Lesson 1 was: “There are no ‘security guarantees’ for the peasants, especially if their security interferes with Gazprom’s God-given right to sell Russia’s natural resources at bargain-bin prices to whomever wants them.”

Less than 24 hours after I published this very important special military lesson, Russian state media reported (in Russian and English) that Gazprom had “delivered” record-setting volumes of natural gas to the European Union via NATO-state Turkey in January:

Turkish media was similarly excited about this impressive achievement.

The Kremlin has been nothing but selfless and kind towards NATO, and where’s the gratitude? Russia continues to sell its natural resources to NATO, even as NATO “prepares for a conflict with Russia” (source: Russia’s Foreign Ministry on January 30, 2026).

Four years of faithfully delivering gas to NATO, first through SATANIC NAZI Ukraine, and then through NATO-state Turkey—even as NATO weaponry is used to vaporize Russians—and this is how NATO repays Gazprom! How uncouth.

To summarize:

1. December 2021: Moscow says NATO is preparing to attack Russia and demands security guarantees.

2. February 2022: Vladimir Putin announces the start of the SMO. He promises that Moscow will “respond immediately” to any outside attempts to interfere with the operation, and warns that any state caught meddling in Ukraine will “face consequences … such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

3. NATO floods Ukraine with weapons and money.

4. ….

5. Four years pass. Hundreds of thousands of Slavs are slaughtered and maimed for no reason whatsoever.

6. Moscow says that NATO is preparing to attack Russia and demands security guarantees.

7. Moscow sells record-levels of natural gas to NATO.

This is why Russia’s “snail offensive technique” in Donbass is so ingenious. NATO must be put in its place—it thinks that a measly 10% increase in Russian gas purchases is acceptable? The SMO must continue until NATO promises to increase Russian gas purchases by 15%. Gazprom demands security guarantees!

As for the security of the people of Donbass—allegedly the whole purpose of the SMO—well, they’ll just have to be patient. True, it’s hard to be patient when you have no water, but they’ll manage.

This concludes today’s lesson. I hope you took notes because there will be an exam on February 24!!!

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There are no “security guarantees” for the peasants, especially if their security interferes with Gazprom’s God-given right to sell Russia’s natural resources at bargain-bin prices to whomever wants them.

This is demonstrably true.

The “security” of ordinary Russians and Ukrainians is not even a top-ten priority. Actually, keeping the peasants in a state of perpetual terror is an excellent way to guarantee the security of the people who actually matter (and their property).

It’s important to understand this.

War, even when it is called a “special military operation”, is the most destructive and terrible of all human activities. It uproots life and plants seeds of hatred, bitterness, and sorrow; it breeds decades of despair.

These are the guaranteed results of the SMO for all yachtless Russians and Ukrainians, “one people part of a single whole” (source: Vladimir Putin circa 2021).

The good news is that progress is being made towards fruitful US-Russia economic cooperation:

Of course, the peasants continue to suffer what they must; but they understand the importance of US-Russia economic cooperation, surely?

The peasants should just be grateful that the slaughter will probably have to end, at least temporarily, eventually. And then Moscow and its “foreign partners, including the Americans” (source: Vladimir Putin circa 2025) can strip-mine Donbass together, peacefully, in accordance with the relevant security guarantees.

This concludes today’s lesson. I hope you took notes because there will be an exam on February 24.

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The SMO will soon enter its fifth year. What are Russia’s stated goals for its “special military operation” in Ukraine, and have any of these goals been achieved? Listen to the podcast to find out!

I reference several documents in this audio recording. They can be found here:

Article by Vladimir Putin: “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” (July 12, 2021)

Agreement on measures to ensure the security of The Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (December 17, 2021)

Address by the President of the Russian Federation (February 24, 2022)

The Lavrov interview I mention can be found here:

Have a nice Sunday.

— Riley

Take a quick gander at Kirill Dmitriev’s X.com account, and you might notice a common theme:

Again, keep an eye out for a repeating motif. It’s subtle:

There are plenty more just like these, but let’s stop here.

Are you noticing a pattern?

You are probably thinking to yourself: “Yes. This Kirill Dmitriev fellow sounds just like my unhinged uncle who continues to insist that Trump arrested Hillary Clinton and sent her to Gitmo, where she was executed by firing squad after being convicted of high treason during a top secret military tribunal.”

But Kirill Dmitriev is not your uncle (or if he is, my condolences). Kirill is Vladimir Putin’s “special representative of the Russian president for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries”.

He also happens to be a Stanford and Harvard Business School grad, an alum of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Coincidence or fate?

Concerningly, Kirill has also assumed a prominent role in ongoing negotiations between Moscow and Washington on the Slav-culling in Ukraine.

But is it normal for a diplomat to refer to the leader of a hostile foreign power directly and indirectly fueling a proxy war that continues to systematically vaporize and maim your own people, “daddy”?

I understand that the “daddy” meme comes from Mark Rutte’s strange NATO summit outburst, but Kirill is not using this moniker to merely portray European leaders as Washington’s lapdogs. He apparently believes it’s good diplomacy—a sign of respect—to call the president of a nation that is directly and indirectly killing Russians every day, “daddy”.

He even shares AI-generated QAnon erotica, just like your insane uncle does.

But again, Kirill is not your uncle. He is Putin’s “special envoy”. Do you understand why that’s worrying?

Somehow we live in a world where this craven bootlicker and human embarrassment is one of Moscow’s most-senior negotiators on Ukraine.

Think about what this means.

Yes, it means that Moscow is demanding that Washington extract rare earth metals from Donbass.

Please don’t misunderstand me: The sooner the pointless Slav-culling in Ukraine ends, the better. I’m just wondering why the Kremlin’s lead negotiator, a Davos-groomed Goldman Sachs alum, apparently can’t stop calling Trump “daddy”.

…As I was typing this-here blog post, he did it again!

(Slightly off-topic: Wasn’t Venezuela supposed to be defended by 10,000 Russian S-900 Novichok missile systems and ten battalions of BRICS’ most elite special forces? I’m pretty sure this is what Pepe Escobar, and many other Very Serious and Important and Completely Independent Journalists, were “reporting” not so long ago.)

Meanwhile, RT’s social media team has been ordered to share every unfortunate word that dribbles out of Dmitriev’s mouth-hole:

Why does the Kremlin think this is a good idea? It’s honestly shocking that Moscow’s upper management thinks this is wise, or accomplishes anything.

Guys, listen (I know some of you read the blog): You’re not driving a 5D wedge between Washington and Brussels by calling Trump “daddy”.

Please stop doing that. Please. I am asking nicely.

Thank you.

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It was a morning much like any other. I jumped out of bed, rushed to my computer, and loaded up YouTube. My body began to tingle with anticipation and excitement.

How many victories had occurred while I was sleeping? Two? Maybe five?

The mainstream media are engaged in a conspiracy of silence to prevent me from knowing all the different ways in which I am constantly winning. Thankfully, there are a few good men—men who sell silver bars on the internet—who are brave enough to see through the pessimism of observable reality and declare victory, always, no matter what:

Hi everyone! Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, October 13, 2025. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on the Palestinian victory. Of course, you wouldn’t know that if you listened to President Trump or Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier today.

Scott Ritter was going to discuss…“the Palestinian victory”? This was too much, even for a seasoned victor such as myself.

I began to scream loudly:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP THE LIVESTREAM.

PULL THE PLUG, JUDGE.

I WILL BUY YOUR SILVER BARS IF YOU END THE BROADCAST, ANDREW.

ABORT, I BEG YOU!

But it was too late. Air began to pass through Ritter’s larynx; his vocal folds started to vibrate. Using his tongue, lips, and teeth, Ritter shaped sounds into words, words into sentences, sentences into awe-inspiring mental gymnastics:

I think what everybody’s forgetting is that the basic terms of this deal are the same terms that Hamas has been laying out since October 7th. And now these terms are being met.

And this is a Hamas victory.

The media can spin it, Trump can spin it, Netanyahu can spin it any way they want. But let’s never forget that Benjamin Netanyahu is a man who said there will never be a Palestinian state and he is the head of a government that said there won’t be a Gaza. This is a president who talked about depopulating Gaza. And none of that’s happening. What’s happening is there was a prisoner swap, something that Hamas demanded. [There was] Israeli withdrawal, something Hamas demanded, and a pathway towards a Palestinian state, something Hamas demanded.

So, you know, Hamas has achieved a strategic victory.

I know I am going to anger and alienate many of my readers when I say this, but: I’m not sure I fully agree with Scott Ritter here.

True, Ritter is a former Marine and a respected expert, while I am a blogger who refuses to get a real job. But please give me a chance to explain my thinking, however obstinate and wrong-headed I may be.

I envision a three-stage approach to deciphering Ritter’s reality-melting sophistry.

• Stage One: Examine the proposition that Hamas has achieved “strategic victory” after Israel exterminated 60,000+ Palestinians, took direct control over half of Gaza, assassinated the senior leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, and was able to attack Iran thanks to the sudden, coincidental downfall of Assad in Syria. (To be fair, Israel was subsequently decimated by a barrage of stern finger-wagging from the international community.)

• Stage Two: Examine how this lunatic proposition compliments Ritter’s voluminous repertoire of unhinged internet commentary.

• Stage Three: Uninstall the internet, smash all screens with a hammer, disappear into the mountains, become a Yeti, then terrorize hikers and picnickers until a Chinese-made drone drops a grenade on me while I’m sleeping in my Yeti-cave.

Let’s begin with Stage One, which admittedly is totally unnecessary, since everyone except Scott Ritter and The Judge understands perfectly well that speaking of a “Palestinian victory” under the current circumstances is an act of ultra-violence against basic human decency.

Nonetheless.

Ritter seems to think Hamas can claim victory because:

1. There was a prisoner swap.

2. The IDF “withdrew” from Gaza.

3. Trump’s plan does not rule out the possibility of Palestinian statehood.

Let’s compare these three strategic successes with Ritter’s earlier description of Hamas’ objectives, which he included in an article first published on November 20, 2023:

The Marine Corps defines a raid as “an operation, usually small scale, involving a swift penetration of hostile territory to secure information, confuse the enemy, or to destroy his installations. It ends with a planned withdrawal upon completion of the assigned mission.”

This is precisely what Hamas did on October 7.

What were the objectives of this raid? According to Hamas, the purpose behind the October 7 raid were threefold.

First, to reassert the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland not defined by the Abraham Accords.

Second, to release the more than 10,000 Palestinians held prisoner by Israel, most without having been charged with a crime, and none with any notion of due process.

Third, to return the sanctity of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest place, which had been desecrated repeatedly by Israeli security forces over the past years.

Israel has reportedly released 2,000 prisoners in exchange for the remaining hostages Hamas captured two years ago.

But Hamas initially sought the release of 10,000 prisoners—even Ritter acknowledges this fact. In other words, Hamas has achieved 1/5 of one of its stated objectives.

What about the other objectives, like protecting the sanctity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque?

Funny you should ask. The Jews are digging tunnels again—this time under Al-Aqsa Mosque as part of ongoing “excavation” work. Some are now saying this holy site is at risk of partial collapse. No, I’m not pulling your leg.

Here is a news report from October 23, 2025:

Even after Trump brought peace to the Middle East and paved a clear path to Palestinian statehood, the usual shenanigans continue:

What about the IDF’s “withdrawal” from Gaza and the alleged roadmap to Palestinian statehood under Trump’s 20-point plan? Surely Hamas deserves credit for these accomplishments?

Like all things, “withdrawal” is a matter of perspective.

The IDF ended its boots-on-the-ground occupation of Gaza in 2005, choosing instead to terrorize Palestinians with periodic airstrikes, raids, incursions, and a murderous economic blockade. Gaza was an open-air prison where the guards mostly remained in their towers, only venturing into the prison yard for a quick massacre every few years. All of this changed after October 7, 2023, when the IDF decided to keep exterminating Palestinians while also occupying large swathes of Gaza at the same time.

Before the ceasefire, the IDF controlled 70-75% of Gaza. Following its “withdrawal”, the IDF occupies more than half of the Gaza Strip. Before the start of the October 2023 “war”, the IDF maintained a sustained, on-the-ground military presence in approximately 0% of Gaza. This is the “withdrawal” that Ritter is referring to when explaining Hamas’ “strategic victory”.

Under Trump’s 20-point plan, after 15 conditions that will never be met are achieved, the IDF promises to consider the possibility of gradually relinquishing its territorial gains in Gaza, theoretically paving the way to Palestinian statehood, somehow.

You have to be very special to believe any of that will come close to ever happening.

But seriously: trust the plan. As Ritter explained, Hamas has scored a strategic victory, and statehood is near. The only obstacle to a free Palestine is the fact that half of Gaza is now under IDF occupation. But the Israelis are just being stubborn. Because they can’t admit defeat, the IDF are now constructing a network of barricades bisecting the Gaza Strip. This is the first step towards a unified, sovereign Palestinian State.

Why are we even relying on Ritter to tell us what Hamas wanted to achieve from its October 7 raid? Let’s let Hamas speak for itself. In February 2024, Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, explained the conditions that needed to be met before hostages could be released:

The return of [Israeli] occupation prisoners has three prices. The first is the relief of our people and their return to a normal life. The second is ending the aggression, and the third is a real prisoner swap deal that frees our 10,000 prisoners in Israeli jails.

According to my calculations, as of October 24, 2025, Hamas has achieved 0.2 out of 3 objectives.

That’s better than 0 out of 3, but then again, you have to remember the price of this “strategic victory”: A two-year campaign of extermination resulting in tens of thousands of murdered, maimed, and displaced Palestinians. Not to mention the fact that Israel has decapitated Hamas and Hezbollah.

And the slaughter and terror continues to the present day, even after the “ceasefire”.

I think you understand what I’m trying to say. Very likely you understood without me having to say anything. Such was the obvious nature of Stage One. Let’s move on to Stage Two, then.

How does Hamas’ “strategic victory” fit into Ritter’s prodigious body of journalism about October 7 and the ensuing “war” (two-year slaughter)? I was interested in learning if Ritter had spontaneously pulled this “Victory!” out of a hat, or if there was evidence he suffered from chronic hallucinations about Israel’s overwhelmingly successful ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza.

My findings confirmed my suspicions.

“All objectives are being accomplished as we speak … which makes the October 7 assault on Israel by Hamas the most successful military raid of this century,” Ritter wrote on November 20, 2023. (He republished the same article on October 7, 2025, proudly proclaiming that his analysis had “stood the test of time”. What?)

Indeed, over the past two years, Ritter has repeatedly reassured his readers that Israel’s industrial-scale butchery in Gaza is actually a huge “victory” for the Axis of Resistance.

“Israel is collapsing on its own volition,” Ritter observed on November 15, 2024.

Ritter is such an incredible analyst that he knew Hamas had won the war months before Trump’s fake ceasefire deal even existed. For example, a prophetic Telegram post from January 2025 proclaimed:

Three months later, Ritter declared (in CAPS LOCK): “HAMAS WON, ISRAEL LOST”.

Ritter obviously understood that Israel was being defeated on all fronts, and not just in Gaza. He provided much-needed clarity when Al Qaeda attacked Aleppo at the end of November 2024, causing unwarranted panic to spread among internet observers:

Erdogan has once again betrayed Russia.

And his support for Palestine has [been] exposed as fraudulent in every way.

Russia and Iran will stabilize Syria.

This will take months.

Syria and its allies will destroy the Islamist stronghold in Idlib.

This will take years.

The Iran-Hezbollah supply line will be restored/maintained.

Israel will be defeated.

And the US will withdraw from Syria, probably in mid-2025.

And Turkey will continue to betray everyone it does business with, because Erdogan stands only for Turkey.

Well…we all know how that ended.

But here’s where things become even more strange.

Scott Ritter knows that Hamas did not achieve a “strategic victory”. He knows that Israel exterminated 60,000+ Palestinians with total impunity. And he is very aware that over the past two years, the “Resistance” has suffered a series of very serious—one might even say potentially fatal—setbacks.

We know he knows all this because he has said so publicly. In May 2025, Ritter revealed the “inconvenient truth” about what was happening in Gaza:

Hamas was gambling on the fact that Israel’s actions would alienate it from the rest of the world, and trigger a backlash in the US and Europe that would isolate Israel and ultimately lead to its demise.

Hamas knew the people of Gaza would be sacrificed in this endeavor.

The Hamas gambit almost worked.

For 15 months Israel’s genocidal actions turned much of the world against it.

Hamas was aided in its actions by the axis of resistance-Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and Yemen.

But the axis of resistance collapsed. […]

Those of us who supported the Hamas actions on October 7, who call out for a free and independent Palestine, must take our fair share of responsibility for the tragedy unfolding in Gaza today.

We helped facilitate it as well.

That’s quite an admission. But why has Ritter since reverted to boasting about Hamas’ “victory”?

If Ritter understands that the events of the last two years have only led to vast destruction and tragedy, why did he republish an article earlier this month that hailed Hamas’ October 7 attack as “the most successful military raid of the century”?

What is going on here? It’s totally baffling.

Did Hamas achieve a “strategic victory” in Gaza, or did Hamas achieve nothing apart from the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the liquidation of the leadership of the Resistance? Ritter claims both, so it’s very confusing.

How can Ritter look into the camera and say with a straight face, “This is a Hamas victory,” after publicly acknowledging that the “war” in Gaza has been a one-sided slaughter that has accomplished nothing for the Palestinian people?

I don’t even know what would motivate someone to do something so incredibly greasy.

Honestly, the best case scenario here is that Ritter is afraid to “be real” with his viewers, who have come to expect Non-Stop 24/7 Victory, and will tolerate nothing less.

If Ritter doesn’t tell his audience they are Winning, they’ll simply give their delicious fiat currency and bars of silver to someone who will tell them that.

This is why Scott Ritter is a successful thought leader. He understands the importance of carefully shaping his thoughts so they can successfully reach the widest possible audience.

A bit off topic, but I was rereading Iain Davis’ excellent series on the inconvenient truths surrounding the October 7 attack (Part I, Part II, Part III).

I remember thinking to myself: “This is all very interesting, but Iain will have to rethink a few things if he expects RIA Novosti to publish his thoughts, which is the greatest honor for an independent journalist.”

Stage Three:

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So great is the Kremlin’s limitless kindness and alms-giving that its virtuous deeds, which almost never actually benefit the Russian people, are sometimes misinterpreted as state-sponsored treachery.

Indeed, even among Russia’s conservative Christians, there is a growing feeling that the Kremlin’s no-strings-attached altruism should in some small way provide discernible advantages to ordinary Russians, and not just Tajik oligarchs. (However, this is debatable.)

Last week, Tsargrad, a popular conservative-patriotic-Christian outlet in Russia that serves as a semi-official platform for adherents of the “Good Tsar, Bad Boyars” worldview, published a remarkable analysis of the Kremlin’s unparalleled generosity amid ongoing fuel shortages in the country.

Before I share with you an English translation of this article, I would like to provide some brief background on Russia’s fuel crisis.

Simply put, Russia currently lacks the refining capabilities to meet domestic fuel needs in some parts of the country. This unexpected turn of events has been blamed in large part on Ukraine’s aerial attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure.

An October 18 report from Novosibirsk media does a good job of conveying at the local level what is happening in multiple regions across Russia:

The situation with gasoline in Russia has ceased to be an ordinary problem of individual gas stations and turned into a systemic one … The Novosibirsk region has also felt the consequences of the Russia-wide imbalance.

A correspondent of NGS.RU visited several gas stations in different parts of the city to personally verify the scale of the deficit. At the Teboil gas station, as well as at the Otti gas station, there was neither AI-95 nor AI-92 gasoline available. Readers on social media confirmed a worrying trend, reporting a lack of fuel at other gas stations in the city.

The situation has reached such intensity that one of the largest local chains—the Prime gas station, which has 27 stations—was forced to officially announce the suspension of sales of AI-92 for private car owners, leaving fuel only for the city’s life support enterprises.

Crimea has been hit the hardest. A large number of gas stations have been forced to suspend operations, and the republic introduced a 20-liter limit on fuel purchases starting in October. The limit was increased to 30 liters on Monday.

Even in regions where gasoline still flows like the Don, fuel prices have increased sharply.

The federal government has responded to this crisis by banning gasoline exports through the end of the year. But this temporary prohibition does not include restrictions on the flow of heavily discounted crude and natural gas to Moscow’s esteemed regional partners.

As a result, Russians now exist in an upside-down world where they are paying exorbitant prices for Russian gasoline (assuming it’s available), while Moscow’s neighbors—almost all of them seeking closer ties with the West and NATO—reap the benefits of generously subsidized Russian energy.

Let us now turn our attention to Tsargrad’s report on this curious state of affairs.

Full tanks of independence: Gasoline from Russian gas stations is flowing to neighboring countries. Moscow will pay for everything

By Ivan Prokhorov

While gasoline and diesel prices are rising in Russia’s regions, and there are restrictions at gas stations, duty-free tankers of Russian fuel continue to flow to “friends” in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Moscow is feeding other countries’ economies while its own economy is already in a state of austerity. Benefits, loans, and debt forgiveness are all provided to countries that are increasingly aligning with regimes that are hostile to Moscow. Russia is supporting its neighbors to its own detriment—but is it worth the cost?

Russia as a fuel sponsor to post-Soviet regimes

After the collapse of the USSR, Moscow assumed the unofficial role of “generous big brother”, guaranteeing the energy stability of the former Soviet republics. Initially this was justified by a shared past, and then by economic interests and obligations to allies. However, Russia has been using its own resources to support the political regimes of its neighbors for decades, through the provision of oil and fuel at zero tariffs, debt forgiveness, and artificially low prices.

Kyrgyzstan receives up to 1.2 million tons of petroleum products from Russia every year without export duties. This is enshrined in an intergovernmental agreement signed in 2016. On this basis, Kyrgyzstan stabilizes its fuel and lubricant market, maintains domestic prices, and avoids fuel crises of its own. In return, Russia loses export revenue, which it compensates for with budget “damper” subsidies.

Tajikistan has also had a preferential import regime for Russian fuel since 2013, with no export duties. These supplies have been extended until 2025, effectively subsidizing the regime of Emomali Rahmon, whose domestic market relies heavily on Russian supplies. Moscow not only turns a blind eye to re-exports but also regularly forgives debts, such as the cancellation of approximately $300 million in debt owed by the Sangtuda Hydroelectric Power Plant in exchange for Russian companies’ involvement in its management.

Armenia was given access to discounted Russian gas and petroleum in exchange for joining the Eurasian Economic Union [in 2015]. In fact, this is an energy subsidy that supports the republic’s budget and industry, but it does not guarantee strategic loyalty. Yerevan continues to shift its policy towards the West, taking advantage of Russian fuel.

While Moscow is busy, Armenia is quietly drifting towards the West.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan previously had significant debts to Russia, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, which were completely written off in the 2010s. In return, Russia received only symbolic promises of “friendship forever” and the participation of these countries in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Similar write-offs have occurred in other cases, with Moscow forgiving tens of billions of dollars in debts to countries in the CIS and Africa, thereby financing their budgets instead of its own.

Against this backdrop, Russia continues to experience a shortage of fuel on the domestic market. At the same time, “friends” from the post-Soviet space are not only well-supplied, but often have lower gasoline prices than Russia due to their tax laws. Kazakhstan sells AI-92 for around $0.45 per liter, while Belarus sells it for $0.76, compared to Russia’s $0.78. Even in Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, where prices are higher, there is no shortage due to the import of fuel from Russia.

These examples show that Russia is actually acting as a donor of energy stability for its neighbors. It provides them with fuel, benefits, and loans, ensuring their social stability and budgetary balance. In return, there are no investments, no control, and no guaranteed support on the international stage. These policies only succeed in ensuring these regimes that they can rely on Russian resources.

Moscow remains the main supplier of vital energy for the post-Soviet states, but it is receiving less and less political or economic return from role.

What does Russia get in return, what is the pay-off?

At first glance, Russia maintains its influence in the post-Soviet space through preferential oil and gas supplies. However, if we examine the economic and political outcomes of this system, it becomes clear that the cost of this “friendship” is disproportionate to its benefits.

From an economic point of view, the scheme of supporting neighbors results in direct losses. After export duties on oil and petroleum products were abolished in 2019, the Russian budget lost a stable and clear source of income. Duty-free supplies to allies mean that Russia is effectively supplying them with fuel at domestic prices, and exporters have no incentive to keep their products on the domestic market. The reduction of payments to oil companies and the decline in export revenues create a hole that is being plugged with domestic taxes.

The political return on these sacrifices is also questionable. The recipients of Russian benefits do not demonstrate stable loyalty. Armenia, which receives heavily discounted gas, is simultaneously turning towards the West and limiting its cooperation within the CSTO. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan vote neutrally in the UN, avoiding open support for Moscow. Kazakhstan, a formal ally, is balancing between Russia, China, and Turkey. The subsidies do not translate into political capital, as supposed allies receive resources that aren’t tied to any obligations.

Even the economic dependence of its neighbors does not translate into loyalty towards Moscow. Russia supplies them with oil, but local oligarchs control the refining, trade, and distribution. In Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, subsidies are lost in intermediary schemes and do not reach the consumer. In fact, Moscow subsidizes the social stability of foreign countries, while the ruling elite benefits from political influence.

Russia supplies fuel to countries that have Turkish and Chinese investments, and even Western military programs. This creates a paradox: Russian fuel and loans are fueling the stability of regimes that are turning towards other centers of power.

The bottom line is clear: Russia pays to be feared, but it is not listened to. Allies take advantage of its generosity while maintaining political autonomy and forming parallel alliances. Duty-free imports, debt forgiveness, and energy incentives only reinforce Russia’s role as a regional sponsor, spending resources to mimic influence.

We feed the CIS, but we have nothing in our own pockets

For years, Russia has built its relations with its post-Soviet neighbors by keeping the flock at the trough with generous handouts. But the days of cheap fuel and bought friendship are over. No matter how much you feed a wolf, it still looks to the forest, and former “brothers” are naturally drawn to those who offer not discounts but a comprehensive strategy.

The problem is not even Moscow’s generosity—if there was a higher goal, it would make sense. However, let’s face it: Russia has yet to articulate its mission, and it vacillates between the West and the East, trying to be friends with everyone at once—with the same result as trying to sit on two chairs.

The internal emptiness of Russian politics makes its generosity fruitless. Moscow subsidizes its neighbors without explaining why. It balances between the West and the East, between liberal rhetoric and state conservatism, without deciding where its home is or why it should build an alliance around it. As a result, Russia spends billions without creating an ideological field, which means no one is gravitating towards it.

So what?

Until there is a clear mission—cultural, civilizational, or political—all the benefits that Russia provides to its allies at the expense of its own people will remain a waste of money. Alliances without ideas are only based on benefit, and those seeking only benefit are always looking for alternatives. Russia should not buy loyalty; it should make people want to be with it. This will only be possible when Russia has a clear direction of its own.

