Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
The Kremlin continues to invite more provocations that are leading to war. Indoctrinated Western peoples do not realize how liberal the Kremlin is. Russia, alone among the powerful countries, has taken it upon herself to uphold the international rule of law and adherence to business contracts and state agreements. In a way this is commendable, but in a way the Kremlin’s adherence to legalisms no longer honored by the West is dangerous for Russia and for the world.
Washington operates by its own ever-changing rules and could not care less about legalisms. For Washington, law is whatever furthers Washington’s interests.
The mind of a liberal is a mind of a person who is convinced that he is doing the right thing. His belief in the righteousness of his behavior makes him blind to its consequences. The Kremlin remains blind to the consequences of its endless toleration of insults and provocations, of its hesitancy, of its weak responses. The West sees in the Kremlin’s ready acceptance of indignities uncertainty, indecision, lack of will, and turns up the provocations. The Kremlin’s behavior encourages and provokes the aggressive Western behavior that is leading to Armageddon. Putin talks tough but his actions are weak. Washington’s provocations have reached the point where Washington is directly engaged in war against Russia. Washington provides not only long range rocket systems to Ukraine, which will require Russian forces to enlarge the area of conquest in order to protect Donbass civilians from constant attack and thus widen the conflict, but also provides targeting information and personnel to operate the HIMARS system. https://www.rt.com/news/558964-russian-foreign-ministry-ukraine-himars-civilians/
It is the West that is aggressive, not Russia, and this is one source of the mounting danger of the conflict. The other source is the Kremlin’s acceptance of the West’s aggression. The Kremlin has been accepting Western aggression since 2007 when Putin called it out. Whereas Putin put it on notice, he has continued to accommodate Western aggression. This is the problem.
The question is: how much more will Putin accommodate? The ruling Zionist neoconservatives and the Biden Democrats think Putin will tolerate insults and provocations until his regime collapses internally. A leader of a country at war who continues to supply those killing his soldiers with energy that makes their war participation possible seems to be more aligned with the enemy than with the country he leads. NATO involvement would never have occurred if the Kremlin had turned off all energy supplies to the West at the first indication of Western involvement in the conflict. This raises the question: Does the Kremlin value legalisms more than the lives of its soldiers?
This is Putin’s problem: How long can he accept provocations before he appears to Russians as a weak and indecisive leader? And thus liberalism will have claimed another victim. Or will provocations continue until Washington crosses one red line too many and unleashes Armageddon?
Weak-Kneed Kremlin Permits Militarily Insignificant Europeans to Seize $13.3 Billion of Russian Assets
President of Serbia says World War III Has Begun
https://www.rt.com/russia/558970-vucic-wwiii-russia-ukraine/
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Be patient; there is no need to egg them on. When the firework starts, it starts.
Roll over, Putin
ha ha ha…Putin is launching live missiles, while poor old Bolshevik tool, Uncle Joe is launching stink bombs into his depends.
VLAD THE DAD Vladimir Putin, 69, ‘will have DAUGHTER with ex-gymnast lover despite grumbling “I have enough kids”
There’s something wrong with Biden.
Has PKR never heard of realpolitik ? …apparently not.
There are almost always thoughtful articles in TBP written by very good writers.
This is not one of those.
PCR thinks Putin is weak for being judicious.
USA is a floundering, collapsing, very dangerous, Empire of Lies with might work nukes.
Why should Putin interrupt the collapse with a potentially unifying gambit?
If there is any doubt of Putin’s stunningly devastating military capacity in action it is suggested to peek at one of the internets military analysis of the systematic destruction, demilitarization, elimination of a generation of Ukrainians by the Russian military. Don’t look at the videos of the action though, too gruesome. Ignore MSM’s take on the situation, too fake for words.
Just for shits and giggles, enjoy the economic collapse of the west by it’s sanctions on Russia, too funny for words.
Or, maybe Russia (and China too) realize that Globohomo and its weak-kneed sister the EU is a paper tiger ready to be destroyed and they’re luring them into a trap. Maybe Russia knows it can utterly destroy the EU at anytime by simply turning off the energy spigot and they’re just waiting for enough provocations for that action to be justifiable to the non-insane portion of the world. Maybe Russia wants to wait until Winter to freeze Europe/Natostan to death. Or maybe Russia realizes that the West is irrelevant to the future of the world and they can just ignore them while they self-destruct. Maybe Russia thinks it can easily win a nuclear war with its superior missile systems but they want the Empire of Lies to make the first move. There’s lots of possible reasons for why Russia does what it does besides the tired and always wrong Western Experts theory that Putin is a pussy.
Peter the Great, after whom is named St. Petersburg, tried hard to make nice with Europe in the early 1700s. He failed to get a favorable response and slammed the window in their faces.
He was just slightly ahead of his time.
Every schoolkid in Russia is aware of this.
Spot on Arch on every point.
“…The Kremlin remains blind to the consequences of its endless toleration of insults and provocations, of its hesitancy, of its weak responses…”
As NordStream1 dribbles out its last puffs of natty. Even judo masters expend more energy to defeat their foes.
Why shut off the energy spigot to Europe during summer?
Shutting it off when it’s getting a bit nippy will have a much greater effect.
Sun Tzu say:
“The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
“When the enemy is relaxed, make them toil. When full, starve them. When settled, make them move.”
– And when they’re cold, shut off the heat.
They typically also begin to stockpile it in summer to be able to keep up with winter demand. I would guess the Russian thinking is: This will hurt them in winter more than now, but it gives us both flexibility to save the situation by them lifting sanctions.
Ukraine was originally supplied with what is basically a garage-sale assortment of random armaments that cannot really be used interchangeably, because of different ammo, different fuel types, and different training.
If you recall reports regarding one the foreign mercs that the Russians captured, it was reported, for instance, that he was issued a “Czech CZ rifle”, as his combat arm.
This could mean an old WWII Mauser variant, or it could mean the Czech 7.62×39 Warsaw Pact-era weapon, which does not use mags that interchange with either a AK47 or AK74 weapons, in either case this is about as useful as issuing troops a Steyr M1912 as a combat arm… they would be unable to find ready ammo or even spare mags in the later case, meaning this was a futile effort.
The Uke push to force Biden to give them current generation long distance arms is an acknowledgement that what they were previously furnished was a junk assortment, and since they know all the monies provided to Biden’s family from Ukraine, he has little choice but to assent to these demands.
I would suggest that its very likely that the Neocon faction set him up with the bribe opportunities specifically so that he could not refuse uke demands once a war was LATER provoked.
For Putin, Biden is basically neutered in months, while for Ukraine, they have a very short time frame remaining to get the most modern and costly equipment out of Biden. It is very unlikely that the pro-Neocon forces controlling the Republicans can sustain power acting as Ukrainian weapons suppliers. It could even split the Republican party, permanently, if they try.
I think that the Neocons/Neolibs would quite like for Russia to start hitting inside Poland or other such actions designed to ensure HIMARS never makes it into Ukraine, because they want a full blown world war. It does not seem to me to profit Russia to fall into that trap, given the other calculations in play.
I disagree w/ this assessment. I believe that Putin’s hesitancy is well thought out. If he responds it gives the U.S. what it’s been trying to provoke – a reason to be more aggressive and to justify its attacks. Then, we’re in a full-on war.
Further, by ‘laying low’ at this time, Russia forces the U.S. and its erstwhile allies to use up much of its munitions and arms which cannot be replaced quickly. And, I believe Putin recognizes that the U.S./West are in the process of collapsing and is waiting it out. When the timing is right, Putin will do a surgical strike and end all of the U.S./West’s aggressions once and for all.