agreements meant for facilitating Ukrainian foodgrain exports to Europe.
In this way, American and EU drones, which carry more than a dozen missiles each, have been taking off from bases situated imside the EU and from American warships, and have mounted direct aggression against Russia by bombing Russian ships, Russian airplanes on peacetime missions, and Russian civilian assetts. These drones are operated by remote control from NATO bases inside Europe, and fly over the Black Sea and Ukraime, and suddenly switch off their friend-or-foe-identification transponders at the PENULTIMATE MOMENT just before firing missiles and bombs on Russian targets, so that America can eschew culpability by saying that the drones involved do not belong to the American military, but are part of the Ukrainian arsenal. Whole swarms American and EU dtones keep loittering in the sky with hostile intentions in the expectation that Russia will shy away from shooting them down out of fear of embarrassment from adverse appraisal by western news agencies and their South Asian surrogates. And then, suddenly, the drones swing into action and fire missiles on Russian assetts by catching the latter off guard in the anecdotal moment. The best way for a farmer to save himself from a leopard or panther that has barged into his field is to shoot him dead at first sight, instead of waiting for it to demonstrate its aggression by readying itself to pounce on the farmer, because a lepard can strike at lightning speed. It is high time that both these drones as well as the European bases from where they takeoff, are smoked out of existence by Russia.
To deprecate the premptive downing of American drones by Russia is typical of priestcrafty conscience, as embodied in the priestcrafty untouchability-monger judicial officers who sentence innocent farmers in South Asia to imprisonment with hard labour for having shot leopards in self defence in their farms. The priestcrafters argue that a farmer should shoot at a leopard which has intruded in his field, only at the moment when the leopard has announced its hostile intentions by bracing up into position for pouncing on the poor man, and not one instant before. This priestcrafty argument is an undisguised call for murder of the farmer, given that the farmer stands no chance of escape once the leopard has jumped up in the air, because one cannot win against the lightening speed of a leopard strike.
Actually, most of the drones deployed by America and the EU over the black Sea and Ukraine do not bear any markings which would identify them as NATO or Pentagon assetts. They do not transmit IFOF frequencies, or suddenly start doing so, at whimsical fancy. These drones are armed with missiles and bombs. They are used by the EU and Pentagon for bombing Russian assetts and troops, but the EU and the US immediately dismiss all culpability by claiming that those drones had been supplied to Ukraine and it is Ukraine which had been remote piloting them. The EU and America have been using their drones for surveillance to eavesdrop of Russian assetts located within Ukraine as well as mainland Russia, and relaying that info to makeshift remote command centres located deep within the EU in countries like Germany, Poland and Czechia. NATO and America have also deployed missile batteries aimed at targets located in mainland Russia and on ships belonging to the strategic Russian naval fleet. These missiles, although located on the territory of Ukraine, are not under operational control of the Ukrainian army, but are under semi-autonomous remote operational control by civilian and military personnel staffers at the makeshift NATO command centres situated in Germany, Poland and Czechia etc. It is from those command centres, that NATO and America have fired missiles at Russia strategic naval fleet ships in the Black Sea, and on a Russian Beriev airborne early warning aircraft which was on non-combat duty in a third country, Belarus. Moreover, American drones flying over the Black Sea, trecherously dropped bombs and fired missiles on a Russian frigate, from a peace corridor which had been agreeed upon as a no-combat zone, under a triliteral agreement for facilitating Ukrainian foodgrain exports, between Russia Ukraine and the western bloc. So, these American and German-operated drones were legitimate military targets of counter-strikes from Russian defense batteries. Notice the intellectual gymnastics involved in the tacit admission by western media outlets that American drones are known to carry upto 15 missiles, but with the rider that they are mainly used for "surveillance" alone. Western media outlets have been bemoaning that the American drones which had been downed by Russia , were only on benign reconnaisance missions and alleging that Russia has "unfairly escalated" matters by shooting it down. Either way, whether the drones have on a bombing sortie, or pure reconnoiteering, they deserved to be smoked out at the very least...
Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy the first-couple-entitled-bedmates of Britain, and Joe Biden the ceremonial president of USA and Anthony Blinken the defacto-incharge, are guilty of having mounted direct aggression against civilians residing inside Russia, and attempts to launch missile as well as electronic sabotage attacks on Russian strategic forces hardware including nuclear early warning systems. NATO has attempted to hijack Russian ICBM's via electronic piloting by flying missiles with ECM payloads very close by, and neutralising those ICBM's by firing them at innocent civilians in Asia and Africa. The EU nations have announced their culpability by their deeds, and have rendered themselves legitimate targets of nuclear counter strikes for saving Asia and Africa from their holocaustic designs. In the same way in which an American drone operated and managed entirely by the Pentagon had trecherously fired a missile at a Russian AWACS plane on peacetime duty in a third country viz. Belarus; likewise all airports and railway stations inside the EU from which weapons are despatched to Ukraine have become legitimate targets of Russian tactical nuclear strikes. The ATACAMS missiles Pentagon is using for mounting direct aggression against civilian neighborhoods inside mainland Russia, contain several cluster bombs made of high yield explosive in their ammunition bay; and these cluster bombs have been deliberately painted green in colour, because the Pentagon has intended those bombs to blend with the decor of cropped farmlands and to survive undetected and unexploded for months to years after getting disbursed over areas spanning some kilometers in the steppe farmlands of Russia, until the moment when some unsuspecting farmer steps over them, unwittingly triggering an explosion leading to his own death and precipitating massive farmland fires. The Pentagon has intended the ATACAMS to straffe Russian wheat fields in the same way French and American Airforce had straffed fields in Iraq even after Iraq's defeat in 1991
Both in Syria and the Black Sea region, American and NATO drones have been flying provocatively directly ahead into the flight path of Russian aircraft, prompting emergency recourse manouevres for collision avoidance. In any similar situation, in which say a Libyan or Iranian patrol boat ventures anywhere close to an American or British warship, those warships have fired on the intruding vessels, and justified such a response under the plea of "collision prevention counter measures". In fact, in the early 1980's, the American navy bombed and sank a number of Libyan patrol boats in the Gulf of Sirte, and killed the occupants of those boats in the process, because those boats had ventured close to American armada whilst it had been conducting naval exercises, and the USA claimed it had rights to preemptive neutralization of "perceived imminent threat".
Likewise, similar measures on part of Russia to protect its aviation from rogue provocations by US and NATO drones, are highly warranted. Moreover, there is no way a Russian pilot can warn a drone which has no human pilot seated in its cockpit, other than by dropping flares or fuel on it !
The remote-pilot of this drone, from his command Centre in CENTCOM base, was trying to outmanouevre the Russian jet, and lost control in the process. There is no way THE pilot of the Russian jet could have warned the drone which had no driver in its cockpit. The only way to warn a drone which veers dangerously close to a fighter jet, is to smoke the intruder out of the sky before it makes a collision with the jet either accidentally or purposely and unloads its arsenal of loitering munitions on that jet.
EU and American drones, which have been flying over both Ukraine and the Black Sea, have been committing relentless aggression against Russia. These drones which include the Reaper among others, carry more than a dozen missiles each, and have butchered an entire wedding party in Afghanistan, and murdered Gen Solemani in Iraq. As such, at the very least they are legitimate targets of reprisal shootings by Russian defence forces, eventhough the aggression which has been mounted by them against Russia would justify retaliatory strategic nuclear strikes on Europe as well, on moral grounds. I say this, because these drones deliberately have been modified to erase all surface markings which could identify them as belonging to the US navy or US Airforce; and moreover, their identification-friend-or-foe transponders are deliberately switched off at the very moment when they fire missiles at Russian targets, but kept ON until the PENULTIMATE moment. In this way, these drones have fired missiles in the nick of time upon Russian ships in the Black Sea, upon Russian Beriev Awacs planes on peacetime duties in Belarus and on civilian Russian facilities situated on the Russian mainland. As I understand, it was in grudging admittance of these crimes that the German chancellor has acknowledged that her country and its allies are engaged in war against Russia. The problem with Russia as I see it, is that Russia has till now erred on the side of restraint, exactly in the same way when America had conspired to have a Russian pilot engaged in non-combat humanitarian operations trecherously shot down by Turkish NATO airforce pilots. Russia had reposed faith in goodwill of America, and had got beguiled in the belief that by having provided advance info about the flight path of Russian pilots to America in good faith, Russia could remain assured of avoidance of incidents. Because of such naive trust in trecherous Americans, Russia had also not deemed it necessary to equip its airplanes with Vimpel missiles. And The US and Turkey ambushed the Russian airplane by exploiting this window of weakness through oversight or negligence of Russia. Western news mongers are saying that Russia has no moral right to shoot down American drones in international airspace, because according to the western creed of global conscience keepers, such a measure will amount to a provocation and escalation. Russia has oft times made the mistake of shying away from shooting down American and EU drones, out of fear of adverse comments from western political observers., and this has emboldened swarms of those drones to venture unmolested dangerously close to Russian assetts, whereupon those drones suddenly switch off their transponders at the penultimate moment and fire missiles and bombs at Russian targets. Having switched off their transponders at the very end, the Americans think they can fool Russia and get away by saying that those drones were piloted not by NATO or the Pentagon, but were part of equipment provided in form of military aid to Ukraine and were piloted by Ukrainians. But Russia knows very well that those drones take off from NATO bases im Italy and Romania among others, and from American warships, conduct reconnaissance on Russian assetts, relay the info via satellite to data-processors located inside remote-command centres deep inside the EU in Germany and Czechia, and from those command centres, digital orders are conveyed via satellite to semi-autonomous missile batteries nominally located on Ukrainian soil but controlled entitely by European civilian techs and pilots from the EU remote command centres. The right thing for Russia to do is to smoke out both the drones as well as the locales from where they have taken off.
