30 Comments
Feb 9, 2022Liked by Edward Slavsquat

Talk about false narrative. Current hysteria about 'invasion' is nothing more than a product of internal politics in the US and UK and a projection, gladly amplified by some of the Putin's internal opposition (like this general who has his personal grievances against Putin, and who isn't in any way objective reader of the events). Russia remains Ukraine's #1 economic partner; why would it spend money on fighting when it makes good money by trading? The whole idea of a war goes against international law, against Russian military doctrine, and against Putin's personal philosophy and practices. For the last 7 years, all the "intervention" Putin could offer to Donbass was Russian passports and "Minsk agreements" - something Donbass doesn't even want. So, maximum what RF might be willing to do at this point is to recognize the 2 Donbass republics' independence (thus creating a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine - and even that will be done only if Russia gets pushed against the wall by some particularly ungodly provocation from the other side...).

Expand full comment
Feb 9, 2022Liked by Edward Slavsquat

The liberal scam-hipsters managed to co-exist with the hardcore old-school goons, but that might be changing! Putin has already created numerous security agencies so they all have competing interests and can't gang up on him, but he won't be able to pull of an Erdogan post-2016 coup attempt military cleansing.

Will have to see if others speak up too, especially on Zvezda.

Expand full comment

the fact is that no democracy / state fairly shares the land and natural resources of a nation. Russia and the US and all others need to establish "earth rights democracy" by socializing the land rent (surplus value, unearned income) of the gifts of nature - land and natural resources, while removing taxation on productive labor and capital.

Expand full comment

Which a load of trash. The "internal enemies" are those who answer to the western [=dominant imperialism, the U.S. since WW1] Deep state, basically the same enemies which the October Revolution fought. There's so much crap written here that it's hard to decide where to start, especially in view of the waste of time

Expand full comment

completely wrong. I lived in russia for 18 years and i will tell you this information is completely false. Russia is an amazing place with an amazing economy/government.

Expand full comment

Hi Riley/Edward, first, I listened with much interest to your conversation with Whitney and find this Russian general's view of the situation fascinating. Now, for the even more expansive geo-political context, I recommend thorough study of the globe-hopping Brazilian correspondent, Pepe Escobar's column published by another Moscow-passed on-line publication, Strategic-Culture.org in today's edition: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/09/do-you-want-a-war-between-russia-and-nato/ to set off an even more complex discussion!

Expand full comment

amazing that Putin is just a little bit less destructive than the Western governments and all the hatred pouring from London & Washington is because Putin allows only his cronies to plunder Russia, without "sharing" it with the anglos. Whom pay back by sanctioning Russia. Sanctions that make Russia poorer and thus less attractive to massive afro-asiatic immigration, slowing down the destruction of russia

Expand full comment

Not very knowledgeable about Russia. But i have a few interesting narratives to put forth.

A Danish author wrote a book one-two years ago, predicting a Russian nuclear bombing of a small English town to get the west off its back. A possibility?

I used to think that putin would want to avoid armed conflict, Russia have slowly build up a middle class that creates stability (but perhaps the middle class is now falling apart?). I now doubt this logic.

One of my takes on the c-one-nine thingy is that it's a deliberate attempt to undermine the middle and working class because it's getting too rowdy. We're voting for the wrong people, asking unwanted questions and keep insisting on decentralisation of power but also of goods. The lockdowns isolated people, ruined local businesses and put globalisation as the only solution. War can have the same effect. Which is perhaps why all western nations talk about war with Russia while trying to keep attention away from the failures of c-1-nine and removing the unnecessary measures. They are drumming up a new scare to keep the centralization of power going, crumbling local communities and cementing total reliability on global institutions (governmental or private doesn't matter, serves same purpose, and those runing them have similar interests - aquisition of power).

This is sort of a similar conclusion as the General.

Too many powerful people with shared interests - keeping and growing power - leading to the most globalisation inhancing predicaments being jumped at, overblown and used for this purpose.

But

Expand full comment