Santa's Gift to Putin: Victory
No Negotiation
The Ukraine Proxy War is an endless black hole for the West.
No, there’s not going to be any negotiated settlement to American’s proxy war on Russia. For one thing: what is the point of the Russians negotiating with the Ukrainians when it is the US and the UK that call the shots?
The Russians already tried compromise in Istanbul back in the Spring when they had destroyed most of the UAF’s air force and navy and much of its air defense system, forcing the UAF into its “Maginot Grid. The Ukrainians were willing to accept Russian terms. The US said No! And that was that.
Now, the Russians are going to continue what is branded as a Counter Terrorism campaign until they have full control of Western Ukraine. There is no other way of ensuring they can achieve their original goals – demilitarization—destruction of Western Ukraine’s military resources – including the electrical infrastructure that supports it – and denazification, identification and capture of Neo-Nazi / Fascists along with holding of tribunals for crimes against humanity. Repeated Ukrainian atrocities have made justice a political necessity.
The Final Goal: Consolidation
Incorporation back into the Russian Federation is the only viable option that will protect the lives and livelihoods of the country’s population.
Historically, Ukraine was always part of Russia. Today it is just a US colony. A kind of Slavic Puerto Rico.
Russia’s original twin goals of demilitarization and denazification always implied this third final goal –the logical consequence of the first two – usually overlooked— but crucial to an understanding of what Russia is doing: Ukraine must die if it is to live again.
“Consolidation” means taking a Ukraine broken by American meddling and resurgent fascism and putting the pieces back together.
Nations are containers for cultures.
The more cultures, the bigger the pot and the more fragile.
In Russia, Putin took the shards of a shattered country and fragmented cultures and put them back together. At first, it leaked. Now, we see Russia is fixing itself – building on its achievements at home, with an evolving social and cultural consensus – bottom-up—driven by a stubborn, conservative but diverse population rather than by corporate propaganda, top-down as in the West reflecting the agenda of the oligarchs there.
Gilbert Doctorow writes: The pressure on Mr. Putin is from his own patriotic supporters, and an untimely truce for negotiations right now could lead to civil disorder in Russia. … Meanwhile, discredited Russian Liberalism is taking down with it the commitment to free markets for the sake of more effective war production. There is serious talk of reintroducing Five Year Plans.
Had Putin gone all out in February this year and announced mobilization at that time, there would have been resistance from an always skeptical public. Now things are different.
Putin and Russian Social Evolution
So many people in the West believe Putin is a “dictator’ and a “tool of the oligarchs ’although how one can be a dictator AND someone else’s “tool” I don’t know.
…between 1991 and 1999 the equivalent of the present entire household wealth of Russia was stolen and transferred overseas, mostly to London. Now the same usual suspects are trying to ruin Russia with sanctions, as “new Hitler” Putin stopped the looting
“Stopped the looting”?
Nobody in the West compares Putin to someone in law enforcement.
Rather, he is characterized as low level criminal – a thug.
Yet, he is the most legalistic and juristic of leaders.
Putin realized that Russian social and economic evolution required stability—and the rule of law. The most corrupt oligarchs went to prison or fled the country. The rest had to toe the line. They could prosper if the country did. Russian oligarchs definitely didn’t like working for the State – but they didn’t have a choice Those who survived and thrived did so to provide continuity and service.
Then came sanctions; finally, war – carried out by Western oligarchs – existential challenges that further weakened the Russian oligarchy and empowered the Russian majority.
No longer will ordinary Russians sell their souls for Big Macs.
It is significant that Putin’s main opposition in Russian is the Communist Party—which is strong because --just as people do increasingly in East Germany-- many older people look back to – and talk about – the benefits of socialism in the days of the USSR.
Despite what Doctorow thinks, the war has not discredited ‘Russian Liberalism” which, in its present form, accepts both social democracy and capitalism—just Russian Neo-Liberalism, which promotes greed and personal profit—and, of course, the Western “narrative”.
