Debunking the flagwaving myths about an attack on North Korea

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE SAKER


Debunking the flagwaving myths about an attack on North Korea

(This analysis was written for the Unz Review)

First, the bragging dummies

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]rump and Haley are still at it.  They want to force China to take action against the DPRK by threatening to take North Korea “into their hands” if China refuses to comply.  Haley saidBut to be clear, China can do more (…) and we’re putting as much pressure on them as we can. The last time they completely cut off the oil, North Korea came to the table. And so we’ve told China they’ve got to do more. If they don’t do more, we’re going to take it into our own hands and then we’ll start to deal with secondary sanctions.”

First, let’s reset this scene in a kindergarten and replay it.

Kid A has a fight with Kid B.  Kid A threatens to beat up Kid B.  Kid B then tells Kid A to go screw himself.  Kid A does nothing, but issues more threats.  Kid B keeps laughing.  And then Kid A comes up with a brilliant plan: he threatens Kid C (who is much much bigger than Kid B and much much stronger too!) by telling him “if you don’t make Kid B comply with my demands, I will take the issue in my own hands!“.  The entire schoolyard erupts in hysterical laughter.

Question: how would you rate the the intelligence of Kid A?

Anyway,

This would all be really funny if this was a comedy show.  But what this all is in reality is a slow but steady progression towards war.  What makes this even worse is the media’s obsession with the range of North Korean missiles and whether they can reach Guam or even the USA.  With all due respect for the imperial “only we matter” (and nevermind the gooks), there are ways “we”, i.e. the American people can suffer terrible consequences from a war in the Korean Peninsula which have nothing to do with missile strikes on Guam or the USA.

The lucrative target: Japan

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his summer I mentioned one of the most overlooked potential consequences of a war with the DPRK and I want to revisit this issue again.  First, the relevant excerpt from the past article:

While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if I am wrong?  What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or, which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families and friends?  What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate?  Well, let me tell you: forget about Guam; think Tokyo!  Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems, DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the Keihanshin region encompassing Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the Hanshin Industrial Region.  The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated (37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain an immense number of industries, many of which would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles.  Not only that, but a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of international economic collapse.  So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis for the entire planet.  During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind.  The Japanese landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war would lay waste to the entire country. This is still true today, only more so.  And just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles!  The South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear, by the way. As for the Japanese, they are officially placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!).  So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible indeed, nukes or no nukes.

Yet, for some reason, the western media rarely mentions Japan or the possible global economic consequences of a strike against Japan.  Very few people know for sure whether the North Koreans truly have developed a usable nuclear weapon (warhead and missile) or whether the North Korean ballistic missile truly can reach Guam or the USA.  But I don’t think that there is any doubt whatsoever that North Korean missiles can easily cover the roughly 1000 km (600 miles) to reach the heart of Japan.  In fact, the DPRK has already lobbed missiles over Japan in the past.  Some red blooded US Americans will, no doubt, explain to us that the US THAAD system can, and will, protect South Korea and Japan from such missile strikes.  Others, however, will disagree.  We won’t know until we find out, but judging by the absolutely dismal performance of the vaunted US Patriot system in the Gulf War,  I sure would not place my trust in any US-made ABM system.  Last, but not least, the North Koreans could place a nuclear device (not even a real nuclear warhead) on a regular commercial ship or even a submarine, bring it to the coast of Japan and detonate it.  The subsequent panic and chaos might end up costing even more lives and money than the explosion itself.

Then there is Seoul, of course.  US analyst Anthony Cordesman put is very simplyA battle near the DMZ, directed at a target like Seoul, could rapidly escalate to the point at which it threatened the ROK’s entire economy, even if no major invasion took place“.

SIDEBAR: Cordesman being Cordesman, he proceeds to hallucinate about the effects of a DPRK invasion of the ROK and comes up with sentences such as “Problems drive any assessment of the outcome of a major DPRK invasion of the ROK, even if one only focuses on DPRK- ROK forces. The DPRK has far larger ground forces, but the outcome of what would today be an air – land battle driven heavily by the overall mobility of DPRK land forces and their ability to concentrate along given lines of advance relative to the attrition technically superior ROK land and air forces could inflict is impossible to calculate with any confidence, as is the actual mix of forces both sides could deploy in a given area and scenario“.  Yup, the man is seriously discussing AirLand battle concepts in the context of a DPRK invasion of the South!  He might as well be discussing the use of Follow-on-Forces Attack concept in the context of a Martian invasion of earth (or an equally likely Russian invasion of the Baltic statelets!).  It is funny and pathetic how a country with a totally offensive national strategy, military doctrine and force posture still feels the need to hallucinate some defensive scenarios to deal with the cognitive dissonance resulting from clearly being the bad guy.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy does Cordesman say that?  Because according to a South Korean specialist “DPRK artillery pieces of calibers 170mm and 240mm “could fire 10,000 rounds per minute to Seoul and its environs.”  During the war in Bosnia the western press spoke of “massive Serbian artillery strikes on Sarajevo” when the actual rate of fire was about 1 artillery shell per minute.  It just makes me wonder what they would call 10’000 rounds per minute.

The bottom line is this: you cannot expect your enemy to act in a way which suits you; in fact you should very much assume that he is going to do what you do not expect and what is the worst possible for you.  And, in this context, the DPRK has many more options than shooting an ICBM at Guam or the USA.  The nutcases in the Administration might not want to mention it, but an attack on the DPRK risks bringing down both the South Korean and the Japanese economies with immediate and global consequences: considering the rather shaky and vulnerable nature of the international financial and economic system, I very much doubt that a major crisis in Asia would not result in the collapse of the US economy (which is fragile anyway).

We should also consider the political consequences of a war on the Korean Peninsula, especially if, as is most likely, South Korea and Japan suffer catastrophic damage.  This situation could well result in such an explosion of anti-US feelings that the US would have to pack and leave from the region entirely.

How do you think the PRC feels about such a prospect?  Exactly.  And might this not explain why the Chinese are more than happy to let the USA deal with the North Korean problem knowing full well that one way or another the USA will lose without the Chinese having to fire a single shot?

The terrain

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ext I want to re-visit a threat which is discussed much more often: North Korean artillery and special forces.  But first, I ask you to take a close look at the following three maps of North Korea:

You can also download these full-size maps from here.

What I want you to see is that the terrain in North Korea is what the military call “mixed terrain”.  The topography of the North Korea article in Wikipedia actually explains this very well:

The terrain consists mostly of hills and mountains separated by deep, narrow valleys. The coastal plains are wide in the west and discontinuous in the east.  Early European visitors to Korea remarked that the country resembled “a sea in a heavy gale” because of the many successive mountain ranges that crisscross the peninsula. Some 80 percent of North Korea’s land area is composed of mountains and uplands, with all of the peninsula’s mountains with elevations of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) or more located in North Korea. The great majority of the population lives in the plains and lowlands.

Being from Switzerland I know this kind of terrain very well (it’s what you would see in the Alpine foothills called “Oberland” or “Préalpes”) and I want to add the following: dense vegetation, forests, rivers and creeks with steep banks and rapid currents.  Small villages and *a lot* of deep, underground tunnels. There are also flat areas in North Korea, of course, but, unlike Switzerland, they are composed mostly of rice fields and marshes.  In military terms this all translates into one simple and absolutely terrifying word: infantry.

Why should the word infantry scare us so much? Because infantry means on foot (or horses) with very little that airpower (AA and MANPADS), satellites (can’t see much), armor (can’t move around), gunships, submarines or cruise missiles can do.  Because infantry means “no lucrative targets” but small, dispersed and very well hidden forces.  Company and even platoon-level warfare.  Because infantry in mixed terrains means the kind of warfare the US Americans fear most.

The adversary

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd with that in mind, let’s repeat that besides its huge regular armed forces (about a million soldiers plus another 5 million plus in paramilitary organizations) the DPRK also has 200’000 special forces.   Let’s assume that the Western propaganda is, for once, telling the truth and that the regular armed forces are poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly commanded and even hungry and unmotivated (I am not at all sure that this is a fair assumption, but bear with me).  But spreading that amount of soldiers all over the combat area would still represent a huge headache, even for “the best and most powerful armed forces in history” especially if you add 200’000 well-trained and highly motivated special forces to the mix (I hope that we can all agree that assuming that special forces are also demotivated would be rather irresponsible).  How would you go about finding out who is who and where the biggest threat comes from. And consider this: it would be extremely naive to expect the North Korean special forces to show up in some clearly marked DPRK uniforms.  I bet you that a lot of them will show up in South Korean uniforms, and others in civilians clothes.  Can you imagine the chaos of trying to fight them?

You might say [further] that the North Koreans have 1950s weapons.  So what?  That is exactly what you need to fight the kind of warfare we are talking about: infantry in mixed terrain.  Even WWII gear would do just fine.  Now is time to bring in the North Korean artillery.  We are talking about 8,600 artillery guns, and over 4,800 multiple rocket launchers (source).  Anthony Cordesman estimates that there are 20’000 pieces in the “surrounding areas” of Seoul.  That is way more than the US has worldwide (5,312 according to the 2017 “Military Balance”, including mortars).  And keep in mind that we are not talking about batteries nicely arranged in a flat desert, but thousands of simple but very effective artillery pieces spread all over the “mixed terrain” filled with millions of roaming men in arms, including 200’000 special forces.  And a lot of that artillery can reach Seoul, plenty enough to create a mass panic and exodus.

Think total, abject and bloody chaos

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o when you think of a war against North Korea, don’t think “Hunt for Red October” or “Top Gun”.  Think total, abject and bloody chaos.  Think instant full-scale FUBAR.  And that is just for the first couple of days, then things will get worse, much worse.  Why?

Because by that time I expect the North Korean Navy and Air Force to have been completely wiped-off, waves after waves of cruise missiles will have hit an X number of facilities (with no way whatsoever to evaluate the impact of these strikes but nevermind that) and the US military commanders will be looking at the President with no follow-up plan to offer.  As for the North Koreans, by then they will just be settling in for some serious warfare, infantry-style.

There is a better than average chance that a good part of the DPRK elites will be dead.   What is sure is that the command and control of the General Staff Department over many of its forces will be if not lost, then severely compromised.  But everybody will know that they have been attacked and by whom.  You don’t need much command and control when you are in a defensive posture in the kind of terrain were movement is hard to begin with.  In fact, this is the kind of warfare where “high command” usually means a captain or a major, not some faraway general.

You might ask about logistics?  What logistics I ask you? The ammo is stored nearby in ammo dumps, food you can always get yourself and, besides, it's your home turf, the civilians will help.

Again, no maneuver warfare, no advanced communications, no heavy logistical train – we are talking about a kind of war which is much closer to WWII or even WWI than Desert Storm.

SIDEBAR: As somebody who did a lot of interesting stuff with the Swiss military, let me add this: this kind of terrain is a battlefield where a single company can stop and hold an entire regiment; this is the kind of terrain where trying to accurately triangulate the position of an enemy radio is extremely hard; this is the kind of terrain where only horses and donkeys can carry heavy gear over narrow, zig-zagging, steep paths;  entire hospitals can be hidden underground with their entrance hidden by a barn or a shed; artillery guns are dug in underground and fire when a thick reinforced concrete hatch is moved to the side, then they hide; counter-battery radar hardly works due to bouncing signals; radio signals have a short range due to vegetation and terrain; weapon caches and even company size forces camps can only be detected by literally stepping on them; underground bunkers have numerous exits; air-assault operations are hindered by the very high risk of anti-aircraft gunfire or shoulder-fired missiles which can be hidden and come from any direction.  I could go on and on but I will just say this: if you want to defeat your adversary in such a terrain there is only one technique which works: you do what the Russians did in the mountains in southern Chechnya during the second Chechen war – you send in your special forces, small units on foot, and you fight the enemy on his own turf.  That is an extremely brutal, dangerous and difficult kind of warfare which I really don’t see the US Americans doing.  The South Koreans, yes, maybe. But here is where the number game also kicks in: in Chechnya the Russian Spetsnaz operated in a relatively small combat zone and they had the numbers.  Now look at a map of North Korea and the number of North Korean special forces and tell me – do the South Koreans have the manpower for that kind of offensive operations?  One more thing: the typical US American reaction to such arguments would be “so what, we will just nuke them!“.  Wrong.  Nuke them you can, but nukes are not very effective in that kind of terrain, finding a target is hard to begin with, enemy forces will be mostly hidden underground and, finally, you are going to use nukes to deal with company or platoon size units?!  Won’t work. [Not o mention you'll lethally contaminate everyone in the broader region.—Eds]

If you think that I am trying to scare you, you are absolutely correct. I am.  You ought to be scared.  And notice that I did not even mention nukes.  No, not nuclear warheads in missiles.  Basic nuclear devices driven around in common army trucks.  Driven down near the DMZ in peacetime amongst thousands of other army trucks and then buried somewhere, ready to explode at the right time.  Can you imagine what the effect of a “no-warning” “where did it come from?” nuke might be on advancing US or South Korean forces?  Can you imagine how urgent the question “are there any more?” will become?  And, again, for that the North Koreans don’t even need a real nuclear weapon.  A primitive nuclear device will be plenty.

