Ukraine – Cookie Monster Retires

March 5, 2024

A big fat rat is leaving the ship.

One might interpret this as the State Department's admittance of defeat in the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine:

On the Retirement of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland – Anthony Blinken / State Department, Mar 5 2024

Victoria Nuland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – a role in which she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership at a crucial time for our nation and the world.
…
[I]t’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.
…
President Biden and I have asked our Under Secretary for Management John Bass to serve as Acting Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs until Toria’s replacement is confirmed.

Victoria Nuland, a member of the neo-conservative Kagan clan, is only 62 years old – too young to retire regularly.

She will be remembered for handing out cookies to anti-government demonstrators in Ukraine and for installing the 2014 coup regime.

That has been her main project in the State Department. But the 2014 Maidan putsch that turn the Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia, has ended in a complete failure.

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Neither was Russia 'weakened' by the war nor has Ukraine any perspective to survive but as some Russian controlled land-locked backwater country in Europe's east.

Given that billions were spent on Ukraine with little controls and nothing to show for Nuland, and her family, have certainly made a bit on the side. One wonders if any of the ongoing and coming investigations into the black hole Ukraine will leave them unscarred.

As even Guardian commentators are now waking up to the mess they helped create it is high time for European politicians to also finally accept this reality:

Western Europe has no conceivable interest in escalating the Ukraine war through a long-range missile exchange. While it should sustain its logistical support for Ukrainian forces, it has no strategic interest in Kyiv’s desire to drive Russia out of the majority Russian-speaking areas of Crimea or Donbas. It has every interest in assiduously seeking an early settlement and starting the rebuilding of Ukraine.

As for the west’s “soft power” sanctions on Russia, they have failed miserably, disrupting the global trading economy in the process. Sanctions may be beloved of western diplomats and thinktanks. They may even hurt someone – not least Britain’s energy users – but they have not devastated the Russian economy or changed Putin’s mind. This year Russia’s growth rate is expected to exceed Britain’s.

The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.

Posted by b on March 5, 2024 at 14:51 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The “Gateway Pundit” believes Nuland’s resignation is to do with a FOIA request they recently filed to investigate her possible involvement with Gonzalo Lira’s death.
May he rest in peace and may she… not.

Posted by: Scotch Bingeington | Mar 5 2024 19:59 utc | 201

Naryshkin again says the people will decide, “Russia’s victory means liberation of everyone willing from Nazi regime in Ukraine — SVR”:

Russia will win when it sees that it has liberated from the corrupt Nazi regime in Kiev “everyone who wanted to be liberated,” Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryskin said in an interview for Russian TV.
“I will answer briefly. We will win when we see that we have liberated everyone who wanted to be liberated from this corrupt, Nazi regime. It is not Washington or London who owns this territory, but the people living on this land. Their fathers, grandfathers, their ancestors lived on this land, the graves of their ancestors are on this land. They are the owners and it is up to them to decide where they want to live, in what country,” he said, answering a question on when the West will admit that it has lost this war.
When a journalist comments that some Ukrainian lands will decide “to return to their historic homeland, not only Russian lands,” Naryshkin said: “Now this will be democratic – a choice of the people.”

Adding Naryshkin’s thoughts to Medvedev’s map provides an interesting look at how Team Putin views the SMO endgame. Naryshkin’s statement also begs the question about other regions that will want to be liberated by joining Russia, specifically regions close to Moldova. Armenia at this point presents a different problem.
This is also a new development, “Abkhazia wants to be part of Union State with Russia, Belarus — top diplomat”:

Abkhazia sees its future in a Union State with Russia and Belarus, Abkhazian Foreign Minister Inal Ardzinba said.
One of the key tasks today is the Belarusian project. Although we have no diplomatic relations with Belarus so far, the heads of state have exchanged visits,” he said during a discussion on the topic of Russia in the current international environment as part of the World Youth Festival.
“We understand that a path to a Union State is quite long and difficult, but a large part of our population supports such an approach,” he stressed. “That is why we will be seeking this.”
“As for Belarus, we are now building the basis. We maintain trade and economic relations, investment cooperation, active development is beginning,” he said.
“We see our future in this – in strengthening union with Russia and in our striving for a Union State,” Ardzinba said and thanked Russia for supporting his country. “Our people appreciates this. And, I think, the results of voting at Russian presidential election in Abkhazia will give a clear picture that you people know what thanks and gratitude are,” he added.
The top Abkhazian diplomat also said that his country plans to invigorate humanitarian assistance to and information support for Donbass. “We hope that we will be able to go to Donbass soon to support our brothers and friends. As a country, we support the special military operation, we support fair international relations, and we support [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,” he stressed.
According to Ardzinba, the majority of Abkhazia’s population “support the special military operation because they pin their hopes on forming a fairer world order, on respecting nations’ rights, their specifics and history, regardless of their political or economic might.”
“Our people and government believe that although having a geographically local nature, the special military operation has global mission, including from the point of view of integration processes in the post-Soviet space, which are very important for our country,” he added.

Will other nations also opt for the Union State combination, South Ossetia for example?

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 5 2024 20:01 utc | 202

Trump isn’t hope, he’s the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter. Are you feeling lucky?

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Mar 5 2024 20:02 utc | 203

@Mario | Mar 5 2024 19:50 utc | 196
The latest sinking may represent a failed attack on the Kerch Bridge, as the ship was reportedly patrolling the Kerch Strait and may have detected the drones and become their target. Doesn’t excuse the apparently inadequate/ineffective means on board to counter the drone swarm. Reportedly a helicopter and a tug helped to destroy some of the drones. As is the usual case with these incidents we won’t get any definitive postmortem with which to competently arrive at conclusions.

Posted by: the pessimist | Mar 5 2024 20:04 utc | 204

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 19:51 utc | 198
Nice try, but I would prefer a believable answer, better from the poster I addressed.

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 20:05 utc | 205

@Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 5 2024 17:36 utc | 117
According to seemingly informed sources over there, it was plain bulka without salt what she offered in the Maidan Square, not cookies, trying the stonefaced intent, based on her planned outcomes, on welcoming people into their own land….

Posted by: Ghost of Mozgovoy | Mar 5 2024 20:05 utc | 206

Posted by: Scotch Bingeington | Mar 5 2024 19:59 utc | 201
That’s certainly interesting. And whether related to her “retirement” (we all know she’s not going away) or not, I very much want to see the results of the FOIA action. But I don’t think we should hold our breath. If complied with at all, there will be more black marker redactions than legible text in the documents.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 20:16 utc | 207

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 20:05 utc | 205
Since one doesn’t seem forthcoming yet, I will try again. I think I misread your intent with the question to alek_a. If in fact “Ukraine” keeps taking out Russian naval assets in the Black Sea or elsewhere, eventually the cat will have to come out of the bag, or the hand out of the glove. I think we all know that it’s really NATO (FUKUS-Poland) behind these attacks on ships and bridges, and at some point it’ll be impossible to conceal because actual NATO operators and flagged equipment or weaponry will be exposed. At that point, depending on the status of the Russian operation on Ukrainian land, I expect a tit-for-tat, possibly proxy-waged, campaign of similar attacks on NATO naval vessels. Russia isn’t stupid; they know that NATO is unhinged and that the more psychotic actors running the show are not-so-secretly hoping for an “excuse” to declare all out, open war on the RF. That’s when we get into the WWIII nuclear Armageddon scenarios.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 20:20 utc | 208

@Ghost of Mozgovoy | Mar 5 2024 20:05 utc | 206

welcoming people into their own land….

