Macron has asked for the Himars and F16s now. He needs them for some other reason. Zelensky will have to wait…

Posted by: scepticalSOB | Jul 1 2023 15:56 utc | 4

. . .the Council on Foreigh Relations forgets about the US-led 2014 coup in Kyev
How Should NATO Think About Ukrainian Membership . . .?

Decisions made at Vilnius will inevitably be compared to Western initiatives of the past thirty years that were intended to bolster Ukraine’s security but fell short:
>. . .Budapest Memorandum of 1994
>. . .2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania
>. . .Minsk
The defects of these initiatives seem obvious today. They achieved a declaratory consensus but paid little attention to practical follow-through; they did not make Ukraine’s ability to defend itself a priority in its own right; they created no institutional framework for cooperation; and they let hope for good relations with Moscow limit relations with Kyiv.
NATO has now put the “Budapest-Bucharest-Minsk consensus” behind it. It recognizes that solemn declarations—absent real cooperation—contribute little to security. Its new approach takes the Russian threat to Ukraine as its starting point and aims to counter that threat without depending on Russian cooperation or good will. NATO wants security ties to Ukraine with a solid institutional structure that can assure their permanence. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 1 2023 15:57 utc | 6

The Ritter piece on “Useful Idiots” (truncated unless you subscribe) had some new items that range from informed speculation to what sounds like some very excellent sources. Ritters RF source network could have only improved via his 25 day sojourn there. Probably more on Jul 01 on his main venue.
Belgorod has dropped off them map. metaphorically. My military science is basically non-existant, but months ago when people still talked of big arrows, the hypothesis of a big arrow from Belgorod and down cutting off Kharkov from the west of Ukraine intrigued me. Of course my number one desire is the taking of Avdivka. Gorlovka and Donetsk have taken enough.
Olesky a few klicks in on the right side of the Dnieper is probably going to take some artillery hits. If anyone better at the art military can opine about how dangerous the UKR advance south of the Dnieper in the Antonov bridge area is if it is unable to get tanks, etc. I would appreciate.
As always, anyone who knows where to find subtitled video pieces of Yuri, very deeply appreciated

Posted by: paxmark1 | Jul 1 2023 16:09 utc | 8

[2]
You are in error. European welfare states are propped up by high automobile prices, heavy taxation on fuel, very high sales taxes, and high payroll taxes split between employer and employee. As for Defence NO-ONE in Europe demands a $900 bn Military Budget in USA not even the Russians
There is no reason to spend so much. If Americans want 20% Sales Tax and double the price of autos to pay for healthcare for all and free college education MOST people in Europe would be just fine as you close bases and take your people home

Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jul 1 2023 16:19 utc | 10

Posted by: Crazy chump | Jul 1 2023 15:44 utc | 1
a hitman sniper tried to kill a businessman at a sports club, but hit him in the stomach… Damn, is this a country with democratic values, as we are told?
Sounds like the USA on any given Tuesday.
Ironically, such events may represent the last traces of normality for Ukraine. A throwback to the good old days …

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jul 1 2023 16:39 utc | 12

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/07/01/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine-war-is-headed/
Essential analysis from the inimitable John J. MEARSHEIMER. Thoughts?

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 1 2023 16:55 utc | 14

@ Crazy chump | Jul 1 2023 15:44 utc | 1
Why Latin America? You can perfectly apply it to the USA today.
And by the way, it’s not Latin America, it is Hispanoamerica. As to my knowledge they don’t speak Latin. If you want to include Brasil, then the proper name is Iberoamerica.