I can already hear the die-hard “rah-rah-rah we are number 1!!” flag-wavers dismissing it all saying “ha! and you don’t think that the CIA already knows all that?”.  Maybe they do and maybe they don’t – but the problem is that the CIA, and the rest of the US intelligence community, has been so hopelessly politicized that it can do nothing against perceived political imperatives.  And, frankly, when I see that the US is trying to scare the North Koreans with B-1B and F-22s I wonder if anybody at the Pentagon, or at Langley, is still in touch with reality.  Besides, there is intelligence and then there is actionable intelligence. And in this case knowing what the Koreans could do does not at all mean to know what to do about it.

Speaking of chaos – do you know what the Chinese specifically said about it?

Can you guess?

That they will “not allow chaos and war on the peninsula“.

Enter the Chinese

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et’s talk about the Chinese now.  They made their position very clear: “If North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States then China should stay neutral, but if the United States attacks first and tries to overthrow North Korea’s government China will stop them“.  Since there is no chance at all of a unprovoked North Korean attack on the South or the USA, especially with this threat by the Chinese to remain neutral if the DPRK attacks first, let’s focus on the 2nd part of the warning.

What could the Chinese do if the US decides to attack North Korea?  Their basic options depend on the nature of the attack:

  1. If the US limits itself to a combination of missile and airstrikes and the DPRK retaliates (or not), then the Chinese can simply provide technical, economic and humanitarian aid to the DPRK and denounce the US on a political level.
  2. If the USA follow up with a land invasion of some kind or if the DPRK decides to retaliate in a manner which would force the USA into a land invasion of some kind, then the Chinese could not only offer direct military aid, including military personnel, but they could also wait for the chaos to get total in Korea before opening a 2nd front against US forces (including, possibly, Taiwan).

That second scenario would create a dangerous situation for China, of course, but it would be even far more dangerous for US forces in Asia who would find themselves stretched very thin over a very large area with no good means to force either adversary to yield or stop.  Finally, just as China cannot allow the USA to crush North Korea, Russia cannot allow the USA to crush China.  Does that dynamic sound familiar?  It should, as it is similar to what we have been observing in the Middle-East recently:

  1. Russia->Iran->Hezbollah->Syria
  2. Russia->China->DPRK

This is a very flexible and effective force posture where the smallest element is at the forefront of the line-up and the most powerful one most removed and at the back because it forces the other side to primarily focus on that frontline adversary while maximizing the risks of any possibly success because that success is likely to draw in the next, bigger and more powerful adversary.

Conclusion: preparing for genocide

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he US has exactly a zero chance of disarming or, even less so, regime changing the DPRK by only missile and airstrikes.  To seriously and meaningfully take the DPRK “in their hands” the US leaders need to approve a land invasion.  However, even if that is not the plan, if the DPRK decides to use its immense, if relatively antiquated, firepower to strike at Seoul, the US will have no choice to move in ground forces across the DMZ.  If that happens about 500’000 ROK troops backed by 30’000 US military personnel will face about 1 million North Korea soldiers backed by 5 million paramilitaries and 200’000 special forces on a mix-terrain battlefield which will require an infantry-heavy almost WWII kind of military operation.  By definition, if the USA attacks the DPRK to try to destroy its nuclear program such an attack will begin by missile and air strikes on DPRK facilities meaning that the USA will immediately strike at the most valuable targets (from the point of view of the North Koreans of course).  This means that following such an attack the US will have little or no dissuasive capabilities left and that means that following such an attack the DPRK will have no incentive left to show any kind of restraint.  In sharp contrast, even if the DPRK decides to begin with an artillery barrage across the DMZ, including the Seoul metropolitan area, they will still have the ability to further escalate by either attacking Japan or by setting off a nuclear device.  Should that happen there is an extremely high probability that the USA will either have to “declare victory and leave” (a time-honored US military tradition) or begin using numerous tactical nuclear strikes.  Tactical nuclear strikes, by the way, have a very limited effectiveness on prepared defensive position in mixed terrain, especially narrow valleys.  Besides, targets for such strikes are hard to find.  At the end of the day, the last and only option left to the USA is what they always eventually resort to would be to directly and deliberately engage in the mass murder of civilians to “break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure” of the enemy’s forces (another time-honored US military tradition stretching back to the Indian wars and which was used during the Korean war and, more recently, in Yugoslavia).  Here I want to quote an article by Darien Cavanaugh in War is Boring:

On a per-capita basis, the Korean War was one of the deadliest wars in modern history, especially for the civilian population of North Korea. The scale of the devastation shocked and disgusted the American military personnel who witnessed it, including some who had fought in the most horrific battles of World War II (…).  These are staggering numbers, and the death rate during the Korean War was comparable to what occurred in the hardest hit countries of World War II. (…)  In fact, by the end of the war, the United States and its allies had dropped more bombs on the Korean Peninsula, the overwhelming majority of them on North Korea, than they had in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II.

“The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating U.N. forces,” historian Charles K. Armstrong wrote in an essay for the Asia-Pacific Journal.  “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others. American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea—that is, essentially on North Korea—including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II.”  As Armstrong explains, this resulted in almost unparalleled devastation.  “The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”

Twelve to fifteen percent of the entire population was murdered by US forces in Korea during the last war (compare these figures to the so-called ‘genocide’ of Srebrenica!).  That is what Nikki Haley and the psychopaths in Washington DC are really threatening to do when they speak of taking the situation “in their own hands” or, even better, when Trump threatens to “totally destroy” North Korea.  What Trump and his generals forget is that we are not in the 1950s but in 2017 and that while the Korean War and a negligible economic impact on the rest of the planet, a war in the Middle or Far East Asia today would have huge economic consequences.  Furthermore, in the 1950s the total US control over the mass media, at least in the so-called “free world” made it relatively easy to hide out the murderous rampage by US-lead forces, something completely impossible nowadays.  The modern reality is that irrespective of the actual military outcome on the ground, any US attack on the DPRK would result is such a massive loss of face for the USA that it would probably mark the end of the US presence in Asia and a massive international financial shock probably resulting in a crash of the currently already fragile US economy.  In contrast, China would come out as the big winner and the uncontested Asian superpower.

All the threats coming out of US politicians are nothing more than delusional hot air.  A country which has not won a single meaningful war since the war in the Pacific and whose Army is gradually being filled with semi-literate, gender-fluid and often conviction or unemployment avoiding soldiers is in no condition whatsoever to threaten a country with the wide choice of retaliatory options North Korea has.  The current barrage of US threats to engage in yet another genocidal war are both illegal under international law and politically counter-productive.  The fact is that the USA is unlikely to be able to politically survive a war against the DPRK and that it now has no other option than to either sit down and seriously negotiate with the North Koreans or accept that the DPRK has become an official nuclear power.


ABOUT THE SAKER
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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Syria – ISIS Is Defeated – The U.S. Is Next In Line

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

A MOON OF ALABAMA DISPATCH

Dateline: December 09, 2017

The Islamic State in Syrian and Iraq is officially defeated. The UN resolution which allowed other countries to fight ISIS within Syria and Iraq no longer applies. But the U.S. military, despite the lack of any legal basis, wants to continue its occupation of Syria's north-east. The attempt to do so will fail. Its Kurdish allies in the area are already moving away from it and now prefer Russian protection. Guerrilla forces to fight the U.S. "presence" are being formed. The U.S. plan is shortsighted and stupid. If the U.S. insists on staying there many of its soldiers will die.

Two days ago the Syrian Arab Army closed the last gaps on the west bank of the Euphrates. Having fought all the way from Aleppo along the river towards the east the Tiger Force reached the liberated Deir Ezzor from the west. All settlements on the way are now controlled by the Syrian government. The remaining Islamic State fighters were pushed into the desert where they will be hunted down and killed.


Map via Southfront - bigger


Two days ago the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, declared a "complete victory" in Syria:

“Two hours ago, the (Russian) defense minister reported to me that the operations on the eastern and western banks of the Euphrates have been completed with the total rout of the terrorists,” Putin said.

“Naturally, there could still be some pockets of resistance, but overall the military work at this stage and on this territory is completed with, I repeat, the total rout of the terrorists,” he said.

Today the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi declared victory and the 'end of the war' against ISIS on the Iraqi side:

"Our forces are in complete control of the Iraqi-Syrian border and I therefore announce the end of the war against Daesh (IS)," Abadi told a conference in Baghdad.

North of the Euphrates the U.S. proxy force SDF had recently negotiated another agreement (42) with the remaining Islamic State fighters there. ISIS allegedly handed over a border crossing with Iraq to the SDF and in exchange was guaranteed free passage through SDF controlled areas. This agreement came after an earlier one in which the U.S. and SDF let 3,500 ISIS fighters flee from Raqqa to fight the Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor. That was a U.S. attempt to delay or prevent the victory of Syria and its allies. It failed.

Shortly after the claimed new ceasefire between the U.S. SDF proxies and ISIS, Russian officers met with officials of the Kurdish YPG, the central force of the SDF. The talks completely changed the situation. In a joint press conference the Kurds and the Russians committed to work together to fight ISIS east of the Euphrates. It seems that the YPG is no longer convinced that the U.S. is willing to do so. The Russians took command and the Russian air forces has since supported the YPG in its fight against ISIS in Deir Ezzor governate on the eastern bank of the river:

“A joint operative staff has been created in the town of Es-Salhiya to provide direct control and organize the cooperation with the popular militia units. Apart from Russian advisors, representatives of the eastern Euphrates tribes are taken part in it,” Poplavskiy said, noting that in the “coming days” the entire territory east of Euphrates River will be free from terrorists.

Mahmoud Nuri, a representative of the Kurdish YPG, stated that the militia “battled ISIS under Russian command very effectively. Kurdish forces have also expressed readiness to ensure the safety of the Russian military specialists operating on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.

The U.S. is seriously miffed that the Russians are suddenly supporting the U.S. proxy in Syria's north-east. The U.S. wants to claim the area for itself. (It probably also wants to protect the rest of ISIS there to reuse it when convenient.) The U.S. claims that the Russian air support for the Kurds is violating "coalition airspace".

The U.S. is not invited to Syria but now claims airspace above the country? The Russians, allied with the Syrian government, are invited to fly there. It is obvious who has a sound legal justification to be in the area and who has not. But the U.S. military hates to confront its own malice, and a competent adversary who knows how to play chicken:

Three A-10C Thunderbolt II Aircraft fly in formation during a training session in Georgia in March 16. (U.S. Air Force photo)

In one instance, two Air Force A-10 attack planes flying east of the Euphrates River nearly collided head-on with a Russian Su-24 Fencer just 300 feet away — a knife’s edge when all the planes were streaking at more than 350 miles per hour. The A-10s swerved to avoid the Russian aircraft, which was supposed to fly only west of the Euphrates.
...
Since American and Russian commanders agreed last month to fly on opposite sides of a 45-mile stretch of the Euphrates to prevent accidents in eastern Syria’s increasingly congested skies, Russian warplanes have violated that deal half a dozen times a day, according to American commanders. They say it is an effort by Moscow to test American resolve, bait Air Force pilots into reacting rashly, and help the Syrian Army solidify territorial gains ahead of diplomatic talks aimed at resolving the country’s nearly seven-year-old war.

