Lebanon-Israel Front Is REALLY Heating Up (Gaza War Military Analysis)

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Richard Medhurst

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Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. And that's a fact. 

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JOE LAURIA: RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM

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Joe Lauria
Consortium News 

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Eurasia map

Does it look like Russia needs to grab more land?


Amongst the condemnations that were hurled at Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin even before their interview was aired, was this gem from an unnamed European foreign affairs spokesman to The Guardian

“A spokesperson for the European Commission said it anticipated that the interview would provide a platform for Putin’s ‘twisted desire to reinstate’ the Russian empire.

‘We can all assume what Putin might say. I mean he is a chronic liar,’ said the EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs. …

‘[Putin] is trying to kill as many Ukrainians as he can for no reason. There is only one reason for his twisted desire to reinstate the now imperialistic Russian empire where he controls everything in his neighbourhood and imposes his will. But this is not something we are able to tolerate or are willing to tolerate in Europe or the world in the 21st century.’” [Emphasis added.]

The article warned that Carlson’s interview could actually be deemed “illegal” under last year’s European Digital Services Act.  The Guardian says:

“The law is aimed at stamping out illegal content or harmful content that incites violence or hate speech from social media. All the large platforms, bar X, have signed up to a code of conduct to help them accelerate and build their internal procedures in order to comply with the law. …

The onus is on platforms to ensure content is lawful, said a spokesperson for the digital tsar, Thierry Breton. … If a social media platform does not comply with the new EU law it can be sanctioned with a hefty fine, or banned from operating in the EU.”

The Russians Are Coming … Again

Military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, May 2017. (kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

After the interview, the Western media predictably dismissed it for a variety of reasons, including that it promoted Russian “imperialism.”  The Economist wrote that Putin’s

“obsession — Russia’s historical claim to Ukraine — is backed by a nuclear arsenal. … He denied any interest in invading Poland or Latvia (though he previously said the same about Ukraine).”  

Western rhetoric about a resurgent “Russian imperialism” dates back to 2014, when Russia assisted Donbass in resisting the U.S.-backed unconstitutional change of government in Kiev. Western officials sought to characterize Russia’s action as an “invasion” that was part of a grand scheme by Putin to reconstitute the Soviet Empire and even threaten Western Europe. 

In March 2014, a month after the coup without making any reference to it to explain Russian actions, Hillary Clinton compared Putin to Adolf Hitler.  The Washington Post reported:

“‘Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,’ Clinton said Tuesday, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. ‘All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people, and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.’” 

March 19, 2010: U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, Ambassador Beyrle and Under Secretary Burns with Russian Prime Minister Putin during a meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo just outside Moscow. (State Department, Public Domain)

Clinton later tried to talk down any comparison to Hitler beginning his conquest of Europe by saying Putin was not that irrational. But the notion that the Russian president is trying to reconstruct the Soviet Empire — and then threaten Western Europe — is often repeated in the West. 

forefront of keeping this idea afloat. 

Reconstituting the Soviet Empire would involve bringing the Central Asian Republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia, let alone the Baltics and the former Warsaw States, now part of NATO, under Moscow’s control. 

The Inevitable Fall of Putin’s New Russian Empire;” and Salon: “How Russian Colonialism Took the Western Anti-Imperialist Left for a Ride.”

The absurdity of the notion of a threat to the West by Russian “imperialism” is underscored every time many of these same Western leaders and media ridicule how disastrously Russia has performed on the Ukrainian battlefield and how, in the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president, Russia must resort to washing machine parts to keep its military going.

How can Russia be so weak and incompetent and yet be such an imminent and menacing threat at the same time? 

The late Russia specialist Stephen F. Cohen dismissed these fears as a dangerous demonization of Russia and Putin. Cohen repeatedly explained that Russia had neither the capacity nor the desire to start a war against NATO and was acting defensively against the alliance.

“How can Russia be so weak and incompetent and yet be such an imminent and menacing threat at the same time?” 

This is clear from the decades-long Russian objection to NATO expansion (which Putin raised with Carlson), coming in the 1990s when Wall Street and the U.S. dominated Russia, asset-stripping the formerly state-owned industries and impoverishing the Russian people, while enriching themselves.

It is clear from Russia backing the Minsk Accords, which would have left Donbass as an autonomous part of Ukraine, and not rejoined to Russia.