The main lesson is simple: energy without a purpose becomes a drain. Russia can and should support its neighbors, but on new principles of partnership, calculation, and a common mission. Otherwise, all the duty-free supplies and forgiven debts will remain nothing more than payment for oblivion.

Published October 14, 2025

Closing thoughts from Edward: Again, the above article was published by a media outlet with an editorial line geared towards Russia’s conservative Christians. Unsurprisingly, it proceeds from the assumption that Moscow is a victim of its own generosity. Even the author’s more direct criticisms of the Kremlin—that it has failed to “articulate a mission” for Russia, leading to rudderless policy-making—rules out the possibility that the Russian government has articulated a mission, and that its seemingly directionless policy decisions, which often treat the interests of the Russian people as a secondary consideration, reflect this mission.

This is another example of the limitations of heuristic-based thinking. Common sense would dictate that the Russian government works to advance the interests of the Russian people. Ergo, if these interests are being neglected, it’s likely for completely innocent reasons: Cynical, self-serving neighbors are taking advantage of the Kremlin’s boundless generosity, while its search for a clear mission is burdened by its own naivety and desire to help others.

To presume otherwise would defy common sense and lead to unpleasant thoughts.

So it’s not surprising that the author of this Tsargrad article uses cognitive shortcuts to explain what might motivate Moscow to provide subsidized energy to countries that aggressively pursue anti-Russia policies. The article works from the common sense assumption that Moscow is using its vast energy resources to seek influence and secure allies in the region, but has failed to achieve the intended results.

This could be because the author believes in his heart that the Kremlin means well but has lost its way. It could also be because departing from the state-approved Overton Window (“The Russian government is very generous, but perhaps it’s too generous?”) could land you in hot water with the authorities. It’s known to happen, now and then.

Even if he bases his reasoning on the least painful possibility, it would be wrong to accuse the author of hopelessly wishful thinking. The article does not hide the fact that subsidies supplied by Russia “are lost in intermediary schemes” of “local oligarchs”. While energy supplies maintain “social stability in foreign countries”, they primarily benefit their ruling elite, who are actively pursuing closer ties to the West. This is confusing. The author even admits that “Moscow subsidizes its neighbors without explaining why”.

We cannot rule out the possibility that the Russian people have been double-crossed by Bad Boyars. Then again, the Tsar has also advocated for profit-driven pragmatism when seeking mutually beneficial cooperation with foreign states that are killing Russians on Russian soil.

We mustn’t be too quick to judge. It’s not easy being the world’s only moral superpower.

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• “The Participants [the RF and NATO members] undertake not to create conditions or situations that might represent or be regarded as a threat to the national security of the other Participants.”

• “The Participants exclude the deployment of medium- and shorter-range ground-based missiles in areas from which they are capable of hitting targets on the territory of other Participants.”

• “The Participants that are member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shall make commitments that exclude further NATO expansion, including the accession of Ukraine, as well as other states.”

• “The Participants that are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization undertake to not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine, as well as other states of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia.”

Four days later, at a meeting with the Defense Ministry, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Moscow was prepared to take action to protect its key security interests and prevent US missile systems, which had been inching closer and closer to Russia’s borders, from being deployed to Ukraine:

If this infrastructure moves further, if US and NATO missiles appear in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be reduced to 7-10 minutes, and for hypersonic weapons no more than five. For us, this represents a most serious challenge to our security.

[…]

We have issued a proposal that would rule out further NATO expansion in an easterly direction, as well as the deployment of offensive weaponry in countries adjacent to us … We need long-term, legally binding guarantees.

[…]

In the case of the continuation of the clearly aggressive line of our Western colleagues, we will take adequate retaliatory military-technical measures, responding to unfriendly steps.

As promised, Russia took military-technical measures after NATO rejected the treaty.

In his February 24, 2022 address announcing the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, Putin explained that “[NATO’s] military presence in territories bordering on Russia, if we permit it to go ahead, will continue for decades to come, or maybe forever, creating an ever-mounting and totally unacceptable threat for Russia.” Military intervention was necessary in order to deter NATO from further eastward expansion, which would represent an existential threat to Moscow:

We cannot stay idle and passively observe these developments. This would be an absolutely irresponsible thing to do for us.

[…]

I reiterate: We are acting to defend ourselves from the threats created for us and from a worse peril than what is happening now.

Putin ended his address by promising that Russia would “respond immediately” to any outside attempts to interfere with the SMO. Any state or foreign actor caught trying to hinder Moscow from protecting its legitimate security interests in Ukraine would “face consequences … such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

In the nearly four years that have passed since Putin made these remarks, NATO has added two new members and turned Ukraine into a base of operations for daily attacks on Russian territory. The weapons used to carry out these attacks have been steadily increasing in range and lethality. Last month, Kiev received authorization from Washington to use US long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia.

Commenting on these developments at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on Thursday, Putin said he was tempted to give Finland a very rude hand gesture for joining NATO, but did not want to offend the women in the audience.

He was similarly displeased about Kiev receiving approval from Washington to use US missiles, manned by US specialists, to attack Russia from Ukrainian territory. Such attacks would be perceived by Moscow as “a new stage of escalation” that would harm US-Russia relations.

“Would [US military specialists using long-range missiles deployed to Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia] pose damage to our relations, where we see light at the end of the tunnel? Of course,” Putin said.

Who could have imagined that Putin would be making such statements more than three and a half years after announcing the start of the SMO, promising historic consequences for anyone who intervened on the side of Ukraine? As it turns out, Russia’s prestigious Valdai Club—the same international forum that Putin spoke at yesterday—predicted this exact scenario.

In an article published in November 2021, three months before the launch of the SMO, Ivan Timofeev, program director for the Valdai Club, explored the probable outcomes of Russian military intervention in Ukraine.

Timofeev imagined a scenario in which Russian forces would strike Ukraine in several directions at once. With the help of uncontested air superiority, the Russian military would either encircle Ukrainian troops in the East, or force them to withdraw to Western Ukraine. Kiev would be declared the capital of a Russia-backed Ukraine, which would include the fully liberated Donbass:

The new state would be recognized by Russia … solving several historical problems at once. An immediate threat to the southwestern borders would be removed. Full control over the Sea of Azov and the land corridor to the Republic of Crimea would be ensured. Two Ukrainian states would appear on the map, one of which is “friendly and fraternal”.

A variation of this scenario involved taking full control of Ukraine, although Timofeev believed this would lead to a prolonged insurgency by Ukrainian nationalists.

Ultimately, Valdai’s program director concluded that military intervention in Ukraine would not resolve Moscow’s core security issues. Instead, a military operation aimed at deterring further NATO aggression would likely exacerbate preexisting problems:

Such a military conflict is unlikely to be ended by any clear agreement. Victory over the Ukrainian military will not lead to a quick peace. The war could develop into a long and sluggish confrontation, especially if part of the territory (for example, Western Ukraine) remains under the control of the Ukrainian military.

[T]he conflict will inevitably lead to a sharp change in the approach to providing Ukraine with modern models of weapons and military equipment. In the United States and in the West as a whole, the new situation will be considered an emergency, and all possible means will be used to equip the Ukrainian military. In this case, all possible conventional weapons will be supplied. Large-scale military aid of the West will drag out the conflict. […]

In other words, the costs of a possible war significantly outweigh the benefits … [A war] would not solve key security problems, while creating many new ones.

Unfortunately, Timofeev’s pessimistic assessment was far too optimistic.

Russia is not battling an insurgency in Lvov. After nearly four years of war, the Russian military is fighting for control of Pokrovsk, a town located in Donetsk Oblast. Assuming Pokrovsk is eventually taken, the Russian military will then have to turn its attention to Ukraine’s major strongholds in Donbass: Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka. Then it will be necessary to capture Zaporozhye and Kherson, capitals of Russian regions currently occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Then there is Kharkov. Then ….

In other words, there’s considerable work to be done if Moscow hopes to achieve, at the bare minimum, the worst case scenario in Ukraine as outlined by the Valdai Club.

NOTE FROM EDWARD: I am profoundly sorry for my prolonged and unexplained blog-silence. Unfortunately, I have some not-so-great news that I will share with you in the coming days. In the meantime, I am eternally grateful to those who continue to support this blog with their hard-earned fiat currency, despite my complete and total failure to blog. Honestly, you are among the most patient and forgiving of all internet patrons. Thank you again and expect more very soon. — Riley

Sergei Shoigu’s removal from the Defense Ministry, and his new appointment as Secretary of the Security Council, has put the Very Serious & Independent Alternative Freedom Media in a bit of an awkward spot. Let’s call it “5D Zugzwang.”

You see, Shoigu’s resignation from the Defense Ministry has certain implications. And these implications must be ignored and/or denied at all costs. We must never speak of these implications or even allude to their existence. If we did these terrible things, Satan would win.

Ergo, Shoigu was not relieved of his duties at the Defense Ministry.

I mean, he was; technically. But he was also promoted.

Yes.

That is what some people are saying. Even though observable reality says the exact opposite of this.

I will demonstrate.

Shoigu’s promotion: Explained

Before Shoigu was “promoted”, he was Minister of Defense and a Permanent Member of the Security Council.

(We’ll return to the Security Council and its functions in a moment.)

According to the MoD’s website, Shoigu had no less than 46 distinct powers and responsibilities as minister of defense:

[… we’re going to skip over 10 Powers because I think you get the point …]

But here’s the Too Many Powers; Didn’t Read summary of Shoigu’s job as defense minister:

• He was responsible for one of the world’s largest and most powerful militaries

• He was entrusted with 5 trillion rubles ($54.8 billion)

• The giant military he was tasked with supervising was fighting the largest land war in Europe since WWII

• If you subscribe to the notion that Russia is embroiled in an existential war for its survival against the Collective West, then Shoigu arguably held the most consequential post in the Russian government.

Now let’s examine Shoigu’s “promotion” after he left the Defense Ministry:

• Secretary (not chairman; that’s Putin) of a council that he was already a member of.

• “curator” of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC), which oversees military cooperation with foreign states.

But in order to fully appreciate this impressive “promotion”, we need to understand what the Security Council is.

What is the Security Council of the Russian Federation?

Here’s the official description of the Security Council, compliments of the Kremlin’s website:

The Security Council of the Russian Federation prepares decisions of the President on issues of ensuring the protection of the vital interests of the individual, society and the state from internal and external threats, and the implementation of a unified state policy to ensure security. The Security Council provides the conditions for the President to exercise his constitutional powers to protect human and civil rights and freedoms, protect the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity. […]

The Security Council develops important conceptual documents in the field of national security.

Translated from bureaucratic gobbledygook, the Security Council is the president’s advisory board, with a budget of $0.00, that meets periodically to discuss issues of national importance. Sometimes this esteemed body even publishes policy papers.

If you think I’m being disingenuous or unfairly facetious, here is how pro-Putin, Conservative Orthodox Katyusha.org described the Security Council in an article expressing cautious optimism after Shoigu was “removed” (not promoted?!):

Shoigu was finally removed. The Security Council is an advisory body, it does not have its own budget, and the apparatus is very small, so Shoigu and his clan are unlikely to be able to do anything there, especially in the context of active investigative actions in the case of [Shoigu’s lieutenant] Timur Ivanov.

Here’s how patriotic/socialist Nakanune.ru described Shoigu’s new post:

Shoigu will now be appointed Secretary of the Security Council instead of Nikolai Patrushev—what is this? Promotion, demotion or honorable retirement? This can hardly be called a promotion, since Sergei Shoigu was pushed away from colossal resources.

Political scientist Pavel Salin told the outlet:

The Security Council is still a “sleeping” structure; if a person has some status and clientele, then the structure flourishes. Shoigu does not have such a clientele without resources, and we see that the first blow was dealt to his command and, most likely, it won’t be the last [blow]. It may well be that the new minister will sort things out, and the heads of the deputies from Shoigu’s team will roll.

That is, Shoigu [will be secretary of the Security Council] without a team and without resources, so for him this is definitely not a promotion, but rather even a significant demotion.

Finally, here’s a few words from the pro-military hardliners at Military Review, Russia’s most popular military news portal:

[We have just witnessed] the arrest of a Deputy Minister of Defense [Timur Ivanov] and the resignation of the Minister [Sergei Shoigu], who was transferred to the frankly puppet position of Secretary of the Security Council.

Actually, this body with vague powers (the Security Council of the Russian Federation is a constitutional state and advisory body under the President of the Russian Federation, which prepares presidential decisions on issues of ensuring the protection of the vital interests of the individual, society and the state from internal and external threats, and the implementation of a unified state policy for ensuring national security) has long become a kind of backwater for “insiders”, such as one former president and prime minister, who are entrusted with nothing.

Yeah, but … Simplicius told me …

Actually, I want to zoom in on Military Review’s observation that the Security Council is basically a nursing home for “insiders” who have outlived their usefulness.

Dmitry Medvedev is the obvious example not-so-subtly provided by Military Review.

Most people in Russia who aren’t on the Kremlin’s payroll understand that Medvedev’s real job is “getting drunk and writing strange things on Twitter.”

He’s basically a blogger. This is not a prestigious profession.

Please just trust me on this one.

But I’ll give you another example to demonstrate the Very Big Prestige of the Security Council.

There is a gentleman by the name of Yuri Kokov who, since 2018, has served as Deputy Secretary of the Security Council. Before receiving this prestigious post, he was governor of Kabardino-Balkaria.

He was “promoted” to the Security Council after he asked Putin if he could have a job in Moscow. This information can be found on Kokov’s TASS bio:

“Hey bro can I work in Moscow?”

“Oh yeah no problem.” [Putin gets out pen and paper] “Is the Security Council okay?”

There are currently seven Deputy Secretaries of the Security Council. 3+4. SEVEN!

SEVEN.

What kind of security-preserving advising has Kokov engaged in since receiving this position of Extreme Prestige?

From October 2021:

Terrorist organizations are actively working on social networks to “discredit the actions of local authorities in the fight against the pandemic, creating a mood of confusion and uncertainty among the population,” Kokov noted.

Yes. Kokov compared people who opposed lockdowns, compulsory genetic injections, and “vaccine passports” to terrorists. This is why they pay Kokov and the six other Deputy Secretaries the big bucks.

Patriots: 1; Terrorists: 0. National Security: Secured. Deputy-Secretary-Security-Advising: Complete.

As for Shoigu’s “curation” of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC): It appears he will be working in an advisory capacity to make sure that Russia is able to pump out weapons for its own use in the Not-War, while also fulfilling weapons contracts and agreements with foreign states. As Putin explained during a meeting with commanders of Russia’s military districts:

I think that [Shoigu], like no one else, understands the need to ensure our obligations to partners in the field of supplying weapons and military equipment to the foreign market, taking into account the fact that first of all we must meet the needs of our Armed Forces. This combination is very subtle, important. Sergei Kuzhugetovich [Shoigu], together with the Ministry of Defense, with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, together with the Chief of the General Staff, will also be involved in this work.

But the Kremlin stressed that Shoigu is not the head of the FSMTC:

Shoigu is basically being kept on as a consultant with zero real power:

“Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu will specifically oversee the work of the FSMTC. There is no talk that he will be the immediate head of this service,” [Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry] Peskov said, answering a question about Shoigu’s powers in his new position.

(I’m genuinely impressed by Peskov’s ability to completely humiliate the people he’s supposed to be defending with walls of Spokesman Lingo word salad. You might even call his special talent a superpower.)

(To be perfectly honest, I don’t much care for this Peskov fellow.)

(But we’re getting off-track. Back to Shoigu’s promotion.)

MEANWHILE…

The detention of Shoigu Creature Timur Ivanov was followed by the arrest of the head of the personnel department of the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov.

There are reports that several other former Shoigu deputies have resigned or are in the process of doing so.

To be fair to Shoigu’s former underlings, it’s not uncommon for a new minister to clean house and bring in his own team. So I’m not going to equate resignation as explicit proof of wrongdoing.

But the arrests are an entirely different matter and reflect very poorly on Shoigu. (Sorry, that’s just a fact!) Russian media outlets are already predicting that more detentions and resignations are coming, with the possibility of Shoigu being dragged into future legal proceedings.

All of this is coincidence, though. The arrests were orchestrated by the CIA in a desperate, satanic attempt to undermine Shoigu’s promotion. It is really sick, how low Washington will sink to discredit one of Russia’s most popular patriots, and arguably the most accomplished military leader since Alexander the Great.

Guys ….

Can we have a little talk? Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.

So …

WHY IS IT THAT “PRO-RUSSIA” MEDIA AIMED AT WESTERNERS IS 100% INCAPABLE OF CONVEYING WHAT “PRO-RUSSIA” MEDIA INSIDE RUSSIA IS SAYING ABOUT RUSSIA?

WHY IS THIS?

I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE DISCONNECT HERE. I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY “ALTERNATIVE WESTERN MEDIA” IS SPOON-FEEDING YOU A MAKE-BELIEVE PINK PONY ALTERNATE REALITY ABOUT RUSSIA.

WHEN IS THE INCREDULOUS, INDEPENDENT, FEARLESS, TRUTH-LOVING, QUESTIONING-MORE ALTERNATIVE WESTERN MEDIA GOING TO START REPORTING ON WHAT RUSSIANS INSIDE RUSSIA ARE SAYING ABOUT RUSSIA?

WHEN?

WHEN?

TELL ME WHEN OR I’M SENDING THE COWS AFTER YOU.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

In conclusion: Shoigu, who was already a member of the Security Council, is now the secretary of this advisory board of deranged dunces; and instead of having a budget of 5 trillion rubles, he has been entrusted with zero kopecks; and instead of having 46+ powers he is now almost completely powerless.

And all of his former deputies are being arrested or forced to resign.

And I’m sorry for yelling and threatening you with my cows.

That was uncalled for.

I apologize.

Have a nice Friday.

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February 24, 2024 marked two years of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. How do Russians assess the last 24 months? Your correspondent sampled a range of views from Russian media and commentators.

My hope is that this blog post will demonstrate that discussions about the SMO in Russia are far more nuanced and diverse than we are told in English-language mainstream and alternative media.

— Riley

Russia has been born again

In an op-ed published by RIA Novosti, political commentator Kirill Strelnikov wrote that Russia had undergone a rebirth over the last two years:

[I]n two years the words “homeland”, “fatherland”, “duty”, “honor”, ​​“heroism”, “self-sacrifice” and “feat” have been resurrected from the musty pages of dictionaries, and we have learned anew to understand their true meaning.

It’s as if we’ve all become wiser and older … [W]e will bring victory closer, no matter how long it takes. The press secretary of the head of our state, Dmitry Peskov, said that the Special Military Operation began against Ukraine, and later “took the form of a war against the collective West,” so it may last longer than planned. We are not running a race against the clock. Our stakes are higher. Our stake is our country and our future.

Our attitude towards everything connected with the Great Patriotic War has changed completely imperceptibly … We want to say to [our grandfathers and great-grandfathers]: “We did not betray you and did not let you down.”

Two years have passed since the beginning of the SMO. And in just these two years, in these two whole years, our country was born again, and with it, us.

Doing the impossible without understanding what to do next

Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone (528,000 subscribers) honored Russia’s Airborne Forces for doing the “impossible” in the first hours of the SMO, adding that these initial military successes were followed by political intrigue:

Two years ago, in these hours and minutes, on February 24, 2022, history began. One of the bright, legendary and heroic pages in this story was the landing on the Antonov airfield in the village Gostomel in the Kiev region. […]

After landing, the paratroopers began clearing the airfield, gradually taking control of administrative and other buildings at Gostomel. […]

The landing party completed its task. Everything that happened next was the result of political games, and without understanding what to do next.

The guys from the Airborne Forces in those days forever wrote themselves into the military history of Russia. They did the impossible, something that no one expected.

When will it end?

Blogger Anatoly Nesmiyan (“El-Murid”), a vocal supporter of the Donbass republics who in recent years has become highly disillusioned with the Kremlin, observed that even in official information channels discreet language is being used to ask when the SMO will end. In a Telegram post (111,500 subscribers), Nesmiyan wrote:

Aesopian language is the alpha and omega of today’s Russian analytics and journalism. Therefore, instead of a clear and precise term, you have to twist the laces, so much so that at the end of the phrase the meaning of its beginning is lost. It is not surprising that it is almost impossible to properly assess what is happening—there is no adequate conceptual apparatus, and what exists is either impossible to use or is prohibited under penalty of many years of imprisonment.

But this is no longer surprising; this is now the norm. Abnormal in every sense—but normal.

Another thing is curious: most of those who write and speak on the occasion of the two-year anniversary [of the SMO] are suddenly preoccupied with the fact that they are trying somehow to pose the question: when? When can all this end? The question is posed very carefully and wrapped in loyal paragraphs about achieving all goals, “we haven’t really started yet”, and other similar things. For the same reason—so as not to be suspected in any way.

But the question “when” is already being asked. Which is not surprising: the blitzkrieg failed, the conflict entered a protracted phase, which transformed into hopeless dead-end “attrition.” At the same time, even the biggest scumbags are forced to admit that, of course, talking about the capture of Kiev is now a task that in no way follows from the real state of affairs and the balance of forces. More sane assessments are not given at all due to the obvious futility.

The question “when” in a hopeless situation arises absolutely inevitably. If it is not hopeless, if it has real prerequisites for a radical change, such a question not only is not raised, it does not arise.

UAF on the eve of defeat in Donbass

Russia’s Free Press, a pro-SMO outlet that leans socialist/communist, collected commentaries from Western analysts who believe the UAF will soon be pushed out of Donbass and that Kiev should agree to a negotiated settlement:

Western experts are now drawing gloomy scenarios for the Ukrainian Armed Forces as the Russian army continues its offensive in Donbass. […]

Research fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) Michael Kofman, at the panel discussion “Defense Priorities,” believes that the Ukrainians will now frantically try to build new defense lines west of Avdiivka. […]

The tactics of the new command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to Kofman, will be to try to hold the territory and deplete Russian forces as much as possible. In particular, the Ukrainians will rely on underground bunkers and tunnels to offset Russia's advantage in artillery and glide bombs.

The problem of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is also the lack of long-term operational planning. According to Kofman, this was evident already during the so-called “counteroffensive” in the summer, when Ukraine was unable to effectively scale the use of its forces, operating at the level of two or three reinforced companies, even to the brigade level. […]

American military expert Daniel Davis says that the latest losses should force the Ukrainian Armed Forces to agree to peace negotiations.

“Ukraine needs to try to come to an agreement with Russia on ending hostilities as soon as possible. This war cannot be won by Ukraine militarily, period,” Davis is confident. “It doesn’t matter whether they get their $60 billion from the United States.”

We know we will win but it’s too early to open the champagne

RT editor-in chief Margarita Simonyan (478,000 subscribers on Telegram) marked the two-anniversary of the SMO by republishing the message she wrote in the early hours of February 24, 2022:

We woke up friends who shared our views. They didn't believe it at first either.

And then they said: “Well, let's open the champagne!”

Then we did not yet know that we would have to fight with the entire Western world, without any allies, for the first time in our history.

But we already knew that we would win.

We know this even now.

It's still too early to open the champagne. For now—prayers for the soldiers, help to the front, families, refugees, patient conversations with doubters—on air and off air.

But the champagne is already in the refrigerator, and we are trying very hard to do everything in our power to ensure that it stays there for as little time as possible.

There is nothing to celebrate

Colonel Viktor Alksnis (known as the “black colonel”), a former State Duma deputy and co-chair of the National Patriotic Forces of Russia, wrote on Telegram (35,900 subscribers) that none of the stated goals of the SMO had been achieved and that the conflict was turning into a stalemate:

Today is the second anniversary of the SMO.

Judging by the lack of official victory reports on this matter, even the Kremlin understands that there is nothing to celebrate and the special military operation is in a positional deadlock, with no end in sight.

My assessment of the “strange war” that has been going on for two years is as follows:

1. None of the goals of the SMO voiced by the President of the Russian Federation in his address to the nation on February 24, 2022, have been achieved in two years of fierce hostilities. Moreover, the combat zone has expanded significantly compared to February 2022, and Ukraine, in addition to Donbass, is now striking at the “old” regions of the Russian Federation.

Let me remind you [what Putin said two years ago]: “...I have made a decision to conduct a special military operation. Its goal is to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years. And for this we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. And also to bring to justice those who committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation.”

2. The Russian army, despite increased funding over the past twenty years and an active advertising campaign about supposedly turning it into the second-most powerful army in the world, and rearming it with 80% of the most modern and best weapons in the world, is actually fighting mainly with outdated Soviet weapons from the eighties. And despite this, lies about the most combat-ready army in the world continue to be heard from the lips of our high-ranking leaders even after two years of the SMO.

3. Despite the current support of the majority of Russians for the goals of the Northern Military District, fatigue is beginning to grow in society from the lack of a fundamental change in the course of hostilities and the age-old Russian questions are beginning to be heard: “Who is to blame?” and “What to do?” And when such questions take hold of the Russian masses, the situation ends in great upheavals, as events more than a century ago clearly showed.

It won't be easy or simple but there is no other way

Donrf, one of the original Donbass military bloggers (42,000 Telegram subscribers), said there should be no more “illusions” as the SMO enters its third year:

[I]n 2014, we expected Russia to come. Then there was a war. Long and negotiable.

Eight years later, Russia came. And everyone also expected it to be quick and easy. And there was betrayal. Betrayal of those who promised us—there will be no resistance. […]

There was Kharkov, where our negotiators were destroyed, there was Kiev, where the Russian landing showed that the heroism of our ancestors did not last, there were stabs in the back from fooled fools...

And then, after Istanbul, the war began. Already in earnest … A different war. With advances and failures. With losses and victims. With the victories of the Russian spirit in Artemovsk. To Zaporozhye. In Avdiivka. It continues. And it will continue.

But there should be no more illusions. None. Everything will be hard and not fast … It won't be easy or simple. It won’t be fast. The third year of the war has begun for the Russian Federation and the eleventh for Donbass. […]

[M]ay God let everyone understand that there is no other way but this.

A battle has been won but the war continues

A op-ed published by Military Review, Russia’s most popular military news portal, hailed the recent victory in Avdiivka, while cautioning that the war was far from over:

The capture of Avdiivka is not a defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, not a “radical change” or anything like that. This is a won battle, but not a won war. I’m almost sure that someone will definitely write something like “everything is going according to plan.” Alas, war is not waged “expecting miracles.” Any “miracle” is carefully prepared at headquarters. Indeed, victories come to those who have “everything according to plan”...

Let's return to Donetsk … the artillery of the Ukrainian Armed Forces almost constantly terrorized the city. And now, after some time, after clearing out all those small villages and industrial zones that surround Donetsk, this will stop. Alas, not now and not even tomorrow. Our fighters need time to clear the territory... And the saboteurs and “sleepers” have not disappeared anywhere...

