Faced with these horrors, many wonder if humans are intrinsically evil? One commenter observed that the corn fuel burned in organic fuel could have fed a lot of starving Sudanese.

In the comments to A Time Of Famine, And A Time Of War… TR3BPilot notes:

I would posit that humans some humans are intrinsically good but most humans are:

1. just downright stupid
2. easily manipulated
3. conforming
4. non-thinking sheeple.

Every atrocity in history may have been led by one or a few socio/psycho-paths but it was masses of non-thinking sheeple who did the dirty deeds. The“re are always millions who will say “just doing my job” and “just following orders”.

One can blame the zionist-globalist cabals but billions of sheeple are responsible for committing evil acts in their name. One can blame the Jekyll Island oligarchs for the Fed but its hundred thousand some employees bear the responsibility for ruining the USD.

One can blame big pharma for their poisons but millions of imbecilic sheeple in their collective stupidity acquired Mass Formation Psychosis in unison.

It never occurs to sheeple that maybe they should think for themselves and quit following the herd.

We should not let ourselves off the hook. If we have leaders like this and we claim to be democracies, those leaders are our responsibility.

Of special interest is Orlov’s short and sweet notes on the current Russophobia enveloping Western discourse.

4. The idea of peace talks presupposes a modicum of mutual respect between the parties involved in the negotiation. And yet if you take any one of a great many articles about Russia being published in the US or the EU and simply replace “Russians” and “Russian” with “Jews” and “Jewish” and publish the result, you would rather quickly find yourself in jail for hate crimes. Russophobia, which is rampant in the West, is no different from Antisemitism or racism generally. Why would Russian officials ever wish to grant an audience to such reprehensible, despicable people?

While racism is rightly castigaged in the West – while today blacks are by their nature good and incapable of crime or at least prosecution – Russians have become subhumans: not entitled to their language, their culture, their religion or their historic lands.

Clearly the West have lost our collective minds. We’d like nothing more than to repeat to re-Conquer the West. I.e. the genocide of the North American Indians.

What Russians have noted is how when Russia expands, there is no attempt to genocide or disinherit the local peoples, or even to take their culture.¹ The local people are allowed self-rule and their leaders encouraged to come to Moscow both to study and for some to stay as regional representatives in national institutions. Co-existence in a federation, rather than suppression and annihilation.

The language which the West is using towards Russians and Russian culture is a hate crime and a war crime. We should collectively be deeply ashamed to have fallen to the level of the Third Reich, within Europe.²

Orlov’s whole essay is worth a read.³

[fvplayer id=”46″]

Here’s Tsarev’s essay in English (original in Russian).

A slave does not seek freedom. A slave seeks a good master.

This is not said out loud, but what you see in the video is the basis – the foundation of Ukrainian separatism. That’s what 90% of the Ukrainian population thinks.

“When they start building skyscrapers in Russia like in Dubai, when they start giving away 100 million dollars (?!), when Russia starts blossoming and smelling, then we will turn around and ask ourselves: look, they have so much money, nowhere to spend it, in that case we won’t need independence either”.

After perestroika in Ukraine they decided that Russia was no longer their big brother. Then the time passed. Russia has risen from its knees, but the myth has remained: the Ukraine must look for a new master. The best is the USA, but Europe will do. Think about why Ukrainians are being told stories that they will be accepted into the EU and that they will live like Europeans, while Russian soldiers are stealing toilets and washing machines. It’s exactly this which underlies the real ideology of the Ukraine. Bandera and the like are only outward attributes. Truly it is a desire for a better life. They are fighting to live like in Europe, not like in Russia.

You know, I have been writing for eight years about the need to deal with Donbass. If the efforts that are now being made to make life better in the Donbass had been made earlier, the SMO would not have been needed. Donbass has been a grey area for eight years, with all its consequences. In Ukraine, Donbass has been turned into a scarecrow for the Russian-speaking regions: If you want to live like Donbass, support Russia.

Why do I often write about the economy, the Central Bank and corruption? Because if, to repeat after the Ukrainian in the video, if Russia was like Dubai, the SMO would not be needed. All the former republics of the Soviet Union, and possibly some of the former territories of the Russian Empire in Europe, would have voluntarily joined the alliance with Russia. And there were all preconditions to make life better. Russia, unlike the UAE, is not a desert. The biggest territory, the richest in natural resources, populated by intelligent, hard-working people.

