Don't Poke the Bear
(Once again, Russia is a terrible country whose leaders assassinate opposition with Novichok and is filled with human rights abuses)
Russia is winning the war, Ukraine is fighting the information war. Russia owns the airspace. They could annihilate Ukraine at any time since the 24th. People can upload videos from Ukraine (they aren’t time-stamped though they could be from the War in Donbas for the past 8 years), do you think that’d be possible if Russia wanted to conquer Ukraine? Russia is also using older equipment they haven’t brought out their many technological marvels unrivaled by any country (other than the Tie Fighter the Israeli news reported) such as T-14 Armata tanks or Dagger missiles. Many claim Russia lost the media war, but everything that has come out of the Ministry of Defense has been pure truths (or at least could be mistaken for the truth, not a debunked myth), versus exaggerations and stories of hope from Ukraine and that’s a deliberate strategy. They are each evoking a different feel: Ukraine is to get people around the world excited and think there’s hope and want to resupply them and maybe even instigate larger military action, Russia is to showcase its professionalism, and if that doesn’t, work slowly start to show off more and more of its power. All the hopium of Ukraine fighting off Russia is fake. Who thinks a 40-mile convoy runs out of gas or food?
“Oh but look how long it’s taking.” It took ruthless Nazi Germany with blitzkrieg tactics 35 days to take Poland.
Gell-Mann Amnesia once more. My few (do I even have any?) readers have seen that the media is adept at only one thing: lying. Many people have the tendency to believe the media about the Russia-Ukraine situation (in this case I’m focusing on Ukraine is winning propaganda) but not about COVID, BLM, or other contentious issues. These are the same Intellectual Yet Idiots™ who think satire is real news, fact checks things that are unequivocally true, play defense for whatever the narrative regime is, and who told you years ago that Iraq had WMDs.
Putin’s war machine is still well-funded with oil and gas profits that weren’t sanctioned and the sanctions while crippling for the citizenry are still toothless as they haven’t stopped Putin one bit. There is an argument that his keys to power, the Russian Oligarchs, are upset at the sanctions and thus he could be politically weak which does make sense but his military is still unaffected so he can still push on. As long as he brings a win here as he did in Crimea, he will be politically ok.*
*unlike in a decent democracy (which neither Ukraine nor Russia are), authoritarian regimes and shithole countries don’t have a rule of law and don’t need to care about votes, but they do need to be worried about assassination attempts, coup d’etats, etc. (especially when the Clinton Foundation is involved)
The only way to win for the West is diplomacy. Ukraine finished its peace talks and didn’t come to a conclusion. Perhaps its NATO membership was too important. Russia also gets more threatened as other countries want to also join NATO such as recently Kosovo’s informal request or the alleged Western plans to induct Finland and Sweden into NATO. I don’t think that helps the situation. I cannot stress this enough, Ukraine’s NATO membership is the brightest red line for Russia that they believe is an existential threat worse than the Cuban missile crisis and almost every important military strategist since the end of the Cold War has warned about it. (which begs the question, why? It feels like Ukraine is somehow “too big corrupt to fail fall” that it’s worth fighting a world war over it)
But no one negotiates with Hitler. The West has painted Putin as Hitler just as he has painted the Kyiv regime as neo-Nazi sympathizers attacking his people. His concerns are valid but we don’t listen. We have incompetent A-list diversity hires fill up the highest ranks of government to talk to Russia’s polished statesmen. The Lavrov-Truss meeting where Liz Truss proves she never passed geography before the Russian invasion is an embarrassment or when another diversity hire proves Veep was a documentary in her seminal breakdown of the Ukraine-Russia situation. Lavrov was right calling it “a mute talking to a blind man.” How can diplomacy happen with such incompetent people in power?
The war hawks don’t want peace though. They demonize Putin (his authoritarianism against enemies deserves criticism such as polonium poisoning but to compare him to Hitler or to say he’s fighting this war for no reason is baseless), flaunt blatant propaganda (covered at length earlier), spread fake news stories (also covered in a previous substack), and claim Putin is going to use nuclear weapons (and this ridiculous article saying the nuclear war would help with climate) and now claiming that this is America’s war and we should care about it. This conflict will not escalate unless we make it escalate. If we shoot down Russian planes or set up a No-Fly Zone it will escalate. Even if it escalates and nuclear forces are on high alert, I don’t think Putin will use them unless we really escalate the situation as some are advocating for but he will probably use other cutting edge non-MAD inducing technology first such as the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal non-nuclear payload that is 10x more sophisticated than any US equivalent. I would never say Russia is superior to the US militarily, but it’s not a foe worth fighting—especially when they are willing to negotiate a fairly simple deal.