If you have a Windows computer, these days you will notice how Microsoft ‘welcomes’ you to your personal computer… that is how these soulless people operate.

Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 5 2024 20:20 utc | 209

Posted by: john | Mar 5 2024 16:31 utc | 77
It’s a staple of Empire to preserve, groom and incentivise provincial crackpots to then serve the regional ambitions of Empire.
Nuland said Russian claims of dangerous experiments in UA biolabs were lies. An hour later, when she heard Russian forces were closing in one such lab, there was suddenly a risk of dangerous biomaterial falling into Russian hands!
She didn’t even have the wherewithal to maintain narrative coherence from one hour to the next for statements that would echo throughout the western media.
Orlov’s right.

Posted by: anon2020 | Mar 5 2024 20:21 utc | 210

https://t.me/rybar/57900

Since all the emotions and feelings about the next attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces with BECs and the loss of the patrol ship ” Sergei Kotov ” have subsided, we would like to talk about what happened at night in more detail.
And the purpose of this analysis is not to reproach the Black Sea Fleet.
📌The goal is to show the enemy’s tactics and what you should pay attention to in order to prevent this from happening in the future, and also to talk about the problems of our fleet using the example of Project 22160 ships .
🔻Progress of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attack:
▪️After midnight, the patrol ship “Sergey Kotov”, which was on combat duty south of the Kerch Strait , was attacked by five unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (they were preparing for the attack, the BECs were drifting in the central part of the Black Sea ).
▪️Why did all five BECs hit the ship? The answer, alas, lies in the problems of the Project 22160 ship itself (we in no way want to shift the focus from the Black Sea Fleet, but still).
The ships are simply not equipped with the necessary means of protection: there is no air defense or anti-submarine defense. Only two machine guns are catastrophically insufficient for hitting group targets.
▪️After the hit, a tugboat and a patrol boat went to the aid of the crew, and a Rosguard Mi-8 helicopter flew to the site of the attack , which destroyed the sixth unmanned boat to the west, the Sergei Kotov.
▪️By 3 a.m., most of the crew was evacuated to tugboats ( three in total were involved ), and it was decided to drag the ship to the port. However, the late-started struggle for survivability due to waiting for orders from the command (here is the direct fault of the Black Fleet’s lack of flexibility) essentially decided the outcome.
▪️By morning, “Sergei Kotov” began to sink southeast of Cape Takil . Three more BECs appeared south of the Crimean Bridge , which were destroyed by the Mi-8 helicopter thanks to the illumination of searchlights from the tugs. Apparently, the bridge was the target of the attack.
❗️Several important points emerge from the entire attack:
➖Project 22160 ships are not equipped to combat modern threats. Relatively cheap BECs disable expensive ships. This is despite the fact that they are also defenseless against UAVs due to the lack of air defense.
➖At the same time, for some reason unknown to us, the crews of the tugboat with a searchlight and the Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian Guard were able to cope with the BECs on their own .
➖The bureaucratic red tape that arose at the time of the attack caused a rather late start to the struggle for the survivability of the ship. He could have been saved if everything had started in a timely manner.
➖So far, unfortunately , we are forced to admit that the entire fleet does not have the practice of correcting its own mistakes – the same problems arise systematically . Going out on patrol alone without the right equipment and surveillance at night… nothing has changed yet .
➖But the tactics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have undergone changes: now they attack at night in groups of up to 10 drones , and not one or two BECs (apparently, they first accumulate drones and then hit) . In the absence of the necessary countermeasures and poor visibility, this is quite logical, which results in lost ships every time.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 20:22 utc | 211

https://t.me/blackcolonel2020/1265

“Black Colonel” V. Alksnis
In connection with the sinking of another ship of the Black Sea Fleet by Ukrainian naval unmanned boats, “Sergey Kotov” decided to express his opinion as an armchair expert on this matter.
Such a development of events was laid down at the very beginning of the Northern Military District in February-March 2022, when it was decided to abandon the suppression of Ukrainian air defense and gaining air supremacy. As a result, this led to the fact that, among other things, we were unable to control the airspace and territory of Ukraine, as well as the surface space of the Black Sea adjacent to the coast of Ukraine, using aviation means of radio engineering, optical and optical-electronic reconnaissance.
Although, for the sake of objectivity, it should be admitted that there are practically no such aviation technical reconnaissance equipment left in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces compared to Soviet times. The Russian space group is incapable of this due to its small numbers.
Unlike Ukraine, which receives the intelligence information it needs from NATO countries around the clock in a 24×7 mode using NATO space, aviation and other sources, and from a vast territory right up to the Urals. And it is not without reason that as soon as Long-Range Aviation aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces take off from an airfield in the Arctic to launch a cruise missile attack on military targets in Ukraine, the alarm is already declared there.
We don’t have anything like this and won’t have anything like it in the coming decades.
Therefore, we are not able to timely reveal the production sites of unmanned marine boats, their warehouses, their delivery to the Black Sea shore for launching, subsequent launch of engines and movement to designated targets. As a rule, they can only be detected visually a few kilometers from our ships.
Please note that when Ukraine launches maritime drones, the exact location of our ships, located hundreds of kilometers away, is unknown and it cannot enter their coordinates into the on-board computer of the unmanned boat. Moreover, as a rule, they move and maneuver. Ukraine does not have such information, since there are no appropriate detection means. But NATO has such information, which monitors their location around the clock using satellites and has information about their location with an accuracy of several meters.
Therefore, after launching and starting the engines, the control of the unmanned boats is taken over by specialists from the NATO satellite constellation, and they then independently issue target designations to the boats, control them along a route of hundreds of kilometers, and launch the boats into the target area with a subsequent attack via video.
I do not rule out that for NATO members, attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea have turned into a kind of computer game, and there may be queues of people wanting to use a joystick to sink a Russian ship. After all, it is impossible to catch them doing this.
I consider it unlikely that Ukraine will be involved in attacks on Black Sea Fleet ships using unmanned boats. Full-scale tests of attacks on ships using unmanned boats are extremely useful for NATO specialists as they provide invaluable information on their use and, accordingly, the development of methods to combat them. For example, in the Red Sea with Houthi drones.
Therefore, today the Black Sea Fleet has practically no technical capabilities to combat unmanned sea boats. In addition to all-round massive fire from heavy machine guns in all directions.
We cannot strike the NATO satellite constellation – this is the third world war.
This means we need to look for options to make NATO realize that such “computer games” will not bring them any good. At one time, Khrushchev succeeded in this during the Caribbean crisis.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 20:23 utc | 212

Phariah 56 Take a tiny look at China or Vietnam please. Capitalism personified by the USA and its”take over the globe” democracy by cash and violence is not exactly thriving or helping peace and harmony in the world.

Posted by: anaisanesse | Mar 5 2024 20:24 utc | 213

I woke up this morning to news of two tiny increments of global positivity — Nuland out, Galloway in. YAY!

Posted by: Jake Blanchard | Mar 5 2024 20:26 utc | 214

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 20:20 utc | 208
I will state it clearly.
While RF ships are a valuable asset, even loosing all of them in the black sea would change nothing.
Unless Turkey violates the treaties that rule the access to black sea non Nato ship, except turkey and Hungary can enter the black sea and only those ships that have their home in the black sea.
RF, by the way has an unsinkable aircraft carrier, that is Crimea.