Posted by: josesan | Jul 1 2023 17:11 utc | 16

I don’t know if this was noted on the previous thread: At the end of Simplicius’s latest sitrep is a brief note and some video related to the level of support Putin now gets post-Rebellion that I urge barflies to watch. I very rarely see such video and was quite impressed.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 1 2023 17:15 utc | 18

The NATO Vilnius Summit is coming up on July 11-12th.
Meanwhile, the USA is putting pressure upon Ukraine to pursue its recent offensive against Russia.
Apparently, whatever the next progression of the war will be looks to depend somewhat upon Ukraine’s performance in their current offensive. Perhaps, their performance will also determine the initiation of a blackswan event in Ukraine such as a nuclear plant being blown up or other.
I expect further and more insane escalation from the West.
The USA is desperate to take Russia down. If they don’t they will rapidly lose its status as having the world reserve currency. This is the snare the USA is in. And they can’t get out of it except to escalate. And even then, they will not be able to get out of the snare.

Posted by: young | Jul 1 2023 17:27 utc | 20

i am getting this message on all the twitter links people have provided today –
Something went wrong. Try reloading.
— i try reloading and it still doesn’t work.. twitter links are now useless..

Posted by: james | Jul 1 2023 17:31 utc | 22

Is it possible to create a WWII thread for those Barflies who wish to (endlessly) revisit that history?
The former Soviet satellite states are fighting an extension of wars over a century ago, even going back to Crimea-Ukrainian campaigns, Tatars and Ottoman Empire going further back to Albania, Kosovo and Serbia conflicts in the Albanian-Ottoman Wars (1432–1479).
NATO and the U.S. exploit cultural and historic differences between peoples.

Posted by: Oui | Jul 1 2023 17:33 utc | 24

You are in error. European welfare states are propped up by high automobile prices, heavy taxation on fuel, very high sales taxes, and high payroll taxes split between employer and employee. As for Defence NO-ONE in Europe demands a $900 bn Military Budget in USA not even the Russians
There is no reason to spend so much. If Americans want 20% Sales Tax and double the price of autos to pay for healthcare for all and free college education MOST people in Europe would be just fine as you close bases and take your people home
Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jul 1 2023 16:19 utc | 9
With respect, no one in Europe demands the Defense Expenditures demanded by Nato/Usa, perhaps. Nevertheless, the defense of Europe is still born by U.S. taxpayers, very little from Europe. USA War Mongers are not “my people.”
And all those 20% Sales taxes, a secondary taxation measure, including on automobiles, still come from cheap Russian energy, where European countries tax energy as far as the European Market will bear, and then use the difference to prop up the European Welfare State.

