Putin's maneuvering has been deficient in its Machiavellianism, suggests the author. (TGP screenshot)
Under international law, any nation’s right to self-defense is more fundamental than any other national right. When two nations are at war against each other, one — the one that starts the war — is called “the aggressor” and under international law is blamed for the war — and the other is called “the defender” or the victim of that aggressor, and has no blame for the war, none. But, which is which can sometimes be debated. This question is always about: Which side started the war?
For example: In the case of the war in Ukraine: When did it actually start? Did it start on 24 February 2022 when U.S.-and-allied Governments imply or even say that it did — which was when Russia invaded Ukraine? If so; then what were the Minsk Agreements about? They were about ending the war in Ukraine — establishing and executing a process to achieve that purpose. It was the same war, and it was continuing even when Russia invaded. When did that war begin? Putin made a mash of explaining why Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. As a result, the U.S.-and allied narrative about this — their lie about it, saying or assuming that the war began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 — has dominated at the U.N. and generally, so that the idea that Russia started the war in Ukraine has dominated ever since. But it’s not merely false but rabidly false, the opposite of the truth, and that falsehood has given those liars — the U.S. and its ‘allies’ or colonies — a terrific PR advantage, ever since, because it hides the violent U.S. coup against Ukraine that started the war, and it hides the U.S. Government’s continuing rape of Ukraine ever since:
The war in Ukraine actually began in the very violent coup that the U.S. Obama Administration had actually started planning no later than June 2011 and started executing inside America’s Embassy in Ukraine on 1 March 2013, and which coup illegally overthrew the democratically elected and neutralist President of Ukraine on 20 February 2014 and which installed to take over the new government on 27 February 2014 the man who had been selected by Victoria Nuland — Obama’s agent controlling the coup operation — when she instructed on 27 January 2014 the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine to have “Yatsenyuk” or “Yats”, a rabid hater of ethnic Russians, placed in charge when the coup would be over, which was then done on 27 February 2014. That coup precipitated or provoked resistance to the coup on the day of the coup, 20 February 2014, when occurred the Korsun Massacre of Crimeans who, on the day of the coup, were fleeing the coup-site on Kiev’s Maidan Square, after holding signs there against the overthrow of that President for whom over 70% of Crimeans had voted, and now they were running back into their 8 awaiting buses to return to Crimea, but became blocked en-route and dozens of them were killed by the Right Sector paramilitaries who beat them to death and piled up their corpses, though many survived to record their accounts of the massacre. So: the war began on the very day of the coup, and it was perpetrated by Obama’s hired forces, specifically the Right Sector paramilitaries, who were under the command of Dmitriy Yarosh, who had been in charge of the team of snipers that the U.S. Government hired to carry out the coup. Some of the foreign snipers that were hired from Georgia and elsewhere were under the command of an American Brian Boyenger, but most of the snipers were Ukrainian racist-fascists who were under Yarosh’s command.
WAS PUTIN REALLY THAT INEPT?
Annotated by Patrice Greanville
(1) Contrary to centuries of demonisation by the West, especially by the Anglo peanut gallery, it seems that Russians are by nature or acculturation far less comfortable than Westerners with the art of deception. It's clear that Putin and his staff are not exempt from this widely observed cultural trait. The Soviet Union was regularly outmatched by the US and its acolytes in almost all global propaganda campaigns, as the Russians simply preferred to tell the truth or remain circumspect about a given question, rather than engage in elaborate and shameless subterfuge. Perhaps the tendency to lie and manipulate was and is a peculiar strength of the West, inherent in its capitalist culture, where marketing and "public relations", both fields extensively tainted with duplicity, are necessary and integral to the system's normal functioning. Incidentally, if you inspect the Washington-Moscow record in regard to treaties and pronouncements on various crises down the years, you will find that, almost invariably, the Soviets were true to their word, and that the breaking of treaties and devious official statements were usually the product of US machinations. Something similar can be said for the Soviet media, when compared to Western "journalism". While the press in the Soviet Union was clearly and unapologetically in the hands of the government, in this case the Communist party, that, again contrary to widespread assumptions of professional or moral superiority by the so-called "Free Press", proves to be, upon examination, a myth. In most cases, the Soviet press could be accused of following closely the editorial directives of the country's leadership, and, perhaps of being boring and grey when compared to its Western counterparts. But when it comes to truth in journalism, there the Soviets were way ahead of their colleagues in the great capitals of the Western empire. With all its flaws, the Soviet media was not another totalitarian propaganda machine in the mould of Goebbels' machine.