And it is clear from the treaty proposals to NATO and the United States offered by Russia in December 2021 intended to avert Russian military intervention. The West rebuffed Russia on all three diplomatic initiatives.


Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)


While realists in Washington and Europe increasingly admit Ukraine is losing the war, neocon fantasists, desperate to keep it going, have revived the theme of the Russian threat to the West to counter congressional reluctance to throw away more money and more lives.

Trumped-up fear of Russia has served U.S. ruling circles well for more than 70 years. The first three National Intelligence Estimates of the C.I.A., from 1947 t0 1949, reported no evidence of a Soviet threat, no infrastructure to support a sustained threat, and no evidence of a desire for confrontation with the United States.

“Trumped-up fear of Russia has served U.S. ruling circles well for more than 70 years.”

war scare was drummed up to save the U.S. aircraft industry, which had nearly collapsed with the end of the Second World War.

Then came the 1954 bomber gap and 1957 missile gap with the Soviet Union, now accepted as deliberate fictions.  In 1976 then C.IA. Director George H.W. Bush approved a Team B, whose purpose was again to inflate Soviet military strength. 

George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow and America’s foremost expert on the Soviet Union tried to counter such exaggerations, including late in life when he opposed NATO expansion in the 1990s. 

Now we are being asked again to believe another fictional story of a Russian threat to the West in order to save U.S. and European face — and Joe Biden’s presidency. 

It is instead a projection to cover up its own authentic imperialism and the West’s perceived threat to Russia, a big part of what Putin was trying to get across in the Carlson interview. 

The Donbas status referendums in May 2014. (Andrew Butko, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The issue at hand is the fundamental difference between imperialism and revanchism. Western critics purposely or ignorantly confuse the two to serve their interests.

Succinctly, the difference is this:  imperialists take control of a country that does not want them there and resists.  A revanchist wants to absorb former imperial lands where the population is largely the same ethnicity and welcomes the revanchist power to protect them from an outside threat.

Yes, Hitler was being revanchist in his defense of the German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. But it was a first step in an imperial design to conquer countries that ultimately resisted him.  Clinton’s effort to roll back her comments to say Putin is not as irrational as Hitler was her attempt to tamp down a suggestion that Putin wanted to conquer Europe as Hitler did. 

“The issue at hand is the fundamental difference between imperialism and revanchism. Western critics purposely or ignorantly confuse the two to serve their interests.”

To call Putin’s move on Ukraine “imperialist” is to say Russia had never conquered those lands before and that he might indeed keep going to conquer lands Russia has never controlled: i.e., Western Europe.

Russian imperialism in Ukraine took place nearly 250 years ago under the reign of Catherine the Great. That was when the Russians defeated the Turks and occupied what came to be known as Novorossiya.  Putin went back further than that to make Russian claims and he has been open about his feeling that those lands and Russia are one.  He spoke at length about it in his interviews with Oliver Stone in 2017.

Putin was acting both to defend Donbass’ Russian speakers (who were under imminent renewed attack in February 2022) and also saw the opportunity to reunite the old imperial lands with Russia. That opportunity was seen in the Kremlin as a necessity because of the West’s rejection of Moscow’s diplomatic efforts to avoid conflict. 

Given the results of the four regional referendums in 2022, plus the one in Crimea in 2014, it is clear the people of those regions wanted to rejoin Russia after the coup and the revival of Ukrainian extremism.  

One can condemn or criticize revanchism, but one cannot call it imperialism.


SOURCE: Joe Lauria, Consortium News. See full bio below in author's box. 
He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

 

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Pepe Escobar: Life During Wartime – On the Road in Donbass

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Pepe Escobar

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You are given a name by the War:/it’s a call sign, not nickname – much more./Lack of fancy cars here and iPads,/But you have APC and MANPADS./Social media long left behind,/Children’s drawings with “Z” stick to mind./’Likes” and “thumbs up” are valued as dust,/But the prayers from people you trust./Hold On, Soldier, my brother, my friend,/The hostility comes to an end./War’s unable to stop its decease,/Grief and suffering will turn into peace./Life returns to the placid format,/With your callsign, inscribed in your heart./ From the war, as a small souvenir:/Far away, but eternally near.
Inna Kucherova, Call Sign, in A Letter to a Soldier, published December 2022


Father Igor, a military priest, is blessing a group of local contract-signed volunteers to the Archangel Gabriel battalion, ready to go to the front lines of the US vs. Russia proxy war. The man in charge of the battalion is one of the top-ranking officers of Orthodox Christian units in the DPR.