ISIS is gone. There is no justification for any "coalition airspace". Where please is the "deal" that allows the U.S. to indefinitely occupy north-east Syria as it now officially demands?

The Pentagon plans to keep some U.S. forces in Syria indefinitely, even after a war against the Islamic State extremist group formally ends, to take part in what it describes as ongoing counterterrorism operations, officials said.

There are approximately 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, along with an unspecified number of contractors supporting them. Last month, the U.S. military withdrew 400 Marines from Syria, which U.S. forces first entered in the fall of 2016.

Officials earlier this week disclosed the plans for an open-ended commitment, known as a “conditions-based” presence.
...
The Pentagon has said the forces will target parts of Syria that aren’t fully governed by either regime or rebel forces. The military says it has the legal authority to remain there.

The U.S. military has lots of fantasies about "legal authority" and "deals". We had already noted that such a "presence" in Syria is obviously illegal. The fig leaf of a UN resolution 2249 to fight ISIS no longer applies. Putin intentionally emphasized the "total rout of the terrorists" and the "complete" victory to point that out. There is absolutely no justification for the U.S. to stay. Moreover - the presence there is unsustainable.

The commander of the paramilitary forces which support the Syrian and Iraqi government sent a note to the U.S. to let it know that any remaining U.S. forces in Syria will be fought down:

[T]he commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp Brigadier General Haj Qassem Soleimani sent a verbal letter, via Russia, to the head of the US forces commander in Syria, advising him to pull out all US forces to the last soldier “or the doors of hell will open up”.

“My message to the US military command: when the battle against ISIS (the Islamic State group) will end, no American soldier will be tolerated in Syria. I advise you to leave by your own will or you will be forced to it”, said Soleimani to a Russian officer. Soleimani asked the Russian responsible to expose the Iranian intentions towards the US: that they will be considered as forces of occupation if these decide to stay in north-east Syria where Kurds and Arab tribes cohabit together.

In 1983 U.S. and French military barracks in Beirut were blown up after their forces had intervened on one side of the Lebanese civil war. Several hundred soldiers died. After the attack the U.S. pulled out of Lebanon. U.S. soldiers staying in north-east Syria can now expect a similar fate.

The U.S. claims that it has 2,000 soldiers in north-east Syria. This after it had claimed that the number was 500.  This new number was announced after it had already pulled out 400 marines and it is still way too low:

The updated figure does not reflect troops assigned to classified missions and some Special Operations personnel, Mr. Pahon said.

The U.S. had for months claimed that it only had 500 soldiers in the area. It did not even mention the contractors that follow its troops everywhere. The real number of U.S. personnal must have been ten times as high as the official one. The new official number is "2,000 and some".  The real new number is likely still above 3,500 plus several thousand contractors. This revelation confirms again that the U.S. military lies whenever and wherever it can.

The now remaining "more than 2,000" will need tens of tons of supplies each day and the U.S. has no secured supply line into north-east Syria. It is arrogant idiocy to keep the troops there in place. A few roving guerillas can easily choke those supplies. Each of the camps those troops occupy will be a target of external and inside attacks.

The YPG Kurds are already skipping out of their coalition with the U.S.. They are now making friends with the Russians who provide them with air-support where the U.S. wants to keep ISIS alive. How much longer will the U.S. soldiers in the YPG controlled areas be able to trust their "allies"?

The Pentagon says that the presence in Syria is “conditions-based” but it does not name any condition that would have to be fulfilled for ending it. General Soleimani seems to believe that a few hundred body bags arriving at Andrews airbase near Washington, DC might be enough condition fulfillment to do the trick.

The situation in other parts of Syria is largely unchanged. The various Takifiri groups in Idelb governate continue to slaughter each other. The Syrian forces will likely hold back their planned attacks into the area as long as their enemies there are devouring each other. But a year from now Idelb, and north-east Syria, will likely be back in the Syrian government's hand.

Posted by b on December 9, 2017 at 11:37 AM | Permalink


Below we reproduce original thread comments. Read at your discretion. Click on button.

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middle of your paper, you forgot the *no* i guess.

There is justification for any "coalition airspace" - > there is NO justification for any yankee bastard. about that, the usa could wait for an attack by Syrians to invade more.. their hubris knows no limit!

Posted by: Bertrand | Dec 9, 2017 12:03:46 PM | 1

thanks b for your thorough coverage here.. the only rationale for the usa being in syria is for all the wrong reasons... they can say whatever they want thru the nyt, wsj and etc, but it doesn't change the fact usa has never been invited into syria.. but then, this is typical usa behaviour too - set up shop in prep for a permanent base in a country that you haven't been invited into and you are not welcome..

Posted by: james | Dec 9, 2017 12:06:26 PM | 2

Soleimani's warning will get turned into "Iran Threatens US!!"

Posted by: dh | Dec 9, 2017 12:30:58 PM | 4

@4 There's no date given for Soleimani's note to US via Russia. It's not clear if Pompeo was reacting to it on Dec 2nd.....or if this is a new warning.

Posted by: dh | Dec 9, 2017 12:40:42 PM | 5

@5 The Arabic (Farsi?) version is dated...... 09 ديسمبر 2017 12:00 ص

Posted by: dh | Dec 9, 2017 12:44:33 PM | 6

@Bertrand @1 - thank you, I corrected my mistake.
@DH - the Magnier piece describing the Soleimani message was written on Dec 9. We don't know when the message was transmitted.

Posted by: b | Dec 9, 2017 12:53:42 PM | 7

The Russian MOD have just issued a statement that, on November 23, a USAF F-22 fighter actively tried to prevent two Russian Su-25s proceeding to attack ISIS positions near al Mayadin. The F-22 rapidly retreated into Iraqi airspace when a Russian Su-35 went along to protect the Su-25s. The Russian MOD stated that the two sides almost came into conflict.

It was around this time that the US was allowing ISIS members to retreat into US-held territory on the eastern side of the Euphrates.

http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/12/official-us-and-russian-air-forces.html

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 9, 2017 12:59:35 PM | 8

nhs @3

A cable from 2006

https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06AMMAN1261_a.html

Classified By: AMB DAVID HALE FOR REASONS 1.4 (B AND D) THIS MESSAGE IS SECRET NOFORN

- (S) JORDAN SHARES OUR CONCERNS ABOUT SYRIA, AND SUPPORTS OUR POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS TO FOCUS PRESSURE ON SYRIA TO CHANGE ITS BEHAVIOR. AT THE SAME TIME, THERE IS GOJ CONCERN ABOUT STABILITY IN SYRIA, AND ABOUT THE SYRIAN REGIME'S REPEATED MIS-STEPS IN REACTION TO EVENTS. JORDANIAN OFFICIALS MAY SEEK YOUR ASSESSMENT OF SYRIA'S LIKELY REACTION TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS.

5. (SBU) THE VERY CLOSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE U.S. AND JORDANIAN GOVERNMENTS IS NOT REFLECTED IN JORDANIAN POPULAR OPINION. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, ESPECIALLY ON THE PALESTINIAN ISSUE AND ON IRAQ, IS PERCEIVED NEGATIVELY AMONG ORDINARY JORDANIANS AS IT IS IN THE REST OF THE REGION. AFTER ISRAEL'S DISENGAGEMENT FROM GAZA, PUBLIC OPINION TOWARD U.S. POLICY IMPROVED, BUT THE MAJORITY STILL DISAPPROVE HERE.

This cable also covers the origins of that KASOTC which was/is used to train 'carfeully vetted moderate rebels' in activities such as urban combat, building wall breaching, sniping, and other useful skills.

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 9, 2017 1:10:41 PM | 9

Saw a report about a F-22 trying to stop two Russian/Syrian planes SU 25's from attacking a Daesh strongpoint on the WESTERN side of the Euphrates. It dropped flares and simulated an attack (or attacks). It rapidly left at the approach of a Russian Su-35S.
Al-Masdar news It appears that the Russians will have to stay longer if the US tries to make a "Coalition only" airspace over Syria.

Posted by: stonebird | Dec 9, 2017 1:11:30 PM | 10

It would have been good watching the SU-35 play chicken with the F-22. The Russian report added 'super maneuverable' to SU-35S, so I guess it was doing some of that.

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Dec 9, 2017 2:01:35 PM | 11

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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Who are the most dangerous Russians in the world today?

By Marcus Godwyn for the Saker blog
(with huge thanks to Gleb Glinker for expert proof reading and wise editing; the introduction to this article has been posted before here)

As western media and politicians relentlessly continue to spew forth warnings to their hapless populations about the ever present and growing “Russian threat”, only today: 12-11-2017 NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has told Europe to “Prepare for a Russian invasion”. Let us take a moment to analyse just who exactly among the hundred and fifty million odd Russians in the world actually constitute a threat to “the west”, to anywhere else or indeed, to other Russians.

Putin is hated because he incarnates the resurgence of a sovereign Russia, and opposition to global US hegemonism. Of course, those reasons hardly justify a war on Tussia, hence the barrage of never ending lies.

For the rest of this article, I will use the term “the west” to define the rulers, as well as the public faces (politicians, journalists etc) of North America, the rest of the Anglo Saxon world and western and northern Europe i.e. the geopolitical alliance whose leaders have once again declared war on the Russian world.

So who are the most dangerous Russians in the world today? Are they, as the west so desperately needs you to believe, the Russian government and its president Vladimir Putin? A resounding NO is the only possible answer that any sane, rational and even slightly informed conscious individual could give. If I had to think of one word to sum up the behaviour of the Russian government over the last four years it would be: “ZEN”! The west started openly provoking Russia in the early 2000s but since the attempt to attack Damascus by the US in 2013 was thwarted by Russia (and some say China, too), Russia has been subjected to endless and very extreme provocations which can only be interpreted as being designed to goad Russia into making the first move towards war with the west. Whether the western rulers actually want a third world war now and nuclear Armageddon (We have all read the stories and seen the photos of what are allegedly the luxury underground “bunkers” that the ruling elites have been preparing for themselves to inhabit while the rest of us burn at their bidding) or, whether they are arrogant and self deluded enough to think that Russia will just capitulate to their will if faced with the threat of all-out war or that the population of Russia is actually oppressed and ready to rise up against its leadership for the chance to be “liberated”, or whether they believed that the Russian armed forces remain as inefficient, ill equipped, demoralized and potentially disloyal as they seemed to be, or at least as we in the west were told they were, in the years immediately after the collapse of the USSR and thus war with Russia this time round will be a pushover, I cannot tell but these provocations have been extreme and extraordinarily dangerous on the part of the west.

"The Russian restraint in retaliating in kind and refusing to be dragged into war has left the west increasingly exposed, at least to the more perceptive among its own population and others around the world, as the aggressive, lying, land grabbing force it actually is and has led to increasing frustration among the west’s rulers culminating in a petulant frenzy of provocations in the dying months of the Obama regime..."

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government by The US and EU in February 2014 could oh so easily, if hotter heads had been in charge in the Kremlin, have led almost immediately to WW3. It is clear that the Russians did not expect such an extreme move from the west and were caught napping. If Putin was the kind of person who allows himself to be eaten by personal pride or whipped into action while smarting from loss of face and even a few of his ministers and advisers were of a similar hue we could all be radioactive dust by now.

The fact is that under Putin’s leadership, Russia has simply absorbed and dissolved every attack the west has thrown at it resorting to physical, military action only when considered absolutely necessary but also, crucially, when the possibility of success without bringing the west into a major, immediate armed conflict seemed virtually assured. The saving of Crimea and its population and the Russian intervention in Syria at the Syrian governments behest being the two most prominent examples. The Russian restraint in retaliating in kind and refusing to be dragged into war has left the west increasingly exposed, at least to the more perceptive among its own population and others around the world, as the aggressive, lying, land grabbing force it actually is and has led to increasing frustration among the west’s rulers culminating in a petulant frenzy of provocations in the dying months of the Obama regime. Ultimately, this outstanding display of disciplined, “Zen” self control from the Russian leadership may not avert the all the out war that the west appears to crave so much but it certainly has done so up until now and will still be talked about in a thousand years time assuming we somehow survive. If ordinary citizens of the west can still go ordinarily about their ordinary business, it is thanks to team Putin in the Kremlin and certainly not their own governments.