Posted by: kupkee | Jul 1 2023 17:38 utc | 26

Elsewhere a commenter gave an opinion that I share. This war is unlikely to end with an agreed settlement between Russia and NATO.
However, it could end because the Ukrainians themselves decide to end it. As said in my reply, it’s difficult to say how close the Ukrainians are to that, or whether they are close to it at all.
It’s likely this war will go the distance. The war aims of the West and those of Russia are so different that it’s difficult to see how it can be otherwise.
Even more so now that the war aims of Russia seem to have extended. At first they were after little more than a modified implementation of Minsk 2. But the blunt Russian statement of aims at the very beginning showed that there was more to it than that. “Demilitarisation and denazification” could scarcely have been done only with a Minsk 2 type arrangement. Even the later peace proposals did not go that far – and that’s if those “peace proposals” were anything more than Russian PR!
But the main point is that any settlement of this conflict that was or might have been on the table concerned only a possible settlement in Ukraine. It seems recently, however, that the Russians have extended those aims and are linking any settlement to their December 2021 European security demands.
A settlement between the West and Russia that involved only Ukraine was doable, if unlikely. Just possibly something might have been devised that saved face for the Western politicians and met the essential Russian demands. Can’t quite see how, myself, but the diplomats and PR men are ingenious so the necessary “off ramp” might have been found.
But any settlement that leads to the West budging on those European security demands? No. Not for the West. Not for NATO. In practice such a settlement would mean the withdrawal of missile bases near Russia and tthe stationing of concentrations of NATO troops further away from the Russian border. There is no way that could be done without a loss of face for the Western politicians that no PR, no diplomatic legerdemain, could conceal.
So if the Russians are serious about linking any settlement to those 2021 demands there will be no settlement arrived at. As Borrell says, this conflict will be decided on the battlefield and nowhere else. There will, as you say, be no armistice “before one side or the other collapses into functional non-existence as a coherent entity.” This war is now “existential” for both NATO and Russia and one side or the other is going to have to lose it.
It’s been pretty obvious to me since February 2022 that that side is going to be us, merely because of the military and economic reality.
Not that big a deal, as I saw it. The West, and particularly Europe, has been on a downward slope for years and any fiasco in Ukraine could only ever be a blip on the graph of that downward line.
I see on the dissident sites the hope that the Ukrainian fiasco will “wake us up” and thus lead to us as voters taking action to arrest that general decline. Not a hope, my view, at least as far as my own country or Europe generally is concerned, so whatever comes of the Ukrainian venture will be largely irrelevant for us in the long run.
Not, of course, irrelevant for the Ukrainian PBI. We’re running out of proxy. That, for me, is the main issue of this war. I regard it as a criminal act, no less than a major war crime, for us in the West to be using our proxies so, whether they are willing or unwitting proxies or not.
And it’s there that your conclusion may turn out to be premature. An end to this conflict may come about in another way.
There are too many unknowns when it comes to Ukraine itself. We simply don’t know how much more of this the Ukrainians themselves will be prepared to take. We don’t know how deep the ultra-nationalist indoctrination of the last few years has gone. We don’t know how strong a grip the Zelensky administration has on the bulk of the people in Ukraine. We don’t know, in spite of all the floods of speculation, whether there are any factions in that administration that might be in a position to force change. We do know that the Ukrainians are taking horrendous losses and that from a rapidly diminishing population base. That is all we know for certain.
It’s not enough to give us any firm bases to predict whether the Ukrainians themselves will call a halt. We do know that a country in extremis tends to fight on. In 1945, when it was obvious as could be that their war was lost, there were still German patriots fighting up to the last minute. And the fact that we, correctly, now view their cause as wrong doesn’t mean those German patriots didn’t fight like heroes. Similarly, though I have no time for the excesses of Ukrainian nationalism, it still has to be acknowledged that many of them are courageous and determined fighters too. The sort that will fight a lost cause to the end.
We also know that the Ukrainians are disillusioned with us. We’ve pitched them into this war but have not backed them up. We’ve told them they are in the front line fighting for our values – and then leave them in the lurch as they fight for them. Forget about ISR assets and the latest Wunderwaffe. We have supported them with little more than words when it comes down to it. They have noticed. It may be, therefore, that we in the West will not, as is so often said, fight this war to the last Ukrainian.
So that’s another way this war might end. It won’t end, neither of us believe, with an agreed settlement. It’ll end, many still think, with the victory of the West or, as I think, with its defeat. Or, maybe an unlikely end but still a possible one, when our proxies decide independently of us to stop the fighting.
Are there any Ukrainian sources that give an accurate picture of what opinion is in Ukraine itself?

Posted by: English Outsider | Jul 1 2023 17:43 utc | 28

it’s funny that Putin & Lavrov increased their weekly output but ordinary mortals would be best served if they apply common sense and invest in patience

Posted by: nyet | Jul 1 2023 17:48 utc | 30

Unfortunately; as an American, I resemble that remark. President Trump was the only President who refused to initiate a new foreign war without a declaration of war from Congress as our Constitution requires. For that grievous offense, he was impeached.
Posted by: Elmer Fudd | Jul 1 2023 15:57 utc | 5
—————————————————–
I expect further and more insane escalation from the West.
The USA is desperate to take Russia down.
Posted by: young | Jul 1 2023 17:27 utc | 19
——————————————————–
Very true. Signal flags are up, the time table is not. Putin will drive. Slowly evolving recognition by the West to come. It is not like the lower level echelons do not get it. Their masters are performing in this macabre Kabuki theatre.