Russians deserve to live better. Then there won’t be a need for wars either.

It’s darkly amusing that in Tsarev’s video source, the Ukrainian everyman insists that the Russian State should be handing out $100 million to each citizen. This is typical of the unrealistic expectations of Ukrainians. They seem to have watched The Wizard of Oz way too many times – “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”. Someday, someone will have to break it to them, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There’s hard work (to get you off the ground) and good timing/luck (to carry you higher) in an environment where those attributes are rewarded. Most citizens are not millionaires. To fall into the top 10% richest families in Canada required just an annual income of CAD$200,000 in 2022.

Still Tsarev is on to something here. Grozny was rebuilt as a model city and Tsetchens are among the most patriotic citizens of the Russian Federation.

Tsarev exaggerates the difference between life in Russia and life in Europe. Palaces in Spain are in a song, Europe is also vast and varied. But yes, the general standard of living in Northern Europe is quite high. We face huge issues in Europe as well, particularly since the Covid-19 lockdowns and new energy crisis. Small companies are closing their doors, more and more Europeans are dependent on multinationals, economic inequality increases with each year. The rich get richer and the rest of us get poorer. The statistics here don’t lie about the division of income.

In the face of heavy economic headwinds, the last thing the Ukraine needed, or Europe needed or Russia needed was a war in Ukraine. There’s only two beneficiaries to this conflict: the United States and the UK. The USA has the opportunity to ruin its competitors (Europe, Russia) at the cost of a state which is of no value to the USA (Ukraine) or even negative value (if the Ukraine rejoined Russia in a common Russian World). The UK has the opportunity to demonstrate its value to its major trading partner (the USA) and to show off its underused assets (espionage and sabotage), potentially acquiring effective control over part of Europe, despite leaving the EU.

What’s interesting here is that Russia may yet come out ahead in this economic footrace to win Ukraine’s heart via quality of life. With the economic disruption taking place in the EU and the internal boom in Russia from increased economic activity to cover sanctions, Russia may offer more opportunities for economic improvement than any other near neighbour. The EU cannot keep the Ukraine waiting like a bride at the altar forever. The only way the EU could hold Ukraine’s heart would be to break all its own internal rules and admit the Ukraine as a full member, which the EU cannot afford to do. The USA only has money for war, not for rebuilding. What money is spent on rebuilding is spent with US firms and in crooked contracts.

Both China and Russia have invested enormously in infrastructure in the last ten years and both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin intend to continue on that path.

The Moscow skyline is unrecognisable in the good sense. Very sensibly the skyscrapers are restricted to a single district, just outside the centre of the city as in Paris (La Défense). When the Russian New Territories (that’s what the Russian are calling Kherson, Zaporozhe, Donbass and Luhansk regions collectively) gleam and their citizens live in attractive homes with low unemployment, the path back to Ukraine’s natural economic partner and native cultural space will look a great deal attractive.

Something similar has already happened in Crimea. Crimea generally and Sevastopol in particular have enjoyed a huge investment in its communal infrastructure since rejoining the Russian Federation in 2014. No one in Crimea would even consider going back to the stagnation which their region suffered under Ukrainian administration.

Russia’s best move is to make the same thing happen in the New Territories. It would suit transplanted Ukrainians like Tsarev just fine. Like any Ukrainian (or anyone else), Oleg Tsarev would love to live surrounded by plenty in a prosperous city.

Photo of Grozny by Timur Agirov via Russia Trek. Photo of Moscow skyline by Deensel.

Here’s Tony Blair talking about lighting fires all around Russia in its neighbours in 2008.

There’s so much other evidence, including the infamous 2019 Rand Report Overexteneding and Unbalancing Russia, where US analysts recommend sanctions, sabotage and civil war. But all that takes time to digest and requires substantial additional reading to fully understand. My friend is busy.

