RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/23/putins-predictabilities/

For all his caginess, dissimulation, and opportunism, Vladimir Putin is more or less predictable.

Putin’s aims? The Russian president’s two-decade dilemma has been how to reclaim the prestige and power of the former Soviet Union—but with only 75 percent of his country’s former territory and 140 million fewer people.

When does he strike? 

First, Putin moves on neighboring former Soviet republics when the world price of oil is high, and his coffers are full. So he went into Georgia in 2008 and into Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014 when he thought he had the financial wherewithal and public support to do so.  

But when the world is awash in oil, prices dip, and the United States reigns as the largest gas and oil producer, he hesitates. So he remained static between 2017 and 2020. 

Second, when the United States increases the defense budget and deters its enemies, Putin also pauses. In contrast, when America “resets” or appeases, he is emboldened.  

In 2008, the United States was battered by sky-high oil prices and bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then between2009 and 2016, President Obama went on an apology tour, cut defense spending, boasted of a new “Russian reset,” contextualized Iranian and North Korean aggression, and begged Putin to behave until Obama was reelected in 2012—in exchange for dismantling U.S. missile defense programs in Eastern Europe. Obama then invited Russia into the Middle East after a 40-year absence. 

As a result, during all those years Putin formally invaded Georgia, Eastern Ukraine, and Crimea. But between 2017 and 2020, Putin was quieter.  

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/kremlin-invades-ukraine-joseph-klein/

It’s official. The oft-repeated warning from the Biden administration that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent has come to pass.

On February 21st, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent so-called “peace-keeping” forces across Russia’s border with Ukraine into two eastern Ukrainian provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, in the Donbass region. These provinces have been controlled by Russian-leaning Ukrainian separatists who have served as Russia’s proxies since 2014. However, to the rest of the world they are still considered within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.

Putin’s initial move in invading Ukraine followed his unilateral recognition of the ““independence” of areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced this decree as “a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

But Putin could not care less what the UN Secretary General or the international community as a whole thinks. In his blistering speech on February 21st, the Russian president claimed that all of Ukraine belongs to Russia and should never have been created as a separate country in the first place.

Early in the morning of February 24th (Ukrainian time), Putin broadened the theater of war in Ukraine. He declared a “special military operation” in the country on the pretext of helping the people of Donbass. It was the equivalent of a declaration of war on all of Ukraine, punctuated by explosions that were heard in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, in the aftermath of Putin’s “special military operation” order. Missile attacks and ground troop assaults are undoubtedly on the way.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ukraine-was-betrayed-in-budapest-russia-vladimir-putin-us-uk-volodymyr-zelensky-nuclear-weapons-11645657263?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

As the people of Ukraine steel themselves for a Russian attack, it’s worth recalling how the U.S. persuaded the country to give up its nuclear weapons. The event was the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which the U.S., Great Britain and Russia offered security assurances to the nation that had won independence when the Soviet Union dissolved.

That was the halcyon post-Cold War era when history had supposedly ended. Some 1,800 nuclear weapons were on Ukrainian territory, including short-range tactical weapons and air-launched cruise missiles. The U.S. wanted fewer countries to have fewer nukes, and U.S. credibility was at its peak.

The memo begins with the U.S., U.K. and Russia noting that Ukraine had committed “to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time.” Then the three countries “confirm” a half-dozen commitments to Ukraine.

The most important was to “reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” They also pledged to “refrain from economic coercion” against Ukraine and to “seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine” in the event of an “act of aggression” against the country. Ukraine had returned all of the nuclear weapons to Russia by 1996.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/russia-unleashes-its-war/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

As I write this, Vladimir Putin has just finished a speech on Russian TV declaring a “special military action aimed at the demilitarization and de-nazification of Ukraine.”

This has followed — just in the last few hours — Ukrainian president Zalensky giving an impassioned early morning speech to the Russian people begging for peace. We have seen a state of emergency declared across Ukraine. We have seen Ukrainian air space closed and emptied of all civilian aircraft. We have seen intensified shelling along the line of contact in Ukraine’s east. And, in a statement that would have made sense to our great-grandfathers, the Ukrainians have asked Turkey to consider closing the Dardanelles to Russian shipping.

There are also unconfirmed rumors of Russian encroachments on Ukrainian border outposts in the Crimea and in the northeast. Journalists in Kyiv — on CNN’s live feed — report the sound of explosions in the distance. Live cams in the city of Kharkiv show fireballs on the dark horizon.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/putin-announces-military-operation-in-ukraine-explosions-reported-in-kyiv/

Russian president Vladimir Putin announced early Thursday morning local time that his government has resolved “to launch a special military operation” aimed at the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” heralding the start of a land war on the European continent.

Threatening those who might oppose his efforts to either outright annex parts of Ukraine, or install Ukrainian leaders with pro-Russian bents, Putin warned that “those who would be tempted to intervene . . . will have consequences that you never have had before in your history.” Putin’s reference to denazification would seem to echo his address two days earlier, in which he officially recognized portions of Ukraine as “independent republics,” purportedly in response to what he baselessly characterized as an active genocide taking place against Russian-speaking people in those regions. The governments of Ukraine and the United States, among others, have vigorously disputed these allegations.

Putin’s address has been followed by reports of explosions across Ukraine, including in its capital city of Kyiv. After Putin’s speech, the Ukrainian interior minister, Anton Gerashchenko, confirmed to CNN that “the invasion has begun.” Per NBC’s Susan Kroll, Gerashchenko has also confirmed that Russian troops have landed in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, the third-largest urban center in the country. Ukrainian military sources have disputed a Russian presence in Odessa, according to Reuters, however, providing an early example of the fog of war that is likely to cloud the conflict.

What is clear, however, is that Russian operations have not been limited to military targets. As the sun began to rise on Thursday morning, air raid sirens began to sound in Kyiv. The capital city’s mayor, Vitaly Klichko, issued the following statement responding to the evolving situation: “In Kyiv we can hear noise of shelling. The worst enemy now is panic. Keep calm. Everyone not involved in critical city functions, stay home. We have to prevail.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/russia-and-west-bruce-thornton/

After weeks of feints, offers to negotiate, threats, and counter-threats, Vladimir Putin has put the question to the West by creating facts on the ground. On Monday he ordered Russian troops to enter the eastern Ukraine Donbas region where in 2014-15 he helped ethnic Russian separatists seize a territorial enclave. He has also created two puppet states which he has promised “friendship and mutual assistance,” and he is sending them “peacekeepers” to defend the new nations, and perhaps expand their territory beyond what they already hold.

So far, the West has responded with bluster and economic sanctions that are unlikely to make Putin back off. Anticipating this move, Russia has already stockpiled $638 billion in reserves and redirected trade from the West. With China’s support, and with oil over $100 a barrel and rising, Putin calculates he can ride out sanctions just as Iran and North Korea have. He also knows Germany and other EU nations needs the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline, the opening of which Germany has suspended, more than Russia does. We’ll see how stalwart European sanctions are when energy prices start biting even harder.

In short, Putin acts and drives events, while we react with “words, words, words,” as Hamlet put it.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/21/why-is-the-left-silent-on-trudeaus-crackdown/

Last month I gave a speech at the ‘Kill the Bill’ rally in Westminster, with a bunch of fellow lefties who were rightly angry at Priti Patel’s proposed Policing Bill, which would have essentially outlawed protests. Jeremy Corbyn was there (obviously), as were other well-known names from the left, many of whom I am friendly with and respect a lot. There was much impassioned rhetoric about the worrying resurgence of authoritarianism around the world.

Yet all of those speakers I demonstrated with in London have remained eerily silent on Justin Trudeau’s crackdown on the Canadian truckers’ protests (with the exception of Extinction Rebellion). As has practically every major civil-rights organisation on the planet for that matter, from the ACLU in the US to Liberty in the UK.

Over the past few weeks, Trudeau’s government has enacted emergency powers, used pepper spray and stun grenades on the truckers’ Freedom Convoy, and has labelled these legitimate protesters as ‘terrorists’, threatening to freeze their bank accounts. Had this been an equally narcissistic North American head of state – with a comparably lousy record on human rights and the environment, and whose name also begins with T – my fellow lefties probably would have had one or two things to say on Twitter. But this was Trudeau, not Trump, and so they all ignored it when GoFundMe seized $10million in legitimate donations to the truckers. They ignored it when Trudeau called a Jewish politician a Nazi sympathiser in parliament for questioning his crackdown. They ignored it when another fundraising site, GiveSendGo, was hacked, outing the names of 92,000 Freedom Convoy donors, some of whom lost their jobs as a result.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-most-dangerous-speech-of-the-post-cold-war-era/

This address should make one question Putin’s sanity.

The Russian government has formally recognized Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, two sections of Ukraine that have been subjected to years of fighting between Russian- and Ukrainian-backed militias. This recognition amounts to the Russian government giving itself permission to intervene to protect these breakaway nations in an undisguised way.

But just as distressing was the speech Vladimir Putin gave to announce it to the world. Earlier today I wrote a piece that in one line offhandedly suggested that Putin was a rational actor. I repent of having written it. If that ranting, grandiose, aggrieved wreck of a speech was delivered sincerely, then Putin has addled himself with his own propaganda, is now unpredictable, and will likely drive his nation and others to a disaster. I grant that there may be insincerity in it as well. But reports of his meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron suggest that Macron was subjected to six hours of this same ranting and could never bring Putin down to what Europeans see as the brass tacks: the Minsk agreements, the withdrawal of Russian irregulars, and a series of next steps, including diplomatic talks on the long-term security arrangements of Europe.

His speech featured the Russian litany of post–Cold War grievances, namely the broken promise not to expand NATO. “They try to convince us over and over again that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance, saying that there are no threats to Russia. Again they propose that we take them at their word. But we know the real value of such words,” he said. More disconcerting, he suggested that the expansion of NATO was meant to “serve as a forward springboard for the strike.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18247/putin-crackdowns

The [recently closed] Memorial Human Rights Centre focused on documenting current abuses, including keeping track of political prisoners. “Memorial creates a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state,” state prosecutor Alexei Zhafyarov said. “It makes us repent for the Soviet past, instead of remembering glorious history.” The court, in its decision, cited the need to protect “the right of citizens to access reliable information” and prevent the “creation of a false image of the USSR.”

Also in late December, a Russian court ordered the prison sentence of historian Yuri Dmitriev extended to 15 years. Dmitriev worked with International Memorial for three decades to uncover, among other things, mass graves from the era of Stalin’s rule.

Now, in Putin’s most recent crackdown, anti-corruption activist and opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest critic — already serving a sentence of 3½ years in a penal colony on trumped up charges of fraud — is facing a new trial…. The latest charges could lead to up to 15 additional years in prison…

Last month, Russian authorities labeled Navalny himself a “terrorist and extremist”…. The designation means that Navalny has been added to Russia’s official Rosfinmonitoring register alongside organizations such as the Taliban and the Islamic State…. People on the terrorist list are effectively banned from Russian society, as their bank accounts are frozen and they cannot take loans or jobs.

Even in prison, Putin is trying to break down Navalny completely. Other prisoners are not allowed to talk to him and since his hunger strike, two inmates have been ordered to follow him around at all times, from morning until night. “Without a doubt, even the simplest decisions about my life here [in the penal colony] get made in the Kremlin, and the important ones—like whether to allow the doctors in—by Putin himself.” — Alexei Navalny, Time Magazine, January 19, 2022

[Navalny] also asked US President Joe Biden to stand up to Putin by imposing new and more efficient sanctions on the Russian president and his fellow Russian elites who have large assets abroad.

“Putin is without a doubt the wealthiest person in the world. The source of his wealth is power and corruption. And the basis of his power is lies, propaganda and falsified election results. You want to influence Putin, then influence his personal wealth… Everybody knows the names of the oligarchs and friends of Putin who hold his money. We know those who finance his yachts and palaces. Those who support his second and third families. It takes a majority of these oligarchs to split Putin’s elites. Give them a signal that the regime in Russia today will not be an eternal paradise where they can rob the people inside Russia while easily and freely spending their earnings in Europe and the U.S.” — Alexei Navalny, Time Magazine, January 19, 2022.

Republican Senators have announced their own sanctions package, the Never Yielding Europe’s Territory (NYET) Act, which would not only sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but also “Putin’s cronies, enablers, and major banks before Russia further invades Ukraine to ensure Putin pays a price now for hybrid attacks already launched.”

“Total Russian private wealth held abroad is assessed at $800 billion…. Putin’s crony capitalism condemns Russia to near stagnation for as long as he stays in power. No political or economic reform is on his agenda, since reform would undermine his political power. Instead, Putin needs foreign adventures, such as the wars in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria to rally his people around the flag. The best defense of the West against Putin’s authoritarian and kleptocratic regime is transparency, shining light on this anonymous wealth, which is probably held predominantly in the United States and the United Kingdom….” — Anders Åslund, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the book Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy.

While the world focuses on the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the midst of a massive crackdown on what remains of the opposition to his rule.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/19/requiem-for-a-nation-n1560630

It may seem hard to believe that America’s neighbor to the north is now a full-fledged, up-and-running police state. Heavily-armed police are arresting and, in some cases, roughing up, severely beating, and trampling with horses members of the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in Ottawa as well as bystanders. The country has gone off the rails.

Justin Trudeau’s ineffable Justice Minister David Lametti is on record threatening those who hold the wrong political views that they are liable to have their bank accounts seized. “If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing,” he said, “then you ought to be worried.” The assumption that Trump has something to do with Canadian trucker donations seems particularly unhinged.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who sits on the board of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum—an obvious conflict of interest—has moved to freeze the bank accounts and other financial instruments of the “protesters” and private citizens who have donated to the trucker fund. Hacked documents revealed the names of these offenders, some of whom have been “interviewed” by news media like the CBC and The Washington Post. Others have been doxed and menaced.

No less distressing, a substantial majority of the Canadian public have approved of the government’s jackbooted and manifestly illegal handling of the situation, taken in by the prime minister’s bought-and-paid-for media’s slanted and mendacious coverage. They are, to adapt a phrase from Daniel Goldhagen, Canada’s willing executioners, a compliant and unthinking populace presiding over the extinction of a once-democratic country. It couldn’t get any worse—though it probably will, with the assistance of the people’s sodden parliamentary representatives and a morally bankrupt media fifth column.

Lots of people are not happy. I have received a number of emails from correspondents claiming that the Convoy Event was Justin Trudeau’s Reichstag moment. I would be loath to say anything so demeaning of the leader of my country, but Elon Musk had no compunction addressing the prime minister in a now-deleted, mordantly funny tweet couched in the voice of der Füehrer: “Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau.” Fast food for thought.