In war, when everyone is at risk and basic morality is essential to survival,demanding attention to human needs and sacrifice. The West’s war on Russia which began years ago with sanctions and psyops has driven the development of Russia. The country is now autarkic, basically self-sufficient, suspicious of Western values, and building new economic roads to the world through alliances with China, India and an ever expanding and powerful BRICS network of countries. While the West fails and flails, Russia is on a roll.
Ukraine as a Russian Republic
If the Ukraine is to be rebuilt, its future lies with Russia. Consolidation will mean not just a new federal republic, in addition to Donbass, Lugansk and the oblasts of Eastern Ukraine; it will mean a return to parliamentary democracy, and pluralism for the Ukraine as a whole.
Kiev was the first capital of the Rus’ long before Moscow.
Later, the Ukraine was the driving force of the USSR.
Once again, the region can become the core of Russia as a federation, revitalized and prospering through trade with Eurasia and BRICS – as the western hub of BRI.
Of course, the people of Western Ukraine are as brainwashed as Germans or Japanese were in 1942, What to do about that? In mass societies, much brainwashing is herding—it is all about direction. You can change the direction of the herd. The cows don’t know or care as long as they can munch some grass. It’s when they get hungry – or frightened – that you have problems. The herd doesn’t have brains to wash; only guts. We call propaganda bullshit for a reason.
As of this writing, bombardment of both primary and secondary energy infrastructure in Western Ukraine, turned off the lights country-wide, including the little ones that tell you your Internet is on. No water either. The herd is discomfited, afraid and hungry. It will be a hard winter --depopulating Western Ukraine by as much as 5 or 6 million, certainly one or two, with people moving west to l join the global anti-Russian Ukrainian diaspora.
Those who get out will likely be the affluent first – privileged people with the resources to flee.
Estimates show that of refugees in Austria, 70 % identify as upper middle class or better. Of 450 Ukrainian parliamentarians, only 90 remain in the Ukraine. Bye bye Kiev. Hello Monaco.
Yet these people get benefits as “refugees”. Of course, some of them need it — but American aid tends to feed the starving Rich who simply must have their caviar. It’s the vitamins y’know. It’s the American way, like corporate socialism.
But such inconsistencies means that the many upscale Ukrainian refuges who have arrived have poisoned the well of welcome for those further down the social ladder who will be arriving later in droves.
At some point, working class Europeans will also be asking why they don’t get caviar.
If I know this and you know it – then the Russians do too.
No Bargaining
There will be no bargaining between West and East.
As Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism writes:
The two sides have zero bargaining overlap in their positions, which means no basis for discussions. And one of the biggest impediments to any settlement, other than Russia eventually dictating terms, is the leader the collective West has put on a pedestal: Zelensky, with the additional baggage of his Banderite inner circle. NATO manhood is at stake and that it can’t be seen to lose to Russia.
Apart from the fact that “bargaining” means both sides must have something to offer and the West has nothing, “NATO manhood” is not the issue. Europe lost its balls years ago – as in fact the US did.
The Russians already tried negotiating. It was called Minsk.
When that failed, they attempted more talks hoping for something different. Those failed too.
The US is a non-negotiator. Insanity is repeating the same mistake and hoping for different result. People like to cite that axiomatically while ignoring it in practice. First you have to recognize the mistake. But people in the West don’t live in the real world. The Hegemon is an old guy locked in a virtual reality loop created by his own propaganda.
The Russians, by contrast, must face up to harsh necessity.
Will NATO intervene?
NATO is not going to field troops in the Ukraine because that would include Americans.
If there is anything that American politicians fear, it is flag-draped coffins.
NATO assistance is therefore limited to “volunteers’ in PMCs (private military companies), which the Russians need not respect as legitimate combatants protected by the rules of war, a policy that the US itself promoted when it invaded Afghanistan.
Who are these “volunteers”?
Gaston Besson participated in the Yugoslav conflict. He slaughtered women and children and burned villages. He is reported to have personally shot soldiers who refused to kill civilians. He was a monster – and now also dead.