What I promised my friend instead was a video from Stanislav Filin who runs the YouTube chanel, S Filinom (сФилином literally translated as “With Filin”). The video was released in early March 2021 to explain the Russian side of the start of the Ukraine conflict. Stanislav is a straightforward ordinary young guy with a talent to connect with people, not a long-winded intellectual like Professor John Mearsheimer. Plus if you want to know the Russian perspective, ask a Russian.

I went to Stanislav’s channel expecting to find the video in less than five minutes and just drop a link to it in Signal to my friend. With ten minutes of hard searching, I couldn’t find it. Not by searching for “American”, not by searching for “Ukraine”, not by searching for “Donbass” in both English and Russian. I found something about Stanislav’s Buchta video being taken down, which made me suspicious that this video was lost. It turned out to be the case. Here’s where it should be on YouTube.

YouTube placeholder page for censored video

The video in question was called something like “How to explain to Americans why Russians moved to protect the Donbass on February 24”.

Next step – I had to find Stanislav’s other channels, which happily enough, are also called sFilinom. There’s Telegram (fairly complete though inconsistent), there’s Dzen, there’s VK.com. On Dzen, one can even find his entire Bucha video in good quality and in English but there’s only 8 videos there, out of the . VK.com only starts on 1 January 2022 so of course no video.

But still no sign of the mystery video.⁶

In a search on VK in Russian for sFilinom and Bucha, I managed to find a compendium of Filin’s political English language videos. It starts with the mystery video and included the Bucha video, the Arnold Schwarzeneger video.

Here’s the full table of contents with original titles:

• What you don’t know about the war in Ukraine (video banned)
• A response to Arnold Schwarzenegger (video still on YouTube)
• Must See!! Advisor to Zelensky said WHAT??!! (video banned)
• What Ukraine is HIDING from YOU (video banned)
• What you must know about BUCHA (video banned)

Don’t bother clicking those YouTube links. Only the “Response to Arnold Schwarzenegger” is still online.

Now that I knew that the video did exist and I wasn’t imagining it and knew the exact title, I’ve managed to find another copy on Bitchute. It turns out there are thirteen copies.⁷

And another copy of just What you don’t know about the war in Ukraine on VK.com. Don’t expect to be able to easily find this material via US search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, Kagi or Bing, even with an exact search like +sfilinom What you don’t know about the war in Ukraine. DuckDuckGo at least includes some VK.com results which will get you close, and in turn uncovered a well-stocked sfilinom TikTok channel.⁸

Anyone who wants to better understand the Russian perspective on the Ukraine conflict and why Russians consider the US the aggressor owes it to him or herself to watch What you don’t know about the war in Ukraine. The video is only five minutes long. To listen to the other side is the basics we are taught at high school debating. Or which all mediators or even competent businessperson learn. Anyone who doesn’t have five minutes to listen to the Russian perspective about what looks like it will develop into World War III and nuclear armageddon loses the right to have an opinion on Russia, Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine conflict.

Lead image of Odessa Trade Union Massacre by Aleksandr Polischyuk

Go ahead, learn what the other side thinks, in their own words, in plain English. It will only take five minutes.⁹

Desert Storm by the way was preceded by Op Desert Shield.

The Iraqi Airforce aircraft that survived the initial start of the war were flown by raw ferry pilots to Iran, to be interned then seized. It promptly ceased to exist.

We spent almost six months battlefield preparation & shaping, destroying with impunity every piece of Iraqi Arms materiel identifiable, every bridge, every power station/transformer, ground attack on any vehicle that moved. MBTs, IFVs & Artillery, Grads, mortars were relentlessly targeted day in day out.

Multiple rotating CAP & ground attack patrol flights, free roam, on rotating station all across Iraq.

HQs units were identified & destroyed many times over. Bunkers & Air force shielded hangers, ammo & stores dumps were destroyed until none were left to add to the target list.

Then we simply ran the target lists again over already destroyed assets/facilities/infrastructure.

When Desert Storm commenced we had already attrited the Republican Guard Divisions to less than 10% materiel strength, the armored & mechanized divisions to less than 15% materiel strength.

The poorly trained & equipped conscripted, sacrificial Iraqi Shia Divisions in the forward defensive lines at the FEBA were incohesive & utterly shattered, broken.

