Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

If Russia’s Not Bluffing, Then What’s in the Cards? by Finian Cunningham

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

We could be a bit more sanguine if Putin didn’t outmatch everyone on our side by at least 50 IQ points. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.org:

Vladimir Putin is renowned as a strategic chess player. Looks like the world is going to see what his skills are for playing poker.

Russia has said it is not bluffing about its categorical security demands ahead of top-level negotiations with American counterparts in Geneva. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed this week that Russia will take a hard line, indicating that the time for vague compromises is over.

History has amply demonstrated that words and promises are expendable when it comes to U.S. and NATO leaders giving assurances to Russia of non-aggression. Three decades of NATO militarism encroaching on Russia’s borders is proof enough.

Henceforth, there will have to be legally binding rules to manage security. That still does not guarantee adherence. Several arms control treaties have been jettisoned by U.S. administrations since the Cold War. Nevertheless, a legal framework is a basic premise. However, after that, there must be a credible alternative warning mechanism to enforce rules.

The demands put forward by Moscow stipulate that the U.S.-led NATO military alliance ceases any eastward expansion, including giving membership to former Soviet Republics such as Ukraine and Georgia. Secondly, the U.S. must withdraw strike weapons that have been placed in eastern Europe such as those in Poland and Romania or any others planned for installment in the Baltic states.

That the United States has responded by holding negotiations in Geneva on January 10 as well as NATO talks with Russian officials on January 12 shows that Washington and its allies have registered the gravity of Moscow’s concerns. Those concerns have been simmering for years over NATO’s relentless expansion since the end of the Cold War. But the recent tensions over Ukraine in which Russia has been baselessly accused of planning to invade have made Moscow’s patience boil over.

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Putin Speaks, by Patrick Lawrence

Posted on December 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

It is hard for Americans to believe that Putin means what he says from long experience with our own politicians who rarely mean what they say or say what the mean. From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

As the Russian president’s year-end presser helped underscore, Europe will increasingly understand itself as the western end of Eurasia rather than the eastern shore of the Atlantic.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, visiting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2019. (Kremlin)

Vladimir Putin was “defiant” during his end-of-year press conference last Thursday. The Russian president, who has held these impressive question-and-answer events for the past 20 years, was “bellicose.” He was “threatening.” So we read in the all-the-same-always American press.

Here’s a gem from one Mary Ilyushina, a CBS News correspondent in Moscow: Putin is worried about the military activities of NATO members in Ukraine, she tells us, “you know, on Russia’s doorstep, which is what Putin believes Ukraine is.”

Putin believes. Got it. Mary Ilyushina, my nominee for president of the Overseas Press Club. I have other words for Putin’s performance before 500 domestic and international journalists, and it is far more pertinent to our circumstances. Putin was confident. He was clear, well-informed per usual, and meant neither more nor less than what he said.  

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The Growing Russia-China Relationship, by Ted Snider

Posted on December 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

The U.S. can take a large measure of the credit, or blame, depending on how you want to look at it, for bringing China and Russia together. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:

Under the pressure of US sanctions, threats, aggression and an imposed Second Cold War, the Russia-China relationship is growing closer and closer.

Personal Relationship

On December 15, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for a virtual summit. XI welcomed his “old friend,” and Putin greeted his “dear friend.”

Their greetings to each other were neither scripted nor posturing for the West. In June 2018, Putin told an interviewer that “President XI Jinping is probably the only world leader I have celebrated one of my birthdays with.” He added that XI”is a very reliable partner.” For his part, XI has called Putin “my best, most intimate friend.”

But the growing relationship is not just a friendship between the leaders of the people of the two countries. It is also a growing friendship between the people of the two countries. Relations between Russia and China were not always good. In 2016, before the intense US pressure started pushing the two countries together, only 34% of Russians viewed China favorably; in 2019, 84% saw China as “more a partner than a rival.”

International Relationship

Russia and China have also partnered as the leaders of an important new set of international organizations, like the BRICS nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Both of these organizations are intended to balance US hegemony and exceptionalism in international politics. Both of these organizations are huge, each representing nearly half the world, and both are led by Russia and China as the principal partners. Both also include India. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization represents a quarter of the world’s economy and four of its nuclear powers.

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Putin, Xi Running Circles Around Biden’s Hybrid War, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on December 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

Multiply Biden’s IQ by 4 and you wouldn’t reach the sum of Putin’s and Xi’s. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin spent an hour and 14 minutes in a video conversation on Wednesday. Geopolitically, paving the way for 2022, this is the one that really matters – much more than Putin-Biden a week ago.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who generally carefully measures his words, had previously hinted that this exchange would be “extremely important.”

It was obvious the two leaders would not only exchange information about the natural gas pipeline Power of Siberia 2. But Peskov was referring to prime time geopolitics: how Russia-China would be coordinating their countercoups against the hybrid war/Cold War 2.0 combo deployed by the US and its allies.

While no substantial leaks were expected from the 37th meeting between Xi and Putin since 2013 (they will meet again in person in February 2022, at the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics), Assistant to the President for Foreign Policy Yuri Ushakov did manage to succinctly deliver at least two serious bits of information.