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 20:32 utc | 215

by shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 20:23 utc | 212
Very astute. Also, in the WWII ships were better protected.
Hanging anti-torpedo nets at 10 m away from the ship, having pontoons.
I mean sea drones are slow, have a TV link are not semi submerged and should be sonar and EW trackable.
I certainly do not believe in TBSF inability to protect itself.
ISR dominance I get, but one can track and know the times when sat is overpassing, or when Poseidon goes back to Signorella or Dulcea or wherever. Move assets about or de-coast Ukraine and the problem is solved.
WTF.

Posted by: whirlX | Mar 5 2024 20:35 utc | 216

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 5 2024 17:14 utc | 104
=============
Thank you for the links and the essay at your blog.
The Crooke-Nap interview is super=interesting. Esp. IMHO ca. 25:00, where Crooke talks about the reason the EU is ginning up the Russia threat: to provide a pretext for Brussels to levy taxes on EU countries for war bonds. A stealth move to encroach even more and more on the sovereignty of EU nations.
If I were an EU citizen I would view these plans with the same suspicion as that with which Palestinians viewed early signs (in the 1920s and ’30s) of what the Zionists planned for them and their land: a total takeover and dispossession.
EU war bonds = big red flag!!

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 20:37 utc | 217

Glennzilla on nuland
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1765049213321113813
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
One of the single most psychotic and bloodthirsty warmongers to serve in the US Government in decades:
Far beyond serving as Dick Cheney’s top advisor for the Iraq War, and overseeing NATO expansion for Bush – including Ukraine – she then ran Ukraine for both Obama and Biden.

Posted by: michaelj72 | Mar 5 2024 20:37 utc | 218

the British through their Ucronazi delegates have sunk another Russian ship,
I don’t understand why not provide the Houthis with materials capable of sinking Anglo-American ships transiting the Red Sea

Posted by: A.cagliostro | Mar 5 2024 20:40 utc | 219

She will be replaced by under secretary John bass. He oversaw the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan. So it’s going to go as well as that as he brings his experience to the next usa failure. Maria Zakharova had some choice words on the subject

Posted by: Hankster | Mar 5 2024 20:40 utc | 220

Bartholomew Cubbins | Mar 5 2024 17:00 utc | 90
Most memes have Vicki a photo next to a jabba the hut picture for similarity

Posted by: Hankster | Mar 5 2024 20:41 utc | 221

I watched that when he put it out. Many of the US anti Russia fanatics have the same or similar background. Hereditary hatreds.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 5 2024 17:47 utc | 126
=================
With all due respect to Gonzala Lira, may he rest in peace, the background info on Nudelman, her family, and her links to other Neocons via her husband was out there and well known to many (including me) well before Lira latched on to it and presented it without crediting the other source. This was just one of such episodes in which Lira used others’ material as though he were somehow breaking the story, without crediting the source.

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 20:48 utc | 222

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 20:23 utc | 212

Therefore, today the Black Sea Fleet has practically no technical capabilities to combat unmanned sea boats. In addition to all-round massive fire from heavy machine guns in all directions.

Just to fix a mistranslation

Therefore, today the Black Sea Fleet has practically no technical means to combat unmanned sea boats. Except all-round massive fire from large caliber machine guns in all directions.

Posted by: hopehely | Mar 5 2024 20:50 utc | 223

In addition, no one knows now where she’ll be stashed, but unless dying… is going somewhere.
Posted by: Trubind1 | Mar 5 2024 19:31 utc | 187
==============
Maybe to the Atlantic Council.
I shouldn’t think the Brookings Institution would want her around.
Perhaps to share an office with Fiona Hill.

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 20:50 utc | 224

Black sea fleet officers clearly do not fear Moscow high command and nap on happily.
How long would it last?

Posted by: Greg Galloway | Mar 5 2024 20:55 utc | 225

Dima says Russia destroyed 3 Himars in the last 24 hours, and two of them 30-40km behind the line with Tornado-S. Clearly Russia has improved something in the ISR sphere.

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 5 2024 20:57 utc | 226

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 20:32 utc | 215

I will state it clearly.
While RF ships are a valuable asset, even loosing all of them in the black sea would change nothing.
…

One wonders what’s the point of keeping a fleet then, right? Must cost a fortune.

Posted by: robin | Mar 5 2024 21:04 utc | 227

These are strategic losses because of the slowly degrading power of RF at sea and in the air. The second is of course due to the losses of the A50 planes.
Posted by: alek_a | Mar 5 2024 19:29 utc | 186
You lose weapons when you fight a war … that’s just the nature of the beast. If you’re afraid of a bloody nose don’t get into a fight.
Look at the 1991 Gulf war where the USA just beat the living shit out of Iraq. The USA lost 33 aircraft to enemy fire during what was the most one sided turkey shoot of a fight in modern history. Those 33 aircraft didn’t include the damaged aircraft that made it home. The attrition rate of A-10’s was so high they replaced them mid campaign with F-111. They lost F-16’s, F-15’s, A-6’s and F-18″s along with a bunch of A-10’s.
Now you didn’t hear much about this at the time because the media roots for the home team. In this conflict Russia isn’t the home team.
Now if you want a conflict that’s a little closer in scale to the current Ukraine conflict look at the US aircraft losses in Vietnam. During that conflict the USA lost over 3700 fixed wing and 5600 helicopters. The USA even lost a sizeable percentage of their strategic bomber force over Vietnam but they were never in danger of losing to the point where they were vulnerable to attack and neither are the Russians today.

Posted by: HB_Norica | Mar 5 2024 21:04 utc | 228

Scotch Bingeington @ 201

The “Gateway Pundit” believes Nuland’s resignation is to do with a FOIA request they recently filed to investigate her possible involvement with Gonzalo Lira’s death.

Oh, oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said she looks like Jabba The Hutt.

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Mar 5 2024 21:13 utc | 229

All current “alternative” analysis seems to spend half their time pointing out all the propaganda and how everything TPTB says are lies, then the other half the time they spend commenting about how TPTB has continuously failed at doing what they said they would do or what they wanted to do.
Victoria Nuland and her mentor Madeleine Albright have both been wildly successful at causing chaos and demand destruction on a grand scale.

Posted by: jef | Mar 5 2024 21:15 utc | 230

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 5 2024 16:16 utc | 63
I think both can be true. Tucker definitely started his career as a(n actual and/or effective) mouthpiece for CIA interests. His father had direct CIA ties. I think at some point he went “off the reservation” – likely when he realized he could make more money flouting CIA narratives than pushing them. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that about a month or so after he started questioning the Ukraine project he was ousted for a fake claim, made by a woman he’d never even met in person (or even on a videoconference I think) of creating a “hostile work environment” for women or some such BS.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 19:45 utc | 192
Definitely possible, but just seems unlikely to me without more.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 5 2024 21:19 utc | 231

Maybe she can get a job playing the role as Divine in a remake of the movie Pink Flamingos .The resemblance in a recent photo is striking.
Posted by: Bartholomew Cubbins | Mar 5 2024 17:00 utc | 90
No way Cookies could match Divine’s effortless charm and captivatingly natural sex appeal. Comparatively speaking, of course.

Posted by: Feral Finster | Mar 5 2024 21:20 utc | 232

RE: Posted by: the pessimist | Mar 5 2024 19:40 utc | 190
Your post was interesting and you had a lot of thoughtful insight. Made me think about Nuland running to save Zelensky and get Zaluzhny out if the way, but then, I read a recent article that Russia believes he’s so unpopular and at risk, they would most likely post him in Lvov.
But your points about “behind” the scenes chicanery and board shifting rather fits in with all this.