A small shrine is set up in the corner of a small, cramped room, decorated with icons. Candles are lit, and three soldiers hold the red flag with the icon of Jesus in the center. After prayers and a small homily, Father Igor blesses each soldier.
 
This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot.

There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalions fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization. Throughout Russian history, it’s individuals that sacrifice their lives to protect the community – and not vice-versa. Those who survived – or perished – in the siege of Leningrad are only one among countless examples.
 
So the Orthodox Christian battalion were my guardian angels as I returned to Novorossiya to revisit the rich black soil where the old “rules-based” world order came to die.
 

The Living Contradictions of the 'Road of Life'

The “Road of Life” has got to be one of the epic war misnomers in Donetsk. “Road” is a euphemism for a dark, muddy bog plied back and forth virtually non-stop by military vehicles. “Life” applies because the Donbas military actually donate food and humanitarian aid to the locals at the Gornyak neighborhood every single week.


Alexander Nevsky icon at Father Michael's temple.


The heart of the Road of Life is the Svyato Blagoveschensky temple, cared for by Father Viktor – who at the time of my visit was away on rehabilitation, as several parts of his body were hit by shrapnel. I am shepherded by Yelena, who shows me around the impeccably clean temple bearing sublime icons – including 13th century Prince Alexander Nevsky, who in 1259 became the supreme Russian ruler, Sovereign of Kiev, Vladimir and Novgorod. Gornyak is a deluge of black mud, under the incessant rain, with no running water and electricity. Residents are forced to walk at least two kilometers, every day, to buy groceries: there are no local buses.

Yelena, the caretaker of Father Michael's temple at the 'Road of Life' in Donetsk.

Yelena, the caretaker of Father Michael's temple at the 'Road of Life' in Donetsk.


In one of the back rooms, Svetlana carefully arranges mini-packages of food essentials to be distributed every Sunday after liturgy. I meet Mother Pelageya, 86 years old, who comes to the temple every Sunday, and would not even dream of ever leaving her neighborhood.

Gornyak is in the third line of defense. The loud booms – as in everywhere in Donetsk – are nearly non-stop, incoming and outgoing. If we follow the road for another 500 meters or so and turn right, we are only 5 km away from Avdeyevka – which may be about to fall in days, or weeks at most.
 
At the entrance of Gornyak there’s the legendary DonbassActiv chemical factory – now inactive – which actually fabricated the red stars which shine over the Kremlin, using a special gas technology that was never reproduced. In a side street to the Road of Life, local residents built an improvised shrine to honor the child victims of Ukrainian shelling. One day this is going to end: the day when the DPR military completely controls Avdeyevka.


Donbass Activ chemical plant at the entrance of the 'Road of Life' in Donetsk
© Photo

The Donbass Activ chemical plant at the entrance of the 'Road of Life' in Donetsk © Photo

 

'Mariupol Is Russia'

The traveling priesthood exits the digs of the Archangel Gabriel battalion and heads to a meeting in a garage with the Dmitry Donskoy orthodox battalion, fighting in the Ugledar direction. That’s where I meet the remarkable Troya, the battalion's medic, a young woman who had a comfy job as a deputy officer in a Russian district before she decided to volunteer.


Mariupol building


Onwards to a cramped military dormitory where a cat and her kittens reign as mascots, choosing the best place in the room right by the iron stove. Time to bless the fighters of the Dimitri Zalunsky battalion, named after St. Dimitri of Thessaloniki, who are fighting in the Nikolskoye direction.

 
At each successive ceremony, you can’t help being stricken by the purity of the ritual, the beauty of the chants, the grave expressions in the faces of the volunteers, all ages, from teenagers to sexagenarians. Deeply touching. This in so many aspects is the Slavic counterpart of the Islamic Axis of Resistance fighting in West Asia. It is a form of asabiyya – “community spirit”, as I used it in a different context referring to the Yemeni Houthis supporting “our people” in Gaza.
So yes: deep down in the Donbass countryside, in communion with those living life during wartime, we feel the enormity of something inexplicable and vast, full of endless wonder, as if touching the Tao by silencing the recurrent loud booms. In Russian, there is, of course, a word for it: "загадка", roughly translated as “enigma” or “mystery”.



I left the Donetsk countryside to go to Mariupol – and to be hit by the proverbial shock when one is reminded of the utter destruction perpetrated by the neo-nazi Azov battalion* in the spring of 2022, from the city center to the shoreline along the port then all the way to the massive Azovstal Iron and Steel Works.

 
At the port, a red, white and blue stripe lays down the law: “Mariupol is Russia”. I make a point to go to the former entrance of Azovstal, where the remaining Azov battalion fighters, around 1,700, surrendered to Russian soldiers in May 2022. As much as Berdyansk may eventually become a sort of Monaco in the Sea of Azov, Mariupol may also have a bright future as a tourism, leisure and cultural center and last but not least, a key maritime entrepot of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union.


The Mystery of the Icon

Back from Mariupol I was confronted with one of the most extraordinary stories woven with the fabric of magic under war. In a nondescript parking lot, suddenly I’m face to face with The Icon.
 
The icon – of Mary Mother of God – was gifted to the whole of Donbass by veterans of the Zsloha Spetsnaz, when they came in the summer of 2014. The legend goes that the icon started to spontaneously generate myrrh: as it felt the pain suffered by the local people, it started to cry. During the storming of Azovstal, the icon suddenly made an appearance, out of nowhere, brought in by a pious soul. Two hours later, the legend goes, the DPR, Russian and Chechen forces found their breakthrough.
 
The conversation ranges from military tactics on the battlefield, especially in the siege of Avdeyevka, which will be totally encircled in a matter of days, now with the help of Special Forces, paratroopers and lots of armored vehicles, to impressions of the Tucker Carlson interview with Putin (they heard nothing new). The commanders note the absurdity of Kiev not acknowledging their hit on the Il-76 carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs– totally dismissing the plight of their own PoWs. I ask them why Russia simply does not bomb Avdeyevka to oblivion: “Humanism”, they answer.
 

The DIY Rover From Hell

In a cold, foggy morning at a secret location in central Donetsk – once again, no drones overhead – I meet two kamikaze drone specialists, codename Hooligan and his observer, codename Letchik. They set up a kamikaze drone demo – of course unarmed – while a few meters away mechanical engineer specialist “The Advocate” sets up his own demo of a DIY mine-delivery rover.

That’s a certified lethal version of the Yandex food delivery rovers now quite popular around Moscow. “Advocate” shows off the maneuverability and ability of his little toy to face any terrain. The mission: each rover is equipped with two mines, to be placed right under an enemy tank. Success so far has been extraordinary – and the rover will be upgraded.


Donbas 'The Advocate' setting up his DIY mine-delivering rover test


There’s hardly a more daring character in Donetsk than Artyom Gavrilenko, who built a brand new school cum museum right in the middle of the first line of defense – once again only 2 km or so away from the frontline. He shows me around the museum, which performs the enviable task of outlining the continuity between the Great Patriotic War, the USSR adventure in Afghanistan against the US-financed and weaponized jihad, and the proxy war in Donbas.


At the school/museum in Donetsk only 2 km away from the front line


That’s a parallel, DIY version of the official Museum of War in central Donetsk, close to the Shaktar Donetsk football arena, which features stunning memorabilia from the Great Patriotic War as well as fabulous shots by Russian war photographers.

 
So Donetsk students – emphasis in math, history, geography, languages – will be growing up deeply enmeshed in the history of what for all practical purposes is a heroic mining town, extracting wealth from the black soil while its dreams are always inexorably clouded by war.



We went into the DPR using backroads to cross the border to the LPR not far from Lugansk. This is a slow, desolate border which reminds me of the Pamirs in Tajikistan, basically used by locals. In and out, I was politely questioned by a passport control officer from Dagestan and his seconds-in-command. They were fascinated by my travels in Donbass, Afghanistan and West Asia – and invited me to visit the Caucasus. As we left deep into the freezing night for the long trek ahead back to Moscow, the exchange was priceless:

“You are always welcome here.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Like Terminator!”


*The Azov Battalion is a terrorist organization banned in Russia.