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The US, Not Ukraine, Decides Whether America Defends Ukraine, by Doug Bandow

Posted on December 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

If the U.S. signs up to defend Ukraine, as Ukraine dearly wants, then look for Russia to sign a defense pact with Mexico. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

The drumbeat of war continues to roll across Europe. President Joe Biden is promoting an uncertain message, sometimes aggressive, other times restrained, as he talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. The Republican Party is more coherent but, as usual, runs from foolish to nutty hawkish.

Merely reckless is former Pentagon official Dov Zakheim, who advocated arming Ukraine, deploying special operations forces to Ukraine, and urging allies to do the same. Taking up the far loon position is Sen. Roger Wicker, who suggested full participation as a combatant, including “that we stand off with our ships in the Black Sea and we rain destruction on Russian military capability,” “we participate. It could mean American troops on the ground,” and “We don’t rule out first use nuclear action,”

To President Biden’s credit, he appeared to take war off the table, insisting that he would not “unilaterally use force to confront Russia.” That theoretically left open the possibility of a multilateral expedition, but no one imagines that Europeans who won’t defend themselves would contribute troops to defend Ukraine.

All that is known for certain is that Russia has staged an impressive military buildup likely intended to coerce, with the threat of invasion, Ukraine. The objective probably is to foreclose a Ukrainian attack on separatist territory in the Donbass and force implementation of the Minsk Protocol, which would grant those areas autonomy. More broadly, Moscow seeks to foreclose Kyiv’s membership in NATO.

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The Biden-Putin Talk, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on December 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

Putin drew his red line, but he should delude himself that Washington is listening or that it will take him seriously. He may well have to prove his red line is a real red line. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

Update Dec 14: As I wrote, Washington intends to keep the “Russian invasion of Ukraine” narrative alive: https://www.rt.com/russia/543124-us-considering-send-troops/

It is both a good thing and a bad thing that Putin got the point across to Washington that Russia will not permit NATO moving into Ukraine. It is good because a Russian foot finally came down. It is a bad thing if it convinces the Kremlin that, finally, Washington is listening.

Washington is not listening, and the Kremlin might again be lost in self-deception.

For Washington, it is more useful for Ukraine to be continually threatened by Russia than to be protected by NATO. If Ukraine is protected, the orchestrated “Russian threat” fades away. What other country can Russia be alleged to be preparing to attack?

Washington is happy to keep Ukraine out of NATO as this keeps the real problem festering. The West claims that the Russians who inhabit Eastern Ukraine in the breakaway republics are rebels whom the Ukrainian army is justified in putting down. The Kremlin apparently agrees as the Kremlin has refused to recognize the endangered republics. Thus, the war there will continue.

It is this war that is dangerous, and it is the Kremlin that tolerates this dangerous war. Eastern Ukraine for centuries was part of Russia. Lenin and Stalin moved the Donbas Russians into Ukraine and Khrushchev incorporated Crimea into Ukraine. Whether this was done for administrative convenience or to add Russian nationals to the Ukraine, or in the case of Khrushchev, himself Ukrainian, to make amends for the Ukrainians he had murdered, I don’t know. It did not matter much at the time as Ukraine was just a province of the Soviet Union. You were Soviet whether you were in Russia or the Ukraine.

The war is dangerous, because the Kremlin has let seven years of the war go by without stopping it. Russians who feel national ties are getting frustrated that Russians in the breakaway republics are being killed by Ukrainian neo-nazi forces supplied by Washington. Russia has provided arms to the breakaway republics, but it has permitted the neo-nazi Ukraine at Washington’s direction to continue its attacks, which continue to take Russian lives.

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Russia does not want a war in Ukraine, by Mary Dejevsky

Posted on December 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

Vladimir Putin has made it abundantly clear: he doesn’t want Ukraine in NATO and he doesn’t want to invade Ukraine. The problem for the war mongers in the United States government is that they want a war with Russia, for unfathomable reasons, so they’re doing their best to stir one up. From Mary Dejevsky at spiked-online.com:

Over the past month the drum beat of a new war in the east of Europe has grown ever louder. So loud, in fact, that US president Joe Biden and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, felt the need to hold a virtual summit on Tuesday this week. The stated aim from the Russian side was to try to clear the air and, from the US side, to stall what it had presented as Russian preparations to invade Ukraine.

The outcome, as spun by the US, included loud threats of new Western sanctions and embargoes should Russia take a step across the Ukraine border. As spun by Russia, the summit allowed for new discussions, which was in turn spun by some advocates for Ukraine as potentially jeopardising its independence.

What seems not to have been resolved in those two hours of talks, however, is the original question: is Russia mobilising to invade Ukraine? (For the New Cold Warriors, this would be the second invasion, the first being Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its ill-defined support for anti-Kiev rebels in eastern Ukraine.) And if Russia is not planning to invade, then what is going on?

The problem, as so often, is that the very same elements that can be cited as evidence of Russia’s aggressive intent, in terms of troop deployment and rhetoric, can also be viewed as reactive – that is, defensive. Yet the idea that Putin might be trying to reinforce Russia’s national security against what he might see as a Western threat – taking the form, say, of the NATO-backed land-grab for Ukraine – is almost never entertained. Yet consider which side has made the running here.

