Today the world faces a deeply corrupt Russian state where state control of the media is almost total, where control of major financial and resource assets resides almost exclusively close ‘friends’ many of whom have have KGB or St Petersburg connections (or both) going some way back, where increasingly neo nationalism is encouraged by the State up to a form of cult worship of the new ‘Great Leader’, a state which is not concerned with any former international agreements it’s predecessors may have the signed – the Budapest Memorandum, Helsinki Accords and even the United Nations founding charter are clearly regarded as non binding. A Russian state increasingly is hurtling back to it’s past. So tell me: was the Cold War won?
Vladimir Bukovsky, a former Soviet dissident and would be candidate for the Russian Presidential election in 2008 (naturally the court disbarred him) and a critic of both the post Soviet Russian regime (as well as the European Union), long argued that in fact the Cold War was never ‘won’. Even a former US Ambassador to Moscow, Mr Michael McFaul, now accepts that “This new era crept up on us, because we did not fully win the Cold War“. While the former Ambassador Mr McFaul believes that Russia could have taken another, brighter path Bukovsky has always argued that a Putinesque Russian revanchism was inevitable since the base evils of the former Soviet Union in Russia were never rooted out. In his terms in order to ‘finish’ the Cold War a form of Nuremburg Trial was needed to expose the crimes of their Soviet regime to the Russian people. He would argue that the real rulers of any dictatorial State are the secret police, the Russian Cheka, NKVD, KGB and in the German fascist dictatorship the Gestapo/SS etc. He would ask could you have ended the fascist regime in Germany without rooting out the Gestapo/SS and trying the criminals? The Gestapo/SS would take over business’s and quickly re-established themselves and very soon you would be back where you were in another form. In Russia this process was never undertaken and now we have a criminal KGB pen pusher (Putin was never a Colonel in the KGB) controlling all the resources through an almost mafia like network of ‘friends’ in exactly the way Bukovsky predicted. In Bukovsky words “Unless and until our nations start looking into their souls to see how much they contributed to these evils they will not start building a new life“.
Essentially Bukovsky would argue that a new Russian oligarchic – secret services run dictatorship was bound to arise because of this failure to expose the evils of past before the people. To go back to the start of the Soviet regime the same is true; they never exposed the Tsarist Okhrana crimes – they used, adapted and updated them, the Cheka inherited the Tsarist Okhrana, almost all the same personnel stayed on, so it is in some ways ‘natural’ that Putin sees himself as continuing this old imperial tradition. But his tradition doesn’t come from the Kyivan Prince Vladimir the Great’s Baptism into the Greek Church but from Count Loris-Melikov and Felix Dzerzhinsky; the tradition of the Lubyanka, the Gulag and neo Tsarist imperialism. Bukovsky said in 2002 “Having failed to finish off conclusively the communist system, we are now in danger of integrating the resulting monster into our world. It may not be called communism anymore, but it retained many of its dangerous characteristics… Until the Nuremberg-style tribunal passes its judgement on all the crimes committed by communism, it is not dead and the war is not over.” Welcome to today… All the West’s failures in regard to responding to Russia stem ultimately from their failure to understand the ‘Bukovsky analysis’, or if they do understand it, their unwillingness to take sufficient steps to oppose the Russian strategies. Interestingly Bukovsky is current facing prosecution in the UK for posessing child sex images.
The Putin Regime’s International Strategy
There is some debate among ‘Russia watchers’ about whether the Putin regime has a ‘strategy’ as such or whether it acts pragmatically; of course the simple fact is we can never fully know how they make their decisions. It is also a fact that Putin after returning to the Presidency, perhaps scared by the large demonstrations at his ‘re-election’, appeared to be alot more hardline than he was in his first two terms, particularly in domestic policy. The Gerasimov Doctrine which might possibly be said to draw the different policy strands together was not picked up on, nor it’s full implications understood even by those of who read when it was first made public in the somewhat obscure Russian ‘Military-Industrial Courier’ until after was illegaly annexed. Yet in truth Crimea was not the West’s first wake up call… wasn’t it obvious from Georgia in 2008?