Posted by: Trubind1 | Mar 5 2024 21:22 utc | 233

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 5 2024 21:25 utc | 234

Nuland exits, tremendous news!
Among all the Nuland stories I’ve read in these comments, I need to add one more: When there was a military coup in Niger last year, with the US-controlled president unseated (he literally gave an interview two weeks before the coup where he said the biggest threat facing citizens of NIger was “Russian disinformation”), Nuland immediately flew to Niger to meet with the new president Tchiani; the US had just built a $100,000,000 drone base in Niger that Nuland needed to protect. Tchiani refused to meet with her. She then tried to meet with the former president BAzoum. He also refused to meet with her–it would hurt his credibility. Nuland got on the jet, humiliated, and flew back to the US.
People all over the world know her as an arch-Neocon. Probably more non-US citizens than US.
Analysis FWIW: This is definitely a sign of cracks in Biden’s foreign policy team. It’s very likely that behind the scenes she was even more hawkish, on Ukraine in particular, than she showed in public. And in public, she was an absolute psycho. It’s well before the election, and suggests a pivot in foreign policy strategy for Biden. It might be that Biden’s morons realized that they would never be able to course-correct with her in a position of power. When Bush Jr. barely squeaked out a second term due to the Iraq war, the execrable Rumsfeld immediately stepped down as secretary of Defense. The war was still terrible, Bush Jr. was terrible, but it was an acknowledgement of something. Nuland’s name is well-known in antiwar circles, but not generally, I think. This will please antiwar people, but it is not performative, as Rumsfeld’s resignation was. I have to think she has caused problems in policy, and only secondarily in PR, and that is the reason for her leaving. She will still wield influence, will be considered an expert by dumb Liberals, will be rich and highly paid, but this has to be a singularly painful day for her.
Signed Lukacs, a registered Independent in the US, who just took a Democratic ballot and voted “ceasefire” in his state primary.

Posted by: Lukacs | Mar 5 2024 21:25 utc | 235

Jane | Mar 5 2024 20:37 utc | 217–
Thanks for your reply. There were two bond issuances discussed–the “War bonds” designed to bail out the previous bond issuance which is 40-60% underwater. This type of action is similar to what occurred in the 1920s that led to the Depression in Europe then the USA and globally. The coming debacle points to the coming failure of the Outlaw US Empire’s colonization of the EU which it looked at as another host for the Empire’s Neoliberal Parasites. The European Depression will negate the transfer of monies to the Empire because there won’t be any monies to move. The Outlaw Neoliberals thought EU industries would move to the US because of cheaper energy, but that one smaller cost is greatly outweighed by all the other overhead costs that make the Outlaw US Empire uncompetitive in global markets for most everything aside from its exclusive monopolies. All costs are cheaper in Eurasia and there’s enough of a skilled workforce whereas that no longer exists within the Empire.
The entire project that began in the 1980s is now beginning to implode. Huge errors were made geoeconomically that led to even bigger errors geopolitically. And those same policies have gravely weakened the USA’s core, and the current governing philosophy will only worsen the situation. Neither Biden or Trump have a plan to solve what are structural flaws within the nation’s political-economy that’s designed to serve the few not the many.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 5 2024 21:28 utc | 236

Dima reports that the purge of Zaluzhnyi-aligned generals was because some of them were changing sides. Could be a psyop, could be true, but if it’s evenly partly true, Ukraine could collapse at any moment. The next wave of defecting officers won’t get involved in elaborate plans with each other that could be exposed, they’ll just take independent actions, opening a section of front, or staging a coup in Kiev, or some city closer to the Russians. I imagine that if a coup could seize power in Kiev, Russia could get forces there faster than ‘loyal’ generals could move Ukrainian forces, with better supply and logistics. If they can’t recover Kiev in a hurry, the war is for all intents and purposes over, although the Brits will probably try to stand up a rump government in Lvov. To punish the Poles as much as anything else.

Posted by: Honzo | Mar 5 2024 21:32 utc | 237

Posted by: robin | Mar 5 2024 21:04 utc | 227
During a war you are supposed to loose assets and manpower.
In the specific case, the black sea fleet is, as most if not all the fleets around the world, built to fight the last war not this one.
RF will probably adapt given time.
But the fleet is not essential.

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 21:35 utc | 238

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 20:32 utc | 215
Not really regarding Russia, but I wonder if US/UK ships would fare any better against these naval drones. I kind of doubt it. Maybe we’ll get to find out soon! Houthis!!!

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 21:36 utc | 239

My guess is the US deep state is now dumping the woke faction in the US and going with the conservative faction for its ongoing wars in the middle east and its coming war with China.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 5 2024 16:24 utc | 70
Still not sure about old Tucker, but I think you’re on to something with this shift from woke to a light rehab of trump and reorientation to China.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 5 2024 21:25 utc | 234
The shift toward China is essentially kayfabe, except to the extent that the US wants a cold war with Russia and China to isolate and control Europe.
Read up on Dick Carlson, Tucker’s dad, and you’ll be sure about Tucker. Or would you believe that Chelsea Clinton would be a champion of color-blindness, clean elections, draining the swamp and the dismantling of the American war machine?

Posted by: Honzo | Mar 5 2024 21:38 utc | 240

@ HB_Norica | Mar 5 2024 21:04 utc | 228
Ta. Very useful response.

Posted by: Don Firineach | Mar 5 2024 21:39 utc | 241

The ICC released arrest warrants today, not for Nuland but for two senior Russian military officials for their alleged “responsibility for missile strikes carried out by the forces under their command against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure from at least 10 October 2022 until at least 9 March 2023.”
The court “considered that the alleged campaign of strikes qualifies as a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts against a civilian population” and that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the suspects also bear responsibility for the crime against humanity of ‘other inhumane acts […] intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health’”
The utility and legality of attacks on physical infrastructure such as power generation has been discussed in some detail on MOA previously, noting for example that such attacks have long been part of U.S. military doctrine. While no one should oppose the application of responsibility to the “multiple commission of acts against a civilian population”, is the ICC actually heralding a new era of accountability here?

Posted by: jayc | Mar 5 2024 21:42 utc | 242

Posted by: Honzo | Mar 5 2024 21:32 utc | 237
Dima said ordinary dissatisfaction of Zelensky or any front situation would probably not be enough to cause swaying officers to the other side.
What would be enough, however, is understanding that Ukraine war is not run by Ukraine, but by the west for interests of the west. What is astonishing in that statement is the assumption that there are still Ukrainian officers who didn’t understand that.
Or, the situation is simply really bad and they see which way the wind is blowing.

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 5 2024 21:42 utc | 243

Even if Russia succeeds to absorbing Ukraine completely into a expanded Russia, the War that Nuland stirred up will be seen as a success by the neocons. The new expanded Russia will still have far fewer people and far fewer troops than it would have had if the war had not happened. This was always a win win for the Neocon faction. The pattern established in the Middle East of endless war based on divide and rule has transferred easily into Europe. It is right to blame the US for this but Ukraine conspired to make it a reality.Lindsay Graham can hardly disguise his scorn for them.

Posted by: Blackeyebart | Mar 5 2024 21:47 utc | 244

Posted by: jayc | Mar 5 2024 21:42 utc | 242
ICC is just a toy of the west. Nor RF nor USA recognize it, but USA pretend that it has some legal power, for the Row, not for themselves.

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 21:50 utc | 245

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Mar 5 2024 21:52 utc | 246

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 21:36 utc | 239
While it’s possibly a missile attack, not a drone one, and not confirmed, it seems that Houthis had attacked us military ships.
I maybe wrong but, sooner of later, usuk ships in the red sea will be sunk/damaged by Houthis, be it missile or drone.

Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 21:57 utc | 247

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2024 21:36 utc | 239
Yes, more effective sonar, more effective point defence, more effective crews, more effective damage control. The Russian surface fleet is still a legacy of the Soviet one, whose principle task was to act as sentries for the SSBN’s, lurking in their bastions. Of all the services it is the one least affected by the SMO and therefore least likely to fundamentally change, doesn’t help that most of its recent surface vessels are small tonnage, feel-good, substitutes for the type of platforms mothballed or scrapped.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Mar 5 2024 21:04 utc | 228
Actually, you did read it at the time, the only difference was that it was reported in the right context, something completely missing from todays news coverage that focuses on a patrol boat being sunk and ignores the serious deterioration of the Ukrainian frontline situation.

Posted by: Milites | Mar 5 2024 22:05 utc | 248

Yes you are correct.
Russia chose to stand up to NATO – a huge risk – and these are the consequences. To be fair, 2 years in, it is going far better than I imagined after the initial plan collapsed and NATO through Boris Johnson decided to double down.
There is however something in the asymmetry of all this that needs to change. NATO assisting and practically – as the repost from shadowbanned above points out – targeting RF ships while Russia cant reciprocate. Nature and physical reality tends to even out or compensate such things. I dont know how in this case.

Posted by: alek_a | Mar 5 2024 22:07 utc | 249

Another sign of dissension in the Biden administration: several officials in it have informed NBC News that several White House (NSC) officials watered down the language in Kamala Harris’s speech Sunday calling for a Gaza ceasefire.

Posted by: Lysias | Mar 5 2024 22:13 utc | 250

To ‘NULAND’ and its Green LGBT guys/women ..
It’s very boring still today to listen the Western EU media, esp. listening to supporting any newly pushed-up Msgs. towards CHINA , by US-CIA-Agents.
CHINA’s media is keeping very calm todays on reporting the “Ukraine War”, to comment any things acc.to ‘UKR counter frontier kilometer effects’.
Why is that – still today ?
NULAND is a devil ..! We all know, Which guys is to be destroyed in a wider sense, immediately.

Posted by: spare_truth_01 | Mar 5 2024 22:14 utc | 251

Before Lira’s reporting, I was already well aware, because of my Yale connections, of Nuland’s family background. It was publicly available information. Lira had no obligation to source the information.

Posted by: Lysias | Mar 5 2024 22:17 utc | 252

During a war you are supposed to loose assets and manpower.
Posted by: Mario | Mar 5 2024 21:35 utc | 238

Yes, to lose them in a fight.
Not to just neatly line them up for the enemy to destroy one by one while you don’t shoot back.

Now if you want a conflict that’s a little closer in scale to the current Ukraine conflict look at the US aircraft losses in Vietnam. During that conflict the USA lost over 3700 fixed wing and 5600 helicopters. The USA even lost a sizeable percentage of their strategic bomber force over Vietnam but they were never in danger of losing to the point where they were vulnerable to attack and neither are the Russians today.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Mar 5 2024 21:04 utc | 228

Very different era back then — aircraft were much simpler, cheaper and faster to build.
Even the US of today could not deal with Vietnam-level losses — the only things currently being built in numbers are F-16s and F-35s, and nowhere near those kinds of numbers.
And the US in principle retained all its might, while Russia lost half its manpower resource, and was heavily deindustrialized too.
P.S. This is why something like civilian aviation actually has strategic military implications — it’s really part of the same system, not a separate thing. If you have a robust civilian aviation industry, that means you have the large facilities needed to build a lot of big planes, and the whole supply chain for components, and the trained workforce to run it all. Then if you need to build something like more A-50 AWACS planes, which in terms of an air frame is mostly the same as an Il-76, or more strategic bombers, it is nowhere near as hard to switch production as it would be to start it from scratch.
But in the 1990s the large Soviet civilian aviation industry was totally gutted, and the West actively assisted the process, often in very obviously malicious ways such as outright banning certain planes from airports for made up reasons like “high noise levels”. It wasn’t just in order to ensure the Boeing/Airbus duopoly, it was also in order to cripple Russian military production and make sure it does not recover.
To make things worse, some key Soviet facilities were left stranded in other countries. Il-76s used to be made in Tashkent. Moscow actually tried to keep the plant going, but the Uzbeks, for who knows what reasons, insisted on shutting down production. The result was that for many years there were no new planes while production was reestablished in Russia.
Then there is the sad story of Antonov being left entirely stranded in Ukraine, culminating with the destruction in the early days of the SMO by the Ukrainians of the sole An-225 that the Soviets managed to build in the late 1980s…
And now the failure to win the war decisively is forcing Russia to destroy much of the remaining Soviet legacy — Yuzhmash in Dnepropetrovsk, Motor Sich in Zaporozhye, etc. have all been bombed numerous times. As a last resort, but there was no choice given what was stored and produced there.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 22:21 utc | 253

black swan event
sorry pals but, what if nudelfrau intent to candidate as vp to michelle or anyone else from dems? (I dont believe she would have a chance to run for president herself…but she can try).

Posted by: gpc | Mar 5 2024 22:42 utc | 254

Signed Lukacs, a registered Independent in the US, who just took a Democratic ballot and voted “ceasefire” in his state primary.
Posted by: Lukacs | Mar 5 2024 21:25 utc | 235
===============
I am “unenrolled.”
Took a Dem ballot and wrote in Trump.
We all need a little fun . . .

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 22:43 utc | 255

Then there is the sad story of Antonov being left entirely stranded in Ukraine, culminating with the destruction in the early days of the SMO by the Ukrainians of the sole An-225 that the Soviets managed to build in the late 1980s…
And now the failure to win the war decisively is forcing Russia to destroy much of the remaining Soviet legacy — Yuzhmash in Dnepropetrovsk, Motor Sich in Zaporozhye, etc. have all been bombed numerous times. As a last resort, but there was no choice given what was stored and produced there.
Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 22:21 utc | 253
It puzzles me how shadowbanned is referred to as a troll. I suspect we are quite far apart ideologically, but I have never seen anything in his posts but a desire for Russia to win and to win quickly. Combine this with the level of knowledge displayed in the posts and, well, you’re the troll for calling him one.
Oh, and then there was one poster above me who claimed that the total eradication of the Russian Black Sea fleet would mean nothing. I don’t even know what to say.

Posted by: Tichy | Mar 5 2024 22:47 utc | 256

@Posted by: Blackeyebart | Mar 5 2024 21:47 utc | 244
You are utterly mistaken, with the Russians taking of Ukraine it will have access to all of the resources of Ukraine – its massive agricultural capacity, its extensive natural resources and its industrial areas. At the same time, Russia itself will have removed its dependency on Western corporations and finances and will have finally cast off the liberal fifth column. It will also control the Black Sea, and its MIC will have advanced significantly. It will have also greatly gained in global prestige, being seen to have bested all that NATO could throw at it.
Europe was already going to find it hard to not de-industrialize in the face of China climbing the technology ladder, but without cheap Russian fossil fuels and other resources it will be in a much deeper hole. Around the world NATO will also be seen as much less of a threat, and the Other 7 billion have proven that they can stand up to the West. The fall in Western power will be palpable.
So maybe in the end at most 150,000-200,000 Russians may die (reasonable given the Mediazona casualty figures), together with up to 1 million Ukrainians killed, MIA and seriously wounded. Plus many other millions having fled to the West to cause many problems there. First of all of course the refugees in Russia will return to the Ukrainian lands. In addition, there are many, many poor people around the world who would love to live in the Ukrainian lands and be given access to the resources – a new “homesteading”. Perhaps even the ethnic Russians treated disgustingly in the Baltics, or liberal Jews fleeing Israel?
No, the loss of Ukraine will be a major gain to Russia (and its ally China) and a huge loss to the West. The Western elites may keep telling themselves that it was a victory, but that will just Copium.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 5 2024 22:49 utc | 257

if the 300b Rus foreign funds are kidnapped for dispersal…if that brings down western economies and Nato…is that a
kind of fair investement loss for Russia?