(2) Putin (and Xi and all other designated opponents of the West) are not dealing with a normal or even remotely healthy political culture, but with a sociopathic and inherently malicious global elite—fitting managers of an empire in open degeneracy— that knows perfectly well what the truth is about each and every issue but which chooses to deny it. Washington and its accomplices know all too well what they did in Kiev in 2014 (actually the culmination of almost a century-long preparation of the Nazi pill by the CIA in those ideologically-accursed regions), and the ensuing years, when they cynically politically enabled and armed a deliberately Nazified population to the teeth, with the equally cynical object of using it as a battering ram to weaken, balkanise and conquer Russia. The goal was, as envisioned by the Neocons, regime change in Moscow—at any price. That has not changed. While, given the Western elites' morally repugnant domination of their media, the average citizen in the West has been fed a bunch of fetid poppycock about Russia for generations, and they are certainly operating in an informational purgatory in which truth is a rarity, such can't be said for their masters. In this sense, no matter what Putin did or said, no matter how clever or true, it would be ignored, downplayed or disgustingly distorted. As the author himself points out, the Western cliques provoked this war by manipulating their Ukrainian puppet and thereby got the war they wanted. They still do, despite their ludicrous protestations to the contrary.
(3) The author argues that Putin's clumsiness in explaining the reasons for the SMO sealed Finland's (and Sweden's) entry into NATO, with the former abruptly providing almost as much strategically sensitive borderline to the West as Ukraine. I doubt this is the case at all. Note I am not denying Putin's sadly unimpressive maneuvering in this issue. I am saying that even if Putin had been Machiavelli's Russian impersonation, he might not have succeeded because the game was rigged, or, rather, firmly encased in the Neocons' deranged agenda for Russia. Further, the Scandinavians, their protestations of moral purity and political superiority aside, have been in the pockets of Washington and London for a long time, de facto if not formal vassals. The Finns, as well—I'm speaking here of their Quisling leadership, a reflection of their own treacherous ruling elites—have been Russophobes for ages, product of unhealed war scars, internal propaganda, and longstanding and deliberately cultivated cultural enmities. Thus, it's very likely that Finland would have joined NATO no matter what the Kremlin said or did at this time. It's telling, indeed, that Helsinki's "woke imperialist" and uber-feminist government didn't dare to put the NATO membership proposal to a referendum, the clearly democratic choice, as they were virtually "pre-sold". (Ditto for Sweden, witness their shady collaboration with the Anglo-Americans in the Assange entrapment op, and there are other instances). Finland's ascension to NATO was also facilitated by Erdogan's typically last-minute treacherous repositioning. (I hope the Russians won't forget that little detail in the years to come, as Finland's abandonment of neutrality is sure to give Moscow a ton of headaches, and, in a tragic sense, make the blood spilled in Ukraine to attain strategic security, less significant). But, again, Helsinki's perfidious move, a long calculated move (let's not kid ourselves), was probably inevitable, and not the product of some mysterious Finnish political naivete. In that sense, Zuesse's hard judgment underestimates the malignant rot—financial, cultural, and ideological and psychological—that permeates Europe and much of the West these days. This malignancy will have to run its course, and go through the harsher realities that usually only wars and terrible hardship can impose, before some mass mental realignment can take place.
(4) All the preceding certifies that while the US and its vassals still dominate the global informational ambit (soft power sphere). neither Russia, nor China, have yet built anything comparable. Nor are they likely to imitate the West in peddling mostly disinformation. Russia, however, and probably China, as well as Iran, are all powers with the ability and willingness, when absolutely required, to mould history by the force of arms. Battlefield realities speak, ultimately, with a decisive voice.