[I]n the information space I constantly come across thoughts about how easy it will now be to crush the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “There are almost no trained units left,” “The West has abandoned Ukraine and will no longer help,” “weapons and ammunition are sorely lacking,” and so on, in the same spirit.

And seemingly thinking people talk about this, without even wondering why their thoughts began to sound the same as the statements of Kiev politicians and our most ardent enemies in the West. They are trying to convince us that soon Russia will win, using the favorite phrase of Ukrainian propagandists. […]

[However,] we’ve learned to fight in new conditions. We have learned to win. We want to win. And this is the main thing today.

Many thanks to all the soldiers and commanders for this victory.

Winter will end, Russian Spring will come

Igor Strelkov’s wife posted a message on her husband’s Telegram channel (516,000 subscribers) in which she shared her mixed emotions about the two-year anniversary of the SMO. (Strelkov recently received four years in prison after a secret trial found him guilty of “extremism”):

Today is a significant date—2 years have passed since the beginning of the SMO. I cannot consider this date a holiday, as probably many of you do. Until we have won, the hopes of the residents of Novorossiya for a peaceful sky above their heads have not yet been fulfilled. In addition, the last two years have been full of irreparable losses—our loved ones and friends.

My husband is in prison—a patriot and officer, ready to lay down his life for our victory and for the Motherland.

But I also cannot consider the day the special operation began as a day of sadness. Yes, tragically late, but finally we have begun to restore justice to the residents of Donbass, who have suffered from uncertainty for so long.

On this day it is especially clear how right Igor was in many ways. Many of his predictions came true and continue to come true. And this is not some kind of prophetic gift of his, but his intelligence and experience. Igor always substantiated his opinion when he showed us problems in the army and at the front as a natural result of many years of incorrect actions of the system. This has brought us to the point where we are forced to live and fight now, trying to save a future for our children.

Neither the military-industrial complex, nor the skills of modern warfare, nor the professionalism of commanders will suddenly appear out of nowhere. Everything that Igor Strelkov wrote about since February 2022 became obvious to everyone by February 2024.

But, as Igor likes to repeat: do what you must—and come what may. I know we will win. And this will be the merit of our people, our soldiers at the front and all caring people helping in the rear.

February does not last forever, but winter will definitely end. Russian Spring will come.

The elites haven’t changed

Nakanune, a popular “leftist” (socialist/patriotic) media outlet, marked the two-year anniversary of the SMO by highlighting the lack of substantive change on the domestic/economic front in Russia.

“The elites have not changed during this time—a very small part of the elites left, and the rest covered their ears. A small part, of course, switched to patriotic positions, because after all, the malice and inability of the West to negotiate became obvious, but the majority remained and are waiting,” political scientist and former Kremlin advisor Sergei Markov told the outlet.

According to Markov, “The attitude of the citizens remains the same— ‘I don’t really want an SMO or mobilization’, but society understands a certain inevitability of this and therefore completely trusts the president.”

Nakanune also published comments from State Duma deputy Mikhail Delyagin (A Just Russia—For Truth), who said that import substitution was still not working properly and it was unclear how Russia’s economy, which is increasingly dependent on defense orders, would develop after the end of the SMO:

The economy categorically does not meet the needs of the time, because it has not been put on a military footing. The slogan “everything for the front, everything for victory” is not reflected in economic policy. Our social and economic policy as a whole is drawn up according to Gaidar’s models and remains absolutely liberal.

No one even dares to limit the withdrawal of capital from the country, let alone stop the arbitrariness of the monopolies, and the burning of the country by an artificially created monetary famine. The population of Russia was kept in artificially created misery and poverty, and remains this way. Everyone is talking about the thousands of sanctions that were introduced. The West is against Russia, but these sanctions are still nothing compared to the sanctions that the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance have imposed against Russia.

Unfulfilled objectives

Popular English-language Russia commentator vicktop55 (69,000 Twitter followers, 21,000 Telegram subscribers) translated an analysis from Russian military expert Alexander Zimovsky:

[In two years,] Ukraine has become even more Nazi and even more militarized than before the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine.

On land, Ukraine continues to occupy:

- 25% of the territory of the Kherson region of the Russian Federation;

- 34% of the territory of the Zaporozhye region of the Russian Federation;

- 39% of the territory of the DPR of the Russian Federation.

At sea, Ukraine has completely neutralized the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, which today has lost the ability to conduct amphibious operations and is no longer able to paralyze maritime communications, supplies and maritime trade of Ukraine.

In the air, Ukraine demonstrated the presence of unmanned/missile weapons with a range of up to 900 kilometers.

In terms of ground combat operations, Ukraine has lost the ability to conduct any offensive actions at the operational level on the Eastern Front; at the tactical level, the ability to advance/attack remains at the battalion-brigade level;

In terms of sabotage and reconnaissance operations, Ukraine retains the initiative and retains some advantage in the number of such operations.

Regarding the use of small unmanned strike and reconnaissance aircraft on the Eastern Front, Ukraine manages to maintain parity with Russia in the tactical depth of the defense of the Russian Federation.

In terms of conducting ideological and psychological special operations, Ukraine is successfully imposing its own narrative of war in the West. And it retains full control over its own population in terms of war propaganda and motivating the population to continue the war in the long term.

The West is gearing up for war with Russia

Katyusha.org, a patriotic Orthodox Christian/conservative outlet, warned that the West was preparing to escalate the conflict. Citing the Economist’s February 22 cover story, the outlet wrote:

The task that Europe now faces, according to the magazine’s analysts, is very difficult. It is necessary to rebuild security mechanisms based on a “big” NATO, due to the fact that support for the alliance will not take priority in an [assumed] incoming Trump administration. The authors of the article identify four components of solving this problem:

• Increasing defense spending to levels not seen in decades.

• Restoring forgotten military traditions of Europe.

• Restructuring its military industry.

• Direct preparation for a possible war.

[…]

The task of our primordial enemies is becoming increasingly clear—to rally Europe to fight Russia without exception, as was done in the last century by the hands of fascist Germany. Only then they made a mistake with their goal-setting and a war broke out on two fronts. The same thing could happen in the new “mobilized” Europe in about five years. Everything repeats itself in history.

NOTE FROM EDWARD: Sorry that there was no news roundup yesterday. We will return to our normal Blog Schedule this Sunday.

If you found this blog post informative, consider subscribing. Every kopeck goes a long way in the village.

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Today marks two years since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Edward Slavsquat is an outcome-focused blog and according to my calculations, the outcome of the Not-War is leaning towards “unfavorable” for all not-oligarch Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, Germans, Brits, Frenchies, Canadians, Poles, Eskimos, and all the rest of you weirdos.

If you want to know how I came to this conclusion, you can read a very long blog post that I typed up in June. Actually, I was warning about the Not-Good Outcome of the Not-War before it even began:

I wish I could type something novel and groundbreaking to mark Two Years of Not-War, but absolutely nothing has changed since One Year of Not-War:

However, in keeping with tradition, I will quote the words of LNR militia leader Aleksey Mozgovoy, who was assassinated by Shadowy Forces in 2015:

I'd like to appeal to everyone who is fighting—on both sides. People on both sides are fighting against the oligarchy. But somehow we only kill each other, ourselves. So we’re committing a slow suicide of sorts.

The “gladiators” need to break out from the “Colosseum”. Instead, a new Colosseum is being organized. We’re burying ourselves. Do we need it all? War for the sake of war? It’s stupid.

Does anyone remember why we have rebelled? Isn’t it clear that the ones we rose up against are ruling us now? For both sides. Isn’t it time for us to come to our senses, military gentlemen? Otherwise, there won’t be a single one of us left.

And the ones we should be fighting against…they will be living on. Without problems. And everything’s going to be as it was before.

So I appeal one more time: start thinking. Your brain should be working, not your grenade launcher. That’s when there will be order. While the guns are working, there will only be deaths.

It’s a sad state of affairs. Take care of yourself and guard your humanity closely.

— Riley

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Tomorrow marks two years of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. My own assessment of what has been accomplished over the past 24 months differs a great deal from what we’ve been told by both mainstream and alternative media.

To put it simply, I contend that everyone is losing this war. Except for the space lizard oligarchs, of course. They are winning bigly.

I’ve been saying this since the first week of the SMO. And each time I make this argument, I receive messages (some more constructive and thoughtful than others) telling me that I am horribly mistaken and that I should listen to Scott Ritter.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I don’t agree with Scott Ritter’s assessment of the SMO.

You are welcome to agree with Mr. Ritter—that’s A-OK. I just want to explain why I do not agree with him.

Knocking on Kiev’s door

Like many analysts, Ritter described Russia’s semi-encirclement of Kiev in the opening days of the SMO as a “decapitation” operation.

“Ukraine is getting schooled in the art of Urban warfare. Russia is advancing inside Kiev, a city of 3 million. It took the US a week to take Fallujah, a city of 200,000,” Ritter wrote on February 25, 2022.

With each passing day, Ritter became more confident that Kiev would soon “fall”.

February 28: “Pro hint for the citizens of Kiev: if you have one of those free weapons your President handed out, are filling Molotov cocktails, or planning on using them…you’re not a civilian. You’re an unlawful combatant (franc tireur) subject to summary execution. Good luck!”

March 1: “All of the cable news military ‘experts’ are just now waking up to the fact that Russia’s ‘failed’ invasion is on the cusp of encircling the main Ukrainian military concentration in the east, and knocking at Kiev’s door. CIA propaganda can only be sustained for so long.”

March 4: “Lvov is the heart of this cancer. There cannot be de-Nazification without Russia taking that city and purging this poison. Just a heads up for those who think this ends when Kiev falls.”

When the knockout blow failed to materialize, Ritter began chastising anyone with the chutzpah to suggest that the Russian military had ever intended to take Kiev.

“What makes you think Russia wants to get involved in a street fight for Kiev? Maybe the strategy is to put enough pressure on Kiev to force Ukraine to fight on a fourth front, complicating an already difficult logistical and operational situation? But you’re the chess master…”, Ritter tweeted at historian Edward Luttwak on March 18.

“First it was ‘Russia doesn’t have enough troops to take Kiev.’ Then it was ‘Russia has failed because it didn’t take Kiev.’ Never ‘Russia conducted a successful strategic fixing operation around Kiev’,” Ritter opined on March 27.

Two days later, Ritter revealed that the encirclement of Kiev had been a masterfully executed “feint” designed to pin down Ukrainian forces as Russian troops swiftly liberated Donbass—what Ritter described as “big arrow” warfare.

The Big Arrow

Ritter began test-driving his “big arrow” theory in mid-March 2022 and at the end of the same month he published a 16-tweet thread explaining how Russia was executing an exemplary “Big Arrow War”:

Big Arrow War—a primer. For all those scratching their heads in confusion, or dusting off their dress uniforms for the Ukrainian victory parade in Kiev, over the news about Russia’s “strategic shift”, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with basic military concepts.

Using “feints, fixing operations, and deep attack”, Russia had out-maneuvered Ukraine’s numerically superior forces while avoiding a “classical attritional conflict”, Ritter explained. Russian troops around Kiev were now being “redeployed” to assist in the complete destruction of UAF in East Ukraine:

Russia is redeploying some of its premier units from where they had been engaged in feint operations in northern Kiev to where they can support the next phase of the operation, namely the liberation of the Donbas and the destruction of the main Ukrainian force in the east.

A week after Ritter published his Big Arrow treatise, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on April 6 that Russian troops were pulling out from Kiev as a “gesture of goodwill” to create favorable conditions for peace talks with Zelensky.

Three days later, on April 9, Ritter said that Russia was weeks away from “strategic victory” in Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. While there appears to be a NATO/western plan to embroil Russia in a ‘new Afghanistan’, I don’t see any risk of this conflict dragging on for more than a few more weeks at the most before Russia accomplishes a strategic victory over Ukraine,” Ritter said in an interview with Strategic Culture Foundation.

Almost two years have passed and the “liberation of Donbass” is still a work in progress. The Ukrainian military controls territory in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye—the four regions incorporated into the Russian Federation in autumn 2022.

There was no “feint”. As Putin explained in his interview with Tucker Carlson, the Russian military left Kiev at the request of Moscow’s trusted Western partners—only to get rug-pulled, again.

Ritter was certainly not alone in believing that Russian troops encircled Kiev in order to force a quick capitulation. But when that plan ultimately failed, Ritter pretended that he never believed all the things he said he had believed, and then wagged his finger at anyone who didn’t understand the brilliance of the Kiev “feint”—which existed only in his mind.

Then something very curious happened. Ritter changed his mind.

Scott Ritter's “Switcheroo”

In May 2022, Scott Ritter shocked independent media by claiming that Western military aid to Ukraine was a “game changer”.

Ritter explained that he had been operating under the assumption that Moscow would be able to “interdict the vast majority of this equipment, but Russia had shown itself unable or unwilling to do this and—as a result—the Ukrainians were having meaningful impact on the battlefield.” If Moscow can’t find a way to stop this, the conflict may never end, Ritter warned.

But he didn’t stop there. In an op-ed published on May 18, 2022, Ritter wrote that “the failure of the invasion to deliver a knockout blow to the Ukrainian government has altered the political-military landscape”. The liberation of Donbass was inevitable and imminent, but “the stated Russian political objective—securing a neutral Ukraine—has not been accomplished,” Ritter noted. In fact, the conflict was bringing Ukraine and NATO closer together, a scenario that the SMO was supposed to prevent:

While it seems clear that Ukraine will not be formally joining Nato any time soon, if ever, the reality is that the war has reforged the relationship between Ukraine and the trans-Atlantic alliance in a way that transforms the way the two entities work together. Ukraine’s current status as a wartime non-Nato ally has strengthened a long-held goal of the US and Nato of neutralizing Russia as a long-term military threat to Europe—in short, by transforming Ukraine’s military into a de facto Nato proxy.

Ritter was even more explicit in an interview with Sputnik on May 22:

[W]hen Russia finishes phase two [the liberation of Donbass], they’re still going to be confronted with a hostile Ukraine that is more closely linked to NATO’s today than they were when the conflict started. And with a NATO that is not willing to roll over and accept Russia’s demands regarding a new European security framework where both sides can live in peace together, but rather which is focused on destroying Russia and Ukraine through continued nonstop combat operations. Which means that Russia better have a phase three in mind because this war isn’t over when they finish with phase two.

In an op-ed published by Consortium News on May 30, Ritter argued that even after Russia defeats the Ukrainian military in Donbass—which he said would happen “at some point soon”—Moscow would still be left with “a number of unfulfilled political objectives” in Ukraine:

[O]nce Russia has fulfilled its stated objective of liberating the breakaway republics, demilitarization will still not have taken place. Moreover, given the fact that demilitarization is premised on Ukraine being stripped of all NATO influence, including equipment, organization, and training, one can make a case that Russia’s invasion has succeeded in making Ukraine a closer partner of NATO than before it began. […]

At some point soon, Russia will announce that it has defeated the Ukrainian military forces arrayed in the east … But [this] will leave Russia with a number of unfulfilled political objectives, including denazification, demilitarization, permanent Ukrainian neutrality, and NATO concurrence with a new European security framework along the lines drawn up by Russia in its December 2021 treaty proposals. If Russia were to call a halt to its military operation at this juncture, it would be ceding political victory to Ukraine, which “wins” by not losing.

Russia has not defeated the UAF in East Ukraine and all of the unfulfilled political objectives of the SMO are still unfulfilled.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned about this exact scenario. In a 2018 interview, Lavrov said that a war to defend Donbass would result in Russia “losing the rest of Ukraine”. In other words, a war between Russia and Ukraine would cement Ukraine’s transformation into a NATO-backed anti-Russia. According to Putin, a key objective of the SMO was to prevent the formation of a “hostile anti-Russia” in Ukraine.

Ritter made an admirable attempt at focusing on whether or not the SMO’s stated goals were actually being achieved. But by doing so he ran afoul of the scientific consensus in alternative media (“whoever kills the most proles wins the war”). Within a month, Ritter was back to his old routine.

“To the extent Ukraine is seeking to delay the Russian advance, it is being done by the full-scale sacrifice of the soldiers at the front … This is the ugly truth about Ukraine today—the longer the war continues, the more Ukrainians will die, and the weaker NATO will become,” Ritter wrote for Consortium News on June 25, 2022.

A “strategic Russian victory” in Ukraine was just around the corner, again, he reassured his readers.

(Six months later, Ritter would offer a moral justification for keeping the bloodbath going: “[T]here is nothing nice about the people in Ukraine … They are either staunch supporters of the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera, and as such deserving of whatever fate befalls them, or pathologically indifferent cowards who have facilitated the horrific crimes of the Banderists.”)

“Russia has lost nothing more than some indefensible space”

Ritter scoffed at Ukraine’s counter-offensive in autumn 2022. In fact, Russia’s retreat from Kharkov and Kherson was actually a defeat for the UAF.

“It appears that Ukraine [will] exhaust its carefully gathered reserve forces before the bulk of Russia’s response engages,” Ritter wrote on September 9. He was convinced that the UAF had fallen into a deadly trap:

The Kherson offensive appears to have stalled, and whether by design or accident, the Kharkov offensive is shaping up to become a trap for the Ukrainian forces committed, who find themselves in danger of being cut off and destroyed.

At the end of the day, this counteroffensive will end in a strategic Ukrainian defeat. Russia will restore the front to its original positions and be able to resume offensive operations. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, will have squandered their reserves, limiting their ability to respond to a new Russian advance.

When it became clear that the UAF wouldn’t be boiled alive in a giant sneaky tactical cauldron, Ritter insisted that Kharkov was useless and Russia had actually gained the upper hand by retreating.

In Kharkov, Russia had “lost nothing more than some indefensible space. Russian casualties were minimal, and equipment losses readily replaced,” Ritter wrote on September 12. He explained:

Russia has actually strengthened its military posture by creating strong defensive lines in the north capable of withstanding any Ukrainian attack, while increasing combat power available to complete the task of liberating the remainder of the Donetsk People’s Republic under Ukrainian control.

A few days later, Ritter announced that the gloves were coming off: Putin’s decision to order partial mobilization on September 21, which coincided with referendums in East Ukraine, meant that the SMO had been upgraded from a “limited-scope operation” to one “linked to the existential survival of Russia”.

As Ritter explained on September 22, once East Ukraine was formally incorporated into the Russian Federation, an attack on Donetsk—or any of the other new regions—would mean an attack on Mother Russia:

All Ukrainian forces that are on the territory of the regions to be incorporated into Russia will be viewed as occupiers; and Ukrainian shelling of this territory will be treated as an attack on Russia, triggering a Russian response. Whereas the SMO had, by design, been implemented to preserve Ukrainian civil infrastructure and reduce civilian casualties, a post-SMO military operation will be one configured to destroy an active threat to Mother Russia itself. The gloves will come off.

It was all over. Speaking on a podcast on October 14, Ritter prophesied, again, that a decisive Russian victory in Ukraine was just a few months away:

This isn’t going to take another year-and-a-half. This is going to take at most several months. I said the last time we talked that Russia will wrap up this militarily by the end of summer, and that it will all be over by the fall of 2023. I stand by that. The only way I think I might be wrong is it might end a little bit sooner.

He was wrong.

When Russian forces withdrew from Kherson a month later, Ritter yawned. The UAF, which was now in control of the capital of a newly incorporated Russian region, had accomplished nothing more than a disastrous Pyrrhic victory.

“Russia … is in the process of finalizing the organization, training, and equipping of 200,000 fresh troops. When they arrive on the battlefield sometime in December, Ukraine will be hard pressed to respond in a meaningful fashion. Like Pyrrhus, Ukraine, in taking Kherson, has been ‘utterly ruined’,” Ritter wrote on November 10.

Five days later, Ritter said Russia’s patience had run out.

“Ukraine’s going to have to accept reality. It has permanently lost Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, the Donbass, and Crimea. You will never get it back, Ukraine. Never, ever, ever in a million years. And if you continue this fight, very soon you’re going to lose Odessa. You’re going to lose Kharkov, and you will never get them back. You will lose Mykolaiv, you’ll lose Dnipro­petrovsk, you’ll lose your very existence. You’ll never get it back, ever. Russia’s reached a point where it is not in a mood to negotiate,” Ritter told the Real News Network.

The gloves did not come off and Kherson is now a massive concrete fortress.

Contrary to what Ritter claimed, the withdrawal from Kharkov did not strengthen Russia’s military posture. Quite the opposite. The retreat allowed Ukrainian artillery to shell Belgorod and other Russian cities and towns located near the border.

Coincidentally, Scott Ritter’s popular Telegram channel returns zero results when you search for “Belgorod”.

ALERT MEMORANDUM

Final preparations were being made for Russia’s final victory, Ritter said in a video message published on January 16, 2023.

Ten days later, Ritter and his colleagues from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) warned US President Joe Biden that he wasn’t prepared for what was “coming” in Ukraine:

It has long been clear that you have not been adequately briefed on two issues of major importance: (1) the war in Ukraine, and (2) the strategic partnership between Russia and China. We chose this genre of “ALERT MEMORANDUM” because we want to prepare you for a major shock. Russia’s winter offensive is about to roll over the Ukrainian army. At that point, unwelcome choices will have to be made. Off-ramps must be sought – again, the sooner the better.

Your intelligence advisers seem blissfully unaware of what is coming.

Russia’s winter offensive ended in Bakhmut, the nine-month “meatgrinder” that was supposed to be the final nail in the UAF’s coffin. To Ritter’s credit, he demonstrated restraint by observing that it wasn’t yet clear how taking the city “fits into the overall pace of the conflict”.

Then Ritter suffered a serious relapse.

Ukraine risked losing up to 50% of its territory if Zelensky continued to refuse negotiations, Ritter said at the end of May 2023.

“Much will depend on when Ukraine starts negotiations. If it continues in the same spirit, it is difficult to say whether it will be able to maintain control over Odessa, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk,” he noted.

It’ll all be over by the end of summer 2023 by the end of 2023 autumn 2024, according to Ritter.

January 14, 2023: “Russia will win this year. Of course, the Russian leadership does not make any commitments on the timing, but I am talking about this as an independent analyst.”

July 17, 2023: By the end of summer, the UAF will no longer be a functioning military force.

September 12, 2023: “There is a depletion of supplies along the entire front line, which could lead to the defeat of the Ukrainian army in the coming weeks or months.”

October 11, 2023: The Ukrainian military will collapse within the next twelve months.

January 6, 2024: “Everything will end by September. When everything is over, the map of Ukraine will not look like it does now. Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov will also be territories of Russia.”

In recent weeks, Ritter and likeminded experts have pointed to the failed Ukrainian offensive, combined with the UAF’s withdrawal from Avdiivka, as evidence that Ukraine will soon be forced into an unconditional surrender.

Pushing the UAF out of Avdiivka is a positive step towards protecting Donetsk. But the operation was hardly a cakewalk (it took several months) and as Russell Bentley noted, the UAF is still able to shell Donetsk from other positions.

“[Taking Avdiivka] moves the front line away from the city limits; secondly, it opens up space for our fighters in the southwestern direction. Just don’t delude yourself. There is still a lot of work ahead,” Bentley wrote February 21.

The SMO is entering its third year and Ukrainian forces are still being dislodged from the suburbs of Donetsk. Is this what Imminent Total Victory looks like? I would say: no. But that’s just my opinion.

Here’s where things currently stand:

• The stated Russian political objective—securing a neutral Ukraine—has not been accomplished.

• Given the fact that demilitarization is premised on Ukraine being stripped of all NATO influence, including equipment, organization, and training, one can make a case that Russia’s invasion has succeeded in making Ukraine a closer partner of NATO than before it began.

• At some point soon, Russia will announce that it has defeated the Ukrainian military forces arrayed in the east. But this will leave Russia with a number of unfulfilled political objectives, including denazification, demilitarization, permanent Ukrainian neutrality.

Scott Ritter knows all of this because I copy-pasted those bullet points from articles written by Scott Ritter, who wrote those things even while under the assumption that Donbass would be 100% controlled by Russia by the end of 2022.

For mysterious reasons, Scott Ritter is now writing very different things: Killing Ukrainians makes NATO weak … Ukrainians aren’t even good people, anyway … Next stop: Odessa … Total Victory is close at hand … Just two more weeks … Just two more weeks…

Like I said: I don’t agree with Scott Ritter.

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“Two years into a war that’s reshaping the entire world, most Americans are not informed … Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine, or what his goals are now,” Tucker Carlson said in a video message explaining why he came to Moscow to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yes, Putin was finally given the opportunity to speak directly to uniformed Americans and explain the chronology that led to the launch of the SMO, as well as the goals and achievements of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

Here’s what Putin said during his chat with Tucker on February 8:

Putin: Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022. This is an attempt to stop it.

Tucker: Do you think you’ve stopped it now? I mean, have you achieved your aims?

Putin: No. We haven’t achieved our aims yet because one of them is denazification. This means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements.

Oh. What happened to the rest of the goals Putin spoke about when he announced the start of the SMO two years ago?

Let’s review Putin’s address on February 24, 2022, in which he laid out his case for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. I encourage you to read Putin’s statement and see for yourself what Moscow hoped to achieve with its special military operation.

I’ve taken the liberty of condensing Putin’s fiery address into five objectives for the SMO:

1. To halt NATO’s eastward expansion

2. To protect the people of Donbass

3. To “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine

4. To ensure Ukraine does not become a “hostile anti-Russia”

5. BONUS GOAL: To demonstrate that Moscow will no longer tolerate Washington’s “empire of lies”

Feel free to nitpick but I think this list does a decent job of highlighting the main aims of the SMO as stated by Putin two years ago.

But if we accept that Putin listed multiple objectives when he announced the start of the SMO in February 2022, why did he only speak of denazification (the “prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements”) when Tucker asked him if Russia had “achieved [its] aims” in Ukraine?

Does Putin believe the other goals have already been achieved? Or perhaps for the sake of simplicity, Putin decided to use “denazification” as an umbrella term to encompass all the objectives he listed in February 2022? If this is the case, why did he define denazification as “the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements”? Such a prohibition wouldn’t guarantee an end to NATO encroachment; nor would it guarantee lasting peace in Donbass. A ban on “neo-Nazi movements” would be a positive step towards preventing Ukraine from becoming a “hostile anti-Russia”, but rekindling friendly—or even just neutral—relations with Kiev would require much, much more. Maybe the goals of the SMO have changed?

To help answer these questions, let’s compare Putin’s motivations and goals for the SMO as stated in February 2022 to what he said almost two years later during his chat with Tucker. (All quotes from 2022 are taken from the Kremlin’s official English-language transcript of Putin’s address announcing the start of the SMO.)