Posted by: Acco Hengst | Jul 1 2023 17:49 utc | 32

B.
Is it possible to create a WWII thread for those Barflies who wish to (endlessly) revisit that history ?
Sometimes 2/3s of the Ukraine threads are discussing some minutia of WWII. It’s frankly a bit dull. Almost like going into obsessive detail about Waterloo (1815) EIGHTY years later (aka 1895).
Posted by: Exile | Jul 1 2023 16:21 utc | 10
Without the History of Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine and Poland, etc, you have no knowledge of what is going on inside decision maker’s heads.
Eastern Europe is a GRAVEYARD. Both of Eastern Europeans, Western Europeans and Foreign Adventurers. Historically…speaking.
Waterloo? You mean the War where London Bankers financed the war via Fractional Reserve banking and credit creation, using British Government and Private British savings? Clever.

Posted by: kupkee | Jul 1 2023 17:50 utc | 34

Overnight, the United States moved a specialized aircraft Designated “Constant Phoenix” to the island of Crete. This plane’s job is to sniff the atmosphere for proof of nuclear materials in the air. With all the talk in Ukraine about an attack coming against the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, this plane’s task is obvious – find reason to blame Russia.

Posted by: Skipper1 | Jul 1 2023 17:54 utc | 36

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 1 2023 16:55 utc | 13
Mearsheimer’s analysis is very “if Russia were America”. Hint: it isn’t.
I remember a journalist asking Dmitry Peskov (?) who should be president of Ukraine. Peskov answered “Ask them, it’s their country”.
Compare with Mearsheimer “conquering all of Ukraine, compelling its military forces to surrender, and installing a friendly regime in Kyiv.”

Posted by: Passerby | Jul 1 2023 18:02 utc | 38

@ Zet | Jul 1 2023 17:58 utc | 35
thanks… that is one way to de-platform twitter….
@ English Outsider | Jul 1 2023 17:43 utc | 27
excellent post eo.. thanks… i agree with your overview and conclusions too.. people just have to think back to the cuban missile crisis and gain a perspective here on how wrong the west is with regard to the security concerns of russia.. but they won’t.. they have gone too far down the wrong path and tried to seal it all with their script writers who say ‘russia is all in the wrong here’.. it couldn’t be further from the truth, but they will continue on as we move towards armageddon.. read @ 14 karlof1’s vk interview with lavrov where he is asked about the use of nukes.. the ball is in the wests court… they don’t appear to have an off ramp.. i have been saying this for some time..

Posted by: james | Jul 1 2023 18:04 utc | 40

Macron has asked for the Himars and F16s now. He needs them for some other reason. Zelensky will have to wait…
Posted by: scepticalSOB | Jul 1 2023 15:56 utc | 4
———————————————————-
Perhaps a civil war, or perhaps to regain control of African colonies, or maybe new colonies? More likely for a NATO intervention into the failing proxy war.

Posted by: Ed | Jul 1 2023 18:04 utc | 42

Posted by: Elmer Fudd | Jul 1 2023 15:57 utc | 5
——————————————————–
Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blow job: Go figure.

Posted by: Ed | Jul 1 2023 18:09 utc | 44

@ English Outsider | Jul 1 2023 17:43 utc | 27
We also know that the Ukrainians are disillusioned with us. We’ve pitched them into this war but have not backed them up. We’ve told them they are in the front line fighting for our values – and then leave them in the lurch as they fight for them. . .Are there any Ukrainian sources that give an accurate picture of what opinion is in Ukraine itself?>
As in the US, it doesn’t matter what opinions the citizens have, the way they ought to think is laid out by Washington and reinforced by the media.
Recently, US Ambassador Brink’s Remarks at the American Chamber of Commerce Independence Day Celebration

. . .We have witnessed how bravely you Ukrainians across the country and around the world have fought for freedom [from the UK] and independence, for the ability to choose your own alliances and your own future.
And that exact phrase was one that President Zelenskyy said just this morning. Like the patriots who fought for American independence and established our own democracy, I know Ukraine will never give up the fight for those principles, or the fight for your own choices. For your and your children’s and your children’s children’s futures.
We understand that fight – we understand that fight right here – and what is it [at] sake intrinsically, and we continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians as you continue to sacrifice for the enduring values of freedom. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 1 2023 18:09 utc | 46

Posted by: james | Jul 1 2023 18:04 utc | 38
Apologies. I got my second comment in the wrong place.

Posted by: English Outsider | Jul 1 2023 18:18 utc | 48

Thanks for your replies james!
RT has an item saying te Ukies are going to use Crimea as a bargaining chip by targeting it with long range weapons–“Kiev considering ‘holding Crimea hostage’ – WaPo”–which from the title was something floated by BigLie media. The lead paragraphs:
“Ukrainian officials aim to station long-range weapons near Crimea in order to gain the upper hand in future peace negotiations with Russia, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing three people familiar with the matter.
“According to the Post, the Ukrainian leadership shared the plans with CIA head William Burns during his secret trip to Kiev last month, where he met with President Vladimir Zelensky.”
Apparently, according to what follows, the Zelensky 10-Point Plan is no longer operative, but it doesn’t specifically say so:

Zelensky and his aides are reportedly devising plans to end the fighting “on terms that are acceptable to Russia and the Ukrainian people.” To achieve this, they hope to gain leverage over Moscow by retaking “substantial territory by the fall,” and, “in an ideal scenario,” station artillery and rocket systems on the border with Crimea, where the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is located.
By “holding hostage” the peninsula, Kiev wants to “open negotiations” and demand that “Russia accept whatever security guarantees Ukraine can secure from the West,” the Post said.

They must be smoking some really good opium to produce such pipe dreams. Russian AD will negate any such weapons as this excellent Simplicius analysis details. And then there’s the issue of actually penetrating Russia’s defenses and also defeating its offensive whenever that occurs. As the Antonovsky bridge ploy shows very well along with Bakhmut before, Russia will allow the Ukies to concentrate forces so they can be more easily dispatched. Ukies have had better recent success using much smaller forces whose missions are to slowly peck away at the Russian defensive skirmish line to find a weak point that might be exploited, although the Clobber Report still lists daily losses in the 500-800 range.
As the NATO confab in Vilnius comes closer, the pressure on Ukies to make some dramatic breakthrough increases. And recall we’re talking about the forward skirmish line of the FEBA, not the engineered defensive works that lay to its rear. What I see is the development of several potential miny cauldrons as well as some major ones according to Rybar’s maps. And as usual, we have no clue about what Russia’s General Staff has in mind aside from what we’re currently seeing at the front along with continual bombardment of the Ukie Deep Rear.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 1 2023 18:35 utc | 50

@ josesan | Jul 1 2023 17:11 utc
Why Iberoamerica or Hispanoamerica?
Why such appropriation?
Like Iberia is in Europe and Hispano is Spain and Americo Vespucci was an Italian cartographer.
500 years later, everything and everyone has a name from somewhere else, unless you live on the res.

Posted by: Lost in time & space | Jul 1 2023 18:45 utc | 52

Zet no. 35 and James no 21
“Twitter has applied temporary daily reading limits to address “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation, Elon Musk has said.”
Mmmmmm

Posted by: ThusspakeZarathustra | Jul 1 2023 18:51 utc | 54

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Kiev is ready to continue the military conflict with Russia for many years. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine noted that a survey was conducted, according to which 58 percent of Ukrainians expressed their readiness to resist Russia for years.
58% of 12 million is 7 million. So 7 million Ukrainians want endless war.
How many want Peace ?
5 million (42% of 12 million)
7 million in DPR,LPR, And Crimea
7 million who fled to RF
So…..
7 million want endless war
19 million want Peace asap

Posted by: Exile | Jul 1 2023 18:54 utc | 56

Posted by: kupkee | Jul 1 2023 17:50 utc | 33
Waterloo? You mean the War where London Bankers financed the war via Fractional Reserve banking and credit creation, using British Government and Private British savings? Clever.
The financers didn’t do it by themselves, but they were one on the necessary elements that produced the British Empire. But for the Bank of England there wouldn’t even be an empire. Finance not, by the way, dominated by an ethnic minority at the start. I suspect the empire sustained itself for as long as it did because it was set up for finance. The king needed the money and couldn’t get into making one for the traditional motive, which if not pillage was often glory.