The entry of American ATACAMS and British STORM SHADOW missiles on the scene has unfolded a new dimension, because there is no way these missiles can be fired at Russian targets without full-fledged involvement of NATO, the British military and the Pentagon in such aggression. Use of ATACAMS and STORM SHADOW requires real time access to satellite reconnaisance data for pinpointing the targets, and feeding of a flight path based on predetermined coordinates into the onboard computer ; and AI management. Those missiles remain fully under active managerial control of NATO and US military command centres at every stage of their operation. The USA, EU and Britain are committing direct aggression against Russia.
European countries have illegally confiscated Russian money and assetts and denied Russian nationals all forms of access to European commercial satellites in a glaring instance of repudiatation of commercial agreements, but are misusing civilian satellites such as Star link for relaying signals on localisation of Russian troops for bombing By NATO drones.
The ATACAMS missiles deployed and controlled entirely by the US PENTAGON on Ukrainian soil for aggression against Russian mainland, contains a deadly array of high explosive cluster bombs, especially painted green in durable powder coat, designed to disburse itself over a wide area in farmlands and remain remarkably concealed for months to years amidst the foliage until accidentally stepped on by a child of a farmer or an u wary pedestrian, whereupon it would explode to kill or irreversible maim that person for life, apart from setting dry foliage on fire, a strategy both the USA and France had used with Storm Shadow missiles for destroying standing wheat crops by straffing in Iraq in 1991 even after Baghdad's surrender for engendering an artificial famine. The US and its NATO quislings had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children via excruciatingly painful terminal starvation genocide in which the human body becomes forced to consume and deplete its own neuronal myelin from its brain in a desperate but fruitless bid to survive. NATO militaries imposed the double whample of a water-tight air-sea blockade to obviate the entry of even a single grain of food into the country as well as shut off all avenues for exit or escape of Iraqis and 175000 Indian labourer expats from the War zone, followed by the most intensive indiscriminate post WW 2 fire-bombing of civilian infrastructure and dwelling units with bunker buster cluster bombs. Besides Not a single Civilian Bomb shelter, hospital, church, mosque worth any mention was spared the napalm bombing., which also included dozens of vans transporting Asian evacuees to Jordan enoute return back home.
Does anyone think the phone call between Austin and the new Russian Minister of Defense might have included discussion of a change in that "policy"...? ☮
"Even asymmetrical responses aren’t seriously considered except for bombing a few military targets afterwards and sometimes hitting a couple of power plants, but those responses have had absolutely no deterrent effect as is indisputably known."
I think it does have an impact on the Ukrainian population. 10 minus hours and falling power a day has to wear on thier moral and that's not good for the Z.
Plus, recent articles by Ben Rhodes and a recent Rand book indicate a split in the Party of Venice/City of London elites running DC. Putin would want to let that fester.
Your frequent and consistent jab to the so-called Alt-Media influencers sounds more and more a personal vendetta. Rather than causing diversion among the ranks, why not realising we our struggle to the evil empire is a shared and united struggle!
The Alt-Media Community refers to the diverse collection of non-Mainstream Media platforms and people, many of whom tend to have very similar if not identical interpretations of events, a lot of which tend to be based on false dogmas and end up being regularly debunked.
I'm a part of this community and I've seen it operate from within, both from my prior vantage point in publicly financed Russian international media and through participation in several independent projects, not to mention my close observations of others in this field.
I've come to the conclusion that while some top influencers are well-intentioned but naive, many are malicious and deliberately mislead their audience with wishful thinking and copium to generate clout, push an ideology, and solicit donations.
Suffice to remind everyone of the countless lies over the years about Russia plotting to shoot down attacking Israeli jets over Syria or plotting a supposedly imminent campaign against Odessa. None of that ever happened, and those top influencers who pushed these claims never publicly accounted for why they were wrong, nor will many of them ever do so.
I disavow those who manipulate their audience and betray their trust for self-interested reasons. These people are also very cliquish and prone to "inquisitions" where they "cancel" folks who share different views, let alone politely debunk their false dogma. It's literally cultish at this point and I want nothing to do with those who partake in such activities.
There's no "shared and united struggle" with people who weaponize lies for their own gain, even if they thinly disguise their intent as pursuing "the greater good". They've discredited the community, dumbed it down, and turned it into a replica of the Mainstream Media, albeit with different rhetoric and in support of a different side, but it's largely run the exact same way.
To be clear, there's still some quality work and honest influencers in the Alt-Media Community, but they're increasingly far and few between. Most of what's out there is just people shouting slogans, ranting against the other side, and spinning everything that their own side does as part of a "5D chess master plan" or whatever. I'm frankly disgusted by it.