Putin demonisation by the presstitutes: journalistic excrement for the Western publics.

So if not the Russian leadership, who then could be the most dangerous Russians in the world today? What about the Russian mafia we used to hear so much about? Well they certainly were dangerous, in Russia and around the world back in the 90s and early 2000s. Have western headline writers forgotten about them? The fact is that Putin, slowly but surely crushed them! I’m not pretending that crime has disappeared from Russia; that would be nonsense, but the grip of organized crime on Russian life has been all but eliminated. Also gone are the gangs of ultra racist, decidedly dangerous skinhead types whom I saw with my own eyes in St Petersburg in the early 2000s. That leads me on to hooligans. Russia, like Britain has a hooligan culture and a culture of street fighting and like Britain, Russia is a country of extremes. Hooligans can still be dangerous late at night in Russian towns and cities but the problem has receded greatly since my time of living there. Something which cannot be said of The UK.

What about crazy Russian drivers? While there has been a slight but definite improvement. It is still true that many Russian drivers, men and women, seem to enter an alternative universe as soon as they get behind the wheel. A universe where the basic laws of science, gravity, mass, velocity, momentum etc suddenly don’t apply to them. You do still take your life in your hands when setting out on the roads of Russia and yes: these irresponsible drivers I would put in second place for this ignominious title but they are not the most dangerous. Not even close.

By far, dear reader...by far the most dangerous Russians in the world today, dangerous for themselves, dangerous for their own country, dangerous for the peace the whole world, and even the survival of human civilization are those who have come to be known as “Russian liberals”! Those Russians who, stubbornly and obstinately and against all the overwhelming evidence that stands against them, still persist in believing that the west remains, (if it ever was), the guiding light on the hill, the pinnacle of justice, freedom, democracy, innovation, quality and the place where people simply have most “fun”.

Thanks be to God this kind of Russian is now in a small minority in their own country but they are still very vociferous and of course always sought out by western journalists for interviews which are then presented to the western public as representative of Russian popular opinion which they are not. For whatever reason by far the largest concentration of Russian “west worshipers” is found in St Petersburg. A fact that is definitely not lost on the western rulers whose private army, NATO, is just a hundred and fifty kilometers down the road massing on the Estonian-Russian boarder. The second biggest concentration of them is in Moscow. They are found in all corners of Russia but in provincial towns and cities most people seem to have a much more down to earth grip on reality. Examine and discuss.

From my observations I will break these most dangerous Russians down into various separate but overlapping categories:


Mikhail Khodorkovsky

No 1 The first is the purely evil. Those who know perfectly well the kind of micro-chipped enslavement the western private central bankers are preparing for the rest of humanity and want “IN” to those western ruling elite circles. These are, of course, in a very small minority but by far [remain] the most dangerous of the dangerous. I would say that Khordokovsky is one such as are many of his erstwhile colleagues. Such people are knowingly and wantonly collaborating with ultimate evil for power and sometimes, untold riches on this earth now and the western rulers are counting on them to deliver Russia for dismemberment, rape, pillage and oblivion. They have literally sold their souls to the Devil just as in all those old stories. Unlike the Russian liberals further removed from the upper echelons of the west’s ruling elite, they perfectly understand the deep ancestral hatred of Russia largely because Russia became the largest and most powerful Christian i.e. Orthodox country in the world and which resisted, until 1917 all their attempts to gain control of its central bank and money supply, and are more than ready to participate in her ultimate destruction. It is vital to understand here that it is people of this mind set who, a hundred and more years ago were responsible in facilitating for the west the overthrow of The Russian Empire and the ensuing, illegal Bolshevik putsch. Even senior government ministers became spies for the western powers.

No 2 The second are those Russians who pathologically hate everything Russian including its people! For these Russia haters, the Russian people are a primitive mass of zombies who are desperately in need of being educated by THEM. This is an unfortunate tradition that the Lord sent to test Russia that goes centuries back. Lenin and Trotsky were two prime examples of this mentality. Such people are utterly convinced that everything foreign but especially from the west is innately superior to anything home grown from religion, philosophy, art, science, to clothes, food, toothpaste, dust and so it goes on. (Note: In this we completely disagree with the author, as an instance of misplaced conceptual overreach reeking of blind anti-Sovietism. Surely he can find better and fairer examples in the contemporary record.—Editor.)


Alexey Navalny: already a witting tool of the Western intel agencies, part of the new wave of "dissidents" the West is always upholding in its hypocritical effort to demonise Russia.

No 3 The third are those who do not hate everything Russian. They can and do enjoy many aspects of Russian life and culture from Banya to literature, dacha to classical music, theater or Russian alternative culture but still pathologically hate everything concerned with the Russian state and government which for them is always bad. The Tsars were bad, The Bolsheviks were bad, Yeltsin was bad but just slightly less so as he was pro western but Putin is somehow the worst of the worst. Their only solution to all problems is that Russia should copy the west in every aspect of its governance, submit unconditionally to all the west’s demands on her and until it does so it will remain “backwards and primitive”. Many however have only the vaguest idea, if any, of the realities of modern western governance. Navalny is probably the most well known example here.

A large proportion of the third category mentioned above are elderly people who still seem to regard the west as that kindly old uncle that it genuinely seemed to be back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The kindly, rich old “Uncle West” who looked after Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to name but a few when they fell foul of the Soviet authorities. Who also provided superior consumer items through relatives who had managed to emigrate. Who provided vinyl disks of “free & exciting” popular music and jeans to go with it, published and translated writers banned in the USSR, who had better clothes, cars, food, restaurants and whose shops were groaning with copious choice of what to buy compared to near empty and dismal Soviet ones. It is undeniable that in the postwar world the west outshone the communist east in pretty much every way and seemed, on the surface at least, to have a genuine claim to the moral high ground.

I, like many on both sides of the iron curtain had simply assumed that this was due to the innate superiority of free market economics compared to centrally planned economies. Nothing is so simple. It is only relatively recently that I have learned and then understood that in the “free west” we no longer have any free market economy. (There have been times in history, ancient and modern when free market economies have existed. Because our country’s central banks, and hence the control of the amount of money circulating in any given country are controlled by very secretive, publicly unaccountable individuals who can and do create booms and busts to suit their own private agenda which is total global control and domination via their grip on the money supply and loans at interest i.e. usury which is actually forbidden by most of the world’s major religions but….)

These [plutocratic] elites control the governments, the media and the education system and have, of course never allowed their all pervasive role to appear in the history books. They took a huge leap forward when they created, by stealth, The Federal Reverse in the US in 1913 and when their seventy year campaign to bring down The Russian Empire finally came to fruition in 1917. As I have mentioned every Tsar refused and foiled every attempt to gain control of the Russian money supply and Russia’s immense wealth by these private banking families and this was the main reason why the so called Russian Revolution happened. These families now funded the new Bolshevik state for interest and, whether the new terrorist rulers liked it or not, the USSR became a captive market for these western bankers and their western-engineered but built-in the USSR products.

A few years ago the top of my head blew off when I read an interview with Soviet dissident Alexander Zinoviev given in 1999 which filled in perfectly for me one of the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle I had been striving to find, namely: why living standards in the west began to decline for most people as soon as the USSR was dissolved. Frankly I find some of his assertions verging on the insane, such as: “Stalin should have had me shot when I was seventeen because I was against him and hence a threat to the USSR” but Zinoviev had the real nature of the west perfectly sussed! He understood the existence of the financial control system I have outlined above and that the western nations had been allowed, in the post WW2 period and for the time being, to experience a semblance of real freedom and enterprise in economic, political, artistic and scientific fields by these financial ruling elites so that it would outshine communism over which the bankers had lost some but not all of their control due to the the Soviet victory in WW2 and occupation of many eastern European states but also because the USSR had begun discovering oil and gas in very many places on its territory which, together with the successful testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb, enabled Stalin to show the western manipulators a fairly stiff middle finger.

Now: in 1991, there was no more communism that needed to be “outshined” and westerners’ disposable income was systematically “called in” as if it were a debt owed to the financial elites.


Alexander Zinoviev: a professional dissident?

As someone who was living in western Europe at the time I can testify to feeling that as soon as the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin on the evening of 26-12-1991 life in the west began to become ever more expensive and more oppressive and life there, somehow empty! As Zinoviev put it: “The end of communism in the Soviet Union also meant the end of democracy in the western world”.

Our Russian liberals have not the faintest idea about any of this. They still see western Europe and America as having superior everything as it did in reality by the time the USSR “collapsed” and hence believe in the false divide of capitalism vs communism. Most cannot accept the one hundred percent role reversal that has taken place between the west and Russia, just as many people everywhere have great difficulty in accepting the one thing that none of us can avoid: change.

There is also a category who were dissidents in the late Soviet era (to which, ironically, Alexander Zinoviev to some extent belongs) and just can’t stop being anti instead of pro. They were anti-Soviet. the USSR collapsed so they were anti-Yeltsin. He resigned so they became anti-Putin. Now most of them are anti-Russian Orthodox Church. I have the feeling with these people that even if the Lord himself came down to earth and righted all the world’s wrongs in front of their noses they would soon, even overnight, turn into dissidents against God bursting with flatulent reasons for complaint and dissatisfaction.

No 4 The fourth category is the category of expats for whom time stands still. These are people who emigrated from the USSR or the Russian federation in the late 80s, early 90s and for whom time stopped at that moment. Yes they live in the west using internet, mobile phones and many other innovations that have come into our lives since their emigration but their relationship to the land they left, whether accurately assessed at the time or not, remains exactly where it was at the moment their plane took of or their train crossed the Russian border. This is a very interesting phenomenon that merits serious psychological research. Even those who regularly return do not see the new Russia in front of their eyes! They see only the country as it was when they left. They represent an extreme example of Man seeing only what he wants to see or that which he has been taught to see as I suspect, ironically some may mistakenly say, that it is the extreme effectiveness of Soviet brainwashing that has rendered these people so incapable of perceiving the reality that is in front of their eyes.

I will give one of the most extreme examples from personal experience. Once upon a time not so long ago in a land not so far away I was invited to a party near Paris by a close Russian friend. About half the guests were Russian expats living in or around the French capital most of whom I already knew. There was one forty-something lady whom I had never met. Soon enough we fell into conversation. She was from St Petersburg and had been living in France for more than twenty years.

I happened to mention that it seemed to me that living standards in Russia had begun rising again despite western sanctions. She rounded on me like you can’t believe. “What are you talking about? Ninety percent of Russians are living in abject poverty and it’s getting worse” Under some shock at the strength and erroneousness of this reaction I hesitantly retorted: “Well, that’s not my impression having lived in St Petersburg for most of the last thirteen years.” “Oh you westerners never know anything about the real Russia! Where do you live when you’re there?” “Apraksin Lane” I answered. Now: Apraksin Pereulok = Lane is a rather tatty street in the very center of the city which many Peters-bourgeois dislike because of a famous clothes market mainly run and manned by people from the Caucasus and central Asia. Its location in the city suits me perfectly however. “Aha” she replied. “That is in the center. Only rich people live there! I knew it! You can’t learn anything about the real Russia living there!” Now flabbergasted, I attempted to explain to her that I had lived there since 2005 and that I knew many of my neighbours and had seen many come and go, had many a tale to tell and the vast majority were certainly not “rich” although as I repeated, living standards had been rising and all the old, Soviet cars in the courtyard had been replaced by modern ones. When was the last time you were in Russia or St Petersburg I ventured to ask. “Three months ago” came the reply. “Marcus! I’m telling you! Apraksin Lane is only for the super rich and living there you never see the penury that the vast majority of Russians are condemned to endure every day. Of course there are no prizes for guessing on whose shoulders she laid the blame for all this “penury”. Realising it was hopeless and wondering whether this woman could actually be considered sane, I moved on.


NATO Warmonger in Chief—Jens Stoltenberg. A disgrace to Scandinavia, too.

Such people are of course, manna from heaven for the western media being onsite as it were and can often be seen, heard and read on western media outlets. That lady is the most extreme case I have come across so far.