Manufactured consent is an essential tool in the propagandist’s toolbox: scare people with fake or exaggerated stories until it has the political support necessary for you to do whatever you want (in this case, make money for the war hawks with a war that kills off people who probably didn’t vote for you against the enemy who wanted to work together with your political opposition.
Ukraine calls for investigation of Russia using a vacuum bomb with no video evidence. It might have happened, might not have. What did happen is the Ukrainian national guard calling the Chechens orcs and greasing their bullets with pig fat to send the Muslim Chechens straight to hell (reminiscent of the Sepoy Mutiny in India under British rule). That’s not that major a crime, but so little is documented on either side what other war crimes have proof? The videos have shown lots of damage from shelling against buildings, but nothing firing the shells, no firefights between Russians and Ukrainians, etc. The aftermath videos show a long line of destroyed equipment purported to be Russian with no Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) marks to prove which side. There is clearly a war going on as videos and satellite footage shows an immense quantity of Russian troops, but Ukraine’s claims on the number of Russian forces killed or equipment destroyed is highly unlikely. Ukraine’s claim that civilians are doing heroics comparable to the Battle of the Bulge or D-Day is laughable. Supplying untrained civilians with weapons against a somewhat-careful-of-civilians invader is the stupidest idea ever. That makes them war zone combatants in a clearly lopsided fight against a global almost superpower. With zero training. Are they trying to inflate the death count? (It's not like in America, where we own more guns than there are people and even a lot of the little kids know how to handle and shoot one). Even worse is that the Zelensky regime has no trouble causing a humanitarian crisis, deploying howitzers in residential zones (which the Russians will then target), freeing criminals, and giving out weapons to the civilian and extremist populations which then ends up in gangs extorting civilians that will then want to take over the leftover Ukrainian regime a la the Taliban. What would the reaction be if Assad or Gaddafi did this?
There’s a reason there are little to no firefights: Russia is a major (almost super) power trying to minimize civilian losses vs an enemy that isn’t eager to kill themselves. The video evidence goes exactly contrary to Ukraine’s claims of Russia using cluster bombs, vacuum bombs, and other banned weaponry and they are indiscriminately killing. If this was the case, they’d have done a blitzkrieg (though that would require a lot of preparation and logistics). The videos that do exist are reminiscent of early covid videos in China of people just dropping dead in the streets to stoke fear. The worst (video) I’ve seen is this bombing of an Azov Batallion recruitment center that killed 10 (could be armed could be civilians), damaged civilian cars, and injured several more (dubbed the Freedom Square bombing). That bombing was also warned in advance by the Russian MOD which also warned of another precision strike on the technology facility of the SBU in Kyiv. By no means is anyone excusing that heinous act, but it’s not indiscriminate slaughter. It is helpful when bombarded by fake news from the West we take a look at the probably also fake news from Russia and come to less fake news conclusions through rational decision making (but I guess Western governments like Canada don’t want you to think for yourself and ban the opposing view from airing and corporations like Google only allow for one side of info).
Russia is the perfect opponent to start WWIII against. The globalist liberal regimes (liberal doesn’t mean democrat it includes RINOs like Mitt Romney) have always focused on Russia, not China, as the main US adversary. Why? Fewer elites benefit from Russia as opposed to China. China and the US economies are too interlinked and with the Diversity Inclusion Equity initiatives, calling a non-white country evil is anathema. This is why Russia is the ideal enemy for US elites. Attacking them has a limited economic impact on us (us meaning the elites it seems like our gas prices will be spiking), a big impact on them(Russia imports/exports <5% of their products from/to the US but angering the US angers the EU which is their main trading partner), they are filled with bad white people who Trump empathized with*, and they are the clear aggressors in this conflict. Does anyone care why they attacked? No. There would be no valid reason to the Western media (not that I’m defending their attacks). If the Rwandan genocide was happening in Ukraine, Russia would still be the bad guy. The elites want a war, and they will manufacture consent for it. This was their blessing in disguise. One of the first times they didn’t need to do a false flag or make a false pretense to expand the MIC.