In general one could class the Russian levers within Europe into four groupings: Gas blackmail, enticements or threats, this is often the preferred first option which are often used to divide European interests.
The second is never to declare war, as layed down in the Gerasimov/hybrid war doctrine, and to prefer the use of proxy forces/ ‘little green men’ over which Russia itself has a plausibly deniable lack of control; only at the last or in extremis is the Russian army openly to be used so that Russia itself can always deny it is ‘at war’: “Nothing to do with us, honest!”.
The third main lever is again used at dividing European nations among themselves and more generally Europe against America by sometimes corrupt and sometimes semi legitimate overt funding of lobbyists and political parties in the West, where influence can be bought, either openly or in brown envelopes it is.
The fourth strategy, which has only come to the fore since the Muscovite – Kievan War started (for to call the Muscovites ‘Russians’ is itself a betrayal of the Kievan Rus legacy which rightly belongs to Ukraine and Belarus) is the mis-information war which has two primary levels: to dilute throw out so many ‘views’ and ‘opinions’, even if they contradict each other, that the objective truth and the greater picture is almost forgotten (MH-17 ‘opinions’ and ‘theories’ originating from the Muscovite regime was a prime example of this) and secondly to seek further to the divisions already created (for example ‘the CIA/EU/Jews funded a fascist coup’ in Ukraine’). Each of these four main methods are used to achieve two prime objectives: firstly to divide European nations among themselves and to divide Europe as whole from the US/Canada and secondly to obtain European reliance on Russian energy exports which is of course necessary as this provides the primary enrichment source of the Muscovite mafia which it is also uses to placate it’s frightened and suffering subject population – or did until the Saudi’s over fed the oil market leaving the Mafia regime only the nationalist paranoia card to play – who was it that said nationalism was the last resort of a scoundrel? In the case of the Putin regime he was most certainly correct.
On the more global stage the gas lever is added to by contracts to build nuclear power stations and supply arms. In extremity a diplomatic ‘compromise’ is suggested that in fact retains the status quo.
Examples and Possible Sources of Development of the Putin Regime’s Strategy in Ukraine
I shall not list examples of nor the historical developments of all these main strategies. The ‘information war’ is excellently covered and documented already by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss in their report ‘The Menace of Unreality’ but we shall return to aspects of this when considering the Putin regime’s plan in Ukraine.
If we accept the broad gist of ‘Bukovsky analysis’ and at the same time understand the ‘mafia state’ analysis – which all evidence from Putin’s Leningrad days to the Magnitsky case, the Litvinenko case, the Anna Politkovskaya, even the Nemtsov case supports and I only mention the high profile cases not the hundreds of others such as Oleg Kashin who only got beaten to within inches of his life then the Putin regime’s actions become alot clearer.
Putin has spoken of his fear of ‘colour revolutions’ and clearly the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions inspired just as much apprehension in the Kremlin. These ‘revolutions’ against what in all cases were deeply corrupt post colonial regimes – for Ukraine was from 1920-91 in essence an extension of the Soviet Empire as it had been formerly a part of the Russian Empire – and aimed at democratic reform naturally were an anathema to the Putin regime which merely posed as a democracy. They represented a real threat to the regimes primary objective of remaining in power in Moscow itself and enriching itself upon the proceeds of it’s control of natural resources and indiscriminately robbing it’s own subjected populace if necessary (Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Evtushenkov being examples).
Clearly then Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ in 2004 raised serious concerns for the Putin regime. Despite Volodymyr Satsyuk’s (now a Russian citizen who they refuse to extradite) attempt at poisoning Yuschenko he survived and Yanukovych was held back for a while. It is suggested that it was at this time that the first plan to seize Crimea was drawn up in Moscow. Yuschenko and Timoshenko were almost certainly threatened with this in their negotiations with Moscow. At the time it would probably been have been overt invasion, as the Chechen wars had been, but when the gas leverage/dispute of 2005–06 payed off and the Yuschenko – Timoshenko disputes broke out Putin must have been laughing. He had escaped lightly.