Posted by: Jo | Mar 5 2024 22:50 utc | 258

Jane@222…..Mr Lira always said that all the info he provided was open sourced, he said it on many videos, so he didn’t credit all his sources so his enlightening videos, the opening of eyes, no one had to go around and sources all the material, he neatly packaged it in the Systems Pig video, spoon fed his audience…..really? RIP Gonzalo.
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Mar 5 2024 21:52 utc | 246
=============
I didn’t notice that Gonzalo “always said” anything of the sort.
Gonzalo was not really a journalist.
Nevertheless, RIP. He left leaving Ukraine way too late.

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 22:50 utc | 259

Even if Russia succeeds to absorbing Ukraine completely into a expanded Russia, the War that Nuland stirred up will be seen as a success by the neocons. The new expanded Russia will still have far fewer people and far fewer troops than it would have had if the war had not happened. . . .
Posted by: Blackeyebart | Mar 5 2024 21:47 utc | 244
=============
Quite possibly Ukrainians who have fled or departed to Europe will decide to return to a functional, cleaned-up (corruption=wise) Ukraine.
The country was seriously malfunctioning long before the SMO. The population had shrunk significantly because millions had already voted with their feet, to find work etc. in Europe.

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 22:55 utc | 260

Trubind1 @ 187, Jane @ 224:
There may be no shortage of neocon thinktanks happy to take on Victoria Nuland as a resident commentator. Her brother-in-law Frederick Kagan and his wife Kimberly may find her a job at their Institute for the Study of War.
Of course the day may come when the stench coming off her is so strong, no-one will want to go near her and that may be when she’s arrested as the war criminal she is and made to stand trial for her part in Gonzalo Lira’s death and for her other interference in Ukraine’s domestic affairs.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Mar 5 2024 22:57 utc | 261

I was already well aware, because of my Yale connections,, of Nuland’s family background.
Posted by: Lysias | Mar 5 2024 22:17 utc | 252
=======
Ooh la la!

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 22:58 utc | 262

Nuland is simply the neocon face that implements her masters policies. Her leaving could be for many reasons, one being that Biden is going down, or that she will be moved onto somewhere else to cause more carnage. Disappearing though won’t be on the agenda.
Karmically she will get exactly what is her due, our wishing for ill only affects our own, not hers.

Posted by: Organic | Mar 5 2024 22:58 utc | 263

NULAND RESIGNS and UKRAINE GENERALS SWITCH SIDES AND JOIN THE RUSSIANS
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Posted by: HERMIUS | Mar 5 2024 23:00 utc | 264

Posted by: jayc | Mar 5 2024 21:42 utc | 242
yeah, what an unfortunate coincidence.
pravda.ua | Ukraine breaks record for daily electricity exports

…By the end of today, Ukraine plans to have exported a record amount of electricity, 13.39 gigawatts, to Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Moldova. On Monday, 4 March, the export figure was 13.2 gigawatts….

truly a miracle

Posted by: sln2002 | Mar 5 2024 23:04 utc | 265

In addition, there are many, many poor people around the world who would love to live in the Ukrainian lands and be given access to the resources – a new “homesteading”. Perhaps even the ethnic Russians treated disgustingly in the Baltics, or liberal Jews fleeing Israel?
No, the loss of Ukraine will be a major gain to Russia (and its ally China) and a huge loss to the West. The Western elites may keep telling themselves that it was a victory, but that will just Copium.
Posted by: Roger | Mar 5 2024 22:49 utc | 257
==================
More or less what I was thinking. The Ukr will offer a huge opportunity to a lot of people and many will want to live and work there. Once again it will be the Ukraine.
However, I sure hope the idea of Jews “returning” to the Ukraine does not take hold. They will just create the same kinds of problems they created in the Russian Empire and Palestine. A fifth column just waiting to be exploited by USA neocons. Somehow Russia must contrive to discourage Jews from “settling” in the Ukraine.

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 23:05 utc | 266

Posted by: Jane | Mar 5 2024 22:58 utc | 262
It’s possible, Lysias was still in elementary school, when the whole PNAC thingie cut into GW’s switch grass grooming at the ranch.

Posted by: sln2002 | Mar 5 2024 23:09 utc | 267

Posted by: sln2002 | Mar 5 2024 23:04 utc | 265
And you believe such blatant propaganda, unsourced and unverified, because?

Posted by: Ghost of Zanon | Mar 5 2024 23:15 utc | 268

“Nuland will be replaced temporarily as under secretary by another career diplomat, John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the country.” US News
This quote is everywhere, but it’s worth pointing out that Nuland was never a career diplomat at DoS. A career diplomat at DoS starts as a foreign service officer and works up. Nuland has only ever been a political appointee. She was first appointed by Clinton and worked under Talbot, then assistant to Cheney (not at state) then I think it was DoD rather than than state for her NATO stint under W. And then she was at state with an Obama appointment.
If she was a career diplomat she wouldn’t have been able to take the Trump administration off. She’s a political hack not a diplomat.

Posted by: Lex | Mar 5 2024 23:45 utc | 269

Hermius!
Ouch that hurt my eyes scrolling down to it.
Is it original work? How did you get it posted?
Anyway ‘Toria’ !! That’s some name shortening. Vicky perhaps but it’s a bit of a mouthful. Several cookies worth.
Maybe Mr Kagan has called her off? An escape back to the hearth. Maybe she has picked up the inevitable physical internalisation of her external destructive behaviour.
Maybe the Bankers have decided to cut their loses. I can’t guess yet. I’m with b’s analysis currently.
There is the rat living the sinking ship metaphor. But mostly I prefer the walking the plank scenario.
If it’s the beginning- there is the ‘to the last ukranian, best money we ever spent’ twat.
Others who were aiming to impose a strategic defeat on the RF. By invoking the Nazi demons. Such Occultism.
That goes back to the Clinton’s and Obamas too and the whole Lobby that derailed representation in European countries with their billionaires backing the ‘right wing’ growth. Including the ukip in the U.K.
There’s a long line to push off the plank at the point of a sword to feed the fish below.
Justice will still be visited upon them , their loot and their dynastic ambitions.
It’s not the end of the ‘End of History’ but perhaps it is the beginning of the Rebirth of History- a resumption of Human civilisation that doesn’t just exist in Hollywood Dreamscape that we have had to endure for this century so far and many before.
Let’s see. The illegal apartheid entity is going down the tubes ans is its proxy natzios and maybe she’ll be the Lady Moses to lead them out of their settler colony and take them to ..?
I don’t care about retribution against her. She has lost. They have lost. Long may they daily live their L’s – living as poor folk isolated from the rest of the world where they will always face arrest for crimes against humanity – as they deserve.
Fingers crossed eh?

Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 5 2024 23:49 utc | 270

Posted by: Tichy | Mar 5 2024 19:17 utc | 181
Thats because they arent monsters. They be demons.

Posted by: Tannenhouser | Mar 5 2024 23:58 utc | 271

TASS today –
“Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin said the US leadership disapproved of the Ukrainian attack on the Russian military transport plane that was carrying captured Ukrainian soldiers.”
Good to hear. Assuming it didn’t happen.