Posted by: Jmaas | Jul 1 2023 19:00 utc | 58

Zet | Jul 1 2023 17:58 utc | 35
“Twitter now requires one to be logged in to view tweets. Idiotic…
It’s true, Musk will kill the twitter goose with stuff like this.
You can still see whole twitter threads if they’re inside a comment thread, at least at Ron Unz’s. And if you can see those, you can right-click on images and “open image in new tab”, that seems to work even though you don’t have twitter.
Nitter.nl is quite good for viewing tweets, if you know the twitter name you are looking for.
Otherwise – “You could create a dummy account, that’s what they really want! No phone number is required, just am email.”

Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Jul 1 2023 19:02 utc | 60

Posted by: Elmer Fudd | Jul 1 2023 15:57 utc | 5
——————————————————–
Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blow job: Go figure.
Posted by: Ed | Jul 1 2023 18:09 utc | 42
It really wasn’t drug abuse because Bill didn’t inhale.
It really wasn’t adultery because Monica didn’t swallow.
The former US Attorney for the State of Oregon, Amanda S Marshall, invoked the Clinton excuse to rationalize her prolonged and spectacularly flagrant affair with a subordinate at the US Attorney’s office. Unfortunately; her boyfriend attested that they were having intercourse as well.

Posted by: Elmer Fudd | Jul 1 2023 19:13 utc | 62

Posted by: JustAMaverick | Jul 1 2023 19:11 utc | 59
Your logic makes sense. On the other hand a popular narrative is Ukraine needs to “show” gains. On the other hand – we see the goal posts keeps changing all the time, or I guess what matters, Blinken’s and Stoltenberg’s and Milley’s narrative. Now they say the counter-offensive is slow and takes time.
On the other hand you have to wonder AFU throwing everything they have at one time, which does seem to indicate that they are subjugated to a Biden set time-oriented goal.
Ukraine is now full mobilized and per recent polls there are millions of people who want to fight to the last man, or last bullet. It is the Sportpalast speech. Although RU has lot of resources they are only minimally mobilized so Ukraine will still get an advantage in numbers.

Posted by: unimperator | Jul 1 2023 19:21 utc | 64

By https://t.me/s/vicktop55

“Nuclear sniffer” has arrived in Europe. A special aircraft WC-135R Constant Phoenix of the US Air Force was deployed on June 30 to the Chania airbase in Crete. It is from this base that RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance UAVs and RC-135W Rivet Joint aircraft fly to the Black Sea region.
WC-135R is designed to collect information about radioactive radiation and control nuclear tests. The rarest visit of a special board may be connected with the preparation of a nuclear catastrophe by Kiev at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.

The actor can’t stop talking about Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (Guardian psyop can be found at post Jupiter#53) which has been tightly under Russian control since the beginning of last year’s escalation. It seems evident that his handlers in Langley, London, Warsaw, … are thinking of initiating another mind boggling escalation by destroying Russian infrastructure and subsequently perform victim blaming as was the case with the Nord Stream threads, Kerch bridge, POW camp, … .

Posted by: xor | Jul 1 2023 19:23 utc | 66

Posted by: xor | Jul 1 2023 19:23 utc | 64
Simplicius in one of the more recent articles said that AFU doesn’t even need to capture the plant. They need to get some troops “somewhere close”, even several km will do, and make a photo operation. The radiation sensors US set up will simply manipulate data and readings to create the narrative they want, and the crisis they want.
However, this will only happen if Nato thinks they are actually ready for real war, because they just might get it, because this sort of provocation is unprecedented and there are multiple variables at play on Lindsey Graham, Nato meeting and what they were talking about some article 5. Russia might expect Nato to strike as a result of this provocation and may pre-empt it.

Posted by: unimperator | Jul 1 2023 19:27 utc | 68

@JustAMaverick | Jul 1 2023 19:11 utc | 59
UkroPol media is happy that a WC-135R arrived in Europe today. I wouldn’t be, US might nuke them just to say Russia did it, like with NS or the dam.

Posted by: rk | Jul 1 2023 19:30 utc | 70

@ Apollyon | Jul 1 2023 18:45 utc | 51
Might one suggest that what General Millet is doing with this speech is lowering the bar for approval of supplying further armaments to the colonial regime by the NATO Vilnius Summit?
Not that such supply was ever in doubt, surely.

Posted by: John Kennard | Jul 1 2023 19:34 utc | 72

Musk says twitter has to be throttled back because enormous amount of data mining is taking place, for ai uses etc.

Posted by: Oh | Jul 1 2023 19:40 utc | 74

In the comments from the previous article some folks getting rather happy over “And there is no doubt that many Jews were prominent in the Communist movement in Russia: less than 2% of the population they comprosed about 5% of the membership of the Bolsheviks”.
Putin said that at least 80 percent of the members of the first Soviet government were Jewish.
https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/putin-first-soviet-government-was-mostly-jewish-317150
But of course Jewish Bolshevism is just an antisemitic conspiracy theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Bolshevism
Meanwhile Russians maintain that there would never have been Communism in Russia were it not for the Jews.

Posted by: gT | Jul 1 2023 19:42 utc | 76

Posted by: Reee | Jul 1 2023 17:48 utc | 30
That’s a pretty blithe dismissal. Reminds me of a monkeys reaction when handed a book.
Anyone else?

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 1 2023 19:44 utc | 78

sean the leprechaun | Jul 1 2023 19:42 utc | 75

Posted by: ostro | Jul 1 2023 19:44 utc | 80

Posted by: Passerby | Jul 1 2023 18:02 utc | 36
I think that’s the strength of his analysis actually. He approaches things from an objective national perspective. Cuts out a lot of the emotional cheerleading for one side of the other. A bit more scientific, imo.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 1 2023 19:47 utc | 82

I’m sticking to my belief that the entire Prigozhin Wagner mutiny was a stunt. Under the guise of banishment Russia got to move its premier seasoned fighting force and its equipment into a new planned theater in the SMO without undo provocation and escalation.
The “coup” forced the western media into the trap of their own narrative, that Russia is a weak failing state. If not for the mutiny maneuver and had Russia simply transferred Wagner to Belarus the western media would have gone apoplectic with stories of Russian escalation and imminent attack on Poland, the Baltics, or a Belorussian attack on Ukraine, feeding the escalation escalator the USA and NATO wants. I could imagine western papers clamoring for nukes to Poland, instead they hogtied and tongue tied themselves limiting their military masters’ escalation propaganda machine.
Publics associated with the “Wagner” hint that the main part of the PMC is located on the territory of the 465th missile brigade of operational-tactical missiles of the ground forces of Belarus in the Mogilev region
https://t.me/intelslava/49582

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Jul 1 2023 19:49 utc | 84

Essential analysis from the inimitable John J. MEARSHEIMER. Thoughts?
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 1 2023 16:55 utc | 13
He posted it a couple days ago ay his substack. I thought he left out a number of critical facts in his analysis & posted the highlights of what was glossed over, ignored & frankly downright dishonest by omission (he implied Russia is the only risk of nuclear war).
Last I looked, it’s the top comment there.

Posted by: Mary | Jul 1 2023 19:55 utc | 86

Posted by: Mary | Jul 1 2023 19:55 utc | 88
He’s in a tricky position as an American academic and almost the only one opposing US imperialism’s war on Russia. Speaking truth in the US and not getting destroyed is an art.
What facts did he leave out of the analysis? Seemed pretty thorough to me…

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 1 2023 20:00 utc | 88

France is a EU, NATO and a G7 country…and it is burning! Next will be Belgium, and Germany.

Posted by: ostro | Jul 1 2023 20:07 utc | 90

Zet | Jul 1 2023 17:58 utc | 35
YetAnotherAnon | Jul 1 2023 19:02 utc | 58
FWIW, here in the most ignorant, litigious nation on planet, TWTR restricted non-subscriber access for years before Musk’s LBO. You know, how it was: start a blog, embed TWEET click bait: it’s “sampling” lure, only your reader is only allowed to read that one plus 5 more posts in the thread (NO deviation!) until the SUBSCRIBE billboard blocks further passage. That’s as far as I was willing or able to go until, iirc, 2019 or so TWTR qualified LOGIN to view. So I registered (phone verification period) just to view but didn’t do anything with the account until 2020 PANDEMIC. That excursion ended in a permanent 12-day hold, summer of 2022 (purportedly I posted a message that encouraged “suicidal ideation”). After October of that year, when X took ownership of TWTR and before the whole Verified *-Check sales campaign, TWTR access fell back to prior “open access” policy. And that’s the way it’s been until this week.
I will miss perusing Massimo (@Rainmaker1979) gallery of natural wonders, but I won’t kill myself with grief.

Posted by: sln2002 | Jul 1 2023 20:11 utc | 92

Stand back for a second and this situation is crazy.
Kakhovka HPP was lost and ZNPP is next in line, for perhaps the main reason of a scorched earth policy to wreck or render uninhabitable anything UA can’t recapture on behalf of US private equity, who are gradually acquiring title to the whole place.
The thing is that, as part of the legal framework of SMO, RF is only sending troops into adopted territory (a change from early on), so Kakhovka HPP and ZNPP both suffer from being on the border between newly adopted Russian territory and Ukraine and thus in a kind of grey zone of contested fire control.
This is bad enough for Belgorod and other border regions but everyone knew that Kakhovka HPP had enormous catastrophe risk and ZNPP is as bad as it gets.
I don’t understand why a zone of conflict has been permitted – accepted, actually – that has undoubtedly led to the loss of Kakhovka HPP and now imperils ZNPP. It is not at all clear why attacks on both sites haven’t produced an appropriate response, such as instructing civilian on the UA side to evacuate and then treating the area as a fire control zone for drone surveillance and long range strikes.
What we’re seeing is first Kakhovka HPP and now ZNPP defended almost from the border of those installations, rather than clearing and maintaining a buffer zone on the UA side, without putting troops on the other side of the river.
There probably aren’t many sites in the world with a higher catastrophe risk than ZNPP. Beyond all the fluff and pretence of rank, I’m wondering what kind of people Shoigu and Gerasimov really are and what their goals are.
Anyone disinclined to question their abilities or character should at least be able to explain examples of their conduct that are acknowledged by all concerned.

Posted by: anon2020 | Jul 1 2023 20:13 utc | 94

Ukrainians conduct exercises or training in a nuclear winter. Now the question is why? To destroy the nuclear power plant and blame Russia again? Fuck these lunatics.
https://t.me/Tatarinov_R/14812

Posted by: Crazy chump | Jul 1 2023 20:19 utc | 96

ostro | Jul 1 2023 20:07 utc | 92–
I read the events have already overflowed into Belgium. Running the EC out of Brussels would be a fine feat. We must wait, but this could become an 1848-like event. Orban asked some excellent fundamental questions that are likely being circulated even with the Twitter shutdown.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 1 2023 20:19 utc | 98

Putin said that at least 80 percent of the members of the first Soviet government were Jewish.
https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/putin-first-soviet-government-was-mostly-jewish-317150
Posted by: gT | Jul 1 2023 19:42 utc | 76
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I went to the site at the JP (a lying sack of Zionist crap) and noticed that your quote was NOT a quote at all, it was a JP statement is a discussion about how 80% of the Jewish members of the CP in Russia felt about Judaism at that time. Nice try though…..
Putin was commenting that Jews in Russia today hold different views now.

Posted by: Ed | Jul 1 2023 20:20 utc | 100