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BLOWBACK: Tucker Does Diplomacy

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Billy Bob's Blowback Roundtable
THE WORLD THROUGH AN INDEPENDENT LEFT LENS

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Tucker Does Diplomacy

Streamed live on Feb 10, 2024

Episode 52 of Blowback: Exposing Imperialist Decline with special guest Ian Kummer
The panel discusses the outstanding aspects of Tucker Carlson's Putin Interview, what it signifies in the context of US imperial propaganda in an age of challenges and decline, and whether the format of the interview itself—one of unusual depth and length—will help or harm the ultimate aim of educating Westerners, especially Americans, about the realities of the world so that peace can be secured, warmongers defeated once and for all, and a nuclear war can be averted. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Billy Bob is a dedicated anti-imperialist activist and blogger. You can reach him at his Facebook page HERE.


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IAN KUMMER: My Main Takeaways from the Tucker Carlson-Putin Interview

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Ian Kummer
THE READING JUNKIE
&
Member, Billy Bob Blowback Roundtable

The Putin Interview Series / Part 3
TOP CRITICAL REVIEWS & COMMENTARY

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My Main Takeaways from the Tucker Carlson-Putin Interview

I watched the full interview on Tucker Carlson’s website early this morning. I won’t give a play-by-play description of what was said, as that has been done a hundred times already. There’s a good synopsis of the main points on Zero Hedge. Instead, I’ll just give my general observations.


There’s the widespread hysteria about Tucker going “soft” on Putin, and I consider this accusation ridiculous. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being friendly and 10 being hostile, I would give this exchange a 4. It was more friendly than hostile, but Tucker did challenge Putin’s statements and try (though unsuccessfully) to redirect the conversation at multiple points. I consider the overall tone of Tucker’s approach to be fairly neutral. Definitely more neutral than any western interview of Putin, Zelensky, Biden, or even aging neoliberal oligarchs like failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. But that’s the problem with our mainstream “news” (I use the term generously). None of these people consider themselves journalists, but information henchmen of the regime. A regime official like Joe Biden or Antony Blinken gets the most absurdly fawning praise and admiration of interviewing them, and with “adversaries” the opposite treatment is applied.

From a journalism standpoint, this approach is ridiculous. The purpose of an interview is to get that person’s viewpoints as coherently as possible. But mainstream western journalists treat the interview as a high school debate club, with half or more of the runtime filled with just this journalist talking over the interviewee and spamming as many regime talking points as possible. Fortunately, Tucker did not do this and that’s probably at least part of the reason Putin accepted an interview with him in the first place.

Tucker went into the interview expecting surface-level explanation of current events, and that shows in his prompts. Basically, what was the trigger for Russia intervening in Ukraine in February 2022. In other words, what is Russia’s history with Ukraine and where did it go wrong? So naturally, Putin gave a 30+ minute synopsis starting in the 9th Century. A college-level dissertation on the history of Rus caught some viewers by surprise, myself included, and it is useful for American audiences who don’t know anything about Russia besides the revisionist history we have been fed for decades. So for those willing to listen, Putin’s lecture was good. Even if this stream of encyclopediac knowledge went over a lot of people’s heads, it at least delivers home the point that Putin is highly educated and knowledgeable. Tucker was taken aback by this and objected a few times, but Putin reminded him that he had claimed to want a serious discussion, not a talk show. And that I think is why this interview was so significant, because it is a serious in-depth discussion, not a cheap talk show, or surface level pop history lesson on TikTok.

It would be possible for an American president to give an equally lengthy and in-depth [account] of American history going back 1,000 years, starting in Britain. The exact starting point of such a history lecture would be a bit arbitrary, but 1066 would make sense. The death of Edward the Confessor led to a power struggle for the throne between Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. Harold crushed the Viking army at Stamford bridge, and was himself defeated and killed by the Normans at Hastings, making this a year a crucial point in world history. Other major inflection points in our history would likely be the Baron wars and the signing of Magna Carta, Henry VIII founding the Anglican church, the first English colonies in the new world, the civil war between cavaliers and roundheads, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, and so on. Such events would be significant in shaping the population of white Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who make up the majority of Americans today.

Could Biden or any other person in his administration give such a 30 minute lecture, let alone from memory? Maybe, but probably not.