Not just Soros, but also other billionaires who it costs nothing to cause a war such as Bill Ackman who probably makes a profit off of this like the 1.4B (out of total 1.9B lifetime net worth) he made from the COVID-19 pandemic.
*Some people may say it has nothing to do with DIE it only has to do with Russia being an old enemy or because of the annexation of Crimea but the favorability of Russia went down before Crimea and other countries do much worse things and our favorability of them doesn’t go down.
The Russiagate hoax made it so gullible Democrats also had a reduced favorability of Russia and it became a polarized issue.
Big tech allows for the crucifixion of a Russian by neo-Nazis in Ukraine but won’t allow for Russians to even create accounts on their platforms.
The amount of propaganda is ridiculous. The days-long conflict has more fake images than every other war in history combined.
The Ukrainian government is being labeled as these heroic victims who were thrust into such an unsuspecting situation when anyone with an eye for geopolitics and half a brain would have seen this coming a mile off. Ukraine is a highly corrupt country, and human trafficking hub thanks to its size, its location on the black sea, and its connection into Europe. There is a lot of shady things going on there, more than meets the eye or is reported by human rights organizations (do you think Epstein’s victims are listed in those lists?).
Ukraine is one of the hotbeds of trafficking, over 50% of slaves are men forced to drug traffic and it has an insanely high prevalence of sex slavery with prostitution sites being incredibly easy to find (I’m not linking this) and an emphasis on child trafficking. Russia is worse (though depends on the survey) in all of these, but we’re not inducting Russia into the EU (fortunately that’s been rejected) or NATO or calling it a mature democracy even though it would be strategic to induct into NATO against a real communist threat (the purpose of NATO).
Ukraine applies to join the EU (a trade union) but what does that even accomplish? It’s just a semantic game to say Russia is attacking the EU (something Americans might know about). As a consequence, “Russian” might become a “cursed” nationality like how after covid there was anti-Asian hate from the usual suspects.
There’s an insane double standard e.g. condemning Russia for arresting protesters (rightfully) but turning a blind eye when Prime Minister blackface does it. Not to mention selective bombing disorder where outrage only happens when bombings happen to the country the media wants you to be outraged about (has anyone heard of the bombings in Somalia this week?)
Only Russia and Russians are punished. Innocent Russians against the war are still getting expelled in European countries such as France and there’s a push to do the same in the US. The same anti-Muslim sentiment against innocent Muslims in the US after 9/11 will now spread to innocent Russians. Russia is clearly not a fan of this, again stoking more tension.
Russian and Belarusian athletes are being banned from representing their country in any and all international competitions, while the Winter Olympics was just held in a concentration camp running China. Russian athletes and pro-gamers are being dropped by organizations purely based on their nationality, despite being neutral or even speaking out against the invasion. People who pour out Russian (actually Latvian) vodka who also wear Chinese-made clothing and drive Russian oil-powered cars to win the Beijing virtue-signaling Olympics powered by slave labor.
Why did Russia invade? (yet another angle)
They already paid the cost of invasion when Western media has been claiming they are going to invade any day now. Putin is now thinking: "If I am going to be conceived of after this of having attempted an invasion, will they not sanction me? And, will I not look weak after 'backing down?'" This isn’t new. The US goaded Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait. This is compounded by the fact that Europe has no hard power anymore and lost any negotiating power by being dependent (especially because it’s winter) on Russian oil due to climate activism. All Russia wanted was for Ukraine to be friendly with Russia maybe not even to the same degree as Belarus is, just to create a Slavic Sphere like the West is the Anglosphere. What would the reaction be if China took over Australia? (not even Taiwan because Taiwan is still Sinosphere). There could be some negotiation there and just not let Ukraine into NATO. Russia also wanted to free the people of Donbas who would vote overwhelmingly in favor of seceding. Soviet agitprop even called Donbas the heart of the USSR.
I don’t really believe Lukashenko here but it could be true
"Incidentally, when the exercise was over, the Russian forces were ready to leave for their permanent bases. Actually, some began to leave," Lukashenko said. "But the West needed an armed conflict that could be blamed on Russia. They did not confine to media fakes or economic measures, but alerted an 8,000-strong group for redeployment to Europe."
I just want peace. Please don’t escalate. Don’t “Go Get Him.”