Putin in February 2022: “Even now, with NATO’s eastward expansion the situation for Russia has been becoming worse and more dangerous by the year. Moreover, these past days NATO leadership has been blunt in its statements that they need to accelerate and step up efforts to bring the alliance’s infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders. In other words, they have been toughening their position. We cannot stay idle and passively observe these developments. This would be an absolutely irresponsible thing to do for us … In December 2021, we made yet another attempt to reach agreement with the United States and its allies on the principles of European security and NATO’s non-expansion. Our efforts were in vain. The United States has not changed its position. It does not believe it necessary to agree with Russia on a matter that is critical for us. The United States is pursuing its own objectives, while neglecting our interests.” (SMO goal: To halt NATO’s eastward expansion)

Almost two years have passed since Putin announced Russia could no longer “stay idle and passively observe” NATO encroachment and provocations. What has occurred since then?

In his interview with Carlson, Putin made no mention of Finland’s accession to NATO in April 2023. Sweden’s bid to join the alliance didn’t come up, either.

Mysteriously, there were also zero references to Steadfast Defender, the largest NATO exercise since the end of the Cold War, which includes drills on Russia’s border.

Instead, Putin repeatedly referred to how Washington reneged on its promise to halt NATO expansion:

The promise was that NATO would not expand eastward. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion. We tolerated all that. We were trying to persuade them. We were saying, please don’t. We are as bourgeois now as you are. We are a market economy and there is no Communist Party power. Let’s negotiate.

Please make a mental note because this chain of events (West makes promise to Moscow —> West deceives Moscow and reneges on promise —> Moscow calls for negotiations —> West doesn’t care and continues to do whatever it wants —> Putin complains to Tucker Carlson) is going to repeat itself again and again and again.

Take, for example, how Putin described the Minsk agreements to Tucker. Which brings us to our next SMO goal…

Putin in February 2022: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime.” (SMO goal: To protect the people of Donbass)

Almost two years have passed since Putin announced Russia would take military action to protect people “facing humiliation and genocide” perpetrated by Gazprom’s pipeline partner. What’s the status on that?

Putin doesn’t say. (It’s not a secret, though. Keep reading and I’ll tell you.)

Instead, Russia’s president told Carlson that for eight years he did everything he could to reintegrate Donetsk and Lugansk into Ukraine, but his efforts were foiled by something completely unexpected…

We addressed the United States and European countries leadership to … implement the Minsk agreements. But frankly speaking, I didn't know how we were going to do this. But I was ready to implement [the Minsk agreements]. These agreements were complicated for Ukraine. They included lots of elements of autonomy for the Donbass territories. That’s true. However, I was absolutely confident—and I’m saying this to you now—I honestly believe that if we managed to convince the residents of Donbass—and we had to work hard to convince them to return to Ukrainian statehood—then gradually the wounds would start to heal. [I believed that] when these territories reintegrated themselves into a common social environment, when the pensions and social benefits were paid again, all the pieces would gradually fall into place. No, nobody wanted that. Everybody wanted to resolve the issue by military force only. […]

A year or a year and a half ago, former leaders of Germany and France said openly that they indeed signed the Minsk agreements, but they never intended to implement them, they simply led us by the nose.

… He was deceived by the West, again!

By the way: According to oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk (a close friend of the Russian president; Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter), former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko begged Putin to “take” Donbass—but Putin refused, insisting that the breakaway republics belonged to Ukraine.

You probably didn’t read about it in Western Independent Media, but it was all over Russian media. Funny how that works.

Here’s what Viktor revealed a year ago in February 2023:

The host of [Belarusian TV channel STV] said that “there is information in the media” about a conversation during which Poroshenko “openly” told Putin to “take back Donbass.”

“I can tell you that Poroshenko repeatedly said in conversations with me: tell [Putin], let him take it,” Medvedchuk replied.

According to him, at the time that the conversation took place, Putin in an interview called Donbass part of Ukraine, while Poroshenko was trying to get rid of this region.

“Because he [Poroshenko] understood that he did not need Donbass … When the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin said that Donbass was Ukraine, Poroshenko tried, as they say, to get rid of it,” Medvedchuk explained.

Why did Poroshenko beg Putin to “take” Donbass, and why did Russia’s president refuse this request even as Poroshenko’s government was “genociding” the region? These are very good questions that we will discuss in an upcoming blog post, Two Years of Not-War: Not Good.

But back to the Putin-Tucker interview.

Maybe Putin didn’t mention “protecting the people of Donbass” as an SMO goal because more people are being killed and maimed in Donetsk in a single day in 2024 than in the entire year of 2021?

According to the United Nations, a total of 25 civilians were killed in Donbass in the year preceding the start of the SMO. At the end of January—almost two years after the start of Russia’s military intervention—27 people in Donetsk were killed in a single day by Ukrainian shelling.

Even if the United Nations vastly underreported deaths in East Ukraine (for the sake of argument, let’s say 250 civilians were killed in 2021), there’s really no comparing the amount of bloodshed that we’re witnessing today. At the end of December, the Russian Ministry of Defense disclosed that more than 4,700 civilians had been killed within the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic since the start of the SMO. And that’s just civilians killed in the DPR.

And Donetsk isn’t the only Russian city subjected to Ukrainian shelling—Belgorod is now being bombarded on a regular basis. I guess it makes sense that Putin wouldn’t want to bring this up, but if Tucker’s aim was to enlighten “uninformed Americans” about the goals and achievements of the SMO, maybe he should have asked Putin why after two years of war the Ukrainian military is still able to shell Russian territory with total impunity? Seems very topical to me.

I HAVE A QUESTION: If Putin said in February 2022 that “the purpose of [the SMO] was to protect people who have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime”, but then two years later claimed Moscow “hadn’t achieved its aims [in Ukraine] yet because one of them was denazification”—WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE DOES THAT SEND IF DONETSK AND EVEN BELGOROD ARE BEING SHELLED BASICALLY EVERY SINGLE DAY? ANY IDEAS? ANY TAKERS?

Sorry for yelling. Let’s move on to “denazification”, the only SMO goal that Putin was willing to acknowledge during his chat with Carlson.

Putin in February 2022: “We will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.” (SMO goal: To “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine)

As we’ve already established, Putin told Tucker that Moscow hadn’t yet achieved its goals in Ukraine because “one of them is denazification.”

Putin probably brought this up because it allowed him to talk about his favorite subject: How the tricky West tricked him again!

A clause about “denazification” was purportedly included in a peace deal with Kiev drawn up in Istanbul in April 2022. You won’t believe what happened next! As Putin explained:

[W]e were told by the Europeans in particular that it was necessary to create conditions for the final signing of the documents. My counterparts in France and Germany said, “How can you imagine [Ukraine] signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev.”

I said, alright. We withdrew the troops from Kiev. As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and got prepared for a long standing armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe.

Just to recap: Putin sent tens of thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine to force the Nazis to the negotiating table. But when the Nazis were ready to sign a denazification deal, the duplicitous West asked Putin: “Hey, can you put your gun away? You’re making the Nazis nervous”—and of course Putin complied with this very reasonable request. And why wouldn’t he? As Putin told Tucker approximately 10,000 times, he was forced to launch the SMO because the West had deceived him for 20 years and he was sick and tired of their tricky lies, their slithery negotiating tactics, and their Nazism, and brute force was the only thing these weirdos understood.

You really have to wonder what was in the Istanbul agreement (which came about thanks to the diligence and diplomacy of Roman Abramovich, Russia’s most well-respected turbo-patriot), and why Putin felt comfortable voluntarily withdrawing Russian troops—apparently without any kind of collateral or insurance policy.

We may never know the contents of the Abramovich Peace Initiative, but according to Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, the deal involved Moscow “leasing” Crimea from Kiev. Yes, really. Lukashenko revealed this during an interview with Russia’s state-run Rossiya 1 TV in June. Here’s the writeup from Belarusian state media:

Just to be clear: Lukashenko wasn’t trying to rat Putin out for agreeing to a catastrophic, humiliating deal with Kiev. Oh no. Quite the opposite. He described the deal as a missed opportunity that was now impossible:

“Putin handed me a document that was initialed by the delegations. Normal, even in Crimea—there is some kind of long-term lease there, in Donbass, in the east... A normal agreement. If only this were possible now—but now it is no longer possible … It was a good process, but they abandoned it,” noted Lukashenko.

Basically everything Lukashenko said was later confirmed by Oleksiy Arestovych, Zelensky’s former advisor.

In an interview with Unherd last month, Arestovych claimed the terms of the deal were so favorable for Ukraine that Kiev’s delegation in Istanbul washed down some bubbly to celebrate:

Arestovych: I was a member of the Istanbul process, and it was the most profitable agreement we could have done. They concluded there two previous agreements that were extremely dangerous for Ukraine: Minsk one and Minsk two. This agreement even contained the question of Crimea. It took 10 years of discussion, 15 years of discussion on the status of Crimea, and it meant security for the Black Sea. But now — I don’t know. Because mid-agreement in Istanbul we came to Kiev and after Bucha we heard from the President that we had stopped the negotiations. The next meeting was to be on the ninth of April and on the second of April it was declined.

Unherd: So you came back from Istanbul thinking the negotiations had been successful?

Arestovych: Yes, completely. We opened the champagne bottle. We had discussed demilitarisation, denazification, issues concerning the Russian language, Russian church and much else. And that month, it was the question of the amount of Ukrainian armed forces in peacetime and President Zelensky said, “I could decide this question indirectly with Mr. Putin”. The Istanbul agreements were a protocol of intentions and was 90% prepared for directly meeting with Putin. That was to be the next step of negotiations.

Arestovych has a few bones to pick with Zelensky, so who knows—maybe he’s just hardcore-fibbing in an attempt to embarrass his former boss? Maybe. But maybe not. Rurik Skywalker has the details if you want to learn more.

(There is an actual conspiracy of silence among Western Z-pundits and NAFO shills when it comes to the Istanbul agreement, because it makes Moscow and Kiev look bad. We’ll talk about it more later. Not right now, though.)

The good news is that Kremlin spokesman and truth connoisseur Dmitry Peskov fact-checked Lukashenko’s slanderous claim about Moscow offering to lease Crimea. Verdict: FAKE NEWS.

It’s very disappointing that Moscow’s closest ally would say such fake and defamatory things. Roman Abramovich could teach Luka a thing or two about what real friendship means. Real friends help you exchange Azov commanders (the guys who needed to be “denazified”) for fellow oligarchs like Viktor Medvedchuk. (Remember him? Yes, that guy.)

Maybe this is why Putin omitted “bringing to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians” (denazification circa 2022) when describing what denazification meant in 2024? Maybe, maybe…

One more thing while we’re on the subject. When Tucker asked what denazification would mean in practice, Putin recalled how Zelensky and Canada’s parliament gave a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, who was presented as some kind of Ukrainian freedom fighter. As it turns out, Hunka fought in the SS Galicia Division during WWII. Ergo, Nazism is alive and well and needs to be stamped out.

What Putin didn’t mention is that the Canadian lawmaker who invited Hunka to parliament resigned after it was revealed that the elderly Ukrainian gentleman was an actual Nazi. The Canadian government also did a fair amount of apologizing and groveling. Obviously no one involved was actually sorry—but if it represented a red line for Putin, Moscow could always, I don’t know, suspend diplomatic relations with Canada? There are many options here.

I’m not excusing the Hunka clap-a-thon—it was peak cynicism. And that’s putting it mildly. But are we really supposed to believe that the SMO is being fought so that we can live in a world where Canadian lawmakers don’t make complete asses of themselves, resulting in their resignation?

And if Putin thinks Zelensky is a massive Nazi, why not just kill him? Oh right I forgot—Putin promised Tel Aviv that he wouldn’t do that. How silly of me to forget that.

Is Kiev a breeding ground for Nazism or is it Gazprom’s pipeline partner? Maybe it’s both? If so, maybe a necessary first step towards denazifying Ukraine is to stop paying Nazis to transport your gas to Europe, which arms and funds the aforementioned Nazis? Makes sense to me but I’m just a lowly blogger.

As for “demilitarization”: Ukraine has experienced unprecedented militarization over the past two years. It has never been more militarized. It is more militarized now than it has ever been. I don’t know why some people try to pretend otherwise, but they do, and it’s very odd.

Which brings us to arguably the most important long-term strategic goal of the SMO: Preventing Ukraine from becoming “a hostile anti-Russia”.

The relevant quote from Putin in February 2022: “The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile ‘anti-Russia’ is taking shape. Fully controlled from the outside, it is doing everything to attract NATO armed forces and obtain cutting-edge weapons. For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation.”

Look, I know you want to ask me about whether or not the SMO has stopped the formation of a hostile anti-Russia in Ukraine, but is this a talk show or a serious conversation? If you don’t mind, I will take only 30 seconds or one minute to give you a short reference to history to provide a little historical background.

In 882, Rurik’s successor, Prince Oleg (who was actually playing the role of regent to Rurik’s young son, because Rurik had died by that time), came to Kiev. He ousted two brothers who apparently had once been members of Rurik’s inner circle. Russia began to develop with two centers of power, Kiev and Novgorod.

In the Middle Ages, Prince Jaroslav the Wise introduced the order of succession to the throne. But after he passed away, it became complicated for various reasons. The throne was passed not directly from father to eldest son, but from the prince who had passed away to his brother, then to his sons in different lines. All this led to fragmentation.

Then in 1654, the Pan-Russian Assembly of senior clergy and landowners headed by the Tsar, which was the representative body of the power of the old Russian state, decided to include this part of the old Russian lands into Moscow’s realm. As expected, the war with Poland began. It lasted 13 years, and then in 1654, a truce was concluded.

Do you understand now? Yes, what I’m trying to say is that I’d rather not talk about anything relevant to the long-term outlook for Russia-Ukraine relations. Can we talk about something else? Let’s talk about how tricky the West is. I like talking about that.

Putin in February 2022: “The ‘empire of lies,’ which I mentioned in the beginning of my speech, proceeds in its policy primarily from rough, direct force. This is when our saying on being ‘all brawn and no brains’ applies … they have deceived us, or, to put it simply, they have played us. Sure, one often hears that politics is a dirty business. It could be, but it shouldn’t be as dirty as it is now, not to such an extent. This type of con-artist behavior is contrary not only to the principles of international relations but also and above all to the generally accepted norms of morality and ethics. Where is justice and truth here? Just lies and hypocrisy all around.” (SMO goal: To demonstrate that Moscow will no longer tolerate Washington’s “empire of lies”)

How did that work out?

As Putin revealed to Tucker, Moscow decided to use some “rough, direct force” of its own, reached the gates of Kiev, and then was tricked again. And now the West is stonewalling negotiations. Again. Remember that chain of events I mentioned earlier? It’s a nasty cycle.

Now I will quickly paraphrase this blog post.

EDWARD SLAVSQUAT’S VERY SIMPLE GUIDE TO UNPACKING THE TUCKER-PUTIN INTERVIEW:

Block out the noise—the gushing tweets, the hot YouTube takes, the RT op-eds that are republished by “alt media”—and ask yourself this: If Tucker came to Moscow so that Putin could explain in his own words why the SMO was necessary and what it had accomplished in two years, what have we learned?

What are Russia’s goals in Ukraine, and have they been achieved? How does Russia intend to “stop the war”—as Putin told Tucker? And when the dust settles, will the benefits of the SMO outweigh the blood and treasure expended to execute it? Has the SMO corrected the problems that existed pre-February 2022? These seem like highly pertinent questions.

But before we can answer these extremely relevant questions, it’s important to keep in mind that the fragmented Russian state became easy prey to the empire created earlier by Genghis Khan. His successors, namely Batu Khan, plundered and ruined nearly all the cities…

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Hello friends,

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin went live about an hour ago. You can watch the full thing on Tucker’s website.

Your correspondent will share his thoughts on this discussion later. Maybe on Saturday. Until then, here is the transcript (the real one, not the fake one that was floating around). Share your impressions in the comments section. Please be nice to each other, though! Okay that’s all for now more later have a nice day. — Riley

Tucker: The following is an interview with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Shot February 6th, 2024, at about 7 p.m in the building behind us, which is, of course, the Kremlin. The interview, as you will see if you watch it, is primarily about the war in progress, the war in Ukraine, how it started, what's happening, and most pressingly how it might end. One note before you watch. At the beginning of the interview, we asked the most obvious question, which is why did you do this? Did you feel a threat, an imminent physical threat, and that's your justification. And the answer we got shocked us. Putin went on for a very long time, probably half an hour, about the history of Russia going back to the eighth century. And honestly, we thought this was a filibustering technique and found it annoying and interrupted him several times, and he responded. He was annoyed by the interruption. But we concluded in the end, for what it's worth, that it was not a filibustering technique. There was no time limit on the interview. We ended it after more than two hours. Instead, what you're about to see seemed to us sincere whether you agree with it or not. Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historic claim to parts of western Ukraine. So our opinion would be to view it in that light as a sincere expression of what he thinks. And with that, here it is. Mr. President, thank you. On February 22nd, 2022, you addressed your country in a nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started, and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States, through NATO, might initiate a, quote, surprise attack on our country and too American ears, that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?

Vladimir Putin: It's not that America, the United States was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia. I didn't say that. Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?

Tucker: Here's the quote. Thank you. It's a formidable serious talk.

Vladimir Putin: Because your basic education is in history, as far as I understand.

Tucker: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: So if you don't mind, I will take only 30 seconds or one minute to give you a short reference to history for giving you a little historical background.

Tucker: Please.

Vladimir Putin: Let's look where our relationship with Ukraine started from. Where did Ukraine come from? The Russian state started gathering itself as a centralized statehood. And it is considered to be the year of the establishment of the Russian state in 862. But when the townspeople of Novgorod invited a Virangian Prince Rurik from Scandinavia to reign. In 1862, Russia celebrated the 1000th anniversary of its statehood. And in Novgorod there is a memorial dedicated to the 1000 anniversary of the country. In 882 Rurik's successor, Prince Oleg, who was actually playing the role of regent at Rurik's young son. Because Rurik had died by that time, came to Kiev. He ousted two brothers who apparently had once been members of Rurik's squad. So Russia began to develop with two centers of power Kiev and Novgorod. The next very significant date in the history of Russia was 988, this was the baptism of Russia when Prince Vladimir, the great grandson of Rurik, baptized Russia and adopted Orthodoxy, or Eastern Christianity. From this time, the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. Why? Because of the single territory. Integrated economic ties. One and the same language. And after the baptism of Russia, the same faith and rule of the Prince, the centralized Russian state began to take shape. Back in the Middle Ages, Prince Yaroslav the Wise introduced the order of succession to a throne. But after he passed away, it became complicated for various reasons. The throne was passed not directly from father to eldest son, but from the prince who had passed away to his brother. Then to his sons in different lines. All this led to the fragmentation and the end of Rus as a single state. There was nothing special about it. The same was happening then in Europe. But the fragmented Russian state became an easy prey to the empire created earlier by Genghis Khan. His successors, namely Batu Khan plundered and ruined nearly all the cities. The southern part, including Kiev, by the way, and some other cities, simply lost independence. While northern cities preserved some of their sovereignty. They had to pay tribute to the horde, but they managed to preserve some part of their sovereignty. And then a unified Russian state began to take shape with its center in Moscow. The southern part of Russian lands, including Kiev begun to gradually gravitate towards another magnet, the center that was emerging in Europe. This was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and it was even called the Lithuanian Russian Duchy because Russians were a significant part of this population. They spoke the old Russian language and were Orthodox. But then there was a unification, the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. A few years later. Another union was signed, but this time already in the religious sphere, some of the Orthodox priests became subordinate to the Pope. Thus these lands became part of the Polish-Lithuanian state. During decades the Poles were engaged in colonization of this part of the population. They introduced a language there, tried to entrench the idea that this population was not exactly Russians, that because they lived on the fringe, they were Ukrainians. Originally the word Ukrainian meant that the person was living on the outskirts of the state, along the fringes, or was engaged in a border patrol service. It didn't mean any particular ethnic group. So the poles were trying to, in every possible way, to colonize this part of the Russian lands and actually treated it rather harshly, not to say cruelly, all that led to the fact that this part of the Russian lands began to struggle for their rights. They wrote letters to Warsaw demanding that their rights be observed and people be commissioned here, including to Kiev.

Tucker: I beg your pardon. Could you tell us what period, I'm losing track of where in history, we are in the Polish oppression of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin: It was in the 13th century. Now, I will tell you what happened later. And give the dates so that there is no confusion. And in 1654, even a bit earlier this year. The people who were in control of the authority over that part of the Russian land, addressed war so, I repeat, demanding that they send them to rulers of Russian origin and Orthodox faith. But Warsaw did not answer them, and in fact rejected their demands, they turned to Moscow so that Moscow took them away. So that you don't think that I'm inventing things. I'll give you these documents.

Tucker: Well, I, it doesn't sound like you're inventing. And I'm not sure why it's relevant to what happened two years ago.

Vladimir Putin: But still, these are documents from the archives. Copies. Here's the letters from Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the man who then controlled the power in this part of the Russian lands, that is now called Ukraine. He wrote to Warsaw demanding that their rights be upheld. And after being refused, he began to write letters to Moscow. Asking to take them under the strong hand of the Moscow Tsar. There are copies of these documents. I will leave them for your good memory. There is a translation into Russian. You can translate it into English later. But Russia would not agree to admit them straight away, assuming that the war with Poland would start. Nevertheless, in 1654, the Russian assembly of top clergy and landowners, headed by the Tsar, which was the representative body of the power of the old Russian state, decided to include a part of the old Russian lands into Moscow Kingdom. As expected, the war with Poland began. It lasted 13 years, and then in 1654, a truce was concluded. And 32 years later, I think a peace treaty with Poland, which they called eternal peace, was signed. And these lands, the whole left bank of Dnieper, including Kiev, went to Russia. And the whole right bank of Dnieper remained in Poland. Under the rule of Catharina the Great Russia reclaimed all of its historical lands, including in the south and west, this all lasted until the Revolution. Before World War 1, Austrian General Staff relied on the ideas of Ukrainization, and started actively promoting the ideas of Ukraine and the Ukrainization. The motive was obvious. Just before World War 1, they wanted to weaken the potential enemy and secure themselves favorable conditions in the border area. So the idea which had emerged in Poland, that people residing in that territory were allegedly not really Russians, but rather belong to a special ethnic group, Ukrainians started being propagated by the Austrian General Staff. As far back as the 19th century, theorists calling for Ukrainian independence appeared. All those, however, claimed that Ukraine should have a very good relationship with Russia. They insisted on that. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to restore the statehood, and the civil war began, including the hostilities with Poland. In 1921, peace with Poland was proclaimed. And under that treaty, the right bank of Dnieper River once again was given back to Poland. In 1939, after Poland cooperated with Hitler. It did collaborate with Hitler, no, Hitler offered Poland peace and a treaty of friendship. An alliance, demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany the so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Konigsberg. After World War One, this territory was transferred to Poland. And instead of Danzig, a city of Gdasnk emerged. Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused. Of course, still they collaborated with Hitler and engaged together in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.

Tucker: But may I ask, you're making the case that Ukraine, certainly parts of Ukraine, eastern Ukraine is in effect Russia has been for hundreds of years. Why wouldn't you just take it when you became president 24 years ago? You have nuclear weapons. They don't. It's actually your land. Why did you wait so long?

Vladimir Putin: I'll tell you, I'm coming for that. This briefing is coming to an end. It might be boring, but it explains many things.

Tucker: It's not boring. Just not sure how it's relevant.

Vladimir Putin: Good, good. I'm so gratified that you appreciate that. Thank you. So before World War 2, Poland collaborated with Hitler. And although it did not yield to Hitler's demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler, as the Poles had not given the Danzig corridor to Germany, and went too far, pushing Hitler to start World War 2 by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom the war started, on 1st September 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland. Sobieski. By the way, the USSR, I have read some archive documents, behaved very honestly, and it asked Poland's permission to transit its troops through the Polish territory to help Czechoslovakia. But the then Polish foreign minister said that if the Soviet planes flew over Poland, they would be downed over the territory of Poland. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that the war begun and Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia. This under the well known Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a part of the territory including western Ukraine was to be given to Russia, thus Russia, which was then named the USSR regained its historical lands. After the victory in the Great Patriotic War, as we call World War 2, and all those territories were ultimately enshrined as belonging to Russia, to the USSR. As for Poland, it received, apparently in compensation, the lands which had originally been German. The eastern parts of Germany. These are now western lands of Poland. Of course, Poland regained access to the Baltic Sea and Danzig. Which was once again given its Polish name. So this was how this situation developed. In 1922 when the USSR was being established, the Bolsheviks started building the USSR and established the Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before.

Tucker: Right.

Vladimir Putin: Stalin insisted that those republics be included in the USSR as autonomous entities. For some inexplicable reason, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, insisted that they be entitled to withdraw from the USSR. And again, for some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands, together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine, and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever. Even if we go as far back as 1654, when these lands returned to the Russian Empire. That territory was the size of 3 to 4 regions of modern Ukraine, with no Black Sea region. That was completely out of the question.

Tucker: In 1654.

Vladimir Putin: Exactly.

Tucker: I'm just, you obviously have encyclopedic knowledge of this region. But why didn't you make this case for the first 22 years as president, that Ukraine wasn't a real country?

Vladimir Putin: The Soviet Union was given a great deal of territory that had never belonged to it, including the Black Sea region. At some point when Russia received them as an outcome of the Russo Turkish wars, they were called New Russia or another Russia. But that does not matter. What matters is that Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, established Ukraine that way. For decades, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic developed as part of the USSR. And for unknown reasons, again, the Bolsheviks were engaged in Ukrainization. It was not merely because the Soviet leadership was composed to a great extent of those originating from Ukraine. Rather, it was explained by the general policy of indigenization pursued by the Soviet Union. Same things were done in other Soviet republics. This involved promoting national languages and national cultures, which is not a bad, in principle. That is how the Soviet Ukraine was created. After the World War 2, Ukraine received, in addition to the lands that had belonged to Poland before the war, part of the lands that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania. So Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Soviet Ukraine, and they still remain part of Ukraine. So in this sense, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin's will.

Tucker: Do you believe Hungary has a right to take its land back from Ukraine, and that other nations have a right to go back to their 1654 borders?

Vladimir Putin: I'm not sure whether they should go back to their 1654 borders. But given Stalin's time, so-called Stalin's regime, which, as many claim, saw numerous violations of human rights and violations of the rights of other states. One can say that they could claim back those lands of theirs while having no right to do that. It is at least understandable.