No 5. The fifth category are the young “west worshipers”; some of them so young they were not even born when the USSR collapsed and are hence, in theory, untouched by the effects of Soviet brainwashing. (See editorial note at foot of this article)  It is hard for me to understand why they are so fact-resistant but I will put forward a few theories.

Firstly: in their childhood and formative years, the nineties, Russia was robbed dry by corrupt oligarchs in league with corrupt financial “advisers” from western governments and “prestigious”western universities which resulted in the standard of living for many falling even lower than it had been in the USSR, mass unemployment and the inevitable spread of mass corruption from the street level to the very top which meant that most continued to see the west as a beacon of hope and this was indeed a period of mass emigration to western countries with highly qualified people having a particularly easy passage as yet again the west profited from the high standards of Russian Empire-Soviet education. It is not hard to imagine the conversations they heard at their parents’ dinner tables and through the thin Soviet walls at night. Meanwhile, Russian media and those of other Soviet republics, now “independent countries”, were taken over by the west and citizens were bombarded with all the worst and the lowest with which the west had already been dumbing down its own citizens for at least a decade or two. [The "dumbing down" of the US population has been going on far longer than a decade or two, easily 100 years, reaching its more virulent phase in the last 4 decades.—Ed]

Secondly. Scientists have recently confirmed by physical, empirical experiments what many of us had come to realise anyway: that aspects of memory are actually passed on genetically and this could also be a reason why young people with absolute free access to information on one of the world’s freest Internets choose not to use it. They have inherited their “west is best” leitmotif from their parents. Of course some of them have literally been taught it from early childhood. It can never be underestimated just how deeply the idea of the innate superiority of the west has sunk into the subconscious of so many Soviet citizens but this phenomenon started well before Soviet times in fact as any one who has read Dostoyevsky will know.

Thirdly. In more recent years many young people have been seduced by what, have been dressed up, especially for them, as new, exciting and fashionable ideas such as for example: being gay. In nineteen eighties Britain I knew people who were trying to be gay when they weren’t just because it had become “a la mode” especially among “left wing” circles and had a flavour of being anti-establishment and above all, anti Thatcher who in reality was herself anti-establishment but let’s stay on track. I was amazed to see exactly the same phenomenon played out among some Moscow and Petersburg friends with great enthusiasm and excitement (like little children discovering their first naughty rhyme and being sure that they are the first to know it) more than thirty years after I had first witnessed this in eighties Britain. I repeat that these people are in a minority everywhere in Russia, even in St Petersburg, but it is true that western “political correctness” is popular among young Russian liberals but far less so among the older ones. Also I should state that the above mentioned trying to be gay phenomenon was and is far more popular among women than men in Russia whereas in eighties Britain, it was rather more fifty-fifty. This goes hand in hand with young people who have become communist or very left wing in the sense that we in the west have come to understand since the sixties as opposed to Soviet communism within the USSR which came to represent a kind of “conservatism”. Many of them agree with our Russian liberals on almost everything. Especially their hatred of the current Russian government, media, family values and perhaps above all, the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church.

Some further analysis as to why this phenomenon exists and why it is so dangerous!

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]f the categories of “Russian Liberals” I have listed above, the first category are clearly in a class apart. They are the very antipode of naivety. Indeed, faced with them it is the rest of us who are naïve (And I’m not talking only about other “liberals” here), the vast majority of us are usually unable to comprehend, or not strong enough to face the terrifying fact that such pure evil can exist and that it already has control of most of our world. In my own case this was certainly why it took me so long to wake up to the true nature of the west, only doing so when I saw the Ukrainian putsch and the west’s reaction to the reunification of Crimea with Russia. The deep knowledge I had gained from many sources but above all from personal contact over many years, with Ukrainians and Russians of all hues and my years living in Russia left me no psychological escape route whatsoever.

The remaining categories are naïve however although some are consumed by negativity and even hatred and could easily be enticed up to the underworld of the first group. One important thing they all have in common is a refusal to watch mainstream Russian television or listen to Russian radio having convinced themselves that it is full of anti western, pro government propaganda and lies. In other words they are living in the world as it was forty and more years ago. As many have noticed and commented on, the actual world is a one hundred percent reversal of the cold war situation. It is the western TV and media which is full of lies, disinformation, fake news and total reality inversions. Yet this is the only “media” that these “Russian liberals” will pay any attention too.

While some aspects of Russian TV still leave plenty to be desired (especially the prevalence of low quality extremely violent dramas, cop shows etc), Russian news broadcasts are infinitely more objective and informative, in other words, HONEST, both on domestic and international issues than their contemporary western counterparts. More importantly there has been an explosion in the popularity and hence number of political talk shows on Russian TV. These shows invite guests of all sides of all political spectrums and nationalities. Our anti Putin, pro western “Russian liberals” are given free voice on prime-time major TV channels as well as Ukrainian, pro Maidan nationalists, Polish nationalists, Russian speaking Americans who support the US State Department “party” line and other pro western voices. Furthermore within the spectrum of what can be collectively labeled pro Russian government, who are also invited obviously, the range of opinion and stance is extremely broad. Within the ruling United Russia Party itself, the spectrum of opinion is wider than that between supposed opposition parties in many western countries. Even if, as some have commentated, some of these shows are designed for entertainment and confrontation, the fact remains that many outstanding experts on pertinent world issues, cultures, civilizations and history take part in these programs and any Russian speaker who watches them is getting themselves a pretty broad education and, and hence, your average Russian viewer is infinitely better informed than western viewers as well as those who are the subject of this article who rely only on mainstream western sources.

Why is this so dangerous?

I’ll try to be brief. Russia is once again under existential threat of attack from the western deep-states and their real rulers because Russia is again resurgent and yet again rejuvenating and worse still for the western elites, she is resurgent as the multi confessional, multi-ethnic but predominantly CHRISTIAN country she always was as the Christianity the west thought it had destroyed in 1917 arises phoenix-like from the ashes of the twentieth century. Whatever negotiations might be going on on a political level, preparations for attack are continuing! If they were not then the barrage of anti Russian propaganda would be withering by now. It is in fact intensifying.

As I have said above, the the first category of “Russian liberals” are collaborating with the west. The other categories just refuse to believe that the west is any threat to Russia and often claim that this is all invented to make Putin more popular. As Sheik Imran Hussein has said we are entering the great epoch of truth versus lie as opposed to the epoch we are leaving of false, fabricated conflicts where endless nuanced arguments about the reasons and nature of those conflicts seemed to have their place. Today, western mainstream politicians and journalists whenever speaking about Russia, Ukraine, Syria and N. Korea always say the exact, one hundred percent opposite of the truth. “Russian liberals” choose to believe this double speak and accuse their own government, media and people of doing exactly that which the west is doing.

We are living through an unprecedented moment of change that is happening at lightning speed and it seems as if all humanity has been put into a giant shaker which is shaking to dust all the isms & wasms that were invented for us to fight over, leaving only truth and falsehood and those who can see it and those who can’t and again down to those who are prepared to sacrifice and fight for truth and who are prepared to fight for falsehood and ultimate iniquity. Few indeed are those who will openly side with evil but many are those who can be seduced into doing so when evil dons the mantle of good; when evil cloaks itself in the guise of freedom, democracy, human rights, tolerance and other comfy sounding words to an ear influenced by the “comfy western democracy world”. The fact is that it is precisely from the countries that are still known as “western democracies” that this falsehood i.e. evil comes and it now takes very little research to understand that it always did. If Russia loses this struggle then not only Russians but western citizens too will become as expendable for the western ruling elites as Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Yemenis and many other African peoples have tragically proved to be. They need you and your backing for the fight that’s coming dear westerner and Russian liberal but the fight once won, you will all be gumming up their works and they will proceed with your conversion into fertilizer to fertilize the few, replacing you with technology! They openly state that they believe the world is overpopulated and something needs to be done. This is the force that these “Russian liberals” are collaborating with, albeit for the most part out of naivety and this is why they are so dangerous for the continuance of human civilization and culture, world peace and of course Russia as a sovereign nation state and all sovereign nation states.

Lastly these Russian liberals are a danger to themselves (Except the first category of course, although in a much deeper and blacker way they are too but we don’t have time to go into that here). Especially those who become “activists” are quite literally putting their own lives in danger! They themselves would of course say: “Yes. That’s right! Our lives are in danger from the evil dictatorial Russian government and the “Great Dictator” Putin. Aren’t we great? Look at us everybody! We’re putting our lives on the line for your liberty so that you can be governed by freedom loving, democratic Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Gary Kasparov, Anne Applebaum, Alexey Navalny, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto and all the rest of the “progressive” gang! You have to be so grateful to us!” Well I’m sorry dear Russian and other liberals. You are blinded and hoodwinked by your own egos’ vanity!

Many have commented, especially the many who have defected from the “liberal” camp to the infinitely broader camp of those seeking truth, struggling towards the light, that liberalism is fueled by the ego; by a desire to bask in the supposed reflective glory of being a “good, caring” person which is why liberals are in fact so intolerant and so quickly become the dictators they claim to be opposing assuming that their “liberalism” gives them a birth right to dictate to, manage and control those whom they perceive as, but won’t admit it publicly of course; “the lower orders”. The ego cannot tolerate criticism, contradiction or exposure of its whims and fears which is why all who do not resist its beguiling iron grip end up serving evil one way or another.

The brutal fact for you Russian liberals is that, except for some student circles in St Petersburg, (Why is it always students?) all your efforts have come to nothing. Almost no one in Russia believes you and most see right through you. Many even hate you for your expressions of joy when a Russian fighter jet on a combat mission against ISIS was shot down by Turkey in a surprise attack and one of the pilots was machine gunned by “Yankee Jihads” as he parachuted to the ground. By your attempts to show the Immortal Regiment as fake government propaganda. By your insistence that Crimea must be “returned” to Ukraine thus negating the right of several million Crimeans, not only to be able to choose to live under a government that represents their past, present and future, but their right not to be baseball-batted, Molotov cocktailed, Kalashnikoved out of existence by, foreign to Crimea, ultra nationalist, NATO backed Ukrainian thugs that would have poured into the peninsula if Crimeans hadn’t acted so decisively, to do the west’s bidding to name but three shameful episodes.


B. Nemtsov (screengrab): Much more useful to the west dead than alive.

Yes! Your lives are in danger. Especially if you become a little high profile, not from anyone in the Russian government or even deep state, but from your own bosses, financiers and the secret services of the western states that are involved in the war on the Russian world. The chilling fact is that for your bosses, you are much more useful dead than alive! Your murder, especially if it can be done in a very public, publicity attracting manner can be used as another major propaganda coup against the Russian government.

Now you see: call me naïve but I do not see anything in Vladimir Putin that makes me think that he assassinates his political opponents. He engages with them unless they are beyond the pale i.e. have actually tried to sabotage the development of Russia or collaborated with her sworn enemies such as Khordokovsky, Navalny, Kasparov, Ponomarev et al, all of whom however, are very much alive. When it comes to the unfortunate Boris Nemtsov, R.I.P: the idea that the Russian government wastes time assassinating people who pose absolutely no threat whatsoever to the stability of the Russian state and its government or, even if taking the most cynical possible view, the grip on power of Russia’s current rulers, is simply mental excrement.

If one looks, as any police detective would do when investigating crimes, for repeating patterns and connections then it quickly becomes clear that the string of appalling, heinous murders of “Putin critics” and others over the last eleven years or so all seem to have been designed to create the maximum publicity, often coinciding with high profile political events and significant dates. Politkovskaya was murdered while Putin was giving a major, highly publicized speech in Germany, one of the first where he stated that Russia would no longer be following the west’s plans for her and it just happened to be his birthday. The downing of, or whatever really happened to, MH17 coincided within an hour with Putin landing in Moscow after a six day tour of Latin America where breakthrough BRICS agreements had been signed as well as coinciding with the black anniversary of the Satanic murder of the Russian Royal Family and their aids on July 17th and so it goes on. It does not take a tactical genius to understand who gains from these murders and the ensuing orchestrated anti Russian propaganda campaigns. Yes: that’s right! The west gains all and Putin, his team and Russia as a whole gain precisely nothing. Only problems and sanctions so neither does it take a tactical genius to understand who is really behind these crimes or at the very least, in some cases, who exploits them very ruthlessly and cynically in ever more desperate attempts to paint Russia as an evil menace which the west will have to “liberate” as it did with Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc!