Some other thoughts:

Putin expressed his frustration that he literally does not know who to talk to in the US government, and that reflects American anxieties that our “democracy” is a masquerade for a persistent state of technocrats who rule and make all the decisions in the background. The main problem with this is that these shadowy technocrats buried in the US capitol and the Pentagon are near-impossible for American citizens or foreign leaders alike to access properly. Tucker seemed confused about Putin’s statement about joining NATO but I think it is important. It doesn’t actually matter if Russia would have decided on joining NATO or not. The point is that Putin asked Clinton, received a “no” for an answer, but that answer wasn’t coming from Clinton, it was coming from people behind Clinton who were making all the decisions, but these technocrats were inaccessible to Putin. This point was further reinforced by the conversation regarding US-sponsored violent in the Norther Caucasus. The CIA told their Russian counterparts in no uncertain terms that these ambitions to stir up unrest served the interests of the US government, regardless of what our president happened to say.

American corporate media took this last point personally, as demonstrated by this article on CNN:

In some cases, Carlson even fed into Putin’s narratives. For instance, Putin advanced an absurd deep state-style conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is not controlled by its elected leaders but by unelected powers at the Central Intelligence Agency who direct the president like a puppet from the shadows.

“So, twice you’ve described US presidents making decisions and then being undercut by their agency heads,” Carlson said after Putin made the assertion, earnestly summing up the Russian leader’s mendacious narrative. “So it sounds like you’re describing a system that’s not run by the people who are elected, in your telling?”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Putin replied.

Carlson never followed up to challenge the absurdity.

Tucker brought up his usual dislike of China and I’m glad that Putin shut this down as thoroughly as he did. This is also beneficial for right-leaning Americans who admire or at least respect Putin. Russia has a 1,000 km border with China and have coexisted for centuries. If Russia can do it, then the USA can too and there’s no need for saber-rattling.


Naturally, CNN doesn’t bother to explain why Putin was wrong or try to disprove him. They just dismiss the whole affair as a conspiracy theory, which is pretty solid evidence that what Putin said was 100% true.

One attribute of this interview that is very clear just from watching it was that there was no prior discussion of the topics or specific questions to be asked. There could be any number of reasons for this (or no reason at all), but I think it is deliberate. In my previous post I brought up the possibility of someone wanting to prosecute Tucker under the Espionage Act, and the communications leading up to the interview were one of the exact pieces of evidence that was mentioned. I am sure Tucker’s interview came only after long consultations with lawyers, and it was shaped to make prosecution as unlikely and difficult as possible. Evan Gershkovich also came up in discussion, and that might have been part of the argument Tucker would make to prove that his Putin interview had good intentions. Speaking of Gershkovich, I find it interesting that Tucker spent a fairly large amount of time on the topic of his detainment, which to me suggests that Tucker is genuinely concerned about him. However, Putin’s overall point on the matter was correct. Prisoner negotiations tend to go a lot more smoothly when they’re not sensationalized in the media and used as political fodder, which Biden has insisted on doing with every single detained American who checks the right diversity boxes.

The most important question is also the most difficult one. What will be the short and long term impacts of the interview? I do not think this will have any impact on opposing camps in the US political establishment who have already made up their minds on the Ukraine issue. But this will influence public opinion. For millions of American citizens, this is the first time in their lives they’ve heard the unadulterated Russian perspective, and that is in of itself significant. The interview has over 100 million views (and the exact number is hard to count because it has been shared so far and wide), and is already being translated into other languages and broken up into digestible sound bytes for people not interested in watching the whole video. And this is part of the reason I think it was good for Putin to focus on such broad historical topics because that makes the video evergreen, it will still be relevant in 5 years even if the conflict in Ukraine has already ended. This will likely be remembered as one of the most significant interviews in the first half of the 21st Century.