Tucker: Have you told Viktor Orban that he can have part of Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: Never. I have never told him. Not a single time. We have not even had any conversation on that. But I actually know for sure that Hungarians who live there wanted to get back to their historical land. Moreover, I would like to share a very interesting story with you. I digress, it's a personal one. Somewhere in the early 80s, I went on a road trip in a car from then Leningrad, across the Soviet Union through Kiev. Made a stop in Kiev and then went to western Ukraine. I went to the town of Beregovoy and all the names of towns and villages there were in Russian and in the language I did not understand in Hungarian, in Russian and in Hungarian. Not in Ukrainian, in Russian and in Hungarian. I was driving through some kind of village, and there were men sitting next to their houses, and they were wearing black three piece suits and black cylinder hats. I asked, are they some kind of entertainers? I was told no, they were not entertainers, they were Hungarians. I said, what are they doing here? What do you mean? This is their land. They live here. This was during the Soviet time in the 1980s. They preserved the Hungarian language, Hungarian names and all their national costumes. They are Hungarians and they feel themselves to be Hungarians. And of course, when now there is an infringement.

Tucker: What that is, and there's a lot of that, though I think many nations are upset about Transylvania as well as you obviously know. But many nations feel frustrated by the redrawn borders of the wars of the 20th century and wars going back a thousand years, the ones that you mentioned. But the fact is that you didn't make this case in public until two years ago, February. And in the case that you made, which I read today, you explain at great length that you felt a physical threat from the West in NATO, including potentially nuclear threat. And that's what got you to move. Is that a fair characterization of what you said?

Vladimir Putin: I understand that my long speeches probably fall outside of the genre of the interview. That is why I asked you at the beginning, are we going to have a serious talk or a show? You said a serious talk. So bear with me, please. We're coming to the point where the Soviet Ukraine was established. Then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and everything that Russia had generously bestowed on Ukraine was dragged away by the latter. I'm coming to a very important point of today's agenda.

Tucker: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union was effectively initiated by the Russian leadership. I do not understand what the Russian leadership was guided by at the time, but I suspect there were several reasons to think everything would be fine. First, I think that then Russian leadership believed that the fundamentals of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine were in fact a common language. More than 90% of the population there spoke Russian. Family ties, every third person there had some kind of family or friendship ties. Common culture. Common history, finally, common faith, coexistence with a single state for centuries and deeply interconnected economies. All of these were so fundamental. All these elements together make our good relationships inevitable. The second point is a very important one. I want you as an American citizen and your viewers to hear about this as. The former Russian leadership assumed that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and therefore there were no longer any ideological dividing lines. Russia even agreed voluntarily and proactively to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and believed that this would be understood by the so-called civilized West as an invitation for cooperation and association. That is what Russia was expecting, both from the United States and this so-called collective West as a whole. There were smart people, including in Germany, Egon Bahr, a major politician of the Social Democratic Party, who insisted in his personal conversations with the Soviet leadership on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that they knew security systems should be established in Europe. Help should be given to unified Germany, but a new system should be also established to include the United States, Canada, Russia and other Central European countries. But NATO needs not to expand. That's what he said. If NATO expands, everything would be just the same as during the Cold War, only closer to Russia's borders. That's all. He was a wise old man, but no one listened to him. In fact, he got angry once. If, he said, you don't listen to me, I'm never setting my foot in Moscow once again. Everything happened just as he had said.

Tucker: Of course, it did come true. And I and you've mentioned this many times. I think it's a fair point. And many in America thought that relations between Russia and the United States would be fine with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the opposite happened. But you've never explained why you think that happened, except to say that the West fears a strong Russia. But we have a strong China the West does not seem very afraid of. What about Russia do you think, convinced policymakers they had to take it down?

Vladimir Putin: The West is afraid of strong China more than it fears a strong Russia, because Russia has won 150 million people and China has 1.5 billion population. And its economy is growing by leaps and bounds, or 5% a year. It used to be even more, but that's enough for China. As Bismarck once put it, potentials are the most important. China's potential is enormous. It is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. It is already overtaking the United States quite a long time ago, and it is growing at a rapid clip. Let's not talk about who is afraid of whom. Let's not reason in such terms. And let's get into the fact that after 1991, when Russia expected that it would be welcomed into the brotherly family of civilized nations, nothing like this happened. You tricked us. I don't mean you personally when I say you. Of course I'm talking about the United States. The promise was that NATO would not expand eastward. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion. We tolerated all that. We were trying to persuade them. We were saying, please don't. We are as bourgeois now as you are. We are a market economy and there is no Communist Party power. Let's negotiate. Moreover, I have also said this publicly before. There was a moment when a certain rift started growing between us. Before that, Yeltsin came to the United States. Remember, he spoke in Congress and said the good words: God bless America. Everything he said were signals, let us in. Remember the developments in Yugoslavia before that, Yeltsin was lavished with praise. As soon as the developments in Yugoslavia started, he raised his voice in support of Serbs. And we couldn't but raise our voices for Serbs in their defense. I understand that there were complex processes underway there. I do, but Russia could not help raising its voice in support of Serbs, because Serbs are also a special and close to us nation, with Orthodox culture and so on. It's a nation that has suffered so much for generations. Well, regardless. What is important is that Yeltsin expressed his support. What did the United States do? In violation of international law and the UN charter it started bombing Belgrade. It was the United States that led the genie out of the bottle. Moreover, when Russia protested and expressed its resentment, what was said? The UN charter and international law have become obsolete. Now everyone invokes international law, but at that time they started saying that everything was outdated. Everything had to be changed. Indeed, some things need to be changed as the balance of power has changed. It's true, but not in this manner. Yeltsin was immediately dragged through the mud, accused of alcoholism, of understanding nothing, of knowing nothing. He understood everything, I assure you. Well, I became president in 2000. I thought, okay, the Yugoslav issue is over, but we should try to restore relations. Let's re-open the door that Russia had tried to go through. And moreover, I said it publicly, I can reiterate. At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I said to him, I asked him: Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?" Suddenly he said, "you know, it's interesting. I think so." But in the evening, when we met for dinner, he said: You know, I've talked to my team, no, it's not possible now. You can ask him. I think he will watch our interview, he'll confirm it. I wouldn't have said anything like that if it hadn't happened. Okay, well, it's impossible now.

Tucker: Were you sincere? Would you have joined NATO?

Vladimir Putin: Look, I asked the question, is it possible or not? And the answer I got was no. If I was insincere in my desire to find out what the leadership position was....

Tucker: But if he had said yes, would you have joined NATO?

Vladimir Putin: If he had said yes, the process of rapprochement would have commenced, and eventually it might have happened if we had seen some sincere wish on the side of our partners. But it didn't happen. Well, no means no, okay, fine.

Tucker: Why do you think that is? Just to get to motive. I know, you're clearly bitter about it. I understand. But why do you think the West rebuffed you then? Why the hostility? Why did the end of the Cold War not fix the relationship? What motivates this from your point of view?

Vladimir Putin: You said that I was bitter about the answer. No, it's not bitterness. It's just the statement of fact. We're not bride and groom, bitterness, resentment, it's not about those kind of matters in such circumstances. We just realized we weren't welcome there, that's all. Okay, fine. But let's build relations in another manner. Let's look for common ground elsewhere. Why we received such a negative response, you should ask your leaders. I can only guess why, too big a country, with its own opinion and so on. And the United States, i have seen how issues are being resolved in NATO. I will give you another example now concerning Ukraine. U.S. leadership exerts pressure and all NATO members obediently vote. Even if they do not like something. Now, I'll tell you what happened in this regard with Ukraine in 2008. Although it's being discussed, I'm not going to open a secret to you say anything new.Nevertheless, after that, we try to build the relations in different ways. For example, the events in the Middle East, in Iraq, we were building relations with the United States in a very soft, prudent, cautious manner. I repeatedly raised the issue that the United States should not support separatism or terrorism in the North Caucasus's? But they continue to do it anyway. And political support, information support, financial support, even military support came from the United States and its satellites for terrorist groups in the Caucasus. I once raised this issue with my colleague, also the president of the United States. He says it's impossible. Do you have proof? I said yes, I was prepared for this conversation, and I gave him that proof of motive. He looked at it and you know what he said? I apologize, but that's what happened. I'll quote, he says, "well, I'm gonna kick their ass." We waited and waited for some response. There was no reply. I said to the FSB director: Write to the CIA". What is the result of the conversation with the president? He wrote once, twice. And then we got a reply. We have the answer in the archive. The CIA replied: We have been working with the opposition in Russia. We believe that this is the right thing to do and we will keep on doing it." It's just ridiculous. Well, okay. We realized that it was out of the question.

Tucker: Forces in opposition to you? So you're saying the CIA is trying to overthrow your government?

Vladimir Putin: Of course they meant in that particular case, the separatists, the terrorists who fought with us in the Caucasus. That's who they call the opposition. This is the second point. The third moment is a very important one, is the moment when the US missile defense system was created at the beginning. We persuaded for a long time not to do it in United States. Moreover, after was invited by Bush Juniors Father Bush senior to visit his place on the ocean.I had a very serious conversation with President Bush and his team. I propose that the United States, Russia and Europe jointly create the missile defense system that we believe, if created, unilaterally threatens our security. Despite the fact that the United States officially said that it was being created against missile threats from Iran. That was the justification for the deployment of the missile defense system. I suggested working together: Russia, the United States and Europe. They said it was very interesting. They asked me, "Are you serious?" I said, "Absolutely".

Tucker: May I ask what year was this?

Vladimir Putin: I don't remember. It is easy to find out on the internet. When I was in the USA at the invitation of a Bush Sr.. It is even easier to learn from someone I'm going to tell you about. I was told it was very interesting. I said, "Just imagine if we could settle such a global strategic security challenge together. The world will change. We'll probably have disputes, probably economic and even political ones. But we could drastically change the situation in the world." He says "Yes, and asks, "Are you serious? I said, "Of course". "We need to think about it." I said, "Go ahead please". Then Secretary of Defense Gates, former Director of CIA and Secretary of State Rice came in here in this cabinet, right here at this table. They sat on this table. Me, the Foreign Minister, the Russian Defense Minister on that side. They said to me, yes, we have thought about it. We agree. I said, "Thank God, great". "But with some exceptions."

Tucker: So, twice you've described U.S. presidents making decisions and then being undercut by their agency heads. So it sounds like you're describing a system that's not run by the people who are elected, in your telling.

Vladimir Putin: That's right, that's right. And then they just told us to get lost. I'm not going to tell you the details because I think it's incorrect. After all, it was confidential conversation, but our proposal was declined. That's a fact. It was right then when I said, "Look, but then we will be forced to take counter measures. We will create such strike systems that will certainly overcome missile defense systems. The answer was, "We are not doing this against you, and you do what you want. Assuming that it is not against us, not against the United States. I said, "Okay". Very well. That's the way it went. And we created hypersonic systems with intercontinental range, and we continue to develop them. We are now ahead of everyone, the United States and the other countries in terms of the development of hypersonic strike systems. And we are improving them every day. But it wasn't us. We proposed to go the other way and we were pushed back. Now about NATO's expansion to the east. Well, we were promised no NATO to the east, not an inch to the east, as we were told. And then what? They said, well, it's not enshrined on paper, so we'll expand. So there were five waves of expansion. The Baltic states, the whole of Eastern Europe, and so on. And now I come to the main thing. They have come to the Ukraine. Ultimately, in 2008, at the summit in Bucharest, they declared that the doors for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO were open. Now, about how decisions are made there. Germany, France seemed to be against it, as well as some other European countries. But then, as it turned out later, President Bush and he's such a tough guy, a tough politician, as I was told later, he exerted pressure on us and we had to agree. It's ridiculous. It's like kindergarten. Where are the guarantees? What kindergarten is this? What kind of people are these? Who are they? You see, they were pressed. They agree. And then they say Ukraine won't be in the NATO. You know, I say I don't know. I know you agreed in 2008. Why won't you agree in the future? Well, they pressed us then I say, why won't they press you tomorrow and you'll agree again? Well. It's nonsensical. Who's there to talk to? I just don't understand. We're ready to talk. But with whom? Where are the guarantees? None. So they started to develop the territory of Ukraine. Whatever is there? I have told you the background, how this territory develops. What kind of relations? They were with Russia. Every second or third person there has always had some ties with Russia. And during the elections in already independent sovereign Ukraine, which gained its independence as a result of the declaration of independence. And by the way, it says that Ukraine is a neutral state. And in 2008, suddenly the doors or gates to NATO were opened to it. Oh come on. This is not how we agreed. Now, all the presidents that have come to power in Ukraine, they relied on the electorate with a good attitude to Russia in one way or the other. This is the southeast of Ukraine. This is a large number of people. And it was very difficult to persuade this electorate, which had a positive attitude towards Russia. Viktor Yanukovych came to power. And how, the first time he won, after President Kuchma, they organized the third round, which is not provided for in the Constitution of Ukraine. This is a coup d'etat. Just imagine someone in the United States wouldn't like the outcome....

Tucker: In 2014?

Vladimir Putin: No, this was before that. After President Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovych won the elections. However, his opponents did not recognize that victory. The US supported the opposition and the third round was scheduled. But what is this? This is a coup. The US supported it and the winner of the third round came to power. Imagine if in the US something was not to someone's liking and the third round of election, which the US Constitution does not provide for, was organized. Nonetheless, it was done in Ukraine. Okay. Viktor Yushchenko, who was considered the pro-Western politician, came to power, but fine we have built relations with him as well. He came to Moscow with visits. We visited Kiev. I visited it too, we met in an informal setting. If he's pro-Western, so be it. It's fine. Let people do their job.The situation should have developed inside independent Ukraine itself as a result of Kuchma leadership. Things got worse and Viktor Yanukovych came to power. Maybe he wasn't the best president and politician, I don't know. I don't want to give assessments. However, the issue of the association with the EU came up. We have always been leanent into this. Suit yourself. But when we read through the treaty of association, it turned out to be a problem for us since we had the free trade zone and open customs borders with Ukraine, which under this association had to open its borders for Europe, which would have led to flooding of our market. But we said, no, this is not going to work. We shall close our borders with Ukraine then the customs borders, that is. Yanukovych started to calculate how much Ukraine was going to gain, how much to lose and said to his European partners, I need more time to think before signing. The moment he said that, the opposition began to take destructive steps which were supported by the West. It all came down to Maidan and a coup in Ukraine.

Tucker: So he did more trade with Russia than with the EU? Ukraine did.

Vladimir Putin: Of course. It's not even the matter of trade volume, although for the most part it is. It is the matter of cooperation size which the entire Ukrainian economy was based on. A cooperation size between the enterprises were very close since the times of the Soviet Union. Yeah. One enterprise there used to produce components to be assembled both in Russia and Ukraine and vice versa. They used to be very close ties. A coup d'etat was committed. Although I shall not delve into details now as I find doing it inappropriate. The US told us, calm Yanukovych down and we will calm the opposition. Let the situation unfold. In the scenario of a political settlement. We said, all right, agreed, let's do it this way. As the Americans requested, Yanukovych did use neither the armed forces nor the police. Yet the armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? Who do you think you are? I wanted to ask the then US leadership.

Tucker: With the backing of whom?

Vladimir Putin: With the backing of CIA, of course, the organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. We should thank God they didn't let you in. Although it is a serious organization, I understand. My former is a V in the sense that I served in the First Main Directorate, Soviet Union's intelligence service. They have always been our opponents. A job is a job. Technically, they did everything right. They achieved their goal of changing the government. However, from political standpoint, it was a colossal mistake. Surely it was political leadership's miscalculation. They should have seen what it would evolve into. So in 2008, the doors of NATO were opened for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup. They started persecuting those who did not accept the coup. And it was indeed a coup. They created the threat to Crimea, which we had to take under our protection. They launched the war in Donbas in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it all started. There's a video of aircraft attacking Donetsk from above. They launched a large scale military operation. Then another one. When they failed, they started to prepare the next one. All this against the background of military development of this territory and opening of NATO's doors. How could we not express concern over what was happening? From our side this would have been a culpable negligence. That's what it would have been. It's just that the US political leadership pushed us to the line we could not cross because doing so could have ruined Russia itself. Besides, we could not leave our brothers in faith. In fact, just part of Russian people in the face of this "war machine".

Tucker: So that was eight years before the current conflict started. So what was the trigger for you? What was the moment where you decided you had to do this?

Vladimir Putin: Initially, it was the coup in Ukraine that provoked the conflict. By the way, back then, the representatives of three European countries Germany, Poland and France aligned, they were the guarantors of the signed agreement between the government of Yanukovych and the opposition. They signed it as guarantors. Despite that, the opposition committed a coup and all these countries pretended that they didn't remember that they were guarantors of the peaceful settlement. They just threw it in the snow right away. And nobody recalls that. I don't know if the US knew anything about the agreement between the opposition and the authorities and its three guarantors, who, instead of bringing this whole situation back in the political field supported the coup. Although it was meaningless, believe me, because President Yanukovych agreed to all conditions, he was ready to hold an early election, which he had no chance of winning frankly speaking. Everyone knew that. Then, why the coup? Why the victims? Why threatening Crimea? Why launching an operation in Donbas? This I do not understand. That is exactly what the miscalculation is. CIA did its job to complete the coup. I think one of the deputy secretaries of state said that they cost a large sum of money. Almost 5 billion. But the political mistake was colossal. Why would they have to do that? All this could have been done legally, without victims, without military action, without the losing Crimea. We would have never considered to even lift the finger if it hadn't been for the bloody developments on Maidan. Because we agreed with the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, our borders should be along the borders of former union republics. We agreed to that, but we never agreed to NATO's expansion, and moreover, we never agreed that Ukraine would be in NATO. We did not agree to NATO bases there without any discussion with us. For decades we kept asking, don't do this, don't do that. And what triggered the latest events? Firstly, the current Ukrainian leadership declared that it would not implement the Minsk agreements which had been signed, as you know, after the events of 2014 in Minsk where the plan of peaceful settlement in Donbas was set forth. But no, the current Ukrainian leadership, foreign minister, all other officials and then president himself said that they don't like anything about the Minsk agreements. In other words, they were not going to implement it. A year or a year and a half ago, former leaders of Germany and France said openly to the whole that they indeed signed the Minsk agreements, but they never intended to implement them, they simply led us by the nose.

Tucker: Was there anyone for you to talk to? Did you call us President and Secretary of State and say, if you keep militarizing Ukraine with NATO forces, this is going to get, we're going to act.

Vladimir Putin: We talked about this all the time. We addressed the United States and European countries leadership to stop these developments immediately. To implement the Minsk agreements. But frankly speaking, I didn't know how we were going to do this. But I was ready to implement them. These agreements were complicated for Ukraine. They included lots of elements of those Donbas territories independence. That's true. However, I was absolutely confident. And I'm saying this to you now. I honestly believe that if we managed to convince the residents of Donbas and we had to work hard to convince them to return to the Ukrainian statehood, then gradually the wounds would start to heal. But when this part of territory reintegrated itself into a common social environment, when the pensions and social benefits were paid again, all the pieces would gradually fall into place. No, nobody wanted that. Everybody wanted to resolve the issue by military force only. But we could not let that happen. And the situation got to the point when the Ukrainian side announced, no, we will not do anything. They also started preparing for military action. It was they who started the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022. This is an attempt to stop it.

Tucker: Do you think you've stopped it now? I mean, have you achieved your aims?

Vladimir Putin: No. We haven't achieved our aims yet because one of them is de-nazification. This means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements. This is one of the problems that we discussed during the negotiation process, which ended in Istanbul early this year. And it was not our initiative because we were told by the Europeans in particular that it was necessary to create conditions for the final signing of the documents. My counterparts in France, in Germany said, How can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev. I said, all right. We withdrew the troops from Kiev. As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and got prepared for a long standing armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe. That is how the situation has developed, and that is how it looks now.

Tucker: Pardon my ignorance. What is what is de-nazification? What would that mean?

Vladimir Putin: That is what I want to talk about right now. It is a very important issue. De-nazification. After gaining independence, Ukraine began to search, as some Western analysts say, its identity. Well, if the intuitionist, you know. And it came up with nothing better than to build this identity upon some false heroes who collaborated with Hitler. I have already said that in the early 19th century, when the theorists of independence and sovereignty of Ukraine appeared, they assumed that an independent Ukraine should have very good relations with Russia. But due to the historical development, those territories were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland, where Ukrainians were persecuted and treated quite brutally as well as were subject to cruel behavior. There were also attempts to destroy their identity. All this remained in the memory of the people. When World War 2 broke out, part of this extremely nationalist elite collaborated with Hitler, believing that he would bring them freedom. The German troops, even the SS troops made Hitler's collaborators do the dirtiest work of exterminating the Polish and Jewish population. Hence this brutal massacre of the Polish and Jewish population, as well as the Russian population too. This was led by the persons who are well known, Bandera, Shukhevych. It was those people who were made national heroes. That is the problem. And we are constantly told that nationalism and neo-Nazism exists in other countries as well. Yes, they are seedlings, but we uproot them. And other countries fight against them. But Ukraine is not the case. These people have been made into national heroes in Ukraine. Monuments to those people have been erected. They are displayed on flags. Their names are shouted by crowds that walk with torches, as it was in Nazi Germany. These were people who exterminated Poles, Jews and Russians. It is necessary to stop this practice and prevent the dissemination of this concept. I say that the Ukrainians are part of the one Russian people. They say, no, we are a separate people. Okay, fine. If they consider themselves a separate people, they have the right to do so. But not on the basis of Nazism, the Nazi ideology.

Tucker: Would you be satisfied with the territory that you have now?

Vladimir Putin: I will finish answering the question. You just asked the question about neo-Nazism and denazification. The president of Ukraine visited Canada. The story is well known, but being silenced in the Western countries. The Canadian Parliament introduced the man who, as the speaker of the Parliament said fought against the Russians during the World War II. Well, who fought against the Russians during the World War two. Hitler and his accomplices. And it turned out that this man served in the SS troops, he personally killed the Russians, Poles and Jews. The US troops consisted of Ukrainian nationalists who did this dirty work. The president of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined? The President of Ukraine himself, by the way, is a Jew by nationality.

Tucker: Really my question is, what do you do about it? I mean, Hitler has been dead for 80 years. Nazi Germany no longer exists. And so, true. And so I think what you're saying is you want to extinguish or at least control Ukrainian nationalism. But how? How do you do that?

Vladimir Putin: Listen to me. Your question is very subtle, and I can tell you what I think. Do not take offense.

Tucker: Of course.

Vladimir Putin: This question appears to be subtle. It is.

Tucker: Quite pesky.

Vladimir Putin: You say Hitler has been dead for so many years, 80 years. But, his example lives on. The people who exterminate the Jews, Russians or poles are alive. And the president, the current president of today's Ukraine, applauds him in the Canadian Parliament, gives a standing ovation. Can we say that we have completely uprooted this ideology? If what we see is happening today, that is what De-nazification is in our understanding. We have to get rid of those people who maintain this concept and support this practice and try to preserve it. That is what De-nazification is. That is what we mean.

Tucker: Right. My question was more specific. It was, of course, not a defense of Nazis, new or otherwise. It was a practical question. You don't control the entire country. You don't control Kiev. You don't seem like you want to. So how do you will eliminate a culture or an ideology or feelings or a view of history in a country that you don't control. What do you do about that?

Vladimir Putin: You know, as strange as it may seem to you during the negotiations at Istanbul, we did agree that we have it all in writing. Neo-Nazism would not be cultivated in Ukraine, including that it would be prohibited at the legislative level. Mr. Carlson, we agreed on that. This, it turns out, can be done during the negotiation process. And there's nothing humiliating for Ukraine as a modern, civilized state. Is there any state allowed to promote Nazism? It is not, is it? Oh, that is it.

Tucker: Will there be talks? And why haven't there been talks about resolving the conflict in Ukraine? Peace talks.

Vladimir Putin: There have been they reached a very high stage of coordination of positions in a complex process, but still they were almost finalized. But after we withdrew our troops from Kiev, as I have already said, the other side threw away all these agreements and obeyed the instructions of Western countries, European countries and the United States to fight Russia to the bitter end. Moreover, the President of Ukraine has legislated a ban on negotiating with Russia. He signed a decree forbidding everyone to negotiate with Russia. But how are we going to negotiate if he forbade himself and everyone to do this? We know that he is putting forward some ideas about this settlement, but in order to agree on something, we need to have a dialog. Is that not right?

Tucker: Well, but you wouldn't be speaking to the Ukrainian president. You'd be speaking to the American president. When was the last time you spoke to Joe Biden?

Vladimir Putin: Well, I cannot remember when I talked to him. I do not remember. We can look it up.

Tucker: You don't remember?

Vladimir Putin: No.

Tucker: Why? Do I have to remember everything? I have my own things to do. We have domestic political affairs.

Tucker: Well, he's funding the war that you're fighting, so I would think that would be memorable.

Vladimir Putin: Well, yes, he funds, but I talked to him before the special military operation, of course. And I said to him then, by the way, I will not go into details, I never do. But I said to him, then, I believe that you are making a huge mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that is happening there, in Ukraine, by pushing Russia away. I told him, told him repeatedly, by the way, I think that would be correct if I stop here.

Tucker: What did he say?

Vladimir Putin: Ask him, please, it is easier for you. You are a citizen of the United States. Go and ask him. It is not appropriate for me to comment on our conversation.

Tucker: But you haven't spoken to him since before February of 2022.

Vladimir Putin: No, we haven't spoken. Certain contacts are being maintained, though. Speaking of which. Do you remember what I told you about my proposal to work together on a missile defense system?

Tucker: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: You can ask all of them. All of them are safe and sound. Thank God. The Former President. Condoleezza is safe and sound. And I think Mr. Gates and the current director of the intelligence agency, Mr. Burns, the then ambassador to Russia, in my opinion, are very successful, ambassador. They were all witnesses to these conversations. Ask them. Same here. If you are interested in what Mr. President Biden responded to me, ask him. At any rate, I talk to him about it.

Tucker: I'm definitely interested. But from the outside, it seems like this could devolve or evolve into something that brings the entire world into conflict and could, um, initiate some nuclear launch. And so why don't you just call Biden and say, let's work this out.

Vladimir Putin: What's there to work out? It's very simple. I repeat, we have contacts through various agencies. I will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the US leadership. If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks. That's it. And then we can agree on some terms before you do that, stop. What's easier? Why would I call him? What should I talk to him about? Or beg him for what?

Tucker: And what messages do you get back?

Vladimir Putin: You were going to deliver such and such weapons to Ukraine. Oh, I'm afraid, I'm afraid. Please don't. What is there to talk about?

Tucker: Do you think NATO is worried about this becoming a global war or a nuclear conflict?

Vladimir Putin: At least that's what they're talking about. And they're trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat. This is an obvious fact. And thinking people, not philistines, but thinking people, analysts, those who are engaged in real politics, just smart people, understand perfectly well that this is a fake. They're trying to fuel the Russian threat.

Tucker: The threat I think you're referring to is a Russian invasion of Poland. Latvia. Expansionist behavior. Can you imagine a scenario where you send Russian troops to Poland?

