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"but the Russians claim that they were backed by Ukraine."

Regarding the Moscow attack, Putin and also the head of the FSB said they suspect that the instigators of the bombing are to be found in the West. Here's why:

The instigators used an earlier video from ISIS-K for the claim. So they gave a finger to ISIS-K who took the whole hand to present a real video (the second claim video).

Then there is another fact: the terrorists had themselves arrested alive on their way nto the Ukraine, which is not normal behavior for ISIS members. The norm is to die as a martyr.

As in recent years, Russia has developed very good relations with Islamic countries, so it is unlikely that the latest attack came from that side.

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Of course the attacks were backed, not only by Ukraine, but by MI6 and the CIA.

The fact that the victims hadn't finished dying before we were duly assured by MI6 and the CIA that Ukraine could not possibly have had anything to do with the Crocus attack is a sure tell. That and the western insistence that they had warned Russia (because they knew and planned the attacks) is another.

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From Zelensky's point of view, what he says is quite reasonable. The issue is why should anyone outside of Ukraine agree with him. And why US military force have to act like a hitman for hire rather than defending the real national interests? Mr. Zelensky is free to want and like whatever he pleases. However, other people should think through the situation before they react.

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Zelensky and his cornered cabal are becoming ever more delusional, and like cornered Netanyahu see dragging America further into the mess they made as the only - delusional - plan to save their own worthless skins.

Fortunately, despite the congressional war lobby desperate to send others' money and kids into their apocalyptic fantasies in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, cooler heads seem to be prevailing in the Pentagon, resulting in, for example, a pathetic Starmer, desperate to bomb Russia and free sausages in Gaza, being this week sidelined, along with fellow cold warriors in the Baltic.

Russia is well on the way to ending the ill-conceived Kursk adventure - again, largely inspired by the Zelensky gang's hope of dragging America further into their delusional project of self-preservation.

But though Vuhledar is now being abandoned, Kurakhove and Pokrovsk neutralized as logistic hubs, and Russia is about to reach the Oskil river south of Kupiansk, Russian progress is grindingly slow even within what might reasonably be seen as their 'natural' boundaries in the South and East of former Ukraine.

...So... I really don't buy all the - to me, paranoid - comments here about WW3.

The Pentagon and the Kremlin will I think be happy enough to accept another Postsoviet frozen conflict, slightly beyond the current Russian line of control.

Trump knows this, and I hope Harris too, though of course nobody knows if or what she thinks.

So unlike the poor victims of doddery Biden's incompetence in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, my guess is that most of us can sleep pretty comfortably for now, as we wait for a new front in the Pacific.

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I hope Taiwan will watch and learn from Ukraine, because Ukraine certainly didn't learn from Georgia. Fact is, when push comes to shovel, the US will let any ally drop by a hot potato.

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Georgia (with Ukrainian citizen Saakashvili - still I think formally Zelensky's Deputy Prime Minister heading his joke 'National Reform Council' in absentia) has certainly learned from Ukraine.

Hilarious how America and the crowds it sponsors in Tblisi complain so much about the new Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is far weaker, but far more needed, than equivalent controls in America itself.

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An excellent analysis and description of Zelenskyy's "last chance" at winning a war, as well as the "rabbit hole" that he and Biden are sharing. There appears to be no NATO nation willing to stick its neck out unless the U.S. leads. Biden, as a lame duck, should not be allowed to escalate this war. He should have been developing a stronger relationship with Putin in order to begin diplomatic efforts at a negotiated peace. Instead, his stubbornness to even communicate with Putin ( as if to show he is so powerful that he won't even talk to a "thug") is a case of poor judgement and weak leadership. Pray that Biden won't act out of spite, that Trump wins the election and negotiations will begin.

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I think Biden prefers to blame it on Kamala.

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You could be right. I fear that neither of them are making the ultimate decision. It’s a matter of how & when.

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Can’t wait to hear the talking heads in the trad press start calling World War Three a good thing for the United States

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I prefer calling them the Regime Press.

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I call them Voice of NATO

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You are VERY correct Sir!

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As Joe and Volod say: Good for Scranton!

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either way, if someone is running around in circles screaming "WAR" and pointing at the current conflict in Ukraine, I seriously question the motives. Basically, who is making money, and it sure isn't the kids in the DOnbas getting the everliving shit shelled out of them. This is a war that should have never happened, but it did when Democrats were in charge at 1600 Pennelvanyia ave.

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Zelensky still shows bravado, but in fact he has already regretted getting into politics a thousand times. That he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and became the last president of the former Ukraine.

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The 'acting president' is only the frontman in a ruling troika with Yermak and Budanov.

A friend with contacts at the State Department told me some time ago that they see Yermak as the main problem.

Good profile here:

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-real-power-broker-yermak-zelensky-russia-war-biden-2023-12?international=true&r=US&IR=T

Interesting that the troika talks together in Russian.