It is the nature of propaganda that it cannot remain silent. If there is any pause then people’s intuition i.e. connection to universal wisdom —truth, reality—kicks into action gently but resolutely posing very awkward questions for the propagandists such as: “Surely modern Russia can’t be responsible for all the world’s ills can it? It doesn’t seem to make any sense.” or “ You mean ALL Jews are involved in some sort of plot against the rest of us? Every single one of them? Including my neighbour? That’s gotta be nonsense!” etc.  This is why totalitarian regimes build ever bigger statues, ever bigger posters and placards covering whole facades of massive buildings, and in today’s age, evermore blanket TV propaganda, often resorting to loudspeakers in streets blaring out whatever they need the public to believe at any given time! Silence is their worst enemy! Much more powerful than opposing propaganda or even the opposing truth!

In today’s world it is the so called western democracies that, while attempting to maintain the facade of actual freedom (and democracy!), are racing full tilt down this path. They started with this particular, final, all out campaign twenty or more years ago and have been steadily picking up momentum ever since. For the underlying forces that are fueling and driving this momentum, their overriding purpose is the final destruction of Russia, the Russian world and traditional i.e. REAL Christianity as well as other genuine religions of which Islam is their second target and, by chance, the second religion of The Russian Federation. “Third time lucky” they are saying to themselves! All the other invasions and destruction of sovereign states listed above, while handing the western rulers some immediate “advantages” in each case, were only another step on the road towards this ultimate goal! In spite of these “victories” all is not going as planned for the west! To quote Sheik Imran Hussein again: “The west makes its plans but Allah-God makes his.” He also stated that which many of us felt. That the reunification of Crimea with Russia is an event of deep spiritual significance, as well as being of crucial military importance and even that it was foretold by the Prophet Mohammed in The Koran. Given what the Russian world was forced to endure in the twentieth century, nearly all of it at the hands of the west actually, the deep destructive consequences of which are still troubling Russia today, it is nothing short of a miracle that Russia has risen to become the leading resistance to the forces of evil which are now so energetically and openly on the march. I find it desperately sad that these “Russian liberals” can’t see or feel this huge moment in history and that they are choosing to aid the forces of darkness!

May the Lord send you light and have mercy on your and all our souls, for naivety can have an appallingly high price! Almost as high as selling your soul to……!

Editors’ Note: TGP’s Opeds are articles we publish due to their overall great value, but which in a number of aspects, we may actually disagree with. Obviously, this is a fine piece, and the author a fine and well-meaning intellect, laying out pressing truths, so our critique here should not be interpreted as refuting his central theses, especially the description of the West’s cynical and absolutely evil assault on Russia and its possible world-ending consequences. So what are these differences? For example (as pointed in line already) we disagree with the author’s rather sweeping characterisation of Lenin and Trotsky, and a generally hostile view of the Soviet Union and its role in the world, even calling its leaders the “new terrorists”. We also see that he seems to imply a certain belief in the goodness of undisturbed “free markets,” a keystone of hardcore libertarianism, and what these portend, capitalist hell, sooner or later. Equally problematic is the author’s extremely rather reductionist view of the mainsprings of the Russian revolution, which he ascribes to a bankers’ plot conceived by a few families (he is probably thinking of the Rothchilds, and Jewish financiers, again), in support of the Bolsheviks! The idea, we are told, is that the Soviet revolution was supported by the dark forces of the west in order to give true Christianity its coup de grace! This is the kind of ultra-right views usually circulated in looney quarters in the US, and with good reason, and this is not to negate the extremely powerful and semi-hidden and even sinister role that international banking—an arm of global capitalism after all—plays in precipitating terrible human events. How Godwyn (in that aspect alone) seems to be on the same page with ultra-rightwingers who support fascism is a bit of a nasty contradiction since he is obviously a clear anti-fascist! Lastly, due to his rather undifferentiated anti-Sovietism, we say “undifferentiated” because understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet Union, its errors and accomplishments, requires a far more balanced view, one which incorporates the dialectic of 80 years of nonstop attacks on the Soviet experiment, including an all-out Nazi invasion and an unrelenting Cold War, he still thinks (like Orwell, actually) that it was the Soviet Union that represented and still represents the most extreme and successful case of “mass brainwash” in modern history, whereas anyone with an even basic grasp of US propaganda methods and media structure can see that it is the US—the anglo-saxon world—that is really the best example of pervasive, smooth and effective systemic indoctrination.—PG

About the author
The author writes frequently about Russia and her culture from a highly personal and original perspective, as evidenced by this extraordinary piece, which is also infused with a strong sense of morality. As he states in the essay, he has lived in Russia (St Petersburg, etc.) and is obviously well acquainted with Russian mores, media and current affairs. His dispatches are published in leading political alternative blogs including The Saker, Oriental Review, Russia Insider, etc.

MARCUS GODWYN—he violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government by The US and EU in February 2014 could oh so easily, if hotter heads had been in charge in the Kremlin, have led almost immediately to WW3. It is clear that the Russians did not expect such an extreme move from the west and were caught napping. If Putin was the kind of person who allows himself to be eaten by personal pride or whipped into action while smarting from loss of face and even a few of his ministers and advisers were of a similar hue we could all be radioactive dust by now.



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The Russian Navy at the crossroads: paradoxes and choices

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE SAKER

 By Andrei Martyanov for the Saker blog | click on images for best resolution!

Battle of Tsushima: Russian ships in serious trouble.

The concept, inevitably, utterly failed and had a profound negative effect on French naval development, effectively arresting a building of the large battleships. Jeune Ecole also influenced Russians, who also slowed their entrance into the age of large armored battleships, dedicating much of their attention to experimentation with new, sometimes dubious, naval concepts. The new technology was simply not adequate. In May of 1905 the Russian Navy would sustain a catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Tsushima—the event which would continue to color Russian and Soviet naval thinking for almost a century. But nothing, not even the Tsushima debacle, would compare to an unprecedented naval catastrophe which befell the Soviet Navy in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. In fact, history has no record of a nation simply refusing to inherit a world class advanced navy, the second largest and capable navy in the world, and allowing it to rot and wither away. Two fundamental ideas, apart from the chaos in which post-Soviet Russia fell in the 1990s, were responsible for the virtual death of the Soviet Navy:

1. The West in general and its leader, the United States, were not viewed as enemies anymore, Russia was to be incorporated into this Western World Order and as such she didn’t need armed forces in general, and a navy in particular, with a global reach and capable of fighting and defeating NATO;

2. As anything “Soviet”, the Soviet Navy was deemed backward, not technologically advanced and it lacked what the US Navy had—many nuclear aircraft carriers. In fact, the carrier-centrism of the US Navy was looked at both with admiration and envy.

The reckless dismantling of even Soviet nuclear submarines and the rest of the Soviet fleet severely damaged the security of the Russian people, inviting attacks and humiliations—which were to follow. An unprecedented —criminal—case of official naivete by men who put their immediate class interests and ideology above the nation's good.

Needless to say, those utterly false ideas originated in the “intellectual” top tier of Russian so called liberal reformers who found themselves in power in early 1990s. They originated in the company of people most of whom far from having any serious military and academic background never served a day in uniform and their claim to “expertise” was in raw political power and revulsion towards anything that was achieved during Soviet times. Most of those people were humanities “educated” ideologues, such as one of the main brains behind the destruction of the Russian economy in the 1990s, Yegor Gaidar, economist by trade, or, for that matter, Boris Yeltsin himself—a power hungry cynical opportunist-apparatchik utterly unqualified for any serious military-political task. Many in the “free”—a euphemism for anti-Russian—Russian media cheered on a destruction of any remaining vestiges of the Soviet system. The Navy was Soviet and as such it was supposed to be dismantled.


Soviet sub rotting in the Kola peninsula graveyard.

By 1999 this task was largely accomplished and the Soviet, now Russian, Navy, or, rather, what was left of it, was effectively reduced to a hollow force barely capable of deploying a single nuclear ballistic missile submarine on patrol. Many modern ships and submarines were scrapped or sold abroad for a fraction of their real cost. Often they were sold with secret communications, navigation and weapons’ control systems intact. In 1999 NATO unleashed its aggression against Yugoslavia, Russia not only was left on the sidelines as a passive observer of a military atrocity committed against an independent nation on completely false premises, but eventually Russia was both coerced and bought into betraying Serbia. It was then that the depth of Russia’s fall was exposed to such a degree that the change was inevitable. Those days the phrase “if Russia still had 5th OPESK, there would have been no attack on Serbia” was floating around many Russian military and political forums. Many were lamenting a destruction of the famed Fifth Operational Squadron (5th OPESK), also known as Mediterranean Squadron—a massive Soviet naval force which was more than capable of preventing any attack on Serbia. Not only was this force gone in 1999, but the once mighty Black Sea Fleet was reduced to nothing more than a total of a brigade of heterogeneous, mostly obsolete, forces, and its main naval base of Sevastopol was not in Russia proper anymore.

No better were things with the Pacific Fleet, which was reduced to several submarines and surface combatants barely capable of making it to sea. The Baltic Fleet was rusting in its bases and even the premier Soviet/Russian Northern Fleet, despite having Russia’s only aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and having the brand new nuclear battlecruiser Peter the Great in its order of battle, was a pale shadow of what used to be the Soviet Northern Fleet. Humiliation in Yugoslavia was compounded with the Kursk tragedy, which completely illuminated the criminal consequences of Russian “reforms” and “reformers” destroying Russia’s military.

BONUS FEATURE
The Raising of the Kursk: an avoidable tragedy
Click on the orange button below to inspect this material.


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Ckick on image for best resolution.

 

AND HERE'S THE AMERICAN VIEWPOINT. 
BELOW, a rather self-serving propagandistic version of the Kursk tragedy by the American show FRONTLINE, aired on the supposedly more impartial educational public network PBS. In recent years FRONTLINE, a generally above average journalistic program, has degenerated into another megaphone for the liberal/CIA/Democratic party -sponsored anti-Russian/Putin campaign. Keep that in mind when you examine this material. 


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NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 completely overturned two major “liberal” assumptions about the Russian military. Not only the combined West, especially the United States, never stopped the Cold War against Russia, now emboldened by Russia’s real and perceived weakness and gross overestimation of own capabilities, it showed its real face and intentions. Moreover, suddenly this, supposedly backward and not carrier-centric Soviet Navy was needed as never before, but it was nowhere to be found except for some remnants of it which had been preserved by sheer miracle and the efforts of people who believed that the destructive reformist bacchanalia in Russia had to be stopped at some point.

What many liberal reformers didn’t know, of course, was the fact that Soviet Navy, far from being backward, by the early 1980s was undergoing a massive transformation started in 1970s by its legendary Commander Admiral Sergei Gorshkov. There were a number of technologies and concepts in which the Soviet Navy led the world, including many things which the United States Navy would offer. Yes, the Soviet Navy was global in the sense that it could conduct operations in what is defined as ocean or remote sea zones—far from its bases. Unlike its US counterpart, however, the Soviet Navy was never a Sea Control force. Sea Control, also known as roughly equivalent to Favorable Operational Regime in Russia, being the ability to conduct any uninterrupted maritime activity from naval operations to commercial shipping, meaning keeping Sea Lines of Communications (SLOC) open. The US Navy was designed as such from the onset with the United States as a nation conceived as the “World’s Island” in Admiral Zumwalt’s definition. US Navy also, after the WW II, slowly but surely, while trying to preserve the disappearing mission for its carriers, which bathed themselves in glory during the War in the Pacific, started to evolve into the Power Projection tool of the American Empire, which emerged unscarred and prospered dramatically during and after WW II.

It was the Soviet/Russian Navy that developed and today deploys an array of ASCMs designed precisely to make large, expensive carriers obsolete. The Russian Navy knows the capabilities of its missiles. It also understands that the U.S. Navy, as well as other serious navies, inevitably will break the hypersonic barrier, as well as develop a genuine distributed lethality, and this will rewrite the rules of naval warfare.