A “no fly” zone? The US has a huge advantage in the number of aircraft it can put in the air. But this is not WWII. As Yves Smith says; Colonel Douglas Macgregor has also pointed out in the event of an official NATO war with Russia, as opposed to the current half pregnant version, Russia could take out all NATO airbases in Europe save one remote one, in Portugal, in the first hour and a half of the conflict. Macgregor himself? He talks of “utter nonsense” in the Ukraine.
The Endgame
This winter is warmer than usual. It is still muddy, which makes mobile offensives such as those that the Russians might mount more difficult.
But the ground will freeze. It gives time to the Russians to fully-re-train and equip and deploy its newly mobilized forces. Expect a Christmas or New Year’s treat for NATO and the West. Look what Santa brought. Boom!
At the beginning of the conflict, the Russians had less than 100,000 combat troops in the Ukraine with about as many in the form the Eastern Ukrainian militias. Right now, we see mostly Russian troops on the front line, rather than those militias -- attacking Marinka, Bakhmut, Soledar, and Ugledar—and other fortified townships and villages that constitute the remnants of Western Ukraine’s Maginot Grid.
Russian reinforcements are already making a difference and in the coming weeks there will be many more.
Once the Maginot Grid falls, Donbass will belong to the Russians. Then Donbass will be theirs, and the rest of Ukraine, dark and cold and depopulated and demoralized, will be belong to them too.
Just as the worst of the Russian oligarchs fled to London when Putin took power and now much of the Russia’s affluent fifth column, the nastiest of Western Ukraine’s Banderites and Banderite sympathizers, who until now have profited from the conflict, will flee to Berlin, Vienna and London too, if not Beverly Hills
Western Ukraine has commited “suicide by cop” — invited its own destruction.
Good riddance.
I am 76. Yes, I know—my profile picture, which is recent, looks younger . There is a reason my book is called "Ageing Young-- You're Never to Old To Rock and Roll", the title given to me by David Bowie's lead guitarist and songwriter, Mark Pritchett.
I write a lot about health issues, ageing successfully, cognitive issues like ASD—and… umm…genius. Recently, I have turned to geopolitical issues.
I have worked in the media for almost 50 years. I was a stringer in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Then I was in Korea. And after that in Japan where I studied martial arts and Buddhism and did a lot of things: union organizer, writer, broadcaster, media analyst, beer and pizza. I am neither Left nor Right. I have trouble with that: tell me to turn right and I may go left and vice versa. It’s a cognitive disability, an aspect of my ASD. Politically, I prefer to say I am "multipolar".
Which is probably what most people are. People who label themselves "left" or "right" seem to be limiting themselves to an ideology.
Guess that is OK if you are paying membership dues to a political party. But I don't have money for that.
Please support the Alternative Media. Moon of Alabama. SouthFront. The Saker. Alex Mercouris. Brain Berletic. Naked Capitalism. Larry Johnson. Media Lens.
Julian, it brings me comfort that you, a person of my age group is relevant still today. For me, it is not difficult to feel irrelevant in todays crappy world, even after the experiencing the joyous, bumpy, ballyhooed ride across time in that most marvelous period of our youth.
For those that experienced the ride eyes wide open, how ever could we be irrelevant?
I need to keep telling myself.
Good work brother!
The Russians did a similar thing in Chechenya in the 1990s. In destroying the jihadis, much of Chechenya and Grozny were smashed. The devastation was terrible and to an outside observer, you would have thought that that level of destruction would have seared hatred for the Russians into the Chechen's very souls. But a strange thing happened. The Russians came back and rebuilt Chechenya and worked with the people and restored the balance of the Russian civilizational state. Russia is not a national state, but multi-ethnic and civilizational and the Chechens were welcomed back to Mother Russia, which they re-embraced wholeheartedly. Chechenya is now one of Russia's most patriotic states and at the forefront of the Ukrainian operation. This project will be repeated in Ukraine.