Vladimir Putin: Only in one case, if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don't have any interest. It's just threat mongering.

Tucker: Well, the argument, I know you know this is that, well, he invaded Ukraine. He has territorial aims across the continent. And you're saying unequivocally you don't.

Vladimir Putin: It is absolutely out of the question. You just don't have to be any kind of analyst. It goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of a global war and a global war will bring all humanity to the brink of destruction. It's obvious. There are certainly means of deterrence. They have been scaring everyone with us all along. Tomorrow, Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons. Tomorrow Russia will use that. No, the day after tomorrow. So what. In order to extort additional money from U.S. taxpayers and European taxpayers in the confrontation with Russia in the Ukrainian theater of war. But the goal is to weaken Russia as much as possible.

Tucker: One of, our Senior United States senators from the state of New York, Chuck Schumer, said yesterday, I believe, that we have to continue to fund the Ukrainian effort, or U.S. soldier citizens could wind up fighting there. How do you assess that?

Vladimir Putin: This is a provocation and a cheap provocation at that. I do not understand why American soldiers should fight in Ukraine. They are mercenaries from the United States. They're the bigger number of mercenaries comes from Poland, with mercenaries from the United States in second place and mercenaries from Georgia in third place. Well, if somebody has the desire to send regular troops, that would certainly bring humanity to the brink of a very serious global conflict. This is obvious. Do the United States need this? What for? Thousands of miles away from your national territory. Don't you have anything better to do? You have issues on the border. Issues with migration, issues with the national debt. More than $33 trillion. You have nothing better to do. So you should fight in Ukraine. Wouldn't it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement. Already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end. And realizing this actually a return to common sense, start respecting our country and its interests and look for certain solutions. It seems to me that this is much smarter and more rational.

Tucker: Who blew up Nord Stream?

Vladimir Putin: You for sure.

Tucker: I was busy that day. I did not blow up Nord Stream. Thank you though.

Vladimir Putin: You personally may have an alibi, but the CIA has no such alibi.

Tucker: Did you have evidence that NATO or the CIA did it?

Vladimir Putin: You know, I won't get into details, but people always say in such cases, look for someone who is interested. But in this case, we should not only look for someone who is interested, but also for someone who has capabilities, because there may be many people interested, but not all of them are capable of sinking to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and carrying out this explosion. These two components should be connected. Who is interested and who is capable of doing it?

Tucker: But I'm confused. I mean, that's the biggest act of industrial terrorism ever, and it's the largest emission of CO2 in history. Okay, so if you had evidence and presumably given your security services or Intel services, you would that NATO, the US, CIA, the West did this, why wouldn't you present it and win a propaganda victory?

Vladimir Putin: In the war of propaganda, it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world's media and many European media. The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions. Don't you know that? So it is possible to get involved in this work, but it is cost prohibitive, so to speak. We can simply shine the spotlight on our sources of information and we will not achieve results. It is clear to the whole world what happened then. Even American analysts talk about it directly. It's true.

Tucker: Yes I, but here's a question you may able to answer. You worked in Germany famously. The Germans clearly know that their NATO partner did this, but they. And it damaged their economy greatly. It may never recover. Why are they being silent about it? That's very confusing to me. Why wouldn't the Germans say something about it?

Vladimir Putin: This also confuses me, but today's German leadership is guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its national interests. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the logic of their action or inaction. After all, it is not only about Nord Stream one, which was blowing up and the Nord Stream two was damaged, but one pipe is safe and sound and gas can be supplied to Europe through it. But Germany does not open it. We are ready. Please. There is another route through Poland called Yamal Europe, which also allows for large flow. Poland has closed it, but Poland pecks from the German hand. It receives money from the pan European funds, and Germany is the main donor to these pan-European funds. Germany feeds Poland to a certain extent and they close their route to Germany. Why? I don't understand Ukraine, to which the Germans supply weapons and give money. Germany is the second sponsor of the United States in terms of financial aid to Ukraine. There are two gas routes through Ukraine. They simply closed one route. The Ukrainians. Open the second route. And please get gas from Russia. They do not open it. Why don't the Germans say, look, guys, we give you money and weapons. Open up the valve. Please let the gas from Russia pass through for us. We are buying liquefied gas at exorbitant prices in Europe, which brings the level of our competitiveness and economy in general down to zero. So do you want us to give you money? Let us have the decent existence to make money for our economy, because this is where the money we give you comes from.They refuse to do so. Why? Ask them. That is what is like in their heads. Those are highly incompetent people.

Tucker: Well, maybe the world is breaking into two hemispheres. One with cheap energy, the other without. And I want to ask you that if we're now a multipolar world, obviously we are. Can you describe the blocks of alliances? Who is in each side. Do you think?

Vladimir Putin: Listen, you have said that the world is breaking into two hemispheres. A human brain is divided into two hemispheres. At least one is responsible for one type of activities. The other one is more about creativity and so on. But it is still one and the same head. I the world should be a single whole. Security should be shared rather than a meant for the golden billion. That is the only scenario where the world could be stable, sustainable and predictable. Until then, while the head is split in two parts, it is an illness, a serious adverse condition. It is a period of severe disease that the world is going through now. But I think that thanks to honest journalism, this work is akin to the work of the doctors. This could somehow be remedied.

Tucker: Well, let's just give one example. The U.S. dollar, which has kind of united the world, in a lot of ways, maybe not to your advantage, but certainly to ours. Is that going away as the reserve currency, the com the universally accepted currency? How have sanctions do you think changed the dollar's place in the world?

Vladimir Putin: You know, to use the dollar as a tool of foreign policy struggle is one of the biggest strategic mistakes made by the US political leadership. The dollar is the cornerstone of the United States power. I think everyone understands very well that no matter how many dollars are printed, they're quickly dispersed all over the world. Inflation in the United States is minimal. It's about 3 or 3.4%, which is, I think, totally acceptable for the US. But they won't stop printing. What does the debt of $33 trillion tell us about? It is about the emission. Nevertheless, it is the main weapon used by the United States to preserve its power across the world. As soon as the political leadership decided to use the US dollar as a tool of political struggle, a blow was dealt to this American power. I would not like to use any strong language, but it is a stupid thing to do and a grave mistake. Look at what is going on in the world. Even the United States allies are now downsizing their dollar reserves. Seeing this, everyone starts looking for ways to protect themselves. But the fact that the United States applies restrictive measures to certain countries, such as placing restrictions on transactions, freezing assets, etc., causes grave concern and sends a signal to the whole world. What did we have here? Until 2022, about 80% of Russian foreign trade transactions were made in US dollars and euros. U.S. dollars accounted for approximately 50% of our transactions with third countries. Well, currently it is down to 13%. It wasn't us who banned the use of the US dollar. We had no such intention. It was the decision of the United States to restrict our transactions in U.S. dollars. I think it is complete foolishness from the point of view of the interests of the United States itself and its taxpayers, as it damages the U.S. economy, undermines the power of the United States across the world. By the way, our transactions in yuan accounted for about 3%. Today, 34% of our transactions are made in rubles and about as much. A little over 34% in yuan. Why did the United States do this? My only guess is self conceit. They probably thought it would lead to full collapse, but nothing collapsed. Moreover, other countries, including oil producers, are thinking of and already accepting payments for oil in yuan. Do you even realize what is going on or not? Does anyone in the United States realize this. What are you doing? You are cutting yourself off. All experts say this. Ask any intelligent and thinking person in the United States what the dollar means for the US. But you are killing it with your own hands.

Tucker: I think that's. I think that's a fair assessment. The question is what comes next? And maybe you trade one colonial power for another, much less sentimental and forgiving colonial power. I mean, or is the the BRICs, for example, in danger of being completely dominated by the Chinese, the Chinese economy? In a way that's not good for their sovereignty. Do you worry about that?

Vladimir Putin: Well, we have heard those boogeyman stories before. It is a boogeyman story. We're neighbors with China. You cannot choose neighbors, just as you cannot choose close relatives. We share a border of 1000km with them. This is number one. Second, we have a centuries long history of coexistence. We're used to it. Third, China's foreign policy philosophy is not aggressive. Its idea is to always look for compromise. And we can see that. And that's the next point is as follows. We are always told the same boogeyman story. And here it goes again through in euphemistic form. But it is still the same boogeyman story. The cooperation with China keeps increasing the pace at which China's cooperation with Europe is growing is higher and greater than that of the growth of Chinese Russian cooperation. If you ask Europeans, aren't they afraid they might be? I don't know. But they are still trying to access China's market at all costs, especially now that they are facing economic problems. Chinese businesses are also exploring the European market. Do Chinese businesses have small presence in the United States? Yes. The political decisions are such that they are trying to limit the cooperation with China. It is to your own detriment, Mr. Tucker, that you are limiting cooperation with China. You are hurting yourself. It is a delicate matter and there are no silver bullet solutions, just as it is with the dollar. So before introducing any illegitimate sanctions, illegitimate in terms of the charter of the United Nations, one should think very carefully for decision makers. This appears to be a problem.

Tucker: So you said a moment ago that the world would be a lot better if it weren't broken into competing alliances, if there was cooperation globally. One of the reasons you don't have that is because the current American administration is dead set against you. Do you think if there were a new administration after Joe Biden, that you would be able to reestablish communication with the U.S. government? Or does it not matter who the president is?

Vladimir Putin: I will tell you. But let me finish the previous thought. We, together with my colleague and friend President XI Jinping, set their goal to reach $200 billion of mutual trade with China this year. We have exceeded this level. According to our figures, our bilateral trade with China totals already 230 billion. And the Chinese statistics says it is $240 billion. One more important thing. Our trade is well balanced, mutually complementary in high tech, energy, scientific research and development. It is very balanced. As for BRICs, where Russia took over the presidency this year, the BRICs countries are by and large developing very rapidly. Look, if memory serves me right, back in 1992, the share of the G7 countries in the world economy amounted to 47%, whereas in 2022 it was down to, I think, a little over 30%. The BRICs countries accounted for only 16% in 1992, but now their share is greater than that of the G7. It has nothing to do with the events in Ukraine. This is due to the trends of global development and world economy, as I mentioned just now. And this is inevitable. This will keep happening. It is like the rays of the sun. You cannot prevent the sun from rising. You have to adapt to it. How do the United States adapt with the help of force sanctions, pressure, bombings and use of armed forces? This is about self conceit. Your political establishment does not understand that the world is changing under objective circumstances. And in order to preserve your level, even if someone aspires, pardon me to the level of dominance. You have to make the right decisions in a competent and timely manner. Such brutal actions, including with regard to Russia and say other countries, are counterproductive. This is an obvious fact. It has already become evident. You just asked me if another leader comes and changes something? It is not about the leader. It is not about the personality of a particular person. I had a very good relationship with say Bush. I know that in the United States, he was portrayed as some kind of a country boy who does not understand much. I assure you that this is not the case. I think he made a lot of mistakes with regard to Russia, too. I told you about 2008 and the decision in Bucharest to open the NATO's doors to for Ukraine and so on. That happened during his presidency. He actually exercised pressure on the Europeans. But in general, on a personal human level, I had a very good relationship with him. He was no worse than any other American or Russian or European politician. I assure you he understood what he was doing as well as others. I had such personal relationship with Trump as well. It is not about the personality of the leader. It is about the elites mindset, leader deal. If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful actions dominates the American society, nothing will change. It will only get worse. But if in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to the objective circumstances, and that one should be able to adapt to them in time using the advantages that the US still has today, then perhaps something may change. Look, China's economy has become the first economy in the world than purchasing power parity in terms of volume. It's over to the US a long time ago. The USA comes second, then in the 1.5 billion people, and then Japan with Russia in the fifth place. Russia was the first economy in Europe last year, despite all the sanctions and restrictions. Is it normal from your point of view, sanctions, restrictions and possibility of payments in dollars being cut off from Swift services sanctions against their ships carrying oil? Sanctions against airplanes. Sanctions in everything, everywhere. The largest number of sanctions in the world which are applied, are applied against Russia. And we have become Europe's first economy during this time. The tools that U.S. uses don't work. Well, one has to think about what to do. If this realization comes to the ruling elites, then yes, then the first person of the state will act in anticipation of what the voters and the people who make decisions at various levels expect from this person. Then maybe something will change.

Tucker: But you're describing two different systems. You say the leader acts in the interest of the voters, but you also say these decisions are not made by the leader, they're made by the ruling classes. You've run this country for so long, you've known all these American presidents. What are those power centers in the United States? do you think? Like who actually makes the decisions?

Vladimir Putin: I don't know. America is a complex country. Conservative on one hand, rapidly changing on the other. It's not easy for us to sort it all out. Who makes decisions in the elections? Is it possible to understand this when each state has its own legislation? Each state regulates itself. Someone can be excluded from elections at the state level. It is a two stage electoral system. It is very difficult for us to understand it. Secondly, there are two parties that are dominant: the Republicans and the Democrats. And within this party system, the centers that make decisions that prepare decisions. Then look, why, in my opinion, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such an erroneous, crude, completely unjustified policy of pressure was pursued against Russia. After all, this is a policy of pressure. NATO expansion, support for the separatists in Caucasus. Creation of a missile defense system. These are all elements of pressure. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Then dragging Ukraine into NATO is all about pressure, pressure, pressure. Why? I think, among other things, because excessive production capacities were created. During the confrontation with the Soviet Union. There were many centers created and specialists on the Soviet Union who could not do anything else. They convinced the political leadership that it is necessary to continue chiseling Russia, to try to break it up, to create on this territory several quasi state entities, and to subdue them in a divided form, to use their combined potential for the future struggle with China. This is a mistake, including the excessive potential of those who worked for the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It is necessary to get rid of this. There should be new, fresh forces, people who look into the future and understand what is happening in the world. Look at how Indonesia is developing. 600 million people. Where can we get away from that? Nowhere. We just have to assume that Indonesia will enter. It is already in the club of the world's leading economies. No matter who likes it or dislikes. Yes, we understand and are aware that in the United States, despite all the economic problems, the situation is still normal with the economy growing decently. The GDP is growing by 2.5%, if I'm not mistaken. But if we want to ensure the future, then we need to change our approach to what is changing. As I already said, the world would nevertheless change regardless of how the developments in Ukraine end. The world is changing and the United States themselves. Experts are writing that the United States are nonetheless gradually changing their position in the world. It is your experts who write that. I just read them. The only question is how this would happen. Painfully and quickly or gently and gradually. And this is written by people who are not anti-American. They simply follow global development trends. That's it. And in order to assess them and change policies, we need people who think, look forward, can analyze and recommend certain decisions at the level of political leaders.

Tucker: I just have to ask you, you've said clearly that NATO expansion eastward is a violation of the promise you all were made in 1990. It's a threat to your country. Right before you send troops into Ukraine, the Vice President of the United States, went to the Munich Security Conference and encouraged the president of Ukraine to join NATO. Do you think that was an effort to provoke you into military action?

Vladimir Putin: I repeat, once again, we have repeatedly, repeatedly proposed to seek a solution to the problems that arose in Ukraine after 2014 coup d'etat through peaceful means. But no one listens to us. And moreover, the Ukrainian leaders who were under the complete US control suddenly declared that they would not comply with the Minsk agreements. They disliked everything there and continued military activity in that territory. And in parallel, that territory was being exploited by NATO military structures under the guise of various personnel training and retraining centers. They essentially began to create bases there. That's all. Ukraine announced that the Russians were a non titular nationality, while passing the laws that limit the rights of non titular nationalities in Ukraine. Ukraine having received all the southeastern territories as a gift from the Russian people, suddenly announced that the Russians were a non titular nationality in that territory. Is that normal? All this put together led to the decision to end the war. That neo-Nazi started in Ukraine in 2014.

Tucker: Do you think Zelensky has the freedom to negotiate a settlement to this conflict?

Vladimir Putin: I don't know the details. Of course, it's difficult for me to judge, but I believe he has. In any case, he used to have. His father fought against the fascists Nazis during World War Two. I once talked to him about this. I said, Volodymyr, what are you doing? Why are you supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine today while your father fought against fascism? He was a frontline soldier. I will not tell you what he answered. This is a separate topic, and I think it's incorrect for me to do so. But as to the freedom of choice. Why not? He came to power on the expectations of Ukrainian people that he would lead Ukraine to peace. He talked about this. It was thanks to this that he won the elections overwhelmingly. But then when he came to power, in my opinion, he realized two things. Firstly, it is better not to clash with neo-Nazis and nationalists because they are aggressive and very active. You can expect anything from them. And secondly, the U.S. Led West supports them and will always support those who antagonize with Russia. It is beneficial and safe. So he took the relevant position despite promising his people to end the war in Ukraine. He deceived his voters.

Tucker: But do you think at this point, as of February 2024, he has the latitude, the freedom, to speak with you or your government directly about putting an end to this, which clearly isn't helping his country or the world. Can he do that, do you think?

Vladimir Putin: Why not? He considers himself a head of state. He won the elections. Although we believe in Russia that the coup d'etat is the primary source of power for everything that happened after 2014. And in this sense, even today, government is flawed. But he considers himself the president and he is recognized by the United States, all of Europe, and practically the rest of the world in such a capacity. Why not? He can. We negotiated with Ukraine in Istanbul. We agreed. He was aware of this. Moreover, the negotiation group leader, Mr. Arakhamia, his last name I believe, still heads the faction of the ruling party, the party of the president in the Rada. He still heads the presidential faction in the Rada, the country's parliament. He still sits there. He even put his preliminary signature on the document. I am telling you. But then he publicly stated to the whole world, we were ready to sign this document but Mr. Johnson, then the Prime Minister, came and dissuaded us from doing this, saying it was better to fight Russia. They would give everything needed for us to return what was lost during the clashes with Russia. And we agreed with this proposal. Look, his statement has been published. He said it publicly. Can they return to this or not? The question is, do they want it or not? Further on, president of Ukraine issued a decree prohibiting negotiations with us. Let him cancel that decree. And that's it. We have never refused negotiations indeed. We hear all the time, is Russia ready? Yes. We have not refused. It was them who publicly refused. Well, let him cancel his decree and enter into negotiations. We have never refused. And the fact that they obey the demand or persuasion of Mr. Johnson, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, seems ridiculous. And it's very sad to me because, as Mr. Arakhamia put it, we could have stopped those hostilities with war a year and a half ago already. But the British persuaded us and we refused this. Where is Mr. Johnson now? And the war continues.

Tucker: That's a good question. Where do you think he is, and why did he do that?

Vladimir Putin: Who knows. I don't understand it myself. There was a general starting point. For some reason, everyone had the illusion that Russia could be defeated on the battlefield. Because of arrogance, because of a pure heart, but not because of a great mind.

Tucker: You've described the connection between Russia and Ukraine. You've described Russia itself a couple of times as orthodox. That's central to your understanding of Russia. You've said you're Orthodox. What does that mean for you? You are a Christian leader by your own description. So what effect does that have on you?

Vladimir Putin: You know, as I already mentioned, in 988 Prince Vladimir himself was baptized following the example of his grandmother, Princess Olga. Then he baptized his squad. And then gradually, over the course of several years, he baptized all the Rus. It was a lengthy process from pagans to Christians. It took many years but in the end, this orthodoxy, Eastern Christianity, deeply rooted itself in the consciousness of the Russian people. When Russia expanded, then absorbed other nations who profess Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, Russia has always been very loyal to those people who profess other religions. This is our strength. This is absolutely clear. And the fact is that the main postulates main values are very similar. Not to say the same in all the world religions I have just mentioned, and which are the traditional religions of the Russian Federation. By the way, Russian authorities were always very careful about the culture and religion of those people who came into the Russian Empire. This, in my opinion, forms the basis of both security and stability of the Russian statehood. All the peoples inhabiting Russia basically consider it their motherhood. If, say, people move over to you or to Europe from Latin America and even clearer and more understandable example, people come, but yet they have come to you or to European countries from their historical homeland. And people who profess different religions in Russia consider Russia their motherland. They have no other motherland. We are together. This is one big family and our traditional values are very similar. 've just mentioned one big family, but everyone has his or her own family. And this is the basis of our society. And if we say that the motherland and the family are specifically connected with each other, it is indeed the case, since it is impossible to ensure a normal future for our children and our families unless we ensure a normal, sustainable future for the entire country, for the motherland. That is why patriotic sentiment is so strong in Russia.

Tucker: The one way in which the religions are different is that Christianity is specifically a nonviolent religion. Jesus says, turn the other cheek. Don't kill. How can a leader who has to kill - of any country - how can a leader be a Christian? How do you reconcile that to yourself?

Vladimir Putin: It is very easy when it comes to protecting oneself and one's family, one's homeland. We won't attack anyone. When did the developments in Ukraine start? Since the coup d'etat and the hostilities in Donbas began. That's when they started. And we were protecting our people, ourselves, our homeland and our future. As for religion in general, you know, it's not about external manifestations. It's not about going to church every day or banging your head on the floor. It is in the heart, and our culture is so human oriented. Dostoyevsky, who was very well known in the West and the genius of Russian culture, Russian literature, spoke a lot about this, about the Russian soul. After all, Western society is more pragmatic. Russian people think more about the eternal, about moral values. I don't know, maybe you won't agree with me, but Western culture is more pragmatic after all. I'm not saying this is bad. It makes it possible for today's golden billion to achieve good success in production, even in science and so on. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying that we kind of look the same.

Tucker: So do you see the supernatural at work as you look out across what's happening in the world now? Do you see God at work? Do you ever think to yourself, these are forces that are not human?

Vladimir Putin: No, to be honest. I don't think so. My opinion is that the development of the world community is in accordance with inherent laws, and those laws are what they are. It's always been this way in the history of mankind. Some nations and countries rose, became stronger and more numerous and then left the international stage, losing the status they had accustomed to. There's probably no need for me to give examples, but we could start with Genghis Khan and horde conquers, the Golden Horde and then end with the Roman Empire. It seems that there has never been anything like the Roman Empire in the history of mankind. Nevertheless, the potential of the barbarians gradually grew, as did their population. In general, the barbarians were getting stronger and begun to develop economically, as we would say today. This eventually led to the collapse of the Roman Empire and the regime imposed by the Romans. However, it took five centuries for the Roman Empire to fall apart. The difference with what is happening now is that all the processes of change are happening had been much faster paced than in Roman times.

Tucker: So when does the AI empire start do you think?

Vladimir Putin: You're asking increasingly more complicated questions. To answer them you need to be an expert in big numbers, big data and AI. Mankind is currently facing many threats due to the genetic researchers, it is now possible to create this superhuman. A specialized human being. A genetically engineered athlete, scientist, military man. There are reports that Elon Musk has already had the chip implanted in the human brain in the USA.

Tucker: What do you think of that?

Vladimir Putin: I think there's no stopping Elon Musk. He will do as he sees fit. Nevertheless, you'll need to find some common ground with him. Search for ways to persuade him. I think he's a smart person. I truly believe he is. So you'll need to reach an agreement with him because this process needs to be formalized and subjected to certain rules. Humanity has to consider what is going to happen due to the newest development in genetics or in AI? One can make an approximate prediction of what will happen. Once mankind felt an existential threat coming from nuclear weapons. All nuclear nations begun to come to terms with one another, since they realized the negligent use of nuclear weaponry could drive humanity to extinction. It is impossible to stop research in genetics or AI today, just as it was impossible to stop the use of gunpowder back in the day. But as soon as we realize that the threat comes from unbridled and uncontrolled development of AI or genetics or any other field, the time will come to reach an international agreement on how to regulate these things.

Tucker: I appreciate all the time you've given us. I just gotta ask you one last question. And that's about someone who is very famous in the United States. Probably not here. Evan Gershkovich who's the Wall Street Journal reporter. He's 32. And he's been in prison for almost a year. This is a huge story in the United States. And I just want to ask you directly, without getting into the details of it or your version of what happened, if, as a sign of your decency, you would be willing to release him to us and we'll bring him back to the United States.

Vladimir Putin: We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them. We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner. However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps. When I talk about the partners, I first of all refer to special services. Special services are in contact with one another. They are talking about the matter in question. There is no taboo to settle this issue. We are willing to solve it but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached.

Tucker: So typically, I mean this stuff has happened for obviously centuries. One country catches another spy within its borders. It trades it for one of its own intel guys in another country. I think what makes and it's not my business, but what makes this different is the guy's obviously not a spy. He's a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he's not a super spy and everybody knows that. And he's being held hostage in exchange, which is true with respect. It's true. And everyone knows it's true. So maybe he's in a different category. Maybe it's not fair to ask for, you know, somebody else in exchange for letting him out. Maybe it degrades Russia to do that.

Vladimir Putin: You know, you can give a different interpretations to what constitutes a spy. But there are certain things provided by law. If a person gets secret information and does that in conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage. And that is exactly what he was doing. He was receiving classified, confidential information, and he did it covertly. Maybe he did that out of carelessness or his own initiative. Considering the sheer fact that this is qualify this espionage. The fact has been proven as he was caught red handed when he was receiving this information. If it had been some farfetched excuse, some fabrication, something not proven, it would have been a different story then. But he was caught red handed when he was secretly getting confidential information. What is it then?

Tucker: But are you suggesting he was working for the U.S. government or NATO, or he was just a reporter who was given material he wasn't supposed to have? Those seem like very different, very different things.

Vladimir Putin: I don't know who he was working for. But I would like to reiterate that getting classified information in secret is called espionage. And he was working for the US special services, some other agencies. I don't think he was working for Monaco as Monaco is hardly interested in getting that information. It is up to the special services to come to an agreement. Some groundwork has been laid. There are people who, in our view, are not connected with special services. Let me tell you a story about a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the U.S. That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals. During the events in the Caucasus, do you know what he was doing? I don't want to say that, but I will do it anyway. He was laying our soldiers taken prisoner on the road and then drove his car over their heads. What kind of person is that? Can he even be called human? But there was a patriot who eliminated him in one of the European capitals. Whether he did it of his own volition or not. That is a different question.

Tucker: I mean, that's a completely different. He's a 32 year old newspaper reporter.

Vladimir Putin: He committed something different. He's not just a journalist. I reiterate. He's a journalist who is secretly getting confidential information. Yes, it is different, but still, I'm talking about other people who are essentially controlled by the US authorities, wherever they are serving a sentence.

Tucker: There is an ongoing dialog between the special services. This has to be resolved in a calm, responsible and professional manner. They're keeping in touch, so let them do their work.

Vladimir Putin: I do not rule out that the person you refer to, Mr. Gershkovich, may return to his motherland. But at the end of the day, it does not make any sense to keep him in prison in Russia. We want the U.S. Special Services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing. We are ready to talk. Moreover, the talks are underway and there have been many successful examples of these talks crowned with success. Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well. But we have to come to an agreement.

Tucker: I hope you let him out. Mr. President, thank you.