The USSR, which bore the brunt of WW II, didn’t have the luxury of such a prosperity, nor, realistically, had intentions to project power anywhere around the globe. The main task for the Soviet Navy was to eventually provide maritime security for the flanks of Soviet Armies fighting in Europe against NATO, and to interdict NATO’s SLOC in the Atlantic, thus cutting supplies to Western European Theater of Operations. That meant fighting in the Mediterranean, Baltic and in what has become known as GIUK gap. But the most important task was not to allow any power projection by NATO navies against Soviet territory first and foremost—this mission being known in the West as Sea Denial, later supplemented with the now popular A2/AD—Anti-Access/Access-Denial concepts. While the US Navy’s posture remained aggressive and offensive since WW II, the Soviet Navy’s posture remained defensive. By the year 2000 Russia simply had no real forces to even fight its A2/AD battles, not to speak of Sea Denial battles in remote sea zones, let alone any ocean—any such attempt would have been easily suppressed by the US Navy and if not for its nuclear deterrent, the Russian Navy was at that point not a contender. Yet, the Soviet Navy left after itself a massive scientific, technological and tactical-operational heritage.

Since its inception, Russian Navy was never in a good position being geographically split into 4 Fleets and 1 Flotilla—an arrangement which complicates things enormously, yet there is no alternative, such as digging Panama Canal, in the case of the US Navy, capable of fast inter-theater maneuver with its forces. Such pressures do create a very different view on naval matters and after the Kursk disaster it became clear that A2/AD must become the primary task for the Russian Navy in the nearest perspective. Some effective and affordable solutions were needed. Some lessons from Jeune Ecole also could be drawn, since unlike the 1870s in the 2000s proper technologies have truly arrived.

Jeune École Mk.2?

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was 21 October 1967, when a three-missile salvo from a Soviet built 62-ton, Egyptian Komar-class missile boat sunk the INS Eilat with a new weapon, the P-15 Termit-class antishipping cruise missile (ASCM). Naval warfare changed dramatically. In fact, the revolution Jeune École sought to launch a century before happened because the technology had arrived. The Soviet Navy immediately recognized both the advantages and shortcomings of this new technology, and saw its enormous promise.

This was not the case with the U.S. Navy, which didn’t consider any cruise missile to be important enough to supplement, let alone substitute, U.S. carrier aviation. Later, Elmo Zumwalt would recite in his memoirs a message he received (at the time he was serving as the head of the Division of Systems Analysis) through the Chief Naval Officer’s aide system that the new Harpoon cruise missile should not have a range of more than 50 miles. The Soviet Navy, not burdened by the politics of internal “trade unions,” had no problems with the range and, wanted both range and speeds of its ASCMs to be as great as possible. Thus a new Russian Navy announced its arrival on 7 October 2015 with a salvo of 26 Kalibr (3M14) cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea at Islamic State targets in Syria. Out of the four ships which launched missiles, three of the project 21631 Buyan-class missile corvettes barely displaced 900 tons and would not be considered a serious combatant by any large navy. Yet, there they were small, inexpensive, and designed mostly for boats with a strategic reach of 2500 kilometers for their land attack weapons and ability to strike any surface target 600 kilometers away. The Soviet Navy always placed a great emphasis on its Mosquito missile fleet. So much so, that deploying those small ships to the Mediterranean became a permanent feature in operations of what was the Soviet Fifth Operational Squadron in 1970s and 80s. But only with the maturing of missile and targeting technologies, which was demonstrated in Syria to a devastating effect, both from ships and submarines, the Jeune École promise envisioned by Admiral Aube was at last fulfilled.


Russian warship firing Kalibr cruise missiles at ISIS targets. Their precision and effectiveness made the world take note.

The operations of the Russian Navy’s Buyan-class missile ships made an impression globally, so much so that Milan Vego, a long-time authority on small combat craft and professor of joint military operations at the U.S. Naval War College, noted that many navalists overlook the capabilities of smaller craft. “We have been somehow dismissive about the increasing combat power of small combatants,” he said. “The US Navy and other navies, blue water navies, really have to pay more attention to what is going on. These smaller ships are less than 1,000 tons. It is very dangerous to be dismissive, especially in smaller straits where they can do a lot of damage.” The Soviet and Russian Navy has never been dismissive of smaller ships. In fact, today these ships play an important role in a multipronged approach to Russia’s A2/AD force structure, including the ability for inter-theater maneuvers with such ships, using Russia’s river waterways. Construction plans for both the Buyan-class and the brand new Karakurt (project 22800) small-missile ships are impressive. Karakurts, unlike their Buyan-class predecessors, despite smaller displacement are much better sea-keeping platforms, which also feature a more respectable organic air defense capability represented by a navalized version of the Pantzir air defense complex. Construction of 18 of these ships is planned. Together with a dozen operational or under construction Buyans, such a force gives the Russian Navy both operational flexibility and distributed lethality in her littoral and near sea zone. When operational, these small ships will give the Russian Navy around 240 missiles, both land attack and antishipping, in a theoretical “first salvo” across several theaters. When integrated into Russia’s A2/AD force with its air defense and air force components and combined with other naval assets, these small combatants will become a game-changer. They also are a perfect indicator of Russia’s limited naval ambitions, which are primarily defensive. Considering a transitional period for Russia’s shipbuilding industry from foreign (Ukraine, Germany) power plant suppliers to domestic ones and the inevitable delay in commissioning larger combatants such as the Frigates of project 11356, the role of Russia’s Mosquito fleet grows even larger in defense of Russia’s interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Obviously, the Russia of 2017 cannot be compared to Russia of 2000 or even of the year 2008. It is a different country today; not only Russia is steadily, despite all undeniable problems, becoming an economic and technological powerhouse, she leads the military world in some very crucial hi-end technologies. This leadership was laid down in Soviet years. But nowhere Russia’s leadership is manifested more than in anti-shipping missiles. Modern Russian anti-shipping missiles’ arsenal is simply unrivaled in the word–all of it is high super-sonic. Last week this arsenal became hyper-sonic with the 3M22 Zircon missile becoming operational. This Mach-8 capable weapon rewrites naval tactics completely because no current or nearest future defense systems are capable of intercepting it. Paradoxically, it is here that the Russian Navy faces its main challenge. The challenge is not in the fact that the Russian Navy has to become at some point of time a Blue Water force—some contours of this force are already recognizable today—from advanced nuclear and non-nuclear missile-carrying submarines to large surface combatants, such as Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates. The issue for the Russian Navy is what to do with the ships Russians dedicated so much effort to making obsolete—large aircraft carriers? It is a conundrum.

Russia’s Naval Paradoxes

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Russian Navy doesn’t have a classic CATOBAR aircraft carrier not just because of economic reasons, despite popular western opinion. Russia is capable, even under economic sanctions, to pursue such a goal. The construction of the Zvezda shipyard in Russia’s Far East which, when complete, will be able to build ships up to 350,000 tons of displacement and a length of up to 360 meters, is a clear indication that, despite some issues with Russia’s shipbuilding industry, the development of Russian aircraft carriers is impeded by more than money. The Zvezda shipyard will be more than capable of building large CATOBAR (Catapult Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery ) carriers. But will it? While the recent document titled “Fundamentals of Russia’s State Naval Policy Through 2030” openly states Russia’s serious maritime ambitions, the document emphasizes the use of high precision and hypersonic weapons and is ambiguous on the fate of carriers, stating that there are plans for the “creation of aircraft carrying complex” in the future. On 18 July, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov revealed that discussion on the development and production of a brand new Yakovlev STOVL (based on the ideas of the Yak-141) aircraft is in full swing and it must enter serial production in 2025. For the Russian large carrier “trade union” and global navalists the news was devastating. Yet, this announcement by Borisov indicated clearly Russia’s ever intensive doctrinal debate and struggle with the carrier issue because it was the Soviet/Russian Navy that developed and today deploys an array of ASCMs designed precisely to make large, expensive carriers obsolete. The Russian Navy knows the capabilities of its missiles. It also understands that the U.S. Navy, as well as other serious navies, inevitably will break the hypersonic barrier, as well as develop a genuine distributed lethality, and this will rewrite the rules of naval warfare. Already, the U.S. Navy deploys some long-range subsonic missiles, such as the LRASM, whose salvo is extremely difficult to defend against. With long-range hypersonic technology, in a hypothetical Russian case, something as expensive as the proposed Storm-class carrier in battle is sim STOVL aircraft providing for a fat, expensive, and prestigious target. In real combat, even damage to the decks of carriers makes them nothing more than a huge pile of metal incapable of launching or landing fixed-wing aircraft. Russia’s very limited power projection needs can be met by other means, especially against the background of the mediocre performance of the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier in Syria.

Some of the problems of cost and deck survivability of CATOBAR carriers are mitigated somewhat in STOVL carriers. In the end, the Soviet/Russian Navy has substantial experience operating these type of carriers. The appearance of the Yak-141 (NATO “Freestyle”) STOVL (short take-off and vertical landing) aircraft in the late 1980s heralded a new set of capabilities for aircraft of this type, with it being a genuine supersonic jet with a respectable range and combat load. Only the collapse of the Soviet Union and an extreme economic crisis stopped the Yak-141 program. Considering Russia’s internationally recognized experience with combat aircraft it is only reasonable to assume that the new STOVL aircraft, if it ever goes into production, will be an impressive machine. If launched into production this aircraft very likely will account for the not always commendable experiences of the U.S. Navy’s F-35B program. Moreover, it opens the road for numerous, multipurpose carriers able to meet tactical and operational tasks required by the Russian Navy. But will the Russian Navy take this path? In the end, apart from serious tactical and operational considerations there is a serious aesthetic (visual) appeal of large carriers as an embodiment of national power. To be sure, the Russian Navy was looking attentively at the US Navy’s LHA-6 (USS America) as one of the possible avenues to pursue with its own carrier program. With America-class ships costing around $3.4 billion, financial comparisons, especially adjusted for Russia’s economic realities, are not in favor of the proposed CVNski, let alone U.S. CVNs whose costs reach upward of $13 billion. Operation costs are also immense. Borisov’s announcement indicates serious rethinking of carriers’ role in the Russian Navy. Old Russian truism states that everything new is well-forgotten old. We may yet see a return, this time on a completely new technological level, to a not so forgotten concept of STOVL carriers, which will vary both in displacement and in capability and which will be more suited for, due to their much lower costs compared to CVNs and deck survivability, for operations in increasingly deadly, long-range super and hypersonic missile-dominated oceans. (Note: CVN is the US Navy designation for all its nuclear-powered carriers, the "N" denoting nuclear plant.)


Russia's YAK-141, a new challenger to Western dominance of the skies and seas.

Throughout its history, the Russian Navy had to operate under unfavorable geopolitical, economic, and combat conditions. These pressures often led to unorthodox solutions, from the bizarre looking round Popovka coastal battleship to an operational adaptation of Jeune Ecole’ to the new technological realities of ASCMs and to leading the way with the drastic expanding of the capabilities’ envelope for STOVL aircraft with the revolutionary Yak-141. A “continuous series of matches between newfangled and old-fashioned military techniques,” in Toynbee’s words, is a never-ending story of technical, tactical, and strategic innovation. One of these matches is between the antishipping missile and the large aircraft carrier. This match finally reached a decisive point when the only role left for large carriers will be that of projecting power against weak opponents. But even this role, considering the proliferation of missile technologies may prove to be a bridge too far in the nearest future. Reducing the cost of carriers to levels which offer a compromise between combat performance and acceptable risks for operations becomes increasingly not just a well-meaning wish, but an imperative.

