Tales from Mother Russia

[nacho]

You know...maybe America could use a little bit of Stalin.

[monkey!]

You know...maybe America could use a little bit of Stalin.

Where's McCarthy when we need him?

[monkey!]

And it continues!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27000700

Gunmen seize Ukraine police station in Sloviansