Kick-Back Empire

That, plus the cabal’s acceptance that the vote of Crimea’s mainly pro-Russian population to join the Russian Federation was all that it would have taken at the outset of the war to have achieved peace (as per the “peace” ticket through brought Zelenskiy to power in 2019, and to which Ukraine was already committed through the Minsk agreements of 2014-2015). Russia has no apologies to make for (1) the defense of the peoples of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea from the certainty of continuing Western-backed Ukrainian aggression against the lives and property of their populations; (2) calling out Ukraine and Europe for their dishonesty in failing to honor the Minsk agreements; (3) for responding proactively to arrogant US refusal to reassess the wisdom of its conversion of Poland and Romania to the status of faggot US staging posts for nuclear defense systems intended to fire intermediate range nuclear missiles against Russia on the pathetic excuse of a possible threat to Europe from Iran (which did not then, and does not now, possess nuclear weapons).

Someone who would shoulder the risk that Zelenskiy has taken - at Western behest and perhaps on Western orders - at the cost not just of so many Ukrainian lives but of the many millions (well over 20 million lives when compared to Ukraine’s 1991 population) who have been forced into exile, and those other lives condemned to injury, poverty, and routine State abuse - is indeed a sociopathic hater. We have seen with what determination the West has clung to the false narratives they have spun on Zelenskiy’s behalf with a view to the dismantling of the Russian Federation for the primary benefit of the West. Increasingly, the world is beginning to understand that this lunatic passion is the inevitable result of a machinery of graft and corruption that has spread its networks across Ukraine, the US and Europe to the point that it would be foolish not to assume that for all practical purposes the otherwise peculiar indifference of European leaders to their own economic and civilizational decline in the name of propping up Zelenskiy is the result of corrupt money flows.

Evil though it is, it is no worse in principle than the systems of graft and corruption that oils the military-industrial complex of the USA and props up US proxy powers in countries around the world that host its armies, flatter its leaders, and parrot its increasingly bizarre and outrageous lies (as today in Venezuela). It is all about stealing money from taxpayer citizens (and noncitizens) for diversion from socially uplifing programs to corporate and plutocratic scams.

Speaking of Venezuela, perhaps it is time to ask if Russia is now positioning any of its new generation of weapons (Oreshnik, Burevestnik or, particularly applicable, Poseidon) in the direction of the US flag dinosaur, the USS Gerald Ford or, rather more broadly, what are the implications of Russian assistance to Venezuela, right now, and in the immediate to medium-term future? The effectiveness of Russian aid to Syria during the fall of the Assad dynasty (note that former Al Qaeda leader Sharaa visited Putin before he went to Washington and that Russia retains its military bases in Syria), or to Iran during the US/Iranian attack on its leadership and its nuclear-energy facilitites in the summer, or its inability to mitigate the civilizational shock of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, whatever the precise circumstances (and of course, they are complex), do not inspire enormous confidence in Russia’s commitment to a truly multipolar order.

It is not unrealistic to see in the present developments scope for leverage and bargaining between Russia and the US over Venezuela: Russia will withdraw its battleships and refrain from sinking the Gerald Ford (or from gifting Caracas with the necessary means of doing so) if the US refrains from taking action against Maduro and withdraws its forces. Because otherwise what we are going to see will look quite a lot like Vietnam and last for longer, with Russia (now drawing not only on its own muscular and expanding weapons production capability, but also that of North Korea and China) and quite possibly China itself (protecting its newly established ports, shipping and trading networks, exemplified by its Chancay development in Peru even more than in its continuing influence in Panama) providing Venezuela and Colombia with all the guerilla means necessary to entrap the US in another, and very bloody, forever war in which it is principally Americans who are going to die in South American jungles. (In his novel Volver la vista atras about Colombian film maker Sergio Cabrera, Juan Gabriel Vasquez traces the story of Chinese relations with Colombian guerillas back to the Cultural Revolution).

Putin’s visit to India in December may function to bring India in line with Russia and China, and perhaps also to ensure there is a shallow floor to India’s reduction of Russian oil purchases, while conditioning Russian arms sales to India on guaranteed support for the collective power of the BRICS.

With or without Russian participation in Venezuela and Colombia (a new era for the Wagner movement and other private Russian armies?) Russia is going to finish the war in Ukraine. Pokrovsk has all but fallen. Zelenskiy, who a week ago was claiming that the Russians had only two or three hundred troops in the city, is now giving his blessing to the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops - a decision, he says, that he has left to the discretion of the Ukrainian army. So too has Kupyansk all but fallen. And so too has most of Vovchansk. Lyman and Siversk are beginning to face the brunt of Russian encirclement. Russia is making significant gains towards the cities of Zapporizhzhia and Dnipro. It is surrounding Huliaipole to the south and may move on Orehiv (to the south of which Russia holds Robotyne, that macabre cemetery of Western tanks and Ukrainian braggadoccio. Even the fairly cautious commentator Alexander Mercouris is saying that he firmly believes that Russia’s grand plan must now involve moving across the southern reaches of the Dnieper and the taking of Mykolaivka and Odessa and the entire Black Sea coast (something I have been arguing here for years now), an ambition, or a necessity, consolidated by Ukraine’s offering its Black Sea coast as real estate for Western military and naval bases.

It has been a slow war; an attritional war, I would argue, that has not just been waged against Ukraine but has been waged against the entire West. Russia is winning and Russia is still smiling. And the war is poised to accelerate to a more lightening-like speed.

The leadership of the countries of Europe look every day more foolish if not criminally corrupt - well, almost certainly criminally corrupt. The sharpest knives in the drawer are its dissidents: Hungary for one (which seems to have secured a one-year relief - Trump lied when he told Orban it would be ‘permanent’ - on US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil so as to preserve Russian energy supply to Hungary and Slovakia) - while fringe territories such as Turkey, Georgia, Serbia, Kazakhstan and Armenia prove as adept and slippery as their untrustwory hedging indicates (although in the case of Kazakhtan, credit to Putin’s aid in resistance to a color revolution which I think finally brings it into overall line with Russian foreign policy interest).

And now, at the very same moment as major revelations of Ukrainian graft and corruption are emerging (or, we should say, are re-emerging simply because the West wants to use such allegations against these henchmen to put pressure on Zelenskiy. Zelenskiy, by the way, is rumored to be on his way to Greece this weekend, perhaps simply to plead for what remains of Greek Patriots and Mirage fighterts or possibly with a view to never returning).

Anyway what does German leader Merz do? Does he pull Germany out of the entire sorry mess, apologize to the German people - for their being cuckolded by the US over Nord Stream, de-industrialized, every day more indebted - and promise he will do everything possible to restore Germany’s industrial pride and might?

No, of course not, nothing so remotely sane. He increases German aid to Ukraine, pledging a total of 11.5 billion Euros for 2026. RBC-Ukraine reports that the budget approved by the Bundestag Budget Committee, November 14, increased aid for Ukraine by €3 billion — from €8.5 billion to €11.5 billion. The additional funds are planned to be allocated to drones, armored vehicles, and the replacement of two Patriot air defense systems. The increase became possible due to the easing of debt limits on defense spending. Germany is in the business of replacing the UK as Europe’s most committed to the Ukraine folly or the Zelenskiy curse. The UK Starmer government, notwithstanding its recent U-turn on taxes (which the Labor government now says it will not increase, after all), will likely fall, and even though its former head of intelligence has just smirkingly told the Financial Times that the war against Ukraine is still “winnable,” we can at least hope not to have to witness any further passionate Downing Street embraces of Zelensiky by any UK prime ministers in our lifetimes.

Featured image: Germany's Merz.