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(NOTEWORTHY COMMENTS (ORIGINAL THREAD))

If you allow, a short summary of President Putin’s claims that led to smo. And this is a set of problems that have been growing like a snowball since the collapse of the union. I would like to note that everything that was said is truthful and easy to verify, however, of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich is somewhat disingenuous or does not say enough at some points. And this is quite normal, because he is a politician. These are the reasons: 1) the constant expansion of NATO to the east (which should not have happened according to verbal agreements) 2) the announcement of readiness to accept Ukraine into NATO 3) the nurturing, legitimization and glorification of neo-nationalist movements and even military units 4) the oppression of the Russian language and Russian-speaking population due to growing nationalism (taking into account the fact that the overwhelming number of citizens are Russian-speaking) 5) signing of European integration, which threatened to open free access to our market for the flow of goods from Europe, because at that time there was a single customs zone 6) a bloody coup d’etat and the beginning of preparations and implementation of a military operation to suppress those who disagreed with this coup (Odessa, Crimea, Eastern regions) 7) flooding of the territory of Ukraine (especially border zones) with military bases with foreign instructors and military equipment, essentially a threat to Russia’s national security 8) refusal to implement the signed Minsk 2 peace agreement 9) continuous shelling of civilians in Donbass. The goals are clear and do not change – demilitarization and denazification. And these are absolutely truthful attitudes. There are others, and thinking people, especially in the field of macroeconomics, know where they stand. If you ask the question why Germany suffers such humiliation from its main strategic partner (meaning the blow of the northern streams and liquefied gas in the sky high prices), the answer cannot be found on the surface. And I think it can be formulated this way: we don’t want cheap (gas and oil), we want free. It’s no secret that behind the most beautiful thoughts, ideas and events there will always be money. And even if money is not the goal itself, the need for economic security and sovereignty determines almost any foreign policy steps of the state. And the complete capture of Ukraine into the orbit of influence of the United States and the European Union is precisely a threat to Russia’s economic security. I don’t agree with everything, however, a general understanding of the economic background can be found here: https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE?si=nxfajObBKVwLhpFl


I enjoyed the history part and found the bit about Poland prior to WW2 particularly interesting. I knew they and the Romanians had prevented the Soviet attempts to build a coalition to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938 and that they had taken a chunk of territory near Cieszyn, mainly inhabited by Poles, but I was not aware of the way Poland used Chamberlain’s promise of support to escalate things with Germany.

I did a course on the religions of Russia a few years ago and, even coming from a Russian Studies background, I was surprised at the extent to which the Roman Catholic church’s negative, crusading, attitude to Orthodoxy found a willing partner in Polish policy and national feeling to cause no end of problems for Russia across the centuries. Growing up in the UK, Poland was always portrayed as the victim, but it is interesting to see the Polish state through Putin’s eyes as, at the very least, eternal troublemakers. But given what has transpired, he’s probably thinking the same about the UK.

I’m working on a blog covering Russian history (https://ratemytsar.wordpress.com) and I’ve only got a century and a bit in from Rurik in a couple of months, so I’m impressed with Putin’s succinctness in fitting everything in 25 minutes. He missed a lot of interesting stuff out, though.

I wonder, though, if any normies will be listening. I get the impression Tucker Carlson has a particular, fairly partisan audience in the USA, who would be sympathetic to the idea that Obama and Biden have messed everything up. I’m not sure people who listen to the mainstream in the west will even have the capability to appreciate the substance of the interview, as they are coming from an environment where everything both Putin and Carlson say is immediately condemned as misinformation and lies. Why listen to two liars lie for two hours, when you can read a brief pro-NATO “debunking” and condemnation in two minutes?


 

ABOUT IAN KUMMER / HIS PERSONAL JOURNEY
Reading Junkie is my personal blog where I share various rants about politics, current events, reviews of books and films, among other things. I’m a former US Marine fire support specialist, and also worked for about 10 years as a public affairs specialist in the US Army National Guard and Reserves. For that reason I will mostly opine about the “information operations” aspect of current events in Ukraine. About three years ago I expanded into writing fiction, starting with a sci-fi anthology titled Ultra Violence, which is the first part of what I originally intended as an ongoing seven-book series. COVID lockdowns, personal drama, and a lengthy hospitalization unfortunately interrupted my project, though I plan to come back to it soon when life allows me to. I then wrote a fictional short story about the Russian “Night Witches” in World War II, which was published on the Fabius Maximus website. Fabius Maximus is now defunct, but you can read a copy of my story on the very first post of Reading Junkie, Ballad of the Unknown Pilot. The topic of Night Witches interested me enough that I decided to write more about them, which required more study and research on my part. The more I read, the more I realized just how little I knew about the Soviet Union, Russia, and the people in it. This rabbit hole eventually led to me to taking multiple trips to Russia, and that’s where I still am today. In Moscow region, attending a course for beginners in the Russian language, and writing my book.


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