Posted by: Elmagnostic | Mar 6 2024 0:17 utc | 272

Ahenobarbus | Mar 5 2024 15:35 utc | 30
*** I think pig might be a better animal analogy. A big voracious, murderous pig runs away from the mass slaughter it intentionally caused for its own fun and profit. Oh, and for the glory of a genocidal empire and likely, in her sick mind, for her superior tribe.***
Remember the video on Telegram last year of wild pigs dining on the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers …. in behavioural terms she could get mistaken for one of them, except that they weren’t obese and nowhere near as ugly.

Posted by: Cynic | Mar 6 2024 0:17 utc | 273

Posted by: bevin | Mar 5 2024 18:04 utc | 142
=============================================
Good analysis Bevin

Posted by: Engineer-John | Mar 6 2024 0:18 utc | 274

The new expanded Russia will still have far fewer people and far fewer troops than it would have had if the war had not happened

Purest delusion. This idiotic and misguided bloody war has instead forced a de facto alliance between a reluctant Russia and China, strengthened its economy, unified its people and overall strengthened Russia immeasurably. Bean counters in NATO are fucking dinosaurs.
We could have allied with Ruddia via NATO and ensured no significant wars for a lifetime. But then we couldn’t steal, could we? Great fucking move geniuses.

Posted by: Doctor Eleven | Mar 6 2024 0:20 utc | 275

“The Outlaw Neoliberals thought EU industries would move to the US because of cheaper energy, but that one smaller cost is greatly outweighed by all the other overhead costs that make the Outlaw US Empire uncompetitive in global markets for most everything aside from its exclusive monopolies. All costs are cheaper in Eurasia and there’s enough of a skilled workforce whereas that no longer exists within the Empire.”
Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 5 2024 21:28 utc | 236
—————————————————————–
karlof1, you said a mouthful right there. While public school districts in poor neighborhoods in the US have been stripped of funds and resources, those funds and resources have been handed over to private (mostly religious) schools and home-schooling schemes that promote religious views in place of science and real history.
In the USA, millions of young people think that before the ‘flood’ people and dinosaurs lived together like in the Flintstone cartoons (see the Ark Encounter in Kentucky: https://arkencounter.com/
I once worked under a young client supervisor, a petroleum engineer, who swore that the earth was less than 10,000 years old, because the bible said so, he as home schooled as a child.
In several Southern States, History classes for children 12 and under are not allowed to discuss slavery in the US because it would be deleterious to the children’s image of our founding fathers, and the United States in general.
Back in the seventies and eighties when corporations were shutting down American businesses as fast as possiable in order to take advantage of cheap and plentiful non-union labor in places like Mexico, Indonesia, and China, they turned their backs on the US workers and the school system as well.
However, countries like China did not skimp on a robust school system, even where they were still a poor country: There were no Chinese riding on the back of Dino’s for them. Math, science, and technology were given high priority, and today China’s economy has surpassed the US and Europe. A similar development (though not as impressive as China’s) is happening in Russia today.

Posted by: Ed | Mar 6 2024 0:21 utc | 276

Karmically she will get exactly what is her due, our wishing for ill only affects our own, not hers.
Posted by: Organic | Mar 5 2024 22:58 utc | 263
—————————————————————–
Party pooper.

Posted by: Ed | Mar 6 2024 0:31 utc | 277

CHINA’s media is keeping very calm todays on reporting the “Ukraine War”, to comment any things acc.to ‘UKR counter frontier kilometer effects’.
Why is that – still today ?
NULAND is a devil ..! We all know, Which guys is to be destroyed in a wider sense, immediately.
Posted by: spare_truth_01 | Mar 5 2024 22:14 utc | 251
—————————————————————————
WHAT????

Posted by: Ed | Mar 6 2024 0:34 utc | 278

Btw – Simon Jenkins article in the Obsessive Groan is met with typical comments btl the most ’popular’ ones of which are pompously sticking to the line of the smug Colonel Blimp mentality of but the ‘Rules are the Rules’ type which do not stray from the wholly brainwashed Russophobic tone that has been taken on by the soft minded ‘liberal left ‘ smug readership of that rag now. They are beyond help in their self satisfied righteousness.
Really the only thing that will cure this mass hysteria of the middle class moronic platitude spouting is the prospect of their children and grand children joining the services to go and defend the ‘front’ a thousand miles and a continent away where they end up as sunflower fertiliser forever a little England corner, because there won’t be anything to put in body bags to bring back! Such utter demented folly by so called leftist peaceniks! To think I was one of them for decades too! Go on . Go fight the nation and peoples that saved Europe from fascism less than a century ago. Stopped Hitler and defeated Germany and the Nazis with their 27 million dead. The Second World War generation dead forebears must be spinning in their graves. The current morons deserve what we vote for including the blind faith in Starmer as the next PM – because all they believe is the blinkered Bad Tories – Good Blairism model.
Come friendly bombs…

Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 6 2024 0:37 utc | 279

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but FPV operators on ships might be a good interim option for taking out swarm drones. Some form of ERA like they use on tanks and obviously better aerial Gunship support.
Just saying.

Posted by: Suresh | Mar 6 2024 0:39 utc | 280

gpc@254…I was thinking Black Swan also, like Lira staying in Ukraine doing his vids, calls out the Nudleman Kagan Crime Syndicate gets arrested and killed, Nudlemanlywoman steps down to face trail for her complicity in Gonzalo’a death…..
Cheers M

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Mar 6 2024 0:39 utc | 281

Phariah | Mar 5 2024 18:37 utc | 161
*** Nuland has a lot in common with socialists, both built nothing only destroyed, both took away the freedom (both Ukrainians and americans) both thrive in corruption and authoritarianism. ***
No, she has an immense amount in common with capitalists, especially the worst sort.
Hardly surprising, since she’s one of them. Your description of a thoroughly buggered, initially pristine and resource-filled, country progressively choking in its own cumulative corruption gangsterism and cultism fits the *CAPITALIST* USA to perfection.
*** USSR was the biggest fvck-up Russia made, and it still suffering the consequences for it.***
The *ending* of the USSR — an action against the wishes of the vast majority of its population — was the biggest fuck-up made upon Russia by traitors.

Posted by: Cynic | Mar 6 2024 0:45 utc | 282

“Victoria Nuland, a member of the neo-conservative Kagan clan,”
Ironically Lazar Kaganovitch was in charge of the holodomore that killed ethnic Russians in Russia proper and the Ukraine. Check out ole Lazar. Nuland, Kagan, and Blinkens are all Bolsheviks who fled Odessa after the failed 1905 revolution. Maybe on the same ship as Trotsky.