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Putin sets a new red line on NATO expansion, by Ted Snider

Posted on December 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

The red line has shifted but if the U.S. crosses it Putin has the will and the military capacity to punish the U.S. for promises that were made and broken regarding NATO in the 1990s. From Ted Snider at responsiblestatecraft.org:

Since its assurances not to move “one inch” outside Germany, the alliance as moved 600 miles closer to Russia.

It is possible to actually measure Washington’s dishonesty. How big is it? It’s about 600 miles.

In 1990, according to declassified documents, Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch” east of Germany. Thirty years ago, that was Russia’s red line.

On December 2, that red line moved from one inch to 600 miles as Vladimir Putin said he would now seek a promise that NATO would not expand further east to Ukraine.

Since these assurances, NATO has wandered its way through Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and Poland. Six hundred miles of broken pledges have brought the U.S. and NATO to the border of Ukraine.

On September 1, President Biden met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Biden used code words for NATO encroachment when he pledged his “support for Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations” and American support for Ukraine’s “being completely integrated in Europe.” He then announced “a new $60 million security assistance package” in addition to the $400 million in security assistance the U.S. has already provided Ukraine this year.

Having retreated 600 miles from Gorbachev’s red line, Putin drew a new red line on December 2, seeking “reliable and long-term security guarantees.” Those guarantees “would exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory.”

Putin is keenly aware that the red line has moved east 600 miles. At the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007, Putin asked the world, “And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

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Russia’s Greatest Weapon is not a Weapon, by Dmitry Orlov

Posted on December 7, 2021 | Leave a comment

Russia is what many people around the world still consider normal, and that gives it a big advantage. From Dmitry Orlov at lewrockwell.com:

An ultimately very healthy but in the meantime very unpleasant realization is gradually dawning in West—an insight that is simply shocking, that fundamentally alters their picture of the world: that the stronger becomes the hurricane of woke transformations that is raging there, the more attractive Russia becomes for hundreds of millions of Europeans and Americans. What is Russia’s most powerful weapon? Is it nuclear? Is it hypersonic (or “hydrosonic,” as per Trump)? Cybermagic, perhaps? No, Russia’s most powerful weapon is its values. And it grows stronger and more dangerous every day, in direct proportion to the intensifying fire of multiculturalism and political correctness that is raging in Europe and in America.

A recent article in The National Interest summarized various American authors who claim that the Kremlin is gradually developing its strategy of soft power and using it to successfully fight the West, splitting it and undermining it from within. What is the cause of their paranoid hysteria? Could it be that they have accidentally discovered who their true enemy is, and that it is… they themselves?

The simplest and most effective way to knock a geopolitical adversary out of the game is to impose on it a system of values ​​that will split its society and lead the most active part of its population to occupy public buildings, to erect barricades and to support a pretender to the throne that is immediately given support and recognition by the country’s enemies. This is how all color revolutions of the late 20th and the early 21st centuries have been done: broadcast some propaganda, recruit some activists, help them to organize, provide some clandestine financial support, and then at some point this human mass, confident in their strength and their righteousness, surges through the police barriers and goes on to create history by overthrowing some faux-democrat petty tyrant, clearing the path for the next faux-democrat petty tyrant to be installed, with the country growing weaker, poorer and more disordered with each iteration. The process starts with the conversion of some significant part of the target population to “universal human values” with secular proselytizing of the “one true democratic faith.”

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A Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Hype or Horror? By Ted Galen Carpenter

Posted on December 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

It’s hard to see what Russia would get from invading Ukraine, other than a little security from NATO. From Ted Galen Carpenter at 19fortyfive.com:

Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Image: Creative Commons

Rumors are flying once again that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine. The latest flurry of concern intensified when Brig. General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s director of defense intelligence, asserted in a November 20, 2021, interview with Military Times that Moscow already had plans in place to launch an invasion by the end of January 2022. He was not talking about a modest border incursion either. Such an attack would likely involve airstrikes, artillery, and armor attacks followed by airborne assaults in the east, amphibious assaults in Odesa and Mariupol, and a smaller incursion through neighboring Belarus, Budanov insisted.

This is hardly the first time that reports have circulated that Russia plans to invade and subjugate its neighbor—and it’s hardly the first time that Ukraine’s government has fanned such fears to gain more support from the United States and NATO. In April 2021, Kyiv cited a sizable buildup of Russian forces (with a wildly inflated European Union estimate of 150,000 troops) near Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014 after the Western powers assisted demonstrators to overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych.  The troop movements led to serious tensions between Russia and NATO, which eased in late April only when the Russian units pulled back from their forward positions.

Periodic reports that Vladimir Putin supposedly harbors massive expansionist plans at Ukraine’s expense have surfaced for years. In the months that followed the Crimea annexation and Russian assistance to the separatist rebellion that erupted in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, there were multiple charges from Ukrainian officials and their sympathizers in the West that the Kremlin planned to follow up with a full-fledged invasion. Those reports proved unfounded, and the latest allegations should be viewed with healthy skepticism.

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