—PG
The unrest against the U.S. coup that started Ukraine’s war centered in two main regions: Crimea in the far south, in which that overthrown President had gotten 70+% of the votes, and Donbass in the far southeast, where he had gotten 90+% of the votes. The Donbass towns of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk on 15 April 2014 rejected the Obama-junta-installed-by-Yatsenyuk officials, and Yatsenyuk announced the next day that his government was starting an Anti-Terrorist Operation or “ATO” and sending in tanks to eliminate any such ’terrorists’. It was now officially an anti-‘terrorist’ war, in keeping with America’s ongoing war against terrorists (sic), but in this case Russia was being blamed for it, because Donbass is Russian-speaking and had voted over 90% for the overthrown, neutralist, President and therefore needed (from Obama’s perspective) to be depopulated so that in any future elections, only anti-Russian candidates would win Ukraine’s elections. Then, on 2 May 2014, Yarosh’s people trapped, inside the Odessa Trade Unions Building, dozens of people who had circulated flyers against the Obama-coup-installed government, and burned them alive, to demonstrate to Ukraine’s Russian-speakers that this new Ukraine hated their guts and wanted them gone from Ukraine. The Obama-installed government appointed, to be the new Governor of a region near Odessa, an oligarch, Kolomoyskyi, who had also funded Yarosh’s operation and helped to plan that burning-alive action. The ATO became the war against Donbass that the Minsk Agreements (which Obama opposed but tolerated) were supposed to stop and failed to stop, because Ukraine’s U.S.-installed government refused to stop its shelling of the breakaway region Donbass, and the war was an ethnic-cleansing operation to reduce the population there, which continued until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and which still has been continuing there, though perhaps somewhat reduced now as Russia has joined the residents there to fight against the U.S.-stooge regime in Kiev and against its ethnic-cleansing (or ‘ATO’) operation to reduce if not eliminate the residents there.
The intent of Obama’s coup was mainly to get Ukraine into NATO so that U.S. missiles could become placed on its border only 300 miles away from blitz-nuking The Kremlin, but was also intended to grab Russia’s main naval base, which since 1783 has been in Crimea, and turn it into a U.S. naval base (something Obama wasn’t able to do).
Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was intended to prevent Ukraine from hosting U.S. missiles only a five-minute-missile-flight-time away from blitz-nuking The Kremlin. Putin made a mess of his explanations of why he invaded Ukraine. The fact that it was done in order to block any possibility of U.S. missiles becoming ultimately posted in Ukraine only 300 miles from the Kremlin was almost ignored in his public statements. Therefore, he made easy The West’s convincing people that the aggressor here was Russia instead of America. On the surface, it looked that way, if the relevant prior history was ignored — and Putin’s explanations distracted from that history, instead of drawing attention to it, and thus allowed the relevant prior history behind this war to be and to remain ignored by the peoples in U.S.-and-allied countries. When he spoke about the prior history, he talked mainly about Ukrainians being really Russians, and other such irrelevancies, which irrelevancies precipitated in The West distractionary debates as to whether or not Ukrainians actually are Russians, or even why he said that they are: pro-U.S. media were, basically, psychoanalyzing Putin, instead of dealing with America’s coup that had grabbed Ukraine and maybe psychoanalyzing Obama himself. The undeniable physical fact is that America’s obsession to get its missiles that close to The Kremlin was intolerable to Russia and to Russians; so, Putin needed to prevent that from happening, and the 24 February 2022 invasion had become the only way to prevent it now, because on December 15th of 2021 Putin gave to the U.S. Government Russia’s existential national-security demands never to place its missiles so close to Moscow, and two days later he gave to America’s NATO anti-Russian military alliance Russia’s national-security demands including that Ukraine will never be in NATO, and, on 7 January 2022, both America and its NATO alliance formally said no to all of them; and, then, on 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine to achieve by military means what the U.S. regime refused even to consider by diplomatic means and negotiations — they refused to negotiate with Russia, regarding what were and still are, for Russia, national-security necessities. They were forcing Russia to invade Ukraine. That’s what they wanted, and they got it.