Posted by: MikeB | Mar 6 2024 0:47 utc | 283

To Scott Ritter, NATO behavior in Ukraine seems inexplicably suicidal, as if nobody is aware of RF retaliatory options, in the event NATO does something really stupid like blowing up the bridge to Crimea:
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/05/scott-ritter-the-minds-of-desperate-men/

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Mar 6 2024 0:50 utc | 284

Vladimir zhirinovsky’s prediction 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nzSqIVfPu4
Vladimir zhirinovsky’s prediction for 2022 February
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aEf2fJ00qg
27 December2021 … refuse then we can accept
another program and which one you will feel
4 o’clock in the morning on February 2022 I
would like 2022 would be a year of peace but
I love the truth
75 years I’m telling the truth, 2022 will be
the year is not peaceful, it will be the year when
Russia is finally great again country and everyone
should shut up and respect our country otherwise
they will give us I’ll shut my mouth and shoot the
Russians disputes in Donbass and then Western Russia
so let’s support in this regard new directions in
foreign policy for Russia

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Mar 6 2024 0:56 utc | 285

The *ending* of the USSR — an action against the wishes of the vast majority of its population — was the biggest fuck-up made upon Russia by traitors.
Posted by: Cynic | Mar 6 2024 0:45 utc | 282

Putin’s refusal to re-embrace the USSR will go down as one of his greatest failures.
Because what are you offering otherwise?
Historically Russia has of course produced lots of great writers, artists, composers, scientists etc. even when it was the Russian Empire.
Yet it didn’t really differ from the other empires of the day all that much. Sure, it wasn’t settler colonialist and didn’t go around the world with genocidal intent. But mostly it stood for the same rampant inequality and injustice, with a small oligarchy living lavishly on the back of everyone else, and mostly outside the laws that existed for the rest too.
The USSR, on the other hand, offered a genuinely different path for humanity. Sure, it went through a lot of crises and tragedies, and although most of them caused by external factors, internally there were a lot of failings too. But still, in principle it stood for something good, and provided a real alternative.
What does modern Russia stand for? Mostly the same rampant inequality and injustice as in the West, but with greater degree of state control and minus the crazy woke nonsense.
How much of a real alternative is that really and can it chart a viable different path for humanity? Doubtful…

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 6 2024 1:02 utc | 286

Biden does not take advice from former President Obama, he takes orders. Truly a Looking Glass situation.
Posted by: Milites | Mar 5 2024 18:50 utc | 170
______
Why do people keep saying stuff like this? Obama was a dull-witted puppet, full of book learning and reasonably good at reading from the teleprompter but largely incapable of spontaneous thought. A useful front man and nothing more.

Posted by: malenkov | Mar 6 2024 1:04 utc | 287

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 6 2024 1:02 utc | 286
wonder which planet you live on!

Posted by: Grishka | Mar 6 2024 1:09 utc | 288

@ malenkov | Mar 6 2024 1:04 utc | 287 who called Obama
”
A useful front man and nothing more.
”
If you were an elite would you want to work with Obama as a complicit middleman or directly with Biden?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 6 2024 1:12 utc | 289

What amateurs, idiots and fools would do in Public for the whole world to see – the Kremlin February 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9A-u8EoWcI

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Mar 6 2024 1:15 utc | 290

What amateurs, idiots and fools would do in Public for the whole world to see – the Kremlin February 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9A-u8EoWcI
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Mar 6 2024 1:15 utc | 290
———————————————————————
So, what is your problem?

Posted by: Ed | Mar 6 2024 1:33 utc | 291

MikeB | Mar 6 2024 0:47 utc | 283 ” Check out ole Lazar. Nuland, Kagan, and Blinkens are all Bolsheviks who fled Odessa after the failed 1905 revolution.”
Blinken landed in America 1904.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 6 2024 1:40 utc | 292

Larry Johnson is reporting that Russia recently took out a CIA base in eastern Ukraine. Wonder if Vickie was visiting friends and got kinzled. So now Blinken reports that she is retiring in a few weeks.
Wonder if she will be seen at her retirement party?
Posted by: Homey | Mar 5 2024 18:43 utc | 166
———————————————————-
Any follow-up such as has she been seen in public in the last few weeks? Should we be expecting any mishaps with loss of life, similar to losing military personnel in aircraft accidents having perished overseas?
Icky Vicky, if not dead, will continue as a faithful servant of her cause. Bowing out of the foreign policy scene does send a message.

Posted by: Acco Hengst | Mar 6 2024 1:40 utc | 293

Ironically Lazar Kaganovitch was in charge of the holodomore that killed ethnic Russians in Russia proper and the Ukraine. Check out ole Lazar. Nuland, Kagan, and Blinkens are all Bolsheviks who fled Odessa after the failed 1905 revolution. Maybe on the same ship as Trotsky.
Posted by: MikeB | Mar 6 2024 0:47 utc | 283
————————————————————–
I wish I had the time and the space to debate your silly ass, but I don’t have either. Whatever, their ancestors were, or weren’t, we know for a fact that they are all died in the wool fucking capitalist of the worst kind. Mike! Do you accept that as true?

Posted by: Ed | Mar 6 2024 1:41 utc | 294

The entire project that began in the 1980s is now beginning to implode. Huge errors were made geoeconomically that led to even bigger errors geopolitically. And those same policies have gravely weakened the USA’s core, and the current governing philosophy will only worsen the situation. Neither Biden or Trump have a plan to solve what are structural flaws within the nation’s political-economy that’s designed to serve the few not the many.
Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 5 2024 21:28 utc | 236
—————————————————–
Tucker Carlson has no clue, Jane had his number, nicely worded.
If the US wants to send a credible emissary to Russia to discuss adjustments to the map posted by karlof1, only William Burns will be acceptable. Worth noting, when he goes and where he goes.

Posted by: Acco Hengst | Mar 6 2024 1:47 utc | 295

MikeB | Mar 6 2024 0:47 utc | 283 ” Check out ole Lazar. Nuland, Kagan, and Blinkens are all Bolsheviks who fled Odessa after the failed 1905 revolution.”
Blinken landed in America 1904.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 6 2024 1:40 utc | 292
Probably rich white Russians, the lot. Don’t put that scum on the party of Lenin.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 6 2024 1:59 utc | 296

You are utterly mistaken, with the Russians taking of Ukraine it will have access to all of the resources of Ukraine – its massive agricultural capacity, its extensive natural resources and its industrial areas.
It will have also greatly gained in global prestige, being seen to have bested all that NATO could throw at it.
No, the loss of Ukraine will be a major gain to Russia (and its ally China) and a huge loss to the West. The Western elites may keep telling themselves that it was a victory, but that will just Copium.
Posted by: Roger | Mar 5 2024 22:49 utc | 257

Another example of counting the chickens before they’ve hatched. It’s much worse than ‘copium’. It’s more than unwise declaring a victory for Russia. It’s delusional. This war is not going to stop anymore than the War in Afghanistan stopped the day the US declared the defeat of the Taliban, or Bush’s Mission Accomplished in Iraq on the aircraft carrier. Seriously there are many here who need to take a cold shower and get a grip on the reality.

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Mar 6 2024 1:59 utc | 297

Some videos for today.
Russian forces destroyed another US-supplied “HIMARS” MLRS launcher in Kherson oblast (great footage):
https://rutube.ru/video/37ae44ad355f7d8df447278d16926dc6/
A Russian ATGM strike destroyed a third US-supplied M1A1 “Abrams” tank near Avdeyevka today:
https://rutube.ru/video/1f7bb3caa6055301cf48005a62da90a6/
Russian airborne troops’ ATGM strike destroys group of enemy infantry near the DPR’s Artemovsk:
https://rutube.ru/video/870c16f8340ecfeeb3862bf74bdbc898/
Russian Msta-S self-propelled howitzer fires on enemy position near the DPR’s Avdeyevka:
https://rutube.ru/video/7e2104c32734187d0d0789a25cee394b/

Posted by: Nate | Mar 6 2024 2:00 utc | 298

Posted by: Guy Thornton | Mar 5 2024 16:26 utc | 72
That made my day, thank you.

Posted by: Duffster | Mar 6 2024 2:01 utc | 299

Why do people keep saying stuff like this? Obama was a dull-witted puppet, full of book learning and reasonably good at reading from the teleprompter but largely incapable of spontaneous thought. A useful front man and nothing more.
Posted by: malenkov | Mar 6 2024 1:04 utc | 287
Black window dressing for a genocidal empire. I’d spit in his face.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 6 2024 2:01 utc | 300

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