Can STOVL carriers offer a viable alternative? In terms of costs they can. In the end, only this type of carriers and STOVL aircraft can show their real modern combat worth against a relatively competent adversary during the Falklands War. Due to their significantly lower costs, such carriers may provide what really counts in combat—numbers. In the end, even massive Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class STOVL carriers’ costs is estimated to be around $8 billion—not bad for two ships capable of carrying together 80 combat aircraft. What the Russian Navy can do for $8 billion remains to be seen, but judging by the costs of Russian-made hardware since the mid-2000s, Russia probably will be able to eventually deploy more than two STOVL carriers. The emergence of relatively inexpensive and numerous STOVL carriers and possibly of the STOVL aircraft with characteristics rivaling those being used on CVNs, coupled with further proliferation of the long-range hypersonic weapon, may write a final chapter for this drama in the Soviet/Russian Navy. What, however, is clear already is the fact that even today the Russian Navy, for all its industry and force structure issues, has reached a technological and operational plateau which is a truly great foundation for not only defending Russia’s own shores and littoral—that already has been achieved—but eventually returning the Russian Navy to the oceans as a true guarantor of stability and real peace in the face of a crumbling Pax Americana, whose collapse may yet unleash a string of small and large wars. This kind of Peace and Stability Power Projection is what the world is in dire need of. The dramatically contrasting cases of Libya and Syria are a stark reminder of the changing geopolitical and technological paradigm.


The iconoclastic round-hulk Popovka concept battleship. Only two units were built in the 1870s—the Admiral Popov and the Admiral Novgorod—but were soon discarded due to poor navigational capability in true deep water or even littoral maritime conditions.

 


ABOUT THE SAKER
 Like The Greanville Post, with which it is now allied in his war against official disinformation, the Saker's site, VINEYARD OF THE SAKER, is the hub of an international network of sites devoted to fighting the "billion-dollar deception machinery" supporting the empire's wars against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other independent nation opposing or standing in the way of Washington's drive for global hegemony.  The Saker is published in more than half a dozen languages. A Saker is a very large falcon, native to Europe and Asia. 

ANDREI MARTYANOV—The emergence of relatively inexpensive and numerous STOVL carriers and possibly of the STOVL aircraft with characteristics rivaling those being used on CVNs, coupled with further proliferation of the long-range hypersonic weapon, may write a final chapter for this drama in the Soviet/Russian Navy. What, however, is clear already is the fact that even today the Russian Navy, for all its industry and force structure issues, has reached a technological and operational plateau which is a truly great foundation for not only defending Russia’s own shores and littoral—that already has been achieved—but eventually returning the Russian Navy to the oceans as a true guarantor of stability and real peace in the face of a crumbling Pax Americana, whose collapse may yet unleash a string of small and large wars.

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Book excerpt: How I became a Kremlin troll by The Saker

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE SAKER

Dear friends,

Today, with the kind permission of Phil Butler, I am posting the full text of my contribution to his book “Putin’s Praetorians: Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls“.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  The main one is that I strongly believe that this book deserves a much greater visibility than it has received (this is also why, exceptionally, I am placing this post in the top “analyses” category and not elsewhere).  Please read my review here to see why I feel so strongly about this book.  Frankly, I am rather shocked by the very little amount of reviews this book has generated.  I don’t even know if somebody besides Russia Insider has bothered writing a review of it or not, but even if somebody has, it is still a crying shame that this most interesting volume has been so far ignored by the alternative media including the ones friendly to Russia.  So by posting my own contribution here I want to bring back this book to the “front page”, so to speak, of our community.  Second, I want to ask for your help.  Right now the Kindle version of the book has 15 reviews on Amazon and only 1 review for the printed paper version.  This is not enough.  I am therefore asking you to 1) buy the book (Amazon wants reviews by purchasers) and 2) write a review on Amazon.  Guys – that is something most of you can do to help, so please do so!  We need to show the world that there is what I call “another West” which, far from being russophobic is, in fact, capable of producing real friends and even defenders of Russia.  So, please, do your part, help Phil in his heroic struggle, get the paper version of the book and review it on Amazon!

Thanks a lot for your help, hugs and cheers,

—The Saker

 

How I became a Kremlin troll by The Saker

By birth, experience, and training, I truly had everything needed to hate Putin.  I was born in a family of “White Russians” whose anti-Communism was total and visceral.

My childhood was filled with (mostly true) stories about atrocities and massacres committed by the Bolsheviks during the revolution and subsequent civil war.  Since my father had left me, I had an exiled Russian Orthodox Archbishop as a spiritual father, and through him, I learned of all the genocidal persecutions the Bolsheviks unleashed against the Orthodox Church.

At the age of 16, I had already read the three volumes of the “Gulag Archipelago” and carefully studied the history of WWII.  By 18 I was involved in numerous anti-Soviet activities such as distributing anti-Soviet propaganda in the mailboxes of Soviet diplomats or organizing the illegal importation of banned books into the Soviet Union through the Soviet merchant marine and fishing fleet (mostly at their station in the Canary Islands).  I was also working with an undercover group of Orthodox Christians sending help, mainly in the form of money, to the families of jailed dissidents. And since I was fluent in Russian, my military career took me from a basic training in electronic warfare, to a special unit of linguists for the General Staff of the Swiss military, to becoming a military analyst for the strategic intelligence service of Switzerland.

The Soviet authorities had long listed me, and my entire family, as dangerous anti-Soviet activists and I, therefore, could not travel to Russia until the fall of Communism in 1991 when I immediately caught the first available flight and got to Moscow while the barricades built against the GKChP coup were still standing.   Truly, by this fateful month of August 1991, I was a perfect anti-Soviet activist and an anti-Communist hardliner.  I even took a photo of myself standing next to the collapsed statue of Felix Derzhinsky (the founder of the ChK – the first Soviet Secret police) with my boot pressed on his iron throat.  That day I felt that my victory was total.  It was also short-lived.

Instead of bringing the long-suffering Russian people freedom, peace, and prosperity, the end of Communism in Russia only brought chaos, poverty, violence, and abject exploitation by the worst class of scum the defunct Soviet system had produced.  I was horrified.  Unlike so many other anti-Soviet activists who were also Russophobes, I never conflated my people and the regime which oppressed them.  So, while I rejoiced at the end of one horror, I was also appalled to see that another one had taken its place.  Even worse, it was undeniable that the West played an active role in every and all forms of anti-Russian activities, from the total protection of Russian mobsters, on to the support of the Wahabi insurgents in Chechnya, and ending with the financing of a propaganda machine which tried to turn the Russian people into mindless consumers to the presence of western “advisors” (yeah, right!) in all the key ministries.  The oligarchs were plundering Russia and causing immeasurable suffering, and the entire West, the so-called “free world” not only did nothing to help but helped all the enemies of Russia with every resource it had.  Soon the NATO forces attacked Serbia, a historical ally of Russia, in total violation of the most sacred principles of international law.  East Germany was not only reunified but instantly incorporated into West Germany and NATO pushed as far East as possible.  I could not pretend that all this could be explained by some fear of the Soviet military or by a reaction to the Communist theory of world revolution.  In truth, it became clear to me that the western elites did not hate the Soviet system or ideology, but that they hated the Russian people themselves and the culture and civilization which they had created.

By the time the war against the Serbian nation in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo broke out, I was in a unique situation: all day long I could read classified UNPROFOR and military reports about what was taking place in that region and, after work, I could read the counter-factual anti-Serbian propaganda the western corporate Ziomedia was spewing out every day.  I was horrified to see that literally everything the media was saying was a total lie.  Then came the false flags, first in Sarajevo, but later also in Kosovo.   My illusions about the “Free World” and the “West” were crumbling.  Fast.

Fate brought me to Russia in 1993 when I saw the carnage of meted out by the “democratic” Yeltsin regime against thousands of Russians in Moscow (many more than what the official press reported).  I also saw the Red Flags and Stalin portraits around the parliament building.  My disgust by then was total.  And when the Yeltsin regime decided to bring Dudaev’s Chechnia to heel triggering yet another needless bloodbath, that disgust turned into despair.  Then came the stolen elections of 1996 [with active assist from Washington—Eds] and the murder of General Lebed. At that point, I remember thinking “Russia is dead.”

So, when the entourage of Yeltsin suddenly appointed an unknown nobody to acting President of Russia, I was rather dubious, to put it mildly.  The new guy was not a drunk or an arrogant oligarch, but he looked rather unimpressive.  He was also ex-KGB which was interesting: on one hand, the KGB had been my lifelong enemy but on the other hand, I knew that the part of the KGB which dealt with foreign intelligence was staffed by the brightest of the brightest and that they had nothing to do with political repression, Gulags and all the rest of the ugly stuff another Directorate of the KGB (the 5th) was tasked with (that department had been abolished in 1989).  Putin came from the First Main Directorate of the KGB, the “PGU KGB.”  Still, my sympathies were more with the (far less political) military intelligence service (GRU) than the very political PGU which, I was quite sure by then, had a thick dossier on my family and me.

Then, two crucial things happened in parallel: both the “Free world” and Putin showed their true faces: the “Free world” as an AngloZionist Empire hell-bent on aggression and oppression, and Vladimir Putin as a real patriot of Russia. In fact, Putin slowly began looking like a hero to me: very gradually, in small incremental steps first, Putin began to turn Russia around, especially in two crucial matters: he was trying to “re-sovereignize” the country (making it truly sovereign and independent again), and he dared the unthinkable: he openly told the Empire that it was not only wrong, it was illegitimate (just read the transcript of Putin’s amazing 2007 “Munich Speech”).

Putin inspired me to make a dramatic choice: will I stick to my lifelong prejudices or will I let reality prove my lifelong prejudices wrong. The first option was far more comfortable to me, and all my friends would approve. The second one was far trickier, and it would cost me the friendship of many people. But what was the better option for Russia? Could it be that it was the right thing for a “White Russian” to join forces with the ex-KGB officer?

I found the answer here in a photo of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Putin:


If that old-generation anti-Communist hardliner who, unlike me, had spent time in the Gulag, could take Putin’s hand, then so could I!

In fact, the answer was obvious all along: while the “White” and the “Red” principles and ideologies were incompatible and mutually exclusive, there is also no doubt that nowadays true patriots of Russia can be found both in the former “Red” and “White” camps. To put it differently, I don’t think that “Whites” and “Reds” will ever agree on the past, but we can, and must, agree on the future. Besides, the Empire does not care whether we are “Red” or “White” – the Empire wants us all either enslaved or dead.

Putin, in the meantime, is still the only world leader with enough guts to openly tell the Empire how ugly, stupid and irresponsible it is (read his 2015 UN Speech).  And when I listen to him I see that he is neither “White” nor “Red.”  He is simply Russian.

So, this is how I became a Kremlin troll and a Putin fanboy.

—The Saker

ABOUT THE SAKER
 Like The Greanville Post, with which it is now allied in his war against official disinformation, the Saker's site, VINEYARD OF THE SAKER, is the hub of an international network of sites devoted to fighting the "billion-dollar deception machinery" supporting the empire's wars against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other independent nation opposing or standing in the way of Washington's drive for global hegemony.  The Saker is published in more than half a dozen languages. A Saker is a very large falcon, native to Europe and Asia. 

ABOUT PHIL BUTLER
Please click on the orange button below.

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Phil Butler is a digital, media, and geopolitical analyst, who was first influential in the Web technology space. After joining a prominent digital public relations firm in Germany, Pamil Visions PR, he became an influencer on internet media relations. 

As a digital analyst and futurist, Butler examined and advised major web-based companies on leveraging online traditional and social media. His work during this time enabled technology startup companies to achieve success in a highly competitive market, providing forward-looking marketing services that promoted them to better understand the digital media landscape. As a result of his work in this field, Butler helped develop some of the most successful digital PR and marketing strategies. 

At the onset of the new “media war” in between the United States and EU actors, Butler served as an analyst to help independent media better understand the tools being arrayed against Russia and all opponents to the globalist narrative. A sought-after media analyst and speaker, Butler has been a guest on RTTV, Russia One TV, NTV Russia, and a cited authority by dozens of other major independent media outlets worldwide. 

He now lives on the Island of Crete in Greece with his wife Mihaela, and their young son Paul-Jules.

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THE SAKER—Putin inspired me to make a dramatic choice: will I stick to my lifelong prejudices or will I let reality prove my lifelong prejudices wrong. The first option was far more comfortable to me, and all my friends would approve. The second one was far trickier, and it would cost me the friendship of many people. But what was the better option for Russia? Could it be that it was the right thing for a “White Russian” to join forces with the ex-KGB officer?

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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