America and its NATO anti-Russian military alliance started the war in Ukraine; but Russia got the blame. Because of Putin’s incoherent explanations of why he was responding now militarily and invading Ukraine, the populations in both neutral Sweden and ‘neutral’ but Hitler-allied-in-WW-II Finland (Finland had joined his Operation Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and stayed with Hitler until that invasion was over in 1944) thought and think that the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion was unprovoked and nothing but a land-grab of Ukraine by Russia. But Putin’s PR failure was even worse than that, much worse, because of the timing of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: If Putin had instead waited for Ukraine’s full-scale invasion of Donbass, before responding then by his invading Ukraine to protect those people and to, at that point, go into Ukraine itself, to take out its racist-fascist U.S.-installed government, then perhaps there wouldn’t have been so many Finns who would have been clamoring for Finland to join NATO. If so, then Putin’s premature invasion of Ukraine has cost Russia its biggest loss ever since 24 February 2022: the loss of a neutral Finland, to a NATO Finland.
Putin was right to have been concerned about, and to be assisting, the defense of the people in the breakaway region of Donbass, but the national security of the people inside Russia was his absolute responsibility, and his public pronouncements smeared together those two, as-if they were equally his obligations to protect. They were not. Washington was luring him into what it could then convincingly lie to call an “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine; and, right before Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion, Washington had its stooge regime in Ukraine hike greatly its shellings against the residents in the breakaway Donbass. Putin fell for the bait, and invaded prematurely, allegedly in order to protect the Donbassers against that shelling instead of to protect Russians from U.S. missiles becoming posted in Ukraine, and he thus enabled Washington to call Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “unprovoked.” Consequently, Russia’s invasion shocked the world (as-if everything hadn’t been building toward this ever since 20 February 2014), and was interpreted falsely almost everywhere in the world, except inside Russia itself (which has far-more-honest newsmedia than in the U.S.-and-allied nations), as having BEEN unprovoked. How important was that successful U.S. lie? Its success persuaded Finns, who had had a pro-Hitler history during WW II, to break their decades of ‘neutrality’ since that time and officially join America’s anti-Russian military alliance, NATO. Like Ukraine, Finland shares a long border with Russia, and, whereas Ukraine’s reaches within 300 miles of The Kremlin, Finland’s reaches within 500 miles of it — that’s a 7-minute missile-flying distance instead of a 5-minute one. It’s almost as bad for Russia as-if Ukraine were to enter NATO. But Putin downplayed this disaster for Russians (a disaster that his own PR incompetence had facilitated). On 13 May 2022, the day after Finland announced its intention to join NATO, I headlined “Russia’s Weak Response to Finland’s Joining NATO” and contradicted Russia’s downplaying this matter as being a “balance of power” issue between the two sides, and pointed out that, to the exact contrary, it was a moral issue, and that America was in the wrong on this vitally important ethical matter: “It wouldn’t ‘preserve the balance of power’, because U.S./NATO will then be in a position to place America’s nukes on Russia’s border near its brain-center Moscow, whereas Russia isn’t in position to place its nukes on America’s border near its brain-center Washington DC.” Furthermore:
If Finland joins NATO, then America will station its missiles on Finland’s Russian border, 507 miles from Moscow, and that is 7 minutes away from blitz-nuking Moscow.
During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, America threatened to initiate nuclear war against the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union would position nuclear missiles in Cuba, 1,134 miles from Washington DC, which would be about 10 minutes away from blitz-nuking Washington (but would have required much longer to reach Washington back in 1962).
Consequently, Russia now is in at least as dangerous a situation if Finland joins NATO as America was in during the Cuban Missile Crisis when America was threatening to launch a nuclear invasion against Russia if U.S.S.R. placed missiles in Cuba.
Furthermore: unlike America and the Soviet Union during the Cuba Missile Crisis, when BOTH nations were willing to negotiate a peaceful end to that Crisis, Russia is willing to negotiate a peaceful settlement this time around but America is not and has repeatedly refused to do so. Clearly, America is heading for conquest.