We ran regular B-52 full payload dumb iron bomb runs in broad daylight destroying multiple grid squares at a time. Some times repeatedly. And we would drop propaganda flyers telling the targeted troops the precise time the bomb run would commence, hours in advance. We dropped Air fuel explosive bombs the same way, by rolling the prepared bladders off the lowered ramp of C-130s.

The Iraqi Army had ceased to exist in any measurable form, its morale utterly crushed, by the time we executed Desert Storm at H-hour.

With overwhelming uncontested total Air Dominance.

Not the situ re NATO mythical possible direct deployment into Ukraine today. Not at all.

It’s unlikely that NATO would be able to establish air superiority over the Ukraine. Russia has excellent long range air defence. If NATO brought enough concentrated force to bear to make air superiority technically possible, they would trigger nuclear war.

Who is going to pay for this field army to amass and sit on its hands¹⁰ for six months? Every large Western economy is already running a deep deficit. Presumably we the people would be asked to pay for these dangerous military games. Or the money would be borrowed/printed. That’s more inflation. It’s starting to sound like the warlike kings of the Middle Ages who would quickly go bankrupt quarreling with their neighbours.

More important than the economic consequences are the human consequences. Like the Great War, such a war over the Ukraine would quickly result in millions of casualties. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and millions of civilians. For Europeans, this war makes no sense, neither militarily nor in terms of economics. Surely diplomacy would be the more sensible path here?

Image credit: Page, Paul, J./Tech. Sgt., official released photo 19910319. Headline Desert Storm

JH: Siege warfare is as ancient and as moral as the Israelites around the walls of Jericho, the Masada defence of the Judaeans against the Romans, or the European Crusaders around Jerusalem. The objective is to persuade the targeted civilian population and military forces, no matter how hostile they may be, to give up their capacity to wage war. The lesson of the history is that the longer the city walls or the citadel barbicans hold out, the more destructive the result for the civilians – unless they are relieved or rescued by a force superior to the siege force….

The British and Americans introduced innovations like the Dam Busters attack on German dams in May 1943 and the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945. The special US innovation was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The US Air Force followed with the saturation and firebombing of North Korea, when the destruction orders included “every installation, facility, and village in North Korea [and] every means of communications and every installation, factory, city, and village.” As you all know, the saturation and fire (napalm) bombing by the US of Vietnam was more geographically extensive, more intensive in explosive power, and more prolonged over time than Germany, Japan or North Korea had experienced.

In comparison to US methods of making war, Russia has been very gentle with the Ukraine attempting to apply an absolute minimum of force to achieve its aims. There have been no depleted uranium shells (Iraq, Yugoslavia), there has been no carpet bombing (Germany, Korea, Vietnam), there has been no chemical warfare (Vietnam, Cambodia). Helmer continues:

In Europe, according to a US Air Force University thesis, “the USAF has long favoured attacking electrical power systems. Electric power has been considered a critical target in every war since World War II, and will likely be nominated in the future… The evidence shows that the only sound reason for attacking electrical power is to affect the production of war materiel in a war of attrition against a self-supporting nation-state without outside assistance.”   This was written in 1994. In May 1999 the USAF demonstrated its operational concept of the “future” in the bombing of Serbia and Belgrade.

The Russian attacks on the dual-purpose energy grid, hence falls clearly within accepted US war doctrine. It took eight months and two refusals to honour a mostly accepted peace agreement to drive the Russians to attack the electricity grid. In the case of the USA, the electricity grid and civilian infrastructure is a day one target.

Any complaints from the USA or Europe about Russian methods of war are hypocritical nonsense. War is an awful way to resolve conflicts but if matters have come as far as war, there is nothing particularly brutal about the Russian methods of war in Ukraine in comparison to Western doctrine.

Helmer believe he has an answer for why Russia is taking a kid gloves approach to military conflict with the Ukraine.

There is a difference between that Anglo-American military approach and the Russian one in the Ukraine. The Russian aim is to persuade the Ukrainian cities and towns, as well as Ukrainian army units, to accept terms of settlement at least cost of casualty or physical destruction. This is how the Battle of Mariupol concluded.

What this Special Military Operation or war by another name has shown is that a gentler approach to war leads to longer wars, at least when the counter-party has extensive financial and military support from the exterior. Without endless arms shipments, satellite intelligence, diplomatic cover and propaganda support, Ukraine’s resistance would have collapsed within three months and a peace agreement would have been signed following the Istanbul negotiations.

In that case, over one hundred thousand Ukrainian men would still be alive, another two hundred thousand or more would still be whole, the Ukrainian economy would have fallen by 20% in 2022 and not 70%. There would be good prospects for next year. Economically Ukraine could go to town again on cheap Russian gas and transit fees. Ukrainian actors, singers and directors could still be working on the large and profitable Russian market.

There’s a lot of advantages in good relations with one’s larger neighbours, particularly when one shares a language and a cultural history with that neighbour. Ask English-speaking Canucks if you don’t believe me. Ask Walloons. Ask Flamands. Ask Scots. The consequences of a state of war are dire for the smaller neighbour. The counter-argument of course would be Ireland where England abused the Irish for centuries, treating them as subhumans, finally only liberating (half of) Ireland under regular bombing from the IRA.

While Ukraine would like to make the same arguments as the Irish about their treatment within the United Kingdom, the situation of Ukrainians within the Russian Empire and particularly the Soviet Union was very different. For those years when the USSR was not under the leadership of a Georgian, the USSR was led by a Ukrainian: Nikita Khruschev, Leonid Brezhnev, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Brezhnev were all Ukrainians.

The Georgian example brings up an interesting point. The Russian soft approach to war (enter Georgia, march on the capital, destroy Georgia’s military hardware and retreat) worked well in this case. The Georgian war left a minimum of scars on Georgia, allowing Russia and Georgia to mend fences enough to return to mutually profitable economic relations.¹¹ The right approach for smaller countries to take is one of détente with their larger neighbours and to enjoy both the peace dividend, goodwill and profits from trade. Finland successfully followed such a policy during the Cold War. China’s close neighbours have done well trading with China. Unsurprisingly, over the last four years the USA has come knocking in that neighbourhood as well, seeking to revive old ethnic rivalries and inflame past conflicts.

For the weaker/smaller country, such conflicts rarely end well. Whatever military action will be conducted will be on their soil, kill their citizens or drive them into exile. It’s precisely because Russia doesn’t plan to cut off economic or cultural relations with Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. For that matter, Vladimir Putin urgently sought to repair the rift between Russia and Poland before the unhappy crash of Lech Kaczyński’s jet near Smolensk.

Russia acknowledges that geography is destiny. It is almost always better for all to prosper and to live in peace. It’s very sad that a small clique of ethnic supremacists (historically called fascists or nazis) received funding and methods to brainwash many Ukrainians into such a self-destructive war, where their own country is the battlefield.¹²

Everybody leaves out China, the biggest consumer of what Russia has to offer, who is very pleased to see

Europe cut off from Russia and vice versa,

European industrial competitors starved of cheap energy,

Russia split off from the rest of the West, the better to dominate

Nonsense, the Chinese would like to turn Russia into a giant railway corridor, shipping Chinese goods to Europe one-way and Russian raw materials to China. Chinese would come en masse to Europe as tourists, somewhat evening the balance of trade. This was happening right before the Covid nonsense. I live in a European capital and the city was absolutely full with Chinese middle-class walking tours six months/year.

pernickety follows up by claiming Russia “got played”:

Ukraine can never be taken now – whatever damage is inflicted. Ukrainians will despise Russia for generations.

Even if they could win, Russia can only lose.

Unlikely outcome. Two choices beckon for what was Ukraine: Ukrainians can learn to live with their heritage and their fate (Malorossiya, Novorossiya has already been cut out with Odessa still to come) or there won’t be a Ukraine.

Russia is not backing down. Next country to be sacked by the military adventurism of the USA looks to be Poland.

With Ukraine gone and its nationalists scattered and unwelcome across Europe, Poland a smouldering wreck, the European public will finally wake up. Italians, French, Slovaks, Austrians, Hungarians have no wish to see armies marching across their lands. Coping with the nearly twenty million refugees will overwhelm all social systems.

When from Napoleon’s Grande Armée of a million men came back only 50,000 mostly broken men, European continental power (then France, this time in the form of the EU) will simply dissolve. Would such a result bother either the USA or the UK now any more than it did in 1812?

There is a wild card. The Germans might be stupid enough to fall in the trap again of fighting wars for the benefit of other powers. In that case, same result but much longer and more painful. I don’t know personally of a single European male who is ready to go to an Eastern front to fight Russia and I’ve asked a dozen point blank.

These are dark days for Europe. It’s a good thing that Russia in the person of its president are still attempting to play the diplomatic card. Further kinetic escalation leads only to more European deaths, Ukrainian, Russian and to some extent European. Even with stalemate, there will be thousands who perish this winter from infrastructure failure (inadequate heating) in Western Europe. The death toll in Ukraine could be catastrophic.

It’s high time a Western leader stood up and negotiated a diplomatic settlement to this crisis. It’s not that there have not been attempts. Last week both Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard did speak up. For their trouble, each was bullied and demeaned by most of the MSM. The marionettes in office from Lloyd Austin through Joe Biden to Olaf Scholtz and Joseph Borrell continued to beat the drums louder for what may be the modern world’s last war.

How could anyone see the current US/NATO modus operandi of endless escalation as sensible conflict management? I don’t recall voting for Dr. Strangelove to lead the EU.

_{Photo credit: this is Caen in France after Allied bombing of France in 1944. With friends like this…This is what our side, the good guys did. By the standards to which Russia is held now, the Caen night bombing raids were clearly a war crime against civilians. Residences were targeted, not infrastructure. Originally I planned to show Kharkiv in 1944 after the German occupation but curiously Western Europe in ruins makes more sense.}

In the comments, BelleDelphine argues again in favour of US domination:

Sure but will you fare any better under Kremlin boot ?

The BelleDephine persona is a broken record and constant liar. To answer her question – would Europe be better off in a Russian economic coalition, akin to the EEC?

Yes, we’d have as much gas as we needed.

Yes, we’d have our well-heeled and free spending tourists back.

Yes, we’d have a great export market for our industrial machines and fine machines and cars and premium food products.

Yes, we’d have unlimited and reasonably priced raw materials.

Yes, as the Russians would fund and buy European software startups instead of trying to secretly lock them out of the market or destroy them.

Yes, we’d have far less woke nonsense to convert our children into twerking transsexuals before the age of eight. Drag queen fairy tale grooming hour would be over.

Yes, we’d have real borders again and our social insurance would not go bankrupt funding people who feel no attachment to our culture and would like to take over and destroy our lands.

Yes, because Russians like and respect Europe and don’t try to destroy the peoples who populate their sphere of influence. Would you rather be Iraq/Libya/Syria/Ukraine or Czechoslovakia/Poland/Belarus/East Germany? Check the death tolls and the long term damage to cultural heritage before you answer that question.

Europe has so far been lucky as it’s suited the US to coddle us for decades to prevent socialist governments coming to power and to quietly ensnare our countries deeper and deeper in the deep sea net of the EU. Now it’s time for us to pay the piper and become the “tip of the US spear”.

On the other hand, Russians really can’t be bothered with the outside world as long as the world leaves them alone, unlike the Anglosphere for whom genocide is a way of life and just another tool of economic piracy.¹³

At this point US economic and cultural imperialism is so toxic that almost any other overlord or ideology would be less harmful to Europe. The US security state and MIC have brought us to bankruptcy, the start of World War III and now to the brink of atomic war on European soil. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have paid the ultimate price for succumbing to the siren song of US military support. Retired US military leadership brags about the bargain they received:

We’ve got a $6 trillion dollar budget…We’ve invested and I mean invested a $66 billion in Ukraine and I mean that’s like 1.1% [or our budget]…For $66 billion what we get – Ukraine is doing the fighting, they are literally destroying the Russian army on the battlefield, which would set them back for years….We are not doing the fighting. And that’s critical to what is happening here.

The US is prepared to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian and then to the last Pole and then to the last German. But this is our continent and we’d like to live in peace and heat our homes. This is not our ideological war. To support US economic and military imperialism neither does us nor the larger world no good. We are enabling the destruction of our continent and our way of life.

Currently the US is encouraging the Ukraine to shell Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporozhie. If shelling doesn’t work, the plan is to flood the entire area with a tidal wave as in Fukushima. The immediate result would be a radiation leak which would make Chernobyl seem like a dress rehearsal. This event would happen in the middle of Ukraine at the border of Europe, affecting Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic, possible Austria and parts of Germany. This would be a generational event, rendering hundreds of thousands of kilometres unfit for human habitation for hundreds of years.

How could such a disaster possibly be in the interest of either the Ukraine or Europe? The US does not care and our EU leadership is more or less silent on the safety issue, choosing to blame the Russians (“shelling themselves to threaten Europe”) instead of the Ukrainian army who is shelling the plant with the help of US military advisors.

EU leadership no longer represents the people of Europe. These unelected bureaucrats are effectively appointed by the US based on service to Atlanticist ideology, not on either their merits nor on their loyalty to Europe. The EU leaders have become the Kapos of concentration camp Europe.

Of course what would be best would be an independent Europe of sovereign states in a loose economic coalition. We have not been given that choice. Since we must choose between destroying our continent and a Russian-run economic coalition, I’m against destroying our continent. The Russians will eventually tire of meddling and let us go our own way in peace. It might take a few decades. If the US get their way, there is unlikely to be a Europe over which to squabble.

What happens next? On the military front, Russia appears to have the upper hand and could continue to move forward in the Ukraine. This leaves NATO in a difficult position – the Ukraine would be lost completely to NATO, making the Russian Federation 576 square km larger. To lose the entire territory of the Ukraine would be a generational strategic and publicity defeat for the West.

The West’s original gambit was for a military defeat of Russia combined with an economic meltdown at home and social unrest within Russia. This has failed. Western statesmen don’t appear to be much worried. There is a plan two, launched on 22 May when Poland’s president spoke to the Ukrainian Rada and demonstratively hugged Zelensky.

[fvplayer id=”30″]

The look on Duda’s face does not look like the expression of a man comforting a struggling neighbour, but rather like a gambler who has just hit the jackpot. Why this exultation?

NATO backup plan: Ukraine becomes Poland

NATO is already collaborating with the Poles on incorporating vast swathes of Ukraine into Poland, calling it NATO territory and using that hostile territory as a barrier between Russia/Belarus and Europe. The plan is to rebuild its army to conquer the east with unlimited preparation, unlimited weapons.

To prevent Poland from annexing Western Ukraine, Russia must make clear to Poland that no annexation of Ukraine will be recognised and that Poland will have to fight for that territory themselves in direct conflict with the Russian army. It’s unlikely that NATO will want to directly particpate in the armed conflict. The danger for Russia is that when promised free immediate EU membership, Western Ukrainians will be willing to sell out their country completely and give up Ukrainian sovereignty forever. Russia could face a true popular uprising where Western Ukrainians want to become part of Poland.

If the Western Ukrainians are happy to give up statehood, Russia has few legal counter-arguments. The belligerent – Ukraine – disappears and its two component parts are divided between Russia and Poland. Ironically, under similar circumstances in the eighteenth century, Poland was twice partitioned by Russia and Germany.

Under pressure from NATO, the USA and Poland, the EU will be force fed the Western part of Ukraine, like it or not, using the East Germany precedent. It would be hard for Russia to counter this move except with total war on Western Ukraine, acquiring a territory mostly purged of its inhabitants.

A much easier win here would be to take Odessa and Transdniestra to acquire another direct European border. Romania does whatever NATO tells them but Romanians are at heart horsetraders. Russia can afford to offer Romania better conditions than NATO does. Good relations with Romania gets Russia direct trade routes with Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria.

If I had to redraw the map above, Kiev would be on the Russian side of the white line. It’s likely that Russia would stop on the other side of Kiev to ensure that the Ukrainian rump state absorbed by Poland cannot reconstitute itself and that Kiev assumes its historic place as the original Kiev Rus.¹⁴

Another potential but more difficult win for Russia would be to acquire a corridor across the south of Western Ukraine to Uzhgorod which gets Russia direct borders with Slovakia and Hungary. Direct borders with multiple states is highly desirable for Russia as it makes it much more difficult to cut Russia off from Europe, both in the short and long term.