"...the way in which President Putin will continue approaching this dilemma."
He's right, of course, as he always has been — the adult in the room.
I'd like nothing more than to see the endless diatribe of awful adjectives used to describe them, which the UK/NATO/US Axis elicits and deserves, somehow vindicated, to see them suffer in some meaningful way, although there really isn't any way their suffering could ever equate to the suffering they've caused and continue to cause. It's childish, as old as humanity itself: 'An eye for an eye!'.
Unpopular though Christianity and many ideas from the Christian Bible have become (And I'm not a bible basher!) there would seem to be good reason why they underpinned several hundred years of gradual development to make us what we are today. There is sense in the idea, 'Turn the other cheek,'.
There was a Scot(t?) someone-or-other on Solovyov Live this morning (Вести ФМ). Solovyov played that awful game, when he demonstrates how fluent he is in English, so they get an interpreter to do a live translation from English to Russian, and I was still half-asleep (BST is two hours behind Moscow time.) so I missed a lot of what was said. I did catch one important point: this 'Scot' (Apparently, he was born in Scotland.) from Yankee Doodle (La-La) Land pointed out the main goal of the US in their use of the Ukraine was to provoke a war with Russia with the specific intention of using this to control the American people. Yes, he's right, of course; and that does make the danger of escalation to nuclear apocalypse very real. The Americans, after all, have nothing to lose.
It's really just a waiting game: if the Russians can turn the other cheek until the spoilt-brat American bully has ranted and raved and run out of steam, until some other distraction attracts the attention of their delusion, Russia may thus save the world. Difficult though I've found it to come to terms with (I do SO want to see them suffer!) Putin IS right.
He is a remarkable leader and constantly shows it. I’d like to meet him.
Thanks for your reply. I find it sincerely gratifying to learn I am not alone in my sentiment.
Please forgive me for contradicting you, and please don't take this as patronising, but despite the admiration I have for the man and his work, I WOULDN'T like to meet him. However gratifying a life milestone meeting him might be for me, I'm afraid it might take some of the energy he uses to do other things away from the very much more important things he has to do. I wouldn't be happy with myself for having done that; I don't think we can afford it.
But I certainly appreciate and share your sentiment.
Thanks for writing!
Putin is the problem. He has always thought that he had an understanding of German/French politics and that they would eventually agree something with Russia. In 2014, he agreed to the stupid Minsk agreement at a time when the Ukraine had only 4,000 battle-ready troops and had no Western weaponry and training at all. He stood in the way. In 2022, it was he who decided not to go in shock and awe style and take out all power stations, and other infrastructure, before invading. It was he who decided never to bomb any railway tracks to Poland carrying Western weapons (this remains the case till today). It was he who decided never to attack Zelensky (although he occasionally says "I may find my balls and attack decision-making centres one day") and to allow a constant parade of visits of Western leaders to Kiev without risk of attack. He decided in 2022 not to mobilise when it was clearly needed. Then at the end of the year, it was he who decided to attack power transmission architecture - which seemed like a big step , but was not in fact an attack on power generation facilities and could be repaired in days. He decided not to attack the bridges over the Dniepr. He decided to allow Global Hawk to direct attacks on Russia. He decided that his red lines on the Crimea were to be worthless. It was he who agreed a draft treaty in Turkey and agreed to pull his troops back before it was signed by Zelensky. It was he who offered to give back conquered territories in that draft treaty and to not demand sovereignty over the Crimea either. It was he who has decided not to respond to terrorist attacks within Russia itself. For me, the fact that Russia is a country you can attack at will with no repercussions is new information. I didn't realise that. Even now, he is angling to get the Ukraine to negotiate on the basis of the 4 oblasts - apparently Putin doesn't even want Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa. But there are 8, not 4, Russian-speaking provinces. I mean, the guy is fixing to lose. Whatever happens will be a strategic defeat for Russia.
I think Russia does not want Ukraine. In any way. Because it would mean having to control millions of incipient terrorists.
I mean Russia. Not Putin, not this guy, that guy, Russia. Russia does not need or want Ukraine.
Russia did not want and does not need the Donbas even.
I can see sense in Putin's reluctance to take them onboard. It is your problem, he said, way back, you solve it, you are part of Ukraine. I think that's fair enough. Good politics even. For the people had the option always open to move to Russia.
Not easy to do, I know, I'm not pretending otherwise.
But if the place is so unpleasant that they're actually targeting you for what we might call 'low grade' ethnic cleansing then if it were me I'd give very serious thought to migrating family and all to Russia
And Russia needs the population.
Let them stay there and handle it and perhaps they could have arrived at a better government and a different situation. All the signs were there. Zelensky was elected on a peace platform.