Vladimir Putin: I also want him to return to his homeland at last. I'm absolutely sincere. But let me say once again, the dialog continues. The more public we render things of this nature, the more difficult it becomes to resolve them. Everything has to be done in calm manner.

Tucker: I wonder if that's true with the war though. I guess I want to ask one more question, which is and maybe you don't want to say so for strategic reasons, but are you worried that what's happening in Ukraine could lead to something much larger and much more horrible? And how motivated are you just to call the U.S. government and say, let's come to terms?

Vladimir Putin: I already said that we did not refuse to talk. We're willing to negotiate. It is the western side, and Ukraine is obviously a satellite state of the US. It is evident. I do not want you to take it as if I am looking for a strong word or an insult. But we both understand what is happening. The financial support. 72 billion U.S. dollars was provided. Germany ranks second, then other European countries come. Dozens of billions of U.S. dollars are going to Ukraine. There's a huge influx of weapons. In this case, you should tell the current Ukrainian leadership to stop and come to a negotiating table, rescind this absurd decree. We did not refuse.

Tucker: Sure, but you already said it. I didn't think you meant it is an insult because you already said correctly, it's been reported that Ukraine was prevented from negotiating a peace settlement by the former British Prime Minister acting on behalf of the Biden administration. So, of course they're a satellite. Big countries control small countries. That's not new. And that's why I asked about dealing directly with the Biden administration, which is making these decisions, not President Zelensky of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin: Well if the Zelensky administration in Ukraine refused to negotiate, I assume they did it under the instruction from Washington. If Washington believes it to be the wrong decision, let it abandon it. Let it find the delicate excuse so that no one is insulted. Let it come up with a way out. It was not us who made this decision. It was them. So let them go back on it. That is it. However, they made the wrong decision. And now we have to look for a way out of this situation to correct their mistakes. They did it, so let them correct it themselves. We support this.

Tucker: So I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding what you're saying. I don't think that I am. I think you're saying you want a negotiated settlement to what's happening in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin: Right. And we made it. We prepared the huge document in Istanbul that was initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He had fixed his signature to some of the provisions, not to all of it. He put his signature and then he himself said, we were ready to sign it, and the war would have been over long ago. 18 months ago. However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talk to us out of it and we missed that chance. Well, you missed it. You made a mistake. Let them get back to that. That is all. Why do we have to bother ourselves and correct somebody else's mistakes? I know one can say it is our mistake. It was us who intensified the situation and decided to put an end to the war that started in 2014, in Donbas. As I have already said by means of weapons. Lt me get back to furthering history. I already told you this. We were just discussing it. Let us go back to 1991, when we were promised that NATO would not expand to 2008, when the doors to NATO opened to the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, declaring Ukraine a neutral state. Let us go back to the fact that NATO and U.S. military bases started to appear on the territory, Ukraine creating threats to us. Let us go back to coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless, though, isn't it? We may go back and forth endlessly, but they stopped negotiations. Is it a mistake? Yes. Correct it. We are ready. What else is needed?

Tucker: Do you think it's too humiliating at this point for NATO to accept Russian control of what was two years ago Ukrainian territory?

Vladimir Putin: I said let them think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will. Up until now, there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat to Russia on the battlefield. But now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible, at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition. It is never going to happen. It seems to me that now those who are in power in the West have come to realize this as well. If so, if the realization has set in, they have to think what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue.

Tucker: Would you be willing to say congratulations, NATO, you won and just keep the situation where it is now?

Vladimir Putin: You know, it is a subject matter for the negotiations. No one is willing to conduct or, to put it more accurately... they're willing, but do not know how to do it. I know they want to. It is not just I see it, but I know they do want it, but they are struggling to understand how to do it. They have driven the situation to the point where we are at. It is not us who have done that. It is our partners, opponents who have done that. Well now let them think how to reverse the situation. We're not against it. It would be funny if it were not so sad that. This endless mobilization in Ukraine, the hysteria, the domestic problems, sooner or later it will result in an agreement. You know, this probably sounds strange given the current situation. But the relations between the two peoples will be rebuilt anyway. It will take a lot of time, but they will heal. I'll give you very unusual examples. There is a combat encounter on the battlefield. Here is a specific example. Ukrainian soldiers get encircled. This is an example from real life. Our soldiers were shouting to them. There is no chance. Surrender yourselves. Come out and you will be alive. Suddenly the Ukrainian soldiers were screaming from there in Russian. Perfect Russian. Saying Russians do not surrender. And all of them perished. They still identify themselves as Russian. What is happening is, to a certain extent, an element of a civil war. Everyone in the West thinks that the Russian people have been split by hostilities forever, and now they will be reunited. The unity is still there. Why are the Ukrainian authorities dismantling the Ukrainian Orthodox Church? Because it brings together not only the territory. It brings together our souls. No one will be able to separate the soul. Shall we end here, or is there anything else?

Tucker: Thank you, Mr. President.

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Russia’s upper house of parliament on Wednesday unanimously approved a law that allows for confiscation of property and deprivation of military ranks and honorary titles for activities directed against the state, as well as for discrediting the country’s armed forces. Since the start of its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian government has granted itself a range of new powers to combat information deemed nonfactual and damaging to national security.

Under the new legislation, money, valuables and property acquired as a result of discrediting the military, as well as property used to carry out such activities, is subject to confiscation by court order.

A lawyer who spoke with Fontanka.ru explained how the law worked by providing an example of “a person who committed a crime by publishing a message on the Internet from a mobile phone.” In this case, “the smartphone can be confiscated as an instrument of the crime, and if the convicted person received money for this crime, then that can also be confiscated.”

The legislation also permits the stripping of military ranks, as well as honorary and state titles, from those convicted of discrediting the army or advocating for activities that threaten the state.

Speaking at a plenary meeting in January, State Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said the bill was designed to punish “scoundrels and traitors who spit on the backs of our soldiers, betrayed our Motherland, and transfer money to the armed forces of the country that is at war with us.”

But what constitutes collusion with Russia’s enemies is open to interpretation. Russia was the main exporter of uranium to the United States in November, and Russian gas continues to flow across Ukraine. On February 3, Gazprom disclosed that 42.4 million cubic meters of gas was being delivered daily to Europe via Ukraine’s Yelets–Kremenchuk–Kryvyi Rih pipeline. The gas transit deal with Kiev is expected to last until the end of 2024.

The new law on confiscation of property expands on preexisting legislation that Russian authorities have used to crack down on speech deemed dangerous to national security. Just hours after President Vladimir Putin announced the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Roskomnadzor, the federal government’s media watchdog and regulator, warned media outlets that they were required to use information only from official sources when preparing materials about the military intervention.

Less than two weeks later, on March 4, 2022, the Russian government criminalized “the public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of Russia and its citizens”, with a maximum punishment of 1.5 million rubles and fifteen years in prison.

Courts have not shied away from punishing the enemies of Russia. In March, a 63-year-old man was sentenced to seven years behind bars for “posting two comments under other people’s posts on the VKontakte social network, which contained an aggressive attitude towards the authorities of the Russian Federation and hostility towards the course of the SMO in Ukraine.”

In December, a 28-year-old woman from St. Petersburg was sentenced to six months of “compulsory treatment” at a psychiatric hospital after she was convicted of posting fakes about the military on social media.

At the end of January, a 72-year-old pensioner received five years in prison for posting “information about the number of dead Russian military personnel” and an “emotional video.” The elderly woman admitted guilt but said she had acted emotionally after her brother, who lived in Ukraine, was buried under the rubble of a building that collapsed as a result of shelling. A Rostov region court ruled that she had been motivated by political hatred.

Fines are given for less serious offenses. In March 2022, a St. Petersburg court fined a resident 35,000 rubles for holding a sign in public that read “No to war”. The defendant was found guilty of “expressing his opinion and forming the opinion of those around him about the participation of the Russian Armed Forces in a war, and not in a special operation.”

In November 2023, a resident of Kamchatka was fined 30,000 rubles after a “linguistic study” determined that she had “denigrated” the Russian military in a social media post. Russian media has reported dozens of similar cases over the past two years.

Punishment is not reserved for those deemed anti-war. In September, a former member of a volunteer detachment in Donbass was fined 20,000 rubles for hanging a banner with the inscription: “Freedom for Strelkov”, and scattering leaflets demanding the release of the ex-Donetsk commander from a pre-trial detention center in Moscow. The defendant was found guilty of discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

In December, retired GRU colonel Vladimir Kvachkov was fined 50,000 rubles for discrediting the Russian army. Like Strelkov, Kvachkov supports military intervention in Ukraine but has been highly critical of the SMO’s execution.

A month later, Strelkov himself was sentenced to four years in prison, purportedly in connection to several Telegram posts he wrote. The evidence against Strelkov was deemed a state secret and his trial was held behind closed doors.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained in a November interview that “certain censorship” is required during “wartime”. He acknowledged, however, that the rules against dangerous speech are somewhat ambiguous.

“Where is the line? I can’t answer this question. [The line] is very thin. And therefore, I would advise all those who speculate indiscriminately and throw words of criticism towards our army without understanding the essence of the matter … to think ten times,” Peskov advised.

The line is constantly moving. On February 15, 2022—a week before Russia launched its special military operation—Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov condemned reports about Moscow’s impending military intervention as “information terrorism”.

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On January 25, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy’s birthday, Igor Strelkov—who warned three months before his arrest that “those who have transferred their capital and their loyalty to the West continue to remain in power [in Russia]” and seek “direct collusion with the enemy”—was sentenced to four years in prison after a secret trial in Moscow proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was a dangerous extremist.

For those who don’t know: Strelkov is a small-time blogger of little to no consequence who has committed numerous crimes against the Russian State, including “asking questions” and “trying to participate in the presidential election”. It’s about time this monster did hard labor.

The fact that Strelkov has finally been brought to justice is further proof that everything is going according to plan.

I know what some of you are thinking: Isn’t there a chance that maybe Roman Abramovich will rescue Strelkov in his private jet, like he did with the Azov commanders captured in Mariupol? No, there is no chance of this, because Strelkov doesn't like Abramovich (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and even suggested that this friendly oligarch and UK passport-holder is not a Russian patriot! Really, four years was not nearly enough.

Yes, Igor Strelkov is a scoundrel and a traitor, but in the interest of fairness I have decided to publish his “goodbye, I’m going to prison” Telegram message:

“On the verdict against Strelkov”

First of all, the verdict against me is evidence that the Russian authorities seriously believe that the crisis has been overcome and there is no need to stand on ceremony with the “jingoists”, “whiners” and “all-overs” on the eve of a brilliant geopolitical victory that will write off everything. Apparently, they do not consider the possibility of defeat in the war at all.

At the same time, assessing the situation in the rear and at the front, I come to a completely different conclusion. In my opinion, the United States and its allies really no longer believe in the possibility of a “victory” for Ukraine. However, with no less reason, they do not believe in the possibility of a Russian victory.

In this situation, the bet of Russia’s external and internal enemies is on the further degradation of the country’s socio-economic sphere, which sooner or later (in the absence of a decisive military victory) will lead to internal political cataclysms and a unilateral cessation of military actions by Moscow with a subsequent deepening of the Troubles.

The so-called “Ukraine” does not care about its owners and never has. The simultaneous collapse of the Russian Federation and Ukraine is perhaps the most desirable scenario for the collective West.

We remember that a strong central government, alas, did not in any way prevent the collapse of one state in 1991... Moreover, the very presence of a nuclear arsenal can become a convincing reason for NATO countries to support intervention on Russian territory in order to take it under control followed by liquidation.

Regarding one’s own destiny in the context of the next national tragedy that we are already experiencing (there is no other way to call the civil war between Russians and Russians on the territory of Ukraine), I can only say that the understandable bitterness in my soul is mixed with a certain sense of satisfaction … I cannot help but note that for the first time in 10 years after the events of 2014, the authorities stopped ignoring me. […]

In the end, my [time in prison] will definitely be beneficial to the enemies of Russia, because, on the one hand, I will be “neutralized” by the forces of my potential allies, and on the other hand, my example will be an excellent “demotivator” for everyone who is ready to defend the country at the call of his soul, and not by order of his superiors.

Igor Strelkov. January 25, 2024.

Strelkov’s unhinged rant should serve as a lesson to anyone who wants to ride in Roman Abramovich’s private airplane.

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In an op-ed published in August, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov warned that the Russian government had turned its back on patriotic forces that “support the residents of Donbass and their heroic struggle for the right to self-determination”:

[I]nstead of relying on the creative energy of millions of supporters of socialism and the patriotic revival of Russia—which the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Left Front and other members of the left-patriotic coalition regularly called on the authorities to do after the start of the special operation—officials are right now launching a new campaign of repression before our eyes. […]

Representatives of the left and patriotic forces urgently need to strengthen mutual coordination and form a broad coalition before everyone is imprisoned one by one.

The response to the unfolding repression should be our unity and the nomination of a single presidential candidate for 2024 from all progressive public and political organizations. Otherwise, it may be too late...

With the presidential election two months away, Udaltsov was arrested on January 11 and charged with “publicly justifying terrorism on the Internet”. His was interrogated for six hours before being carted off to a pre-trial detention facility.

What kind of heinous terrorist plot did Russia’s brave spooks foil this time?

Udaltsov is accused of posting a Telegram message in support of five Marxists (the “Ufa Five”) who conspired to “seize power” in Russia. (The group published a video on social media encouraging Russians to resist the “capitalist occupation” of their country.)

The Ufa Five are still waiting for their trial to start (they’ve been in pre-trial detention since March 2022), which means Udaltsov was arrested for justifying terrorism because … he expressed support for five dudes who haven’t been convicted of anything (yet)? That is the official reason for his arrest, yes.

Even though he was caught red-handed trying to participate in his country’s political process—which is the highest form of terrorism—Udaltsov has refused to admit guilt. He faces up to 7 years in prison.

Left Front issued a statement on January 14 under the headline “Criticism of the authorities is not terrorism”:

The Left Front declares that Sergei Udaltsov, like the Left Front as a whole, has never justified and does not justify terrorism … Therefore, LF supporters regard this persecution solely as POLITICAL, the purpose of which is to strangle any opposition activity.

Sergei supports the just struggle of the people of Donbass, is an experienced politician, a patriot of Russia, and a consistent critic of the Russian authorities from socialist and patriotic positions. […]

The Left Front states that instead of solving real problems, the Russian authorities have intensified the fight against the left-wing patriotic opposition. Instead of bringing to justice those oligarchs about whom there is information about their financing of the armed forces of Ukraine, criminal cases are initiated against communists and patriots: Boris Kagarlitsky, recognized as a foreign agent and extremist, the Ufa Five, Igor Strelkov, Konstantin Pavlov and others.

Not much else is known about the anti-terrorist operation against Udaltsov because “the documents justifying [his] arrest constitute a secret protected by law”.

Coincidentally, the investigation into monarchist turbo patriot Igor Strelkov—who was arrested in July on charges of “inciting extremism”—is also top secret.

Despite being on opposite ends of the political spectrum, these two suspected terrorists (Udaltsov and Strelkov) have a lot in common:

1. They both support the Special Military Operation

2. They both think the SMO is being mismanaged/sabotaged

3. They both begged the Kremlin to cleanse Russia of the neoliberal parasites that have been sucking the country dry for the last 30-odd years, and offered to help mobilize patriotic forces across the political spectrum that were ready to work with the government.

4. They both gave up on trying to work with the Kremlin and started organizing for the upcoming presidential election…

… and then they were both arrested.

I’m struggling to express how thoroughly bewildered I am. Why do we tolerate it? And I do mean we, because it’s the same everywhere, really.

The United States, Russia, China, the EU—it’s the exact same system of space lizard rule-by-terror. In Ukraine they will actually murder you if you make fun of Zelensky on Twitter. C’mon, now.

What’s the point of it all? Sometimes I think that our governments are laughing at us as we yell at each other on the internet and kill each other in retarded wars—just laughing and laughing and laughing. But these are terrorist-thoughts and I sincerely apologize for them. Please don’t tell them I said those things.

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Former DNR defense minister and (ex?) FSB officer Igor Strelkov has been taken into custody by security forces working for Russia’s Investigative Committee.

Here’s what RBC published:

On Friday, July 21, law enforcement officers detained Igor Strelkov, two law enforcement sources told RBC. Strelkov’s lawyer Alexander Molokhov confirmed that his client had been arrested.

Law enforcement officers took Strelkov from his house around noon. Employees of the Investigative Committee are conducting a search of his apartment.

According to preliminary data, the detention was carried out at the request of a former employee of the Wagner PMC.

Molokhov said that he was currently looking for the whereabouts of Strelkov.

Strelkov’s wife posted the following message on Telegram:

Today, at about 11:30, representatives of the investigative committee came to us. I was not at home at that time. Soon after, according to the concierge, they arrested my husband took him away to an unknown location.

From friends, I managed to find out that my husband was charged under article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (extremism).

I do not know anything about the whereabouts of my husband, he did not get in touch.

Strelkov is arguably the most prominent “turbo-patriot” in Russia. He was also one of the first voices from the conservative/patriotic Right to criticize the handling of the Not-War. (In fact, as far back as April 2022, Strelkov was calling for Russia to mobilize. This blog even wrote about it back then.)

Strelkov was also a co-founder of the Angry Patriots Club.

In October, Strelkov warned that his arrest would be a very bad omen:

If I am called to serve as a PMC, it means that the patriotic group of authorities has won. If I am imprisoned, then the liberal oligarchic group has won. And if I am imprisoned, forget about victory; if they call me to the front, we will win.”

Rolo wrote about this prophesy in December. You should read what he wrote, because now it is very relevant:

The Slavland Chronicles

Igor "Stormcrow" Girkin Returns From Front Bearing Bad Tidings and Fulfilling His Own Prophecy of Doom

Igor Girkin, better known as “Strelkov” - his nom de guerre - has returned from the front after a short and disappointing deployment. Late is the hour in which this conjurer chooses to appear…

Read more

3 years ago · 13 likes · 5 comments · Rolo Slavskiy

Also: My colleague and friend Iurie Rosca published an insightful video response to Strelkov’s arrest. You should watch it.

It should be noted that Strelkov’s criticisms of Shoigu and the Ministry of Defense were harsh but certainly no worse than Prigozhin’s countless outbursts. And Prigozhin sent tanks zooming towards Moscow—and for some reason is not in prison.

This is very strange.

I don’t know what’s going on but it’s probably not very good. I’ll do my best to keep you guys updated on developments.

UPDATE (2:18 PM Polička Time) — A NEW MESSAGE WAS POSTED ON STRELKOV’S TELEGRAM CHANNEL:

Today, July 21, 2023, it became known that Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, a Russian military, state and political figure, a hero of the Novorossiya militia, was detained in his apartment in Moscow.

Igor Ivanovich is known to the country as a person who does not compromise in matters of protecting the national interests of Russia. This principled position compels his enemies and the enemies of our country to use methods of slander and provocation against him.

Igor Ivanovich openly and reasonably criticized the actions of government officials, including the president, but the freedom of speech provided by the state showed that the country’s leadership complied with Article 29 of the Russian Constitution. Today, confidence in this has been undermined—we see that processes are taking place in our country that indicate the departure of government representatives from basic values.

Recently, after the events of June 24 of this year, Igor Ivanovich consistently sought condemnation at the state level of the actions of an illegal armed group—PMC “Wagner” and the activities of its leader, E. Prigozhin, leading to open threats against him. His detention coincided with an attempt to split the Angry Patriots Club on the issue of the organization’s attitude towards PMC “Wagner” and the consequences that the continued existence of armed and trained mercenaries, including criminals, not burdened by an oath to Russia, has for our country and our people.

We believe that today’s detention undermines the confidence of the country’s population in law enforcement agencies, that it is a continuation of the dishonest fight against Igor Ivanovich, and has extremely negative consequences for the stability of the country in the conditions of the North Military District.

We express our unconditional support to Igor Ivanovich, the leader of the Angry Patriots Club, and we demand that law enforcement officers release Strelkov and make public all those who ordered another provocation.

Companions of Igor Ivanovich Strelkov

UPDATE #2 (4:23 PM Polička Time) — Strelkov spotted in a detention-cage. He looks unamused:

Update #3 (8:13 PM Polička Time) — Interfax has the latest:

Moscow. 21 July. INTERFAX.RU - At the request of the investigation, the Meshchansky Court of Moscow put former leader of the Donetsk militia Igor Strelkov (Girkin) under arrest, an Interfax correspondent reported.

"To choose a measure of restraint in respect of Girkin in the form of detention until September 18, 2023," Judge Olesya Mendeleeva announced the decision.

As reported, Strelkov was detained as part of a criminal case on incitement to extremist activities (Part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). From the materials read out in court, it follows that he was formally charged on Friday.

According to the materials, Strelkov does not admit guilt and does not cooperate with the investigation.

The investigator, petitioning for the arrest of Strelkov, in particular, indicated in court that the suspect could try to hide if released on bail.

In turn, Strelkov himself noted that he would prefer house arrest as a preventive measure, since he has health problems and takes medication. He also stressed that he was not going to hide, recalling that he was wanted by Interpol.

The prosecutor’s office supported the petition of the investigation.

According to the materials, the case in which Strelkov was detained was initiated on July 18. Claims against Strelkov arose from the investigation because of two posts in Telegram.

Strelkov’s lawyer Alexander Molokhov told reporters after the meeting that the court’s decision would be appealed.

Stay tuned.

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On June 25, your correspondent compiled a colorful range of opinions (mostly poached from English-language Twitter, aka Living Hell) about Wagner’s march on Moscow.

Today we will examine a sampling of views about this puzzling event published in Russian-language media.

Sorry for stating the obvious (I need to do so for legal reasons), but this blog post is in no way an endorsement of any of the perspectives I’m about to share with you. Actually, the primary objective of this blog post is to demonstrate that, at least in Russia, there is a diverse range of views about how to interpret and understand Prigozhin’s short-lived SMO.

Military Review (pro-military hardliners)

Let’s begin with Military Review, our go-to source for SMO-related commentary. As Russia’s most popular national security news portal, it would make sense to carefully examine how this website reacted to the troubling events of June 23-24.

I spotted three op-ed dedicated to unpacking Prigozhin’s “insurrection” (maybe there are more). In chronological order:

June 27: What was it and why? Prigozhin’s ‘March of Justice’

The op-ed argued Prigozhin misjudged the amount of support he had among the Russian public: “He could not feel the difference between ‘Prigozhin is probably right about something’ and ‘Prigozhin is our leader, he can do what he wants.’”

The author also asked why the Kremlin failed to adequately address longstanding tensions between Russia’s MOD and Wagner, and conceded that the “March of Justice” appeared to discredit the theory that this rivalry was mere theater:

We do not know why the Kremlin paid little attention to resolving the conflict between the Ministry of Defense and PMCs. Perhaps it was an attempt to maintain some kind of competition for the sake of achieving greater success at the front. Until recently, I wanted to believe that this was just a game to mislead the West and the Ukrainian regime.

But in any case, this episode should teach us that if the towers of the Kremlin knock against each other uncontrollably, then the whole structure may eventually crumble.

Moscow must also adopt tighter regulations and controls for PMCs, the op-ed urged.

June 29: “Another tragic date in modern Russian history”

Two days later, Military Review wrote in a different op-ed that June 24 would be remembered as a “tragic” day for Russia—one that required careful study to ensure such events do not occur again:

There is no doubt that what happened caused significant damage to our country as a whole, as well as to specific individuals in particular - civilians, military personnel, fighters of the Wagner PMC. However, it could have ended much worse. It is necessary to carefully and carefully understand the nature of this conflict, the reasons that gave rise to it, so that this tragedy does not happen again in the future.

July 2: The so-called ‘March for Justice’ is a wakeup call for Russia

Military Review’s third op-ed argued that Prigozhin’s SMO exposed public discontent with Russia’s trajectory, as well as a clear split in the country’s elite:

Criticism of the shortcomings of the system and successes in Bakhmut raised Prigozhin’s popularity to the skies, and he felt like a “denunciator.” And many supported him and continue to sympathize. Although no one has clearly come over to his side, the facts of his deployment in Rostov and the attitude of the population and the military towards him show that there is a real problem, and this problem is recognized by the society.

Society is not satisfied with the economic course of “effective managers” who are turning the country into a raw material quarry; the people are not satisfied with the low standard of living in the country, especially for its many millions of really poor people.

Of course, you can continue to govern using “managed democracy”, but this method, like the policy of the Tsarist government, will lead the country to confusion. The authorities must have feedback from the people: they need a real, and not a “mythical” assessment of the reaction of the people to their actions. Something is not right—change is needed. The unreformability of any system is the main reason for its collapse.

The split in the elite is also serious, where the “patriotic bloc” sees the problems that the liberal pro-Western bloc, which came to prominence during the time of Boris Yeltsin, has created. And the situation in the Northern Military District—the abandonment of territories during the 2022 campaign—are pushing certain groups towards a 1917 scenario, which, in fact, the West is counting on.

Free Press (socialist)

Next up we have Free Press, an independent left-wing (socialist) outlet.

“Rebellions do not arise out of the blue. There are always reasons,” wrote one of the website’s op-ed contributors on June 25:

Prigozhin called his campaign the “March of Justice”. This is no coincidence. Justice has always been a key word for the country. The desire for justice is in our subcortex. All riots, civil wars, and rebellions that break out in Russia are because the people feel deceived and demand a just system. […]

Are we doing okay today? Of course, everyone will say the oligarchs, officials, businessmen close to the authorities—those who know exactly which doors to knock on—[are doing fine].

There is a different answer from the tens of millions of those who have been “scammed” by the authorities more than once over the past 30 years. But what can I say, it’s enough just to name one figure—by the end of 2022, the number of Russians living below the poverty line amounted to 15.3 million people, or 10.5% of the country’s population. Tens of millions more are teetering on the edge of [official] poverty.

Please note: the Wagner columns passed the south of Russia in just a day, their troops could have easily taken the entire Black Earth region. As Prigozhin himself said, his tanks had 200 kilometers to go before reaching Moscow.

They were not greeted with bread and salt, but something tells us that Muscovites, if Wagner tanks entered the city, would hardly have rushed to the barricades, because many would face the question: who or what to protect? Those who have been fattening themselves for the last ten or fifteen years?

I do not want to idealize Prigozhin, an ambiguous figure. In the end, he brought the country to the brink of civil war, but as a businessman who saddled the “theme” of justice, the leader of the PMC Wagner did well for himself.

Will the government draw lessons from “Prigozhin’s campaign against Moscow”? I would like [our country] to learn from this event, only for this, you need to shake up the deck of “the whole royal army”.

It turns out that Russia lives, as it were, in two worlds. In one world … it’s believed that the current order has been established forever, that it cannot be otherwise. In another, non-illusory world, questions and protests are piling up.