Meanwhile two things were happening so as to overcome this sort of problem again some enterprising soul was studying the cases of Transdniestr and Nagorno Karabakh (or Artsak as the Armenians call it). Who he/she or even they were we shall never know. In the Nagorno Karabakh war the post Soviet Muscovites had supplied weapons to the Armenians via their 102nd base in Gyumri which had been instrumental in the Armenian victory. Similarly weapons had been supplied by the formerly Soviet forces to the ‘Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic’ and when a ceasefire was called the ‘peacekeepers’ were Russian troops who maintained the status quo. Whoever learned from these post Soviet conflicts of the 1990s is the real originator of the ‘Gerasimov/hybrid war’ doctrine on the military level but this is undoubtedly where it’s origins lie. The second thing that happened was that Putin regime learned it was exposed to Ukrainian leverage as the main transit route for supply to Europe – their money feed. The North Stream project, originally started by Finnish, German and Danish companies was obtained almost entirely by Gazprom in it’s own name (the Finnish company had been owned by Gazprom anyway). This was done by a certain Herr Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi Officer codenamed ‘Arthur’ who had known Putin in his time in Germany, though he later claimed to have only Putin in Lenningrad in 1991. From 2005 they were given the go ahead – Gerhard Shroeder, the then German Chancellor, was persuaded or bribed (or both) that it was in Germany’s and his interests and gave a 1 billion euro German Government guarantee to the project three weeks before leaving Office to take up a post… at Gazprom. Clearly it was not without interest to him – Putin even attended his Birthday in St.Petersburg last year. In this way North Stream acted not only against Ukrainian (and Polish) interests as it reduced European dependence of Ukrainian transit lines but also acted to create future leverage on Germany since they would now have their own dedicated gas supply. At the time Radek Sikorski, currently Marshall of the Polish Sejm and formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs was Minister of Defence and compared the North Stream deal to the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact. He was correct of course but in 2009, though the underlying strategy of the Putin was clear for all to see if they cared to but look at the record, his views were dismissed as ‘Polish paranoia’.
In the meantime significant discoveries had been made in the Caspian though it had always been known that the Baku area was rich in oil resources – even the Germans targeted Baku in their 1942 ‘Case Blue’ offencive though they didn’t get there thanks to the Soviet victory at Stalingrad. Due to the above mentioned Nagorno Karabakh/Artsak dispute and subsequently ‘frozen conflict’ of the 1990s clearly building a pipeline from Caspian fields via Baku through Armenia/Hayastan was not going to work. Of course the (deeply corrupt) Azerbaijan Government being allied with Turkey with whom the Armenians have arguably legitimate genocide accusations didn’t help so in 1996 a preliminary deal was signed by Georgia and Azerbaijan to supply “early oil”. During the 2000s the capacity of the Baku – Georgian gas and oil supply route rose from 100,000 bbl/d of “early oil” in 1999 to 20,500,000 tons of oil in 2008. This was all heading directly to the European market and seriously undermining the Putin regimes attempts to reduce Europe to being a gas extortion racket. Something clearly needed to change before the then Saakashvili Government obtained NATO membership as it was then trying and to many seemed likely to do; Membership Action Plans for both Georgia and Ukraine were on the table at Bucharest in 2008 but were opposed by… France and Germany. Hell they’d already erected a statue of Prometheus in Tiblisi in 2007 in honour of the interwar doctrine of liberation doctrine known as ‘Prometheism‘, a form ‘intermarium plus’ aimed at liberating all the old Muscovite/Soviet Empire’s indigineous nations. Saakashvili had come to power following the ‘Rose Revolution’ in 2004 of course and inherited the problems in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after the Bucharest NATO summit in April 2008 the Putin regime thought it saw NATO membership for Georgia coming and therefore acted signing a decree authorising ties (and weapons supplies) with South Ossetia and Abkhazia on April 16th. The separatist regimes were then encouraged to provoke Georgia and assured of Muscovite support, the rest is history. It was a no win game for Saakashvili almost from the start and the cutting of the Baku pipeline from Russian control was only stopped by a military ‘exercise’ called ‘Immediate Response 2008‘ by US and Georgian forces and threat of more US forces being sent to the area. Putin then promised the then French President Sarkozy that his forces would withdraw (they never did) and everyone forgot it… The Putin regimes point was made regarding NATO membership and Europe still retained some non Mafia controlled energy supply route from the Caspian. Later the Israelis rented an airfield in Azerbaijan due to their concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme but we shall return that shortly.