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insightful

thanks

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Zelenskii speaks Russian in private, or whenever he doesn't think the mike is on. This is something that just about every Ukrainian politician does.

To give a few examples:

I was "treated" to an Atlantic-Bridge session, featuring some Ukrainian nationalist politician ranting about linguistic politics in Ukraine. After the speech was over, I listened to the guy speak with his entourage - in Russian.

Soon after the so-called "Orange Revolution", I got to hear a spokeswoman for the Yushchenko regime speaking on IP rights in Ukraine. The talk was, of course, in (scripted) Ukrainian. However, the Q&A session was in Russian. The woman could read off of a script, but could not speak on the fly in Ukrainian.

Or the day I witnessed the closing of a public private partnership agreement between a Ukrainian government agency and a Kiev-based businessman. The agreement at issue was written in Ukrainian, as per the requirements of Ukrainian law. The year was around 2006.

I had to translate the agreement into Russia, as none of the signatories understood the words forming the agreement. And I am self-taught in Russian and never even did that in Ukrainian, but I knew more Ukrainian than any of the Ukrainians present did.

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Less sophisticated insight from my side - but living in Germany I had many colleagues at college from Russia and Ukraine. And the question where they exactly came from NEVER arose. It was of zero significance. And yes, they spoke among themselves Russian. Never an issue.

We owe it to US scholars like Nicolai Petro teaching in Rhode Island to understand how in particular this Ukrainian nationalism took shape.

A fact completely ignored in Europe.

What shocks me so much, as German, is the utter negligence and in fact malign double standard towards this issue in Germany since 2022. Virtually over night.

In cultural life everything Russian is replaced with Ukrainian. Even restaurants now call themselves not Moscow but Kiev or worse Kyiv, borscht is suddenly "Ukrainian borscht".

An entire year of literary and music awards has been virtually thrown at everyone Ukrainian. However Ukrainians who were against the war in 2022 in the German press did not dare speak out under their real name.

On this note if anybody cares, a sickening interview from 2022 with the director of the Kiev book institute, Oleksandra Koval, with Interfax.

She suggested that Ukrainian libraries would have to be cleansed from Russian literature.

"Director of UIC Koval: Books are weapons, either defensive or offensive"

"(...)But, according to my calculations, there may be more than 100 million copies of literature in public library collections that will need to be withdrawn.(...)"

Which means destroying 100 million books (perhaps burn them like Nazis did? It would be fun lighting up the nights of Kiev.)

see entire long interview:

https://archive.is/DQ1wR

Imagine that members of the German GREEN party welcomed members of Ukrainian Nazi groups. Imagine them GREENs incessently babbling about the threat of rising fascism in Eastern Germany and yet they are sending everything short of nukes to a government where certain parts of the army and law enforcement and the secret intelligence services (Budanov for sure) are proto-fascists.

What is this, if not simply sick?

And how are you to explain such behaviour to Russians?

If I go into the street today and raise a Russian flag I get arrested.

Yet I raise flags by Ukraine (or Israel for that matter) some private people might be bothered, but not state authority.

I pass by the town hall in my city two flags are up day and night. I don´t need to tell you which ones. (But were there ever Syrian flags? flags of Yemen? Iraq? Afghanistan? Stupid question of course.)

And our government dares to speak about human rights?

About persecuting Putin (on what grounds???)?

And then sending German tanks against Russia bearing in part the same name as 1941? Made by the same company?? A company that murdered the children of Russian women doing forced labour.

And one of the most jingoist Russophobic German politicians demanding war against Russia, Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, is a lobbyist for that same tank manufacturer in that same constituency where those Russian women were interned? Düsseldorf btw.

(which was also the place where one of the big Nazi war trials over Majdanek took place between 1975-1981 . But German media are conveniently beset with amnesia.)

What the hell is going on. I ask myself every morning.

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I'll do you one more - the United States commits an act of war against Germany by blowing up the Nordstream, and the German response is that bad slaves deserve their beatings.

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And what says German slave? Points at his own wife: "She beat me!"

("Aurora" seriously? You cannot imagine how much traction that idiocy gained even among real reporters.......)

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Zelensky knows he is a dead man walking and we all know that he is a sociopath who sacrificed the future of his own people with nothing in return. He can't back down because eventually ordinary people will find out that he was used as a pawn by the West in an attempt to destroy Russia (or at least initiate a regime change). After 1 Mio casualties, he has nothing to show and knows that the only hope he has is dragging NATO into a direct war with Russia. It's shameful that the Western media is portraying this man as a hero.

Fact remains that NATO can't fight Russia without risking a nuclear war and humiliation. NATO has emptied its stockpile of weapons and ammo, there are no logistics in place to operate a war on a big scale and its air defence is a joke. Airplane carriers are sitting ducks around the world and its bases could be nuked by Russia any time. Let's be real here, NATO can't get involved and won't get involved.

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I dunno Ghani is alive and well and living The High Life off his stolen loot.