June 28: Prominent journalist and naval captain (reservist) Sergey Ischenko wrote that Prigozhin “almost pushed Russia into the abyss of civil war.”

Ischenko claimed Russian soldiers stationed at border posts and checkpoints were facing disciplinary measures for not putting up more resistance to Wagner’s march on Moscow—which, if true, makes it difficult to believe the entire event was “staged”. He also noted that Moscow was almost completely “naked”: only the 45th Special Forces Brigade stood between Wagner and the Russian capital:

From the point of view of any professional military man, there is a considerable legal conflict here. There are situations when there is no time to reason and persuade. We must act. And immediately.

Probably, this is exactly how things went [on June 24] in the helicopter regiment, which received an order, if not to stop, then at least to detain the Wagnerites on the way to Moscow, and that was the case. Now, it is very possible that military investigators will begin to explain this to the “refuseniks”, with unclear legal consequences for the perpetrators of this process.

It can be assumed that similar “debriefings” are taking place today (including with the participation of law enforcement officers) and at much higher levels of law enforcement agencies. After all, there is no escaping the question: how did it happen that a huge column of rebels, in which there were up to a thousand vehicles for various purposes (including tanks, armored vehicles, air defense systems and self-propelled artillery), without encountering any resistance on the ground, almost reached Moscow? And, according to Prigozhin himself, she was forced to stop only 200 kilometers from the capital, leaving behind Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Lipetsk, and Tula?

Again, citing a popular Telegram channel, he claimed that this “review” process is already underway.

June 28: The ghost of the next “March of Justice” is haunting Russia

Sergey Udaltsov offered one of the more concerning interpretations of June 24. Udaltsov is a radical leftist politician, and the head of Russia’s Left Front. (He is the great-grandson of Ivan Udaltsov, rector of Moscow State University in the 1920s, who joined the Bolshevik Party in 1905. A street in Moscow is named after this revolutionary figure.)

Udaltsov wrote:

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about the Prigozhin rebellion and the Wagner march on Moscow. According to some theories, these events were initiated by Putin himself, who allegedly wanted to check how his entourage would behave in a critical situation. But if we examine this event more seriously, Wagner’s demarche has been brewing for a long time, and what happened was a natural result.

The rebellion did not happen in a vacuum … It must be noted that our government, outside the legal field, created a “private military campaign” to solve its “special” tasks [in Ukraine] and, apparently, allowed Prigozhin to earn huge amounts of money through non-transparent schemes.

What preliminary conclusions can be drawn from the events of June 23-24? Of course, nothing has ended. It was only the first “symptom”. The Russian system of power is seriously ill, as representatives of the left-wing patriotic forces have been pointing out for many years.

However, there are no signs yet that the Kremlin will draw the right conclusions from what happened. Most likely, even an armed rebellion will not force Putin to carry out a serious personnel rotation in the leadership of Russia and to announce a “justice march” himself to change the disastrous course that today hinders victory and the development of our country. It is likely that the system will continue to desperately resist much-needed reforms, and our rules in the Kremlin will do whatever is necessary to continue to sit “on the throne.”

In such a situation, all supporters of socialism should not rely on God, the “good tsar” or “Prigozhin’s sledgehammer”, but organize themselves so that in the future they do not become victims and hostages of the bloody showdowns of the bourgeoisie.

Nakanune (socialist)

Yekaterinburg-based Nakanune is a favorite of this blog, mostly because it provides extremely in-depth reporting on social issues in Russia.

The outlet published some brief comments from political scientist Sergey Chernyakhovsky on June 26:

A month ago, I heard opinions that a dual power was emerging in the country— reminiscent of the dual power struggle between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin—that part of the military, intellectual and financial elite was concentrating around Prigozhin. What really happened, and did this split represent a real danger? Not every rebellion turns into a disaster like 1991. [...]

The problem is that the position of the military leadership of the Russian Federation, and its high passivity, has caused discontent and bewilderment in Russian society— which was reflected by Prigozhin’s emotional escapades. While speaking out against the military leadership in the context of the ongoing military campaign is unacceptable, many questions remain for our military leadership.

Nakanune also shared a short op-ed penned by retired Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov. Ivashov is a very controversial figure. He was (is?) the chairman of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, which issued an open letter last year warning that a war with Ukraine would have disastrous consequences for Russia (the letter was covered by this blog just days before the SMO started). His military expertise has been officially recognized, though: It should be noted that Ivashov has written for Zvezda, a state-owned outlet run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

In his June 26 op-ed for Nakanune, the colonel-general expressed bafflement as to why the feud between Shoigu and Prigozhin was not promptly dealt with by the Kremlin.

He also argued that he didn’t think Prigozhin was hoping for regime change, noting that Putin had been the Wagner CEO’s sponsor:

[Wagner’s] trip to Moscow: Here, probably, the goal was also to watch the reaction of the presidential bureaucracy, governors, etc. And Putin in his address to the people did not name “Wagner” or Prigozhin. But there were the words “traitors” and so on.

And here is something that is not quite clear to me. Criminal cases are initiated against Prigozhin, and literally a few hours later all this is disavowed …

He suggested the whole event was “perhaps staged” and speculated that the presence of Wagner troops in Belarus could help bring Kiev to the negotiating table.

Katyusha (conservative/Orthodox/pro-Putin)

Conservative firebrand Andrei Tsyganov made some remarkable comments about Prigozhin’s SMO. In a message published on Katyusha’s Telegram channel on June 28, he said:

The series of “fateful statements” that have befallen Russia over the past two days have caused bewilderment, to say the least. (It's good that we have Lukashenko).

Putin, on the other hand, talked a lot about the rebellion and its “heroic” suppression—which the country did not notice—but he said nothing about [the insurrection’s] causes and prerequisites.

As a result, Russians began to openly laugh at the president on social networks: there is not just a lack of awareness [in Putin’s statements], but a break with reality, and even a fundamental unwillingness to see what worries huge masses of people.

Actually, for us none of this has been a secret for a long time. Or does someone think that Russians really approve of the construction of a digital biometric concentration camp, the omnipotence of global corporations and money owners, etc.? That our soldiers are fighting for Nabiullina and Gref, so that they can introduce the digital ruble and social ratings, or for Kiriyenko to hold his debilitating and corrupting VK fests for children? … Or maybe for Golikova, who defends the interests of the WHO and transgender homosexuals? Or for Manturov, who, instead of developing production and providing for the army, calls for switching to food made from fly larvae … ?

All this fully applies to the army and the NWO: the capitalist system, which has abandoned even the idea of ideology, is focused solely on profit. The oligarchs have no need for a strong army or a sovereign state—not to mention the revival of the empire. Isn’t that why even our arms factories belong to private individuals?

All these years society has tried to send signals upward. The authorities for the most part pretended not to notice them. Now, when it came to a military revolt, there was (and still remains) hope that the authorities will finally begin to hear the people.

In the meantime, we see only attempts to “sweep under the rug” and tighten the screws by handing over tanks and guns to the internal troops (Rosgvardia) and taking over the last island of freedom—Telegram...

If the supreme power was listening, we would expect resignations from, among others, Shoigu … Shoigu has long been a symbol that evokes a very definite attitude both in the army and in society. Just like Nabiullina or Gref.

Tsar Alexander I understood this and therefore dismissed his beloved Barclay de Tolly, whose name was associated with the failures of the first months of the 1812 campaign, and appointed Kutuzov, whom he did not like but was popular in the army, because he understood that the country needed to win.

His video commentary:

OSVR (neo-Soviet)

Readers will recall the interview I published with Dr. Alina Lushavina, the head of Russia’s Independent Association of Doctors.

Her group of physicians is part of the All-People’s Union of the Revival of Russia (OSVR), a neo-Soviet sociopolitical movement in Russia.

Dr. Lushavina wrote on her public VK (Russian Facebook) page on June 25:

Let’s summarize the past events.

For two days the whole country watched the squabbling of the clans of the oligarchs.

Yevgeny Prigozhin is a businessman. And when the work of his business began to put spokes in the wheels, he decided to show his teeth. Shoigu did not just want to disband the Wagnerites—the [Russian MOD] even encroached on the Wagner base in the Central African Republic. And this is money, contracts and the interest of the Russian elites, for whom Prigozhin works.

Disputes began, and Wagner simply decided to intimidate the system of power—what happens if you can’t negotiate. 

While the peasants happily cheered and hooted for Prigozhin, thinking that he had risen against Putin’s dictatorship, Prigozhin was solving his commercial issues. And it was all resolved quickly and efficiently. PMCs have vast experience in armed rebellions and they know how to work quickly. In one day the case was closed, the gold bars and passports were returned. Now the PMC will work in Belarus. This isn’t good for us, because it is better to have an excellent army of Russian fighters at home.

And what did the people get in return?

• 13 dead pilots. 13 professionals laid down their lives for the sake of an agreement between the oligarchs. They died for nothing.

• The guarantor’s ratings dropped to zero.

• Prigozhin’s ratings dropped, because when you give up and don’t finish what you started, people experience disappointment and contempt.

• Lukashenka's ratings skyrocketed.

• Two new laws: if you REFUSE TO FOLLOW THE ORDERS OF martial law, expect arrest for 30 days!

• The draft age of reserve officers in martial law and mobilization has also increased to 70 and 65 years. Squabbling squabbling, and martial law is being prepared.

• Some cities have not fully canceled the Counter Terrorism Operation regime.

• Arrests of human rights defenders (Prigozhin's accomplices). Ruined roads, a blown up oil depot, gray hair, thousands of sissies who most likely left the country on 300k-ruble tickets to Turkey and Dubai ...

• Kadyrov’s fighters sitting in a traffic jam near Rostov and taking pictures on the Moscow Ring Road.

• Understanding that in Russia there is unrest, crisis and anarchy.
  
  Our people’s interests are disregarded by those who have money, this must be understood. And only we ourselves can save the country—by people rallying together and unifying. This is what the two-day squabble should teach us. Therefore, join the OSVR and do not expect a change in events. But together we will figure out what to do.
  
  There’s nobody except us.

Closing thoughts from Edward

The above commentaries span Russia’s entire ideological spectrum. What’s strange though is that this diversity of views is barely represented in Western alternative media. From my observations, it seems many Western pundits insist Prigozhin’s SMO was a sneaky plot to redeploy troops to Belarus. Case closed.

Why they believe the events of June 23-24 were necessary to send somewhere between 8-40k Wagnerites to Belarus is a difficult question to answer. Do US spy satellites stop working when mercenaries are rerouted under the “guise” of a highly worrying (and deadly) internal dispute? And when can we expect the fabled assault on Kiev, which was promised to us in the hours after Lukashenko revealed his successful negotiations with Prigozhin? It’s difficult to ignore the glaring hole in this narrative: If this is a real 5D move, spotted by Western alt media, how exactly did it “trick” Kiev and its Western sponsors?

Furthermore, why is it that this troubling event is being reported by Western alt media within the context of no context? There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful attempts to explain the long and well-documented series of circumstances that led to the “march on Moscow”. It is very odd.

For anyone who is willing to examine this event in its proper context, the idea that this “insurrection” was a clever ploy by Moscow is arguably the most speculative possible explanation for what we all witnessed.

It is true that there are many unanswered questions, and I would never pretend to have The Answers. But surely discussion in Western alternative media should more closely resemble the debate happening within Russia itself?

Just some things to think about.

Until next time,

-Riley

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The excitement was electric. Muscovites were pawning their most prized Beanie Babies in hopes of raising the necessary funds to buy a ticket.

It was going to be the fight of the millennium.

Shoigu, the Terror of Tuva, specialized in the ancient art of Tuvan spoon-bending (when you bill the government 1 million rubles to bend a spoon, then outsource this task to a quadriplegic for 50 rubles, and pocket the difference).

Prigozhin, known by his millions of fans as the Kleptocratic Cook, was world-famous for his signature “move”—mercilessly nibbling on the toes of his opponents until they tapped out, bleeding and humiliated. These are the facts.

Dana White was waiting patiently in the Octagon that he built with his bare hands. The clock was ticking. But the fight was canceled. Maybe some other time if it can be rescheduled, time permitting.

A small but impressively speedy army of mercenaries came within 200 km (124 miles) of Moscow yesterday evening. They stopped, had a cig, or maybe a nice refreshing hookah, and turned back.

Their leader, who vowed to punish the evil deeds of Russia’s military leadership, was banished to Belarus. You could do worse, honestly.

I don’t think it is necessary to give a detailed play-by-play of what occurred on June 24. Undoubtedly, you have already been bashed over the head with millions of BREAKING NEWS updates, salacious and completely unconfirmed rumors, and various other morsels of “information” that are, on the whole, entirely useless.

(We will discuss a few important details being ignored by Western alt media, but more on that later.)

The most important Update is that Lukashenko mediated a deal, and the mutiny, or insurrection, or coup d'état, or 11D psyop—what happened yesterday goes by many different names—came to a screeching halt.

What was in this deal? As per tradition, the proles are never told, but Peskov revealed a few details:

• In recognition of their past military service, Wagner fighters who participated in the “March of Justice” (that’s what they called it—BLM vibes?) will not be prosecuted. Prigozhin is included in this amnesty policy.

• Wagner members who didn’t participate can sign contracts with Russia’s MOD.

• Prigozhin receives a free Greyhound bus ticket to Belarus (one-way).

• There were no discussions about personnel changes in the Ministry of Defense.

That last bullet-point is key, because if we take Prigozhin at his word—which of course must be done cautiously—he wanted Shoigu and Gerasimov to “retire”.

The whole affair was very confusing, worrying, and as I have repeatedly stressed—weird.

There’s a lot to discuss. There is no possible way to cover everything, so I will just share my initial observations.

Before I dive into this total mess, I just want to ask my dear readers for a quick favor: I know there is a wide range of opinions on what we all just witnessed. I am 100% OK with this. You should also be OK with this. Please do not pretend that you know exactly what happened, and why, because you don’t.

I am genuinely shocked by how personally people (many of whom have zero connection to Russia) have taken these events. Based on scant or zero evidence, and wild conjecture, they have convinced themselves they are Frodo E-Baggins, heroically transporting the Tweet of Power to Mount Zuckberg, or some other urine-stained corner of the internet, where they balk at the pathetic simpletons who Don’t Understand.

Please don’t be this person—I beg you.

An incomplete sampling of Views

Let’s start by reviewing how various pundits and commentators interpreted Prigozhin’s SMO. I will select viewpoints from across the ideological spectrum, for the sake of diversity.

Leonid Ragozin, a ferocious anti-Kremlin journalist, and BBC alumnus, highlighted how a poplar Russian Telegram channel floated the idea that Prigozhin pulled off a masterful diversion. He conceded that this theory also crossed his mind:

Rybar [ran] a conspiracy theory regarding [the] Wagner putsch, which suggests it was a distractive way of redeploying Wagner to Ukraine’s northern border, with the view of a future offensive. A thought that occurred to me today, must admit. But too much humiliation for Putin.

This theory was also proposed by Larry Johnson. There are related sub-theories, like the idea that Prigozhin tricked the United States into giving him $6 billion, as part of a sneaky 5D plot. People on Twitter like this idea.

Kim Dotcom, who put forward some very creative theories about the “insurrection” while it was in progress, had this to say once the dust settled:

The craziest 24 hours. With the Warner [sp] Group situation resolved things are going to change. This was a wake-up call for Putin. He can’t afford to slow play the US proxy war in Ukraine anymore.

Pepe Escobar announced a total victory for Putin:

Putin wins ON ALL COUNTS. Making an absolute ass of Western MSM again; Rallying people to end the war quicker; Amassing a list of traitors and 5th, 6th columnists; And freedom to deploy CTO [Counter-Terrorist Operation] martial law powers.

Shortly before the truce was announced, Scott Ritter wrote on his blog that Prigozhin and his fighters were Western-backed traitors who would be mercilessly crushed:

What Prigozhin and his supporters, both in the command and rank and file of Wagner, and those collaborators in the social media universe, have done in attacking the constitutional government of Russia is nothing short of treason. […]

But the critical point here isn’t Wagner’s treasonous behavior, but rather the fact that Russia’s enemies—in particular the British and American intelligence services—saw fit to facilitate a substantive armed insurrection designed to remove from power the government of a nuclear armed power.

I’m not sure if he has commented on the most recent developments. If he has, he didn’t post them on his Telegram channel.

Eccentric Russian nationalist and transhumanist Anatoly Karlin cautioned that the “settlement” might not last:

Skeptical about peace deal. Prigozhin “crossed the Rubicon”—Wagner brought down Russian Air Force planes - discredited the Putin system more than anyone else - seems unlikely he'll “live happily ever after” if he turns back. I suppose we'll see who's psyopsing who soon enough.

Marko Marjanović wrote a very thought-provoking Twitter thread, in which he argued that Wagner is lame, and Prigozhin got himself in trouble by making promises to Putin that he couldn’t keep. (By the way: If you are craving more Marko, let him know in the comments. I think we can bully him into publishing a full article.)

Rolo believes Prigozhin emerged from the Wagner SMO as the clear victor. It’s difficult to provide a succinct summary for why he came to this conclusion, so I encourage you to read his musings in full. They are very interesting.

Obviously, many people hold views that are a mixture of all the perspectives documented above. And there’s also fierce debate about what this all means for Putin, Prigozhin, Shoigu, the SMO, Ukraine’s counter-offensive, etc. Really, it hurts my head just thinking about all the different angles.

There are also many interesting takes from Russian pundits, but we’ll cover them in a different blog post.

Edward’s hot take

Now I’ll share my own reactions.

First, I want to review what I typed when this whole thing kicked off:

• I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t pretend to know.

• The theory that this was all “faked” (or staged/part of some sort of insider scheme between the two “belligerents”) seemed unlikely to me. (I will return to this point in a moment.)

• Wagner’s SMO didn’t come out of the blue—there were many warning signs.

• I didn’t trust Prigozhin.

• I didn’t trust Shoigu.

• Putin was in Pink Pony Land.

• I wrote this: “It’s too soon to say that we are witnessing the opening salvo of a civil war. Who knows? Maybe this will all be over by the end of the day.”

• Resist the urge to go bananas. Listen to JS Bach. (The most important point.)

It’s true I also announced FULL BLOG MOBILIZATION, which perhaps was premature—although I’m not so sure. Personally, I don’t think we’ve closed the book on this bizarre event. We’ll see though. For now, this blog remains in DEFCON 1 RED LEVEL SAFE & EFFECTIVE BLOG ALERT. It’s my blog, I make the rules.

Okay, here’s my take: Personally, I don’t think you can call this a W for Prigozhin if Shoigu is still running the MOD (although I understand the dangers of contradicting King Rolo).

At the same time, I wouldn’t call this a W for Putin, either.

Let me be clear: I’m very glad that potential bloodshed was avoided. (There was bloodshed, though! Despite what some people are claiming. Be patient, we’ll talk about it…) In this sense, it’s a W for everyone. Maybe.

The problem for Putin is that he publicly called Prigozhin a traitor and an insurrectionist, and ordered security forces to quell the “revolt”.

Then, as Wagner was inching closer to Moscow, Russian state media announced Prigozhin was backed by MI6/CIA/Mossad.

Then Ritter and half of the “alternative media” echoed this claim. (By the way, I don’t want to pick on Ritter. Just using him as an example.)

Then Luka revealed a deal had been reached, which meant Putin negotiated with a CIA/Mossad traitor, promised him safe passage to Belarus, and gave full amnesty to his insurgents? I’m not trying to nitpick, or be pedantic, but am I out of line to suggest this is a bit strange and contradictory?

I fully appreciate that Putin was in quite a pickle. After all, just a month ago he hailed Wagner as heroes. But why accuse Prigozhin of being a Western stooge, only to cut a deal with him literally two hours later?

This is either the result of very poor messaging from the Kremlin (which is its specialty), or something else is going on here. There are many possibilities, I cannot explore them all. However, I want to address the psyop theory, since it is very popular, and while I think it is possible, it is not my top candidate for explaining what the heck just happened.

Admittedly, the information we have is murky, but it’s reasonable to work from the assumption that approximately 5,000 Wagner fighters were approximately 200 km from Moscow before they were ordered to go back to their bases.

Can you seize Moscow with 5,000 troops? Definitely no. But, like the Original SMO and its failed attempt to “take” Kiev, I don’t think it was Prigozhin’s intention to storm the Russian capital.

In this sense, the Wagner SMO was a psyop—it was likely designed to put pressure on Russia’s upper-management to cave into his demands (Shoigu out!), or at the very least, force Putin to the negotiating table.

Well, Prigozhin got his negotiations, but I don’t think he got everything he wanted (again, if we take Prigozhin at his word). He was probably hoping his supporters inside Putin’s administration would be able to convince Russia’s president that he needed to dump Shoigu to avoid triggering a larger internal conflict. He was too hopeful.

For this “psyop” to be successful, Wagner needed to demonstrate that it was largely unopposed. It was able to demonstrate this—to such an extent that many people believe the whole thing was “staged” in some way.

I’ve seen two pieces of (alleged) evidence to support this idea. First, that a Wagner tank (only one, as far as I know) had its muzzle covered. Second, not a single Russian soldier or Wagner fighter was harmed on June 24—proof that it was all fake!

To address the first point: And? Was this tank leading the column of dozens of military vehicles that rolled into Rostov? Do we know what the situation was like in Rostov when it arrived? Wagner was apparently able to park in front of the Southern Military District HQ unopposed—was there some reason why this tank needed to be ready to fire?

If Wagner was putting on a show of force, and had no intention of fighting, is there some reason why it would be unusual for the tank’s muzzle to be covered? If necessary, would it be so hard to uncover it? Why is it that these basic questions aren’t being asked by people who seem to believe this single photo serves as conclusive proof of something?

Second point: If you think there were no deaths on June 24, you are mistaken. This unavoidable reality is all over Russian-language media.

For example, Readovka (a very large, mainstream news outlet, with one of Russia’s largest Telegram channels) reported yesterday:

15 soldiers were killed in today’s clashes with Wagner PMC

Today, 15 servicemen of the RF Armed Forces were killed during a conflict with Wagner PMC fighters. Most of them are combat pilots. [So far], an Il-18 aircraft was shot down. There were at least eight servicemembers on board.

In addition, today a Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter was destroyed—the entire crew was killed. These servicemen were faithful to their oath to the end.

(It was later clarified that the destroyed aircraft was actually an Il-22.)

A more recent update from a very popular Russian outlet (BRIEF):

Prigozhin, under the terms of the [peace?] agreement, agreed to pay 50 million rubles in compensation to the families of the dead pilots.

Why would Prigozhin pay 50 million rubles to the families of dead pilots that he didn’t kill? Curious minds want to know. Or is this also a sneaky 5D plot?

The reason why there wasn’t more bloodshed is very likely that Prigozhin calculated correctly—the Russian military didn’t want to fight its brethren. Some of them probably supported what Wagner was doing.

That’s how I see things, at least. But if you have different views that’s fine.

On a totally unrelated note, it was revealing that RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan did not post a single social media message on June 24.

It’s very, very rare for Simonyan to go a single day without posting something on social media. The reason for this is because like all Very Serious Journalists, she is a validation-starved human tragedy.

(Remember that gimmick from the idiotic television series “Lost”, where some guy in a bunker had to press a button every 30 seconds, or else? That’s Margarita. I am positive she would experience spontaneous self-combustion if someone took her iPhone 666 away.)

As of 3:00 p.m. Khachapuri Time, Simonyan still hasn’t barfed up a single tweet or Telegram post since the evening of June 23—shortly before Prigozhin’s festivities kicked off.

Was she hedging? Would be funny. I wouldn’t put it past a vax-shilling schizo such as herself.

One last thing.

It’s very true that this weird event has allowed the Russian government to impose all sorts of new and exciting restrictions on the population. The so-called “Counter-Terrorist Operation regime” is still in place, although Peskov promises it will be lifted soon. He promises a lot of things.

Putin on Saturday also signed a bill allowing for the detention of individuals for up to 30 days if martial law is declared. (Martial law has not been declared, by the way.)

But do you really need to send Wagner tanks barreling towards Moscow to justify such measures? I would argue no. There are much simpler and less humiliating ways.

Be well,

—Riley

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UPDATE (NOON TBILISI TIME): PUTIN GAVE AN ADDRESS SAYING ROSTOV WAS NO LONGER UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE RUSSIAN MILITARY, AND ORDERED SECURITY FORCES TO TAKE NECESSARY MEASURES TO RECLAIM THE CITY. (TRANSCRIPT)

UPDATE (10:15AM TBILISI TIME): It’s real, guys. Wagner is causing mischief. Russia’s MOD issued an appeal to the PMC’s fighters:

UPDATE (9:30AM TBILISI TIME): Strelkov, who hates Prigozhin with all his heart, has confirmed that Wagner has taken the Southern Military District HQ.

UPDATE (9:00AM TBILISI TIME): Prigozhin claims Wagner now controls Rostov’s military facilities.

There was a huge amount of uncertainty and confusion when I filed my frenzied 2AM report about Prigozhin going rogue.

Things are still very uncertain, strange, and weird. However, there appears to be some … clarity? For lack of a better term.

Local media has confirmed that “the center [of Rostov] was occupied by unidentified military forces.” It appears these unidentified but heavily armed men (who have tanks, etc.) have surrounded Russia’s Southern Military District Headquarters.

The latest from 161.ru:

The governor of the Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, urged Rostovites to stay at home for the second time overnight.

“In connection with the current situation, I ask you to refrain from traveling to the city center and, if possible, not to leave your homes,” the message on Golubev’s Telegram channel says.

The warning was posted at 5:51 am, two hours after a similar message. During this time, unidentified armored vehicles managed to enter the center of Rostov, and fighters in camouflage and with white armbands cordoned off the headquarters of the Southern Military District, the city administration and other buildings.

I have seen unconfirmed reports claiming that these camo-clad men have also surrounded or taken control of Rostov’s police department (on Budennovsky Street), as well as the city’s Ministry of Internal Affairs building, FSB outpost, and Administration office.

161.ru has a “live blog” of updates on the situation in Rostov, although I’m not sure if they are still updating it. RT is also maintaining a page with live updates about the Wagner vs. MOD/FSB cage fight. Just keep in mind that it’s RT.

I was scrolling through the comments on my emergency dispatch. Some of you suggested this whole thing was a Deep Fake theater production. Maybe? Look, it’s 2023, I am not going to wag my finger at anyone who questions the prevailing narrative.

But—in my humble opinion—there is more and more evidence that this is real, it is very serious, and things are probably going to get extremely weird.

What exactly is happening right now in Russia? I DON'T KNOW, FRIENDS. But something is up. In the hours/days ahead, it’s going to become very difficult to separate fact from fiction. I will do my best to relay accurate info to you, but please remember I am also human. Stay safe everyone, and if you have juicy Russia-related scoops, you know how to reach me.

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