The essential Saker
The dean of "pro-Russia" punditry is retiring. Big clown shoes to fill.
Andrei Raevsky, better known as the Saker, is shuttering his blog.
His razor-sharp analyses—which cut through the noise of the 24/7 news cycle, like a Japanese steak knife through a leather boot—will be dearly missed during these increasingly precarious and turbulent times.
Thankfully, like his predecessors Confucius and Aristotle, the Saker has left us with volumes of blog posts, which will help us navigate the stormy seas ahead.
August 2021: “[The unvaxxed] will have self-inflicted and rather shitty lives”
As governments around the world—including the Russian government!—began forcing experimental gene therapies on their citizenry, the Saker gave a stirring sermon from his blog-pulpit: Mandatory vaccination decrees were “not necessarily wrong” because “the government was in charge of public health.”
The “anti-COVID crusaders” would eventually have to “cave in to the social pressure” and accept the inevitability of “COVID passports.”
The Saker smugly predicted:
My bet is that in 1-2 years the anti-vaxx hysteria will die down again, and that the majority of those who now say “never! never! over my dead body!” will quietly get vaxxed, and the few who won’t will have a self-inflicted and rather shitty life which, of course, is their right!
A profoundly shitty take.
The above videos document the “self-inflicted shitty lives” of two elderly Russian women who didn’t want to be injected with an unproven AstraZeneca knock-off.
November 2021: “Lukashenko must go”
Three months before Russian tanks carrying out “joint drills” in Belarus barreled towards Kiev, the Saker joined forces with Emmanuel Macron to demand regime change in Minsk.
It’s difficult to imagine a more accommodating and loyal friend to Moscow than Lukashenko.
Not according to Mr. Saker.
Our blog-friend Marko Marjanović wrote an entire series ( Part I, II, III, and IV) deconstructing the Saker’s curious (and curiously timed) fatwah against Lukashenko.
Here’s the two-paragraph executive summary:
The verdict is in. Belarus’ Lukashenko is “a megalomaniac” who “lacks vision”. He is “incompetent”. He “cares only about himself”. He “needs to be replaced”. He has made Belarus into a “parasite”. His policy is “unacceptable” and his presence is intolerable. We must “get rid of” him. In short: “Lukashenko must go”! […]
As Lukashenko finds himself—once again—the target of a NATO regime-change war, the [Saker] demands Russia make it two-front and pounce on Lukashenko from the east. It is a demand that is as bizarre as it is moronic.
“Lukashenko must go”: This is a guy who clearly has all his fingers and toes on the pulse of the Kremlin.
March 2022: “Every day of delay categorically harms us”
The Saker published his final Q&A video on February 22, 2023.
At around the 35-minute mark, he was asked about Paul Craig Roberts’ belief that the prolongation of the “special military operation” in Ukraine was not to Moscow’s benefit, and could potentially lead to a catastrophic escalation.
The Saker responded:
[Roberts] doesn’t understand Russia at all. Also, he doesn’t understand military issues at all. He is literally talking on a subject that he shouldn’t touch, because he has no expertise or competence or any understanding of it … Basically what happened is that he started listening to 6th columnists in Russia.
“So, having given his ear to Putin-haters, [Roberts] repeats their nonsense,” the Saker declared.
So believing that time is of the essence in Ukraine makes you a 6th columnist Putin-hater?
Fascinating. Because in March 2022, the Saker published an article by a “Russian military professional” who stressed that time was of the essence in Ukraine.
The analysis, written by a gentleman named Alexander Dubrovsky, repeatedly stressed that speed was of critical importance to achieve Russia’s goals in Ukraine:
The special operation does not stop, there will be no more delays.
Every day of delay categorically harms us, unplanned diplomatic, political, economic and military problems appear. Only speed and onslaught, until in the West they begin to assess the situation with a cool head.
“Every day of delay categorically harms us”—silence, wretched 6th columnist Putin-hater!
The Saker was so smitten by this analysis that—by his own admission—he “begged” his Russian translator to make a “quick and dirty” translation ASAP.
“I wanted to get the info to you as fast as possible,” the Saker beamed about a text that declared “every day of delay categorically harms” Russia’s SMO.
By the way, is Sergey Glazyev—hailed as a demigod by the Saker and his disciples—also a “6th columnist Putin-hater?”
Because in January Glazyev said prolonging the war would be a disaster for the Russian world:
The prolongation of the Special Military Operation (SMO) fully fits into the strategy of Washington and London, who are escalating the war with each passing day at the expense of the EU. […]
The calculation of the American-British secret services to wear down the forces of the Russian people in this fratricidal conflict is confirmed with each passing day of its continuation.
Worse, the reports of our Ministry of Defense were reduced to stating the number of Ukrainian servicemen killed, which allows the enemy to interpret the goals of the SMO precisely in this indicator.
The transition to a long trench war, like the infamous Verdun meat grinder, which claimed the lives of a million French and Germans in the First World War, is fraught with disaster for the Russian world.
Why did the Saker constantly cite this 6th columnist Putin-hater?
You think Russia has all the time in the world to “de-Nazify” Ukraine? Fine, you are allowed to have that opinion.
But if you endorsed the idea that “every day of delay” is bad for Russia in March 2022, and then proclaimed in February 2023 that anyone who thought Russia didn’t have infinite time in Ukraine was a nefarious “6th columnist” (wtf even is that?), you should probably stop blogging.
And that is what the Saker—a man of honor—has graciously decided to do.
Farewell, Saker.
Your exodus could not have come at a worse time—a time when millions of people are groping in the dark, desperate for answers.
Who has the vision and fortitude to raise the Saker’s banner, and continue his perennial crusade for a cattle-tagged, reality-raped world—a beautiful world without Lukashenko?
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Someone who I consider to be smarter than me recommended the saker. I tried for about a week or two to see what they saw in him, but I failed, ending my attempt with a rather long post about why Russia seems sus. To the saker's credit, my post was published, finished off with a little dispute and the accusation that I was nothing but a troll. I stopped reading the guy who I consider to be smarter than me, too.
I was blissfully unaware of his body of work. Perhaps I am not going to explore further at this point in time. :)))