Saakashvili would be doing the same if he hadn't made the tomfool decision to return to Georgia.

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MOSCOW, September 25 – RIA Novosti. At a Security Council meeting on nuclear deterrence, Vladimir Putin proposed making a number of clarifications regarding the conditions for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons.

"In the updated version of the document ("Fundamentals of state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence." - Ed.) aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state..."

Same day on Russian Telegram: "The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense: Umerov [who made a recent trip to Pentagon for consultations] has just publicly confirmed that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have planned operations “outside the country” using long-range weapons for 2025, despite the fact that the West has not yet approved their use"

"Cheap war with many benefits" with "someone else doing it" doesn't come cheap.

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Whenever you write anything about the goings on inside of Russia I know I am going to listen to the CIA pushed narrative. Your "report" on the Crocus terror attack is just criminally bad. When has ISIS ever ran away in an attempt to get paid for it's operation? Hint: NEVER It is plain as day this was a western intelligence operation. Talking about Navalny, you say "how much western support he had is unknown is just an outright lie. Joe Biden would say "Come on man" .The FSB released video of Navalny's manager or head of the political group speaking to MI6/CIA, to me it makes no difference it is all 1 in the same. He also never had anything approaching 27% in any type of country wide polling, less than 5%. I could continue but you will just continue to repeat outright lies

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Certainly agree on Navalny. Not sure he ever got beyond 2% support - Yabloko (the much bigger real Liberal party) absolutely refused to have anything to do with him.

He was certainly well known.

My impression is that the CIA/MI6 and other deep state actors have been saying for over a decade that one more push and Putin is over and they daren't go back on that now despite it being manifestly stupid.

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Sep 26Edited

jsarnak

You seem to have been in a hurry to post.

Personally, I doubt that Navalny (who would have been the ultimate loose cannon for the West if he did have much success) ever had much support from the west except for press releases from security agencies. I doubt if he was provided with a budget of millions of dollars, an all in effort by all the security agencies of multiple countries coordinating their efforts, satellite surveillance results made available to Navalny's well financed and equipped team, the figurative and even actual physical elimination of select opponents, etc. All that and more was present in the Maiden effort in Ukraine. Navalny had none of that.

Why did Navalny leave Germany after rehabilitation and go back to certain arrest and imprisonment in Russia? Quite likely Germany told him........now that you are physically ok., you are on your own, we won't let you set up some kind of government in exile operation and will strictly limit your activities to those that fit our ever changing agenda...... ... So Navalny beat feet in what normal people would have considered a bizarre action. However, even Navalny's supporters never claimed he was normal.

As posted in the article, Navalny got roughly twenty six percent of the vote in a Moscow election. In polling, he is reputed to never have had more than two or three percent nationally. Outside of Moscow, he was seen as a politician. And in Russia, politics/politician are literal dirty words. Outside of Moscow, Putin is *not* seen as one of those detestable politicians whatever else they might think of him. That is part of the reason for the reservoir of good will that Putin has in Russia.

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All these people with so much knowledge and certainty. Amazing

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If Zelensky has been paying any attention to Putin, he wants WW3.

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Aware this is not intended as fun stuff. But I had to laugh reading the headline:

"Zelensky Wants US Troops in Ukraine

He also wants Putin replaced"

Short and witty.

As is the intro summary.

(And if one thinks of products like Lubitsch´s "To be or not to be" from 1942, or "The Producers" from 1967 one might as well argue that humour is necessary to get a clear view - "don´t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazis party" - as Mel Brooks famously texted and as it says it all).

Much happening as this very moment one can read that Israeli society - at least as reported from the surface - is rejoicing over Nasrallah´s death. This will be a loooong US-election campaign.

p.s. may be of interest - I don´t agree with everything but I think it´s worth the read:

Roundtable discussion

"Russian Messianism: A Roundtable Discussion

"Could it be that in the West today, it is we who hate Russia for having its own distinctive roots, its own history and attachments?"

with Paul R. Grenier, Victor Taki, Gordon M. Hahn, and Paul Robinson

8/17/24

https://landmarksmag.substack.com/p/russian-messianism-a-roundtable-discussion

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Mİ6 and the Tugendhat faction are wallowing in nostalgia like an old, worn-out admiralty widow 😁

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What´s the Tugendhat faction?

I only know the landmark house of the same name by Mies van der Rohe. But I guess that´s NOT it.😝

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From "Servant of the People", the TV series in which he played before 2019, Zelenski switched to "all peoples/all leaders are my servants". He asks and receives. With delays, slowly, gradually , but they respond to his order... How it got here, I keep wondering...

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I find it hard to believe the US or NATO will go to war to save Ukraine. It's too insane.

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When you are desperate anything is possible

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Why is this hard to believe? The sociopaths who rule the West would annihilate us all without hesitation, if that were what it took for them not to lose their perches.

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Riddle me this one? Who smoked the Nordstreem pipeline? I'll wait.

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