Yet acquiring and maintaing such a panhandle would be difficult as Chernavtsi has a much richer historical association with both Hapsburg Austro-Hungary and Romania than with Russia. It would be very difficult to hold this territory.

If Russia must hold Chernavtsi, it would make more sense to take all of the Ukraine, turning Western Ukraine into a kind of neo-Warsaw pact protectorate. Curiously, most of the Warsaw pact countries operated as a net economic loss for the USSR. Still, economically-unviable territories can have enough military/political value to be worth the investment. Gibraltar is a net negative for the UK, not to mention the Falklands. France’s outre-mer costs Paris more treasure than it brings, not to mention the headache. Outre-mer still has enough social and political value to justify France’s annual subsidies.

End Game

How far is Russia willing to go to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine? What concessions is NATO willing to make? So far based on the balance of forces it looks like the Polish annexation and disappearance of Ukraine is the most likely. NATO would be reasonably happy for Russia to have a single open border to Europe with Moldova, backed up by the Romanian border.¹⁵ There’s much room for mischief and blocking of this border and capturing the elite of just two countries to keep Russia behind a new Iron Curtain relative child’s play. Russia would plan to subvert the Romanians with rich blandishments and pressure from Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria who would also prosper from direct connections to import Russian energy and export to Russian markets.

In this scenario, the great game goes on. The losers in this scenario? The Western Ukrainians, who end up stateless again, and with no friends. The absorption into Poland will be almost total. Aside from the obvious winners – Poland, NATO, Russia – European citizens and the world also win from this partition. Nuclear armageddon would be averted, at least temporarily.

>This, as well as all other Russian warnings will be ignored…to everyone’s peril.

Actually, I think US is listening very closely.

US desperately wants to bring NATO’s Article 5 into play.  US is trying everything to provoke Russia into attacking a NATO country so European troops can replace all the killed and wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

So, US is certainly not ignoring Russia’s warnings, they are counting on it.

Taconasty doesn’t think the US will escalate further:

I don’t think so. Ukraine is just not that valuable. It is one of the poorest countries in Europe and it has a decreasing population that is even older than America (and China). The USA has nearly no international trade with Ukraine.

I’m not buying that argument. Sending in MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems) with long-range GMLRS missiles (extended range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System), and now HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) is another deliberate red-line provocation which will inevitably result in escalation. The US is pushing for an Article 5 incident and already has its EU troops lined up.

• Poland is (again stupidly) chomping at the bit
• the UK seems keen to get involved in a European land war, albeit at minimum risk to itself
• Germany will do what its told and send its army who won’t dare disobey
• Romania seems to be enough in thrall to send troops in exchange for Moldavia annexation and Transdnistria
• most Czechs won’t want to participate but there’s enough militarist whackos to fill a volunteer regiment (heck the Czech Legion worked their way out to Siberia in 1918 before evacuating from Vladivostock in 1920 after betraying the White general Kolchuk)
• Slovaks won’t go in any shape or form
• Hungarians won’t go and will push back against other EU countries entering the war

France and Italy won’t go. Baltics are keen but with their tiny populations have little to offer. Finland unlikely to actively intervene in Russia (same goes for Sweden).

So the stage is set for war in Europe. If escalation continues, a logical first Russian step would be to destroy Rammstein and Camp Bondsteel. That will either sit the US down (along with the EU vassals) or provoke full retaliation before the Russians are dragged into a war of attrition.

Vladmir Putin first asked his rhetorical question What value does a peace/world (same word mir in Russian) have to us if there is no Russia? (Зачем нам такой мир, если в нём не будет России?) All the Western maniacs (majority of our elected leaders, the entirety of official MSMs scribes) shrieking for the elimination of Russia and Russian culture are effectively demanding the annihilation of North America, Europe and much of Russia.

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Perhaps the black Africans and the métis of South America will build a more successful next civilisation, or at least one which is not so excessive and demanding of the planet. Russia is large enough that there will be some Russians in this next world as well, albeit starting from small towns in Kamchatka, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutia, Kemerova, Magadan, Zabaykalsky Kraj or Yamalo-Nenets Okrug.