Where's the real need for a war? Lose god knows how many of your own, Donbas people, over 10 years of fighting. Got to be 50,000 I'd say at a wild guess. And Russia has lost maybe 100,000 now for sure though they're not giving the figures. But everyone talks about 5:1. Well Kiev must have lost a good 600,000 DEAD by now.
I think it sane and sensible to avoid taking Ukraine.
If the war can be won by negotiation then good. There's something like 600,000 men lying in their graves: and all their families and friends, who'd be better off today if there'd been a negotiated settlement.
But I think as a normal man with a normal man's fears for life and safety of self and family. Not as some histrionic ideologue. I would rather be alive and free to move than dead.
And when it comes to 'strategic defeat' I think it is clear that Russia and the BRICS have won the greatest strategic victory for the forces of the people and free trade and multipolarity that anyone - more than anyone - could have imagined would have been possible a few years ago.
I can’t imagine the pressure Putin is under to retaliate. I think there is something else going on—what, I don’t know. Retaliation hardly means that the next step is WWIII. It would seem to an outsider that serious retaliation would expose the enemy’s next step, and that is an important piece of information for a commander.
I think they should wind up to shooting down the drones. Make much publicity about it. Spell it out widely and very very clearly and simply - even over simplify, put it as: 'these drones are the trigger and the targeting for these attacks' - and mention the period of time this has been going on, mention that Russia has always been able to bring them down - be slow, slow, slow - weeks, maybe even a couple of months... and then bring one down.
There has to be a stop to the pussy footing somewhere sometime and this looks good to me. It's only a drone after all. Over the water. To the average guy what the hell is it doing there anyway? The USA is thousands of miles away. F*** off to your own backyard.
Putin spelled out clearly already the essence of it all: the targeting, the munition and even the trigger pulling is all American.
His people particularly the 'alt media' or whatever who're active in Telegram, YT war vids etc, are vociferous increasingly with demands that he do something.
They want him to hit live targets, even with collateral damage. Some want especially collateral damage.
You would think at the least he would put up a drone offshore the USA. But in fact if he did that they would shoot it down and then of course he'd have to shoot theirs. That would be the beginning of a shooting war.
This way would be safer. I think. I think a yankee drone over the Black Sea means much much less to the Americans than a Russian drone offshore.
Agree Andrew, BUT, I am also sensing some frustration among some Russian's with Putin's warnings not followed up by actions.
I've sensed this frustration from the get-go but it never amounted to any drastic shift in policy.
Don't get me wrong, I personally hope that the policy changes, and it should have already.
But I'm also not getting my hopes up either and getting disappointed once again.
I’ve said elsewhere, “If Putin keeps the world out of WWIII then he should get the Nobel Prize.”
The British-made Storm Shadow missiles and the American-made Atacam missiles which have been deployed by NATO and Pentagon on the territory of Ukraine for hitting civilian targets inside Russia, are fully within operational control by NATO and Pentagon command centres and their operational control has not been transferred to Ukrainian hands by Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden. These missiles require a complex procedure for operation, relying on real time reconnaisance data from satellites for pinpointing the location of targets, and the feeding of a flight plan based on inertial coordinates into the on board computer. All of these steps are being performed by NATO and Pentagon directly without any participation by Ukrainian troops. For the past two and a half years, American drones flying over the Black Sea and the Ukraine have fired missiles and laser-guided bombs off and on at Russian civilian and military assetts, and have had their transponders which transmit IFOF frequencies, turned off, so that once they have hurled their payload of bombs on Russian targets, America can get away by saying that the incriminated drone belonged to the Ukrainian Airforce and not to America. On the other hand, if the drone gets shot down by a Russian missile before it could drop its bombs on Russia, American strategy is to create a ruckus by bemoaning that Russia has shot down a drone belonging to a third country, ie. America which is not a party to the conflict. Apart from dropping bombs on Russian assetts, American drones have also been transmitting reconnaisance data back to makeshift remote-command centres based deep inside the EU, in Germany and Czechia, from where EU civilians are directly remote-controlling missile batteries installed on Ukrainian soil and firing them at Russian targets. In this way, American and EU drones have been directly parricipating in aggression against Russia and Belarus, including the trecherous bombing of Russian ships from a designated peace corridor, and the shooting down of a Russian Awacs plane flying on routine peacetime mission over a third country, Belarus.
Thus, American and EU drones have been flying undaunted near Russia, with their identification-friend-or-foe frequencies turned ON on purpose until THE PENULTIMATE MOMENT when they fired their arsenal of bombs and missiles at Russian Targets after switching those transponders off suddenly. These drones also do not bear US Air Force or Navy markings. These drones have trecherously fired missiles and dropped bombs on Russian ships from the strategic nuclear fleet, from a "peace corridor" which had been agreed upon as a zone of no combat in triliteral agreements meant for facilitating Ukrainian foodgrain exports to Europe.