Of the formal and informal lobbyists payed by the Russian regime I shall give merely some examples. Clearly ‘fracking’ is against their interests so fracking must be opposed – money is therefore donated to the Green Parties in Europe. The funding of Marine Le Pen’s Front National Party is widely known already, the alleged Lukoil funding of Czech President less so. Other old friends they have had to help them: I remember after Yanukovych refused to sign the EU agreement at Vilnius that former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski had been sent to speak to Yanukovych… A reunion of the old guard almost as Kwaśniewski was himself known to have met his old KGB/FSB ‘handler’ known to most as ‘Vladimir Alganov‘ while in Office. Sending Kwaśniewski – sadly the whole article is missing there but I know people who have deeper proofs) to convince Yanukovych of the wisdom of signing the EU agreement must have made the Kremlin laugh out loud. ‘Kwackers’ was already already comprimised materiel who could be manipulated at will. There are of course other Kwaśniewskis and more energy bribes – the deal with Hungary which will doubtless make Mr Orban very rich is another example. The gas and bond deal with Yanukovych in December 2013 was of the same form. So clearly both overt and covert influences using money – or what we call corruption – were and still are in use against not only Ukraine – and they certainly still exist within Ukraine – but also in the divisive effort. The lobbyist and NGO funding I shall not go into detail about as it is covered by the Chatham House report of last year. They also hire lobbyists against sanctions as one might expect but in the whole concerted attempt undermine the unity of European nation and the Transatlantic Alliance in order to achieve an energy leverage/blackmail position over Europe as a whole nothing is left off the table – including the threat of using nuclear weapons. Then of course they have their payed ‘trolls‘ who are sent out to influence the west via the social internet media; facebook, twitter and all the other myriad internet media forms. The British newspaper even complained about this. This though perhaps both in the ‘information war’ grouping and the covert psychological war at the same time as naturally the ‘trolls’ and ‘bots’ are to some extent covert but contribute to the information war. The genesis of their information war in general including ‘trolls’ we cannot be sure of course but it may relate back to the 2007 Estonian ‘cyberattack’ on Estonia. Clearly though while television propaganda is well known another someone has encapsulated the idea of ‘weaponizing’ social internet media for misinformation and obscuring the greater truths such that the Putin regimes forces have invaded Ukraine and are war within Ukraine.