That is a replay of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis but in reverse: not Soviet missiles in Cuba, but American missiles in Ukraine — or, now, in Finland. Finland became central to it because Putin’s premature invasion of Ukraine caused Finns to think that — as was the U.S. intention when Putin fell into America’s trap — this was an unprovoked land-grab by Russia instead of part of a long-term plan by America’s rulers to ultimately win control over Russia.
Clearly, America was the aggressor; Russia was not. Ukraine was and is merely the battlefield and proxy army for the U.S., in which this war between America and Russia is being fought. Putin disastrously blew the PR; and, so, not only is NATO continuing its expansion dangerously near to Russia’s central command in Moscow, but it is Russia that is being sanctioned against by the U.S. and its vassal-nations, and Russia that is being condemned in the U.N. General Assembly, as-if the aggressor were Russia, instead of the U.S. regime.
But Putin’s performance is even worse than that: As I headlined on 3 April 2023 and pointed out “Putin’s Enormous Blunder”, an even bigger failure by him has been the follow-up to Finland’s announcement of its intention to join NATO. And— as I pointed out there — even now, after Finland is in NATO, he is continuing that failure.
This is not to say World War Three, which we now are in (not yet in the direct and nuclear stage of it) will necessarily be lost by Russia (I expect Russia and China to win against the U.S. Government, because that Government is astoundingly corrupt), but Putin’s PR incompetency in this is clear. Russia’s diplomacy (and diplomacy is terrifically important a part of success in a war) is continuing to be hobbled by his incompetency at PR. Putin seems impervious to improving his poor performance in the non-military aspects of WW III, except in the economic aspects, which he has managed brilliantly. He has also outperformed The West in the military aspects, though America (which might be as corrupt at its top as any country in history ever was) spends on its military 20 times what Russia spends on its. Putin’s very weak areas have been in diplomacy, negotiation, and PR. And he shows no signs of improving in those fields. He blew them, and he tragically still does. In that sense, he has been rigid. But, because he is a skillful leader in other aspects, his blunders that produced Finland’s joining NATO might not hand an overall victory to the U.S. regime. It was a huge win for America’s rulers, but not necessarily a fatal loss for Russians and for the entire world. The Russian Government’s downplaying it is false: it enormously understates this harm that has been resulting from Putin’s falling into, and remaining in, the U.S. regime’s trap on this Ukrainian matter.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.Print this article
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
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let’s see you handle a large army of NAZIS with NATO US & CANADA plotting destruction of your country whiklele salguhterint the people of DONBASS. backseat driver. putz
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This war has been inevitable sooner or later since WWII. The Western elites, personified by Churchill were planning a reinvasion of the USSR after Stalin saved them. No good deed goes unpunished. And they’ve been plotting ever since, because their source of wealth for 500 years or more has been ‘Slavery, Stealing, and Slaughter’. What this discussion by Zuesse as well as Greanville omits is an extremely important factor: Donbass and Russian intelligence knew of an imminent mass invasion of the Donbass. Given that the main populated areas were extremely vulnerable. such an attack would most likely overrun the defending… Read more »
I like Eric Zuess writings but he is an unapologetic anti-communist and therefore just another anti-communist social-democrat regurgitating empire apologetics in a more complex form Putin is operating in an environment with a very sizeable 5th column (Russia has always been like this since Peter the Great). A 5th column that see’s Europe (by extension USA) as the forward thinking fountain of progress. Putin has been hamstrung by this 5th column and has had to walk a tentative tight rope. For example Russia did not hit all the power plants, water works, sewage works and food processing plants in the… Read more »
Thanks, Bobby. What you say is certainly on point. I never understood Zuesse’s anti-communism, since, little by little, as he understands more deeply the depravity and sheer evil of capitalism and its antecedents, he is compelled to see that all roads lead to a communist future or else humanity is lost. His clear hatred of capitalism and the American “way” is certainly to be applauded. I personally felt his critique of Putin —while objectively, on the surface, was correct, such as Zuesse’s suggestion that Putin had missed a good opportunity to nip the Finnish/NATO alliance in the bud by deft… Read more »