In this way, American and EU drones, which carry more than a dozen missiles each, have been taking off from bases situated imside the EU and from American warships, and have mounted direct aggression against Russia by bombing Russian ships, Russian airplanes on peacetime missions, and Russian civilian assetts. These drones are operated by remote control from NATO bases inside Europe, and fly over the Black Sea and Ukraime, and suddenly switch off their friend-or-foe-identification transponders at the PENULTIMATE MOMENT just before firing missiles and bombs on Russian targets, so that America can eschew culpability by saying that the drones involved do not belong to the American military, but are part of the Ukrainian arsenal. Whole swarms American and EU dtones keep loittering in the sky with hostile intentions in the expectation that Russia will shy away from shooting them down out of fear of embarrassment from adverse appraisal by western news agencies and their South Asian surrogates. And then, suddenly, the drones swing into action and fire missiles on Russian assetts by catching the latter off guard in the anecdotal moment. The best way for a farmer to save himself from a leopard or panther that has barged into his field is to shoot him dead at first sight, instead of waiting for it to demonstrate its aggression by readying itself to pounce on the farmer, because a lepard can strike at lightning speed. It is high time that both these drones as well as the European bases from where they takeoff, are smoked out of existence by Russia.
To deprecate the premptive downing of American drones by Russia is typical of priestcrafty conscience, as embodied in the priestcrafty untouchability-monger judicial officers who sentence innocent farmers in South Asia to imprisonment with hard labour for having shot leopards in self defence in their farms. The priestcrafters argue that a farmer should shoot at a leopard which has intruded in his field, only at the moment when the leopard has announced its hostile intentions by bracing up into position for pouncing on the poor man, and not one instant before. This priestcrafty argument is an undisguised call for murder of the farmer, given that the farmer stands no chance of escape once the leopard has jumped up in the air, because one cannot win against the lightening speed of a leopard strike.
Actually, most of the drones deployed by America and the EU over the black Sea and Ukraine do not bear any markings which would identify them as NATO or Pentagon assetts. They do not transmit IFOF frequencies, or suddenly start doing so, at whimsical fancy. These drones are armed with missiles and bombs. They are used by the EU and Pentagon for bombing Russian assetts and troops, but the EU and the US immediately dismiss all culpability by claiming that those drones had been supplied to Ukraine and it is Ukraine which had been remote piloting them. The EU and America have been using their drones for surveillance to eavesdrop of Russian assetts located within Ukraine as well as mainland Russia, and relaying that info to makeshift remote command centres located deep within the EU in countries like Germany, Poland and Czechia. NATO and America have also deployed missile batteries aimed at targets located in mainland Russia and on ships belonging to the strategic Russian naval fleet. These missiles, although located on the territory of Ukraine, are not under operational control of the Ukrainian army, but are under semi-autonomous remote operational control by civilian and military personnel staffers at the makeshift NATO command centres situated in Germany, Poland and Czechia etc. It is from those command centres, that NATO and America have fired missiles at Russia strategic naval fleet ships in the Black Sea, and on a Russian Beriev airborne early warning aircraft which was on non-combat duty in a third country, Belarus. Moreover, American drones flying over the Black Sea, trecherously dropped bombs and fired missiles on a Russian frigate, from a peace corridor which had been agreeed upon as a no-combat zone, under a triliteral agreement for facilitating Ukrainian foodgrain exports, between Russia Ukraine and the western bloc. So, these American and German-operated drones were legitimate military targets of counter-strikes from Russian defense batteries. Notice the intellectual gymnastics involved in the tacit admission by western media outlets that American drones are known to carry upto 15 missiles, but with the rider that they are mainly used for "surveillance" alone. Western media outlets have been bemoaning that the American drones which had been downed by Russia , were only on benign reconnaisance missions and alleging that Russia has "unfairly escalated" matters by shooting it down. Either way, whether the drones have on a bombing sortie, or pure reconnoiteering, they deserved to be smoked out at the very least...
Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy the first-couple-entitled-bedmates of Britain, and Joe Biden the ceremonial president of USA and Anthony Blinken the defacto-incharge, are guilty of having mounted direct aggression against civilians residing inside Russia, and attempts to launch missile as well as electronic sabotage attacks on Russian strategic forces hardware including nuclear early warning systems. NATO has attempted to hijack Russian ICBM's via electronic piloting by flying missiles with ECM payloads very close by, and neutralising those ICBM's by firing them at innocent civilians in Asia and Africa. The EU nations have announced their culpability by their deeds, and have rendered themselves legitimate targets of nuclear counter strikes for saving Asia and Africa from their holocaustic designs. In the same way in which an American drone operated and managed entirely by the Pentagon had trecherously fired a missile at a Russian AWACS plane on peacetime duty in a third country viz. Belarus; likewise all airports and railway stations inside the EU from which weapons are despatched to Ukraine have become legitimate targets of Russian tactical nuclear strikes. The ATACAMS missiles Pentagon is using for mounting direct aggression against civilian neighborhoods inside mainland Russia, contain several cluster bombs made of high yield explosive in their ammunition bay; and these cluster bombs have been deliberately painted green in colour, because the Pentagon has intended those bombs to blend with the decor of cropped farmlands and to survive undetected and unexploded for months to years after getting disbursed over areas spanning some kilometers in the steppe farmlands of Russia, until the moment when some unsuspecting farmer steps over them, unwittingly triggering an explosion leading to his own death and precipitating massive farmland fires. The Pentagon has intended the ATACAMS to straffe Russian wheat fields in the same way French and American Airforce had straffed fields in Iraq even after Iraq's defeat in 1991
Both in Syria and the Black Sea region, American and NATO drones have been flying provocatively directly ahead into the flight path of Russian aircraft, prompting emergency recourse manouevres for collision avoidance. In any similar situation, in which say a Libyan or Iranian patrol boat ventures anywhere close to an American or British warship, those warships have fired on the intruding vessels, and justified such a response under the plea of "collision prevention counter measures". In fact, in the early 1980's, the American navy bombed and sank a number of Libyan patrol boats in the Gulf of Sirte, and killed the occupants of those boats in the process, because those boats had ventured close to American armada whilst it had been conducting naval exercises, and the USA claimed it had rights to preemptive neutralization of "perceived imminent threat".
Likewise, similar measures on part of Russia to protect its aviation from rogue provocations by US and NATO drones, are highly warranted. Moreover, there is no way a Russian pilot can warn a drone which has no human pilot seated in its cockpit, other than by dropping flares or fuel on it !
The remote-pilot of this drone, from his command Centre in CENTCOM base, was trying to outmanouevre the Russian jet, and lost control in the process. There is no way THE pilot of the Russian jet could have warned the drone which had no driver in its cockpit. The only way to warn a drone which veers dangerously close to a fighter jet, is to smoke the intruder out of the sky before it makes a collision with the jet either accidentally or purposely and unloads its arsenal of loitering munitions on that jet.
EU and American drones, which have been flying over both Ukraine and the Black Sea, have been committing relentless aggression against Russia. These drones which include the Reaper among others, carry more than a dozen missiles each, and have butchered an entire wedding party in Afghanistan, and murdered Gen Solemani in Iraq. As such, at the very least they are legitimate targets of reprisal shootings by Russian defence forces, eventhough the aggression which has been mounted by them against Russia would justify retaliatory strategic nuclear strikes on Europe as well, on moral grounds. I say this, because these drones deliberately have been modified to erase all surface markings which could identify them as belonging to the US navy or US Airforce; and moreover, their identification-friend-or-foe transponders are deliberately switched off at the very moment when they fire missiles at Russian targets, but kept ON until the PENULTIMATE moment. In this way, these drones have fired missiles in the nick of time upon Russian ships in the Black Sea, upon Russian Beriev Awacs planes on peacetime duties in Belarus and on civilian Russian facilities situated on the Russian mainland. As I understand, it was in grudging admittance of these crimes that the German chancellor has acknowledged that her country and its allies are engaged in war against Russia. The problem with Russia as I see it, is that Russia has till now erred on the side of restraint, exactly in the same way when America had conspired to have a Russian pilot engaged in non-combat humanitarian operations trecherously shot down by Turkish NATO airforce pilots. Russia had reposed faith in goodwill of America, and had got beguiled in the belief that by having provided advance info about the flight path of Russian pilots to America in good faith, Russia could remain assured of avoidance of incidents. Because of such naive trust in trecherous Americans, Russia had also not deemed it necessary to equip its airplanes with Vimpel missiles. And The US and Turkey ambushed the Russian airplane by exploiting this window of weakness through oversight or negligence of Russia. Western news mongers are saying that Russia has no moral right to shoot down American drones in international airspace, because according to the western creed of global conscience keepers, such a measure will amount to a provocation and escalation. Russia has oft times made the mistake of shying away from shooting down American and EU drones, out of fear of adverse comments from western political observers., and this has emboldened swarms of those drones to venture unmolested dangerously close to Russian assetts, whereupon those drones suddenly switch off their transponders at the penultimate moment and fire missiles and bombs at Russian targets. Having switched off their transponders at the very end, the Americans think they can fool Russia and get away by saying that those drones were piloted not by NATO or the Pentagon, but were part of equipment provided in form of military aid to Ukraine and were piloted by Ukrainians. But Russia knows very well that those drones take off from NATO bases im Italy and Romania among others, and from American warships, conduct reconnaissance on Russian assetts, relay the info via satellite to data-processors located inside remote-command centres deep inside the EU in Germany and Czechia, and from those command centres, digital orders are conveyed via satellite to semi-autonomous missile batteries nominally located on Ukrainian soil but controlled entitely by European civilian techs and pilots from the EU remote command centres. The right thing for Russia to do is to smoke out both the drones as well as the locales from where they have taken off.