The Putin Regime’s Strategy Globally
When Putin heard of the US ‘Pacific tilt’ in 2012 no doubt he rubbed his hands in glee… Though Hilary Clinton time as US Secretary of State policy had been to attempt a ‘reset’ , the symbolic button which her officials mis spelled the Russian translation, the US – Muscovite relationship did not get any better and then Obama ‘pivotted’ to the Pacific in 2012. Now while it one thing to ‘pivot to the Pacific’ in itself it is quite another to announce your intention to the whole world; international strategy is not a matter for public announcements and flag waving. Similarly publicly ruling out any option, such as the deployment of US/NATO troops to Ukraine from the start is insanity of the highest degree; it re-assures your opponents when they should be kept guessing! This does not mean that you MAY send troops into Ukraine – privately it is fine to rule this option out – but to publicly rule out the option is a breach of the very basic lessons of foreign policy and does nothing but to assure any potential opponent who would otherwise be left guessing and worrying. On top of this. They fundamentally failed from the start to understand the Bukovsky or mafia analyses in my view. Perhaps they were ignorant of them or if they knew chose to ignore them…
How can you offer a reset gimmick to a nation that a year before invaded Georgia and came within inches of making all of Europe even more dependent on a Mafia regime for energy supply? Frankly the naïveté and cluelessness of this policy left many including the Centre for Strategic and International Studies astounded at the time; it was asking for trouble. Sadly those that warned against such a pivot in Europe and in the US were – as Sikorski over North Stream – were accused of ‘paranoia’. The Putin regime was ‘rational’, “he’s not a gambler” and various other meaningless platitudes were rolled out publicly by the wise leaders to allay fears. They were wrong then, completely and totally failed to face the facts both in Europe and in North America. Since then they have still not ‘caught up’ and frankly the Putin regime has laughed all the way through the Obama Administrations conduct of foreign policy. Let me give some examples.
The scale back of the ‘Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence’ (European Defence Shield) in 2009 from the deployment of interceptor bases in Poland was met with the Muscovite regime’s withdrawal of Iskanders from Kaliningrad but it takes only days to redeploy the Iskanders again – as we have seen recently – whereas building an integrated defense shield system is a long term safeguard against any Muscovite regimes nuclear blackmail. Presumably this was part of the ‘reset’ approach which was fundamentally flawed from the start.
Let me take another random example; Syria where the Assad regime has been murdering it’s own population for nearly 5 years. Obama said use of chemical weapons was a ‘line in the sand’. Fine, Assad used them and the Putin regime, which supplies the Assad gang with weapons and encouraged him to refuse the proposed Qatari – Turkey gas pipeline deal then intervened to suggest a ‘solution’ whereby the already criminal Assad regime (the use of chemical weapons being a war crime) gave up it’s chemical weapons yet is said to have used chlorine gas on civilians only last week – a crime of WW1… So the status quo continued, more people died and ISL/ISIS, the Islamic fundamentalists took the central stage for sheer hideousness. So much for a line in the sand – now we are bombing the extremists and supporting Iranian backed Iraqi to defeat the former rebels thanks to the Kremlin’s diplomatic ‘compromise’. Surely the ‘line in the sand’ should have meant more – if the Assad regime had been taken out there and then the extremists would never have gained a foothold in Syria or Iraq but maybe ‘reset’, accommodation with the Putin regime and the ‘Pacific pivot’ blinded them. Suites the Putin regime fine though to have US, British and French forces bombing arabs while they invade Ukraine. Clearly senior political figures in the West never understood the Putin regime.
Thirdly let me come to Iran where as we know a tentative ‘deal’ on their production of various necessary ingredients for the production of a nuclear weapon has recently been struck under the negotiation of the ‘P5+1‘ format with Iran. Who supplied the nuclear power stations to Iran? One guess? Yep Moscow… who supplied the centrufuge designs? Same answer. Yet we let this people who supply them these materiel’s sit in on talks where we aim to convince them not to go ahead and build a nuclear weapon? The very same regime that takes advantage of Ukraine’s giving up it nuclear weapons in the 1990s to annex and invade it’s neighbour? Notwithstanding that the Iranians and Russians are backing the Assad regime and supporting the Yemeni trouble… As it was naturally the Putin regime was never going to let Iranian oil be freely available on the market as this would have further reduced prices so they quickly revived the S-300 deal knowing that this would fail any deal passing in the US and quite possibly elsewhere. This suits them fine of course – more problems for others to deal with while they continue with their agression against Ukraine and division and threats within Europe.