The entry of American ATACAMS and British STORM SHADOW missiles on the scene has unfolded a new dimension, because there is no way these missiles can be fired at Russian targets without full-fledged involvement of NATO, the British military and the Pentagon in such aggression. Use of ATACAMS and STORM SHADOW requires real time access to satellite reconnaisance data for pinpointing the targets, and feeding of a flight path based on predetermined coordinates into the onboard computer ; and AI management. Those missiles remain fully under active managerial control of NATO and US military command centres at every stage of their operation. The USA, EU and Britain are committing direct aggression against Russia.
European countries have illegally confiscated Russian money and assetts and denied Russian nationals all forms of access to European commercial satellites in a glaring instance of repudiatation of commercial agreements, but are misusing civilian satellites such as Star link for relaying signals on localisation of Russian troops for bombing By NATO drones.
The ATACAMS missiles deployed and controlled entirely by the US PENTAGON on Ukrainian soil for aggression against Russian mainland, contains a deadly array of high explosive cluster bombs, especially painted green in durable powder coat, designed to disburse itself over a wide area in farmlands and remain remarkably concealed for months to years amidst the foliage until accidentally stepped on by a child of a farmer or an u wary pedestrian, whereupon it would explode to kill or irreversible maim that person for life, apart from setting dry foliage on fire, a strategy both the USA and France had used with Storm Shadow missiles for destroying standing wheat crops by straffing in Iraq in 1991 even after Baghdad's surrender for engendering an artificial famine. The US and its NATO quislings had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children via excruciatingly painful terminal starvation genocide in which the human body becomes forced to consume and deplete its own neuronal myelin from its brain in a desperate but fruitless bid to survive. NATO militaries imposed the double whample of a water-tight air-sea blockade to obviate the entry of even a single grain of food into the country as well as shut off all avenues for exit or escape of Iraqis and 175000 Indian labourer expats from the War zone, followed by the most intensive indiscriminate post WW 2 fire-bombing of civilian infrastructure and dwelling units with bunker buster cluster bombs. Besides Not a single Civilian Bomb shelter, hospital, church, mosque worth any mention was spared the napalm bombing., which also included dozens of vans transporting Asian evacuees to Jordan enoute return back home.
Does anyone think the phone call between Austin and the new Russian Minister of Defense might have included discussion of a change in that "policy"...? ☮
"Even asymmetrical responses aren’t seriously considered except for bombing a few military targets afterwards and sometimes hitting a couple of power plants, but those responses have had absolutely no deterrent effect as is indisputably known."
I think it does have an impact on the Ukrainian population. 10 minus hours and falling power a day has to wear on thier moral and that's not good for the Z.
Plus, recent articles by Ben Rhodes and a recent Rand book indicate a split in the Party of Venice/City of London elites running DC. Putin would want to let that fester.
Wait for it.
Your frequent and consistent jab to the so-called Alt-Media influencers sounds more and more a personal vendetta. Rather than causing diversion among the ranks, why not realising we our struggle to the evil empire is a shared and united struggle!
The Alt-Media Community refers to the diverse collection of non-Mainstream Media platforms and people, many of whom tend to have very similar if not identical interpretations of events, a lot of which tend to be based on false dogmas and end up being regularly debunked.
I'm a part of this community and I've seen it operate from within, both from my prior vantage point in publicly financed Russian international media and through participation in several independent projects, not to mention my close observations of others in this field.
I've come to the conclusion that while some top influencers are well-intentioned but naive, many are malicious and deliberately mislead their audience with wishful thinking and copium to generate clout, push an ideology, and solicit donations.
Suffice to remind everyone of the countless lies over the years about Russia plotting to shoot down attacking Israeli jets over Syria or plotting a supposedly imminent campaign against Odessa. None of that ever happened, and those top influencers who pushed these claims never publicly accounted for why they were wrong, nor will many of them ever do so.
I disavow those who manipulate their audience and betray their trust for self-interested reasons. These people are also very cliquish and prone to "inquisitions" where they "cancel" folks who share different views, let alone politely debunk their false dogma. It's literally cultish at this point and I want nothing to do with those who partake in such activities.
There's no "shared and united struggle" with people who weaponize lies for their own gain, even if they thinly disguise their intent as pursuing "the greater good". They've discredited the community, dumbed it down, and turned it into a replica of the Mainstream Media, albeit with different rhetoric and in support of a different side, but it's largely run the exact same way.
To be clear, there's still some quality work and honest influencers in the Alt-Media Community, but they're increasingly far and few between. Most of what's out there is just people shouting slogans, ranting against the other side, and spinning everything that their own side does as part of a "5D chess master plan" or whatever. I'm frankly disgusted by it.
Atleast they can be followed by drones with jamming equipment. Russia would have deploy more airforce guys for which it has to do mobilisation