Now some of us who have watched this long progression from the Lenningrad Casinos, SPAG etc days to today who will no doubt have ‘caught on’ sooner than others. I will happily admit that it was the 2008 Muscovite – Georgian War and the implied threats to the Caspian energy supply that awoke my suspicions and caused me to look back into the Putin regime’s history. Yet once had history been understood that leads to the inevitable ‘mafia state’ analysis – even if one discounts the ‘Bukovsky analysis’ – then how did the EU and the West in general allow and encourage Ukraine into todays war? Were the European leaders ignorant or not briefed of the facts? Did they chose to ignore the facts? Or worse, were they mislead and perverted by the ‘organs’ of Putin regime themselves? I would hazard a guess that all three are true in different cases. Even the British House of Lords, while refraining from using the word ‘negligent’, issued a report ‘The EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine’ critical of the blindness of the European leaders. Yet nobody has resigned from the EU or any member Government nor any of it’s agencies… why not? Presumably they were blind but does that not in itself assign negligence? No, sadly if once, God willing the Battle of Ukraine is won, the ‘West’ itself must be look within and purge it’s own soul for accomodating a known Mafia regime so long. They knew and so stand guilty as aiding and abetting the crimes now perpertrated against the Ukrainian people by the Putin mafia regime.
The Putin Regime Plans for Ukraine and Mistakes
The January 16th ‘Dictatorship Laws’ which insanely even made traffic jams potentially ‘illegal’ and all criticism of the Yanukovych regime, whether in Ukraine or abroad, prosecutable – even ‘in absentia’ in theory – showed that he had no intention of ever again permitting free and fair elections within Ukraine. If it had been a Euromaidan before it then became and overwhelming popular uprising. Whether the Putin regime advised him on the Dictatorship Laws we shall never know perhaps but it was a massive mistake. From January 23rd a series of provincial Administration occupation swept over western and central Ukraine. After some of the ‘Dictatorship Laws’ had been were withdrawn on Jan 28th an uneasy standoff and frquent ‘truces’ ensued while Yanukovych tried to bring in more troops and ‘titushky’ in two operations, subsequently revealed in the ‘Hennadiy Moskal papers‘ which happily required more troops than he had available, 25th Airborne Brigade having had an ‘accident’ en route etc… On the same day (Feb 20th) live fire was authorised by then Minister of Interior Vitaly Zakharchenko and friend Surkov arrived with an FSB Generals (Colonel-General Sergei Orestovoch Beseda) and two other FSB officers to do who knows what other than ‘assess the security the security level and protection of the Muscovite Embassy’ as Lavrov said at the time. On the 21st arrived the Foreign Ministers of Germany, Poland and France to negotiate the ‘agreement’. The Muscovite representative at this these talks between the three EU Foreign Ministers, Yanukovych and the Opposition leaders was Vladimir Lukin but he never signed it as a witness. Radek Sikorski, who was then the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister told the Ukrainian opposition leaders to accept the agreement or they “would all be dead” – famously caught on video. Later he said that a phone call to Putin changed Yanukovych’s mind. The rest is known – the deal was signed and not honoured on the President’s part and having packed his trucks full of loot he left from his mansion by helicopter with his mistress and her dog early on February 22nd am.
All the previous is history of course but in light of Putin’s later and recent remarks it makes sense to refresh our minds. First it will be recalled that Putin said there were no Russian troops in Crimea, then later he admitted there were. Then the ‘Crimean medal’ appeared dated February 20th and then finally he admitted himself having the ‘secret order’ for the Crimean operation on February 20th. But this was before Yanukovych even started negotiating with the Opposition leaders with the mediation of the EU Foreign Ministers on the 21st Feb but also the same day as Muscovite delegation with Beseda and Surkov arrived (around 7pm).
From these known facts we can begin to piece together the Putin regimes initial plan and hopes: Surkov and Beseda and other staff (the entire party numbered 5) were dispatched to Kyiv the day that the decision to ‘go’ on Crimea was made. The Surkov/Beseda team they knew they had Zakharchenko, who probably authorised live fire on direct orders from Moscow the same day, in their pocket but already they had pretty given up on Yanukovych. Yet he could prove useful still and must ‘persuaded’, one way or another, to leave Kyiv and try to raise support in Eastern Ukraine. He was only finally convinced of this during the negotiations of the 21st Feb when as Sikorski says he suddenly changed his mind. Beseda and Surkov were in the SBU building in Kyiv while the shooting was ongoing on Feb 21st – again forcing Yanukovych to leave. They knew of course that the Crimean ‘anschluss’ operation was already gearing up. If Yanukovych retreated to the Party of Regions Conference in Kharkiv, which had been quickly sketched in, while the ‘local militia’ as Putin first described them in Crimea but who we knew were ‘little green Muscovites’ then they hoped that eastern Ukraine would rise in support of Yanukovych, following the Russian example in Crimea, Yanukovych would then denounce any ‘fascist junta’ that picked up the pieces after he had abandoned his Office and the nation and if necessary call upon our ‘fraternal partners’, who just happened to have some 100,000 troops at the border at the time, to help him ‘restore order and democracy’ or whatever rhetorical phrasing he or Putin chose. This, or very close to this, was undoubtedly the Putin regime’s original plan. Retaliation in Crimea against the ‘little green men’ would have meant full scale invasion while Yanukovych was still ‘in play’. Those days until the end of March were possibly the most precarious days – not just for Ukraine but for Europe and the world possibly but once the ‘interim Government’ was internationally recognised the crisis passed and the initial Putin regime plan had failed.
Let us make no mistake though this was almost entirely a ‘wake up call’ for the international community which came and still comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives. Ignorant and unwilling to recognise truths which are plain for anyone to see they persist in appeasing a Putin regime intent on enslaving it neighbours as well as it’s own terrified population in order to grasp further through its energy leverage and other corrupt financial practices. Yet Putin himself, for all he is supposed a great ‘strategist’ radically got Ukraine and partly the world wrong. We knew the ‘little green men’ in Crimea were Russian troops when they appeared and subsequent appearance in Donbass didn’t fool anyone either. He lost Ukraine in 2014 and therefore had to ‘annex’ Crimea and misinform of the historical facts about Vladimir the Great’s conversion to Christianity . The Girkin/’Strelkov’ GRU operation in Donbass and Colonel Girkin’s admission that he started the war in Donbass are documented facts which cannot be denied. Yet still Putin’s ‘strategic genius’ has failed – in nearly a year since the Girkin/’Strelkov’/GRU operation started the so called ‘Republics’ have less ground than they did at first. For the Putin regime to go onwards incurs more sanctions and possible financial meltdown among his select and elite ‘comrades’ who may oust him but backwards admits defeat, which cannot be seen to happen. The last gamble is therefore nigh; they have put themselves against the wall from their own perspective and must therefore to react against it, in this case it involves breaking out sadly in Ukraine. The West’s inertia and willingness to ‘compromise’ with the Putin regime merely encourages them; they believe they have more will power than the West (thus proving it’s ‘decadence’ in neo fascist terms) and though they understand that the Russian GDP is now less than that of Italy alone they believe they can win due simply because they want to and others will remain idle or be neutralized by their strategies. Sadly and disgracefully therefore the Ukrainian troops now preparing for the ultimate trial have little to no support until the Muscovite regime launches it’s next onslaught under the guise of it’s little green proxies. A disgraceful show of weakness on the Western democracies part that it will take long to repair and a massive miscalculation on the whole Ukrainian internal dynamics by the Putin regime. It is said among the books of old that wars are often won by those who make less mistakes than their opponents, therefore at this time of trial let all Ukrainians stand to their duty in the name of their proud homeland and may Ukraine’s misguided ‘allies’ see the truth before more of Ukraine’s heroic fighters are sacrificed.
The time of trial draws close.
Arise Sons and Daughters of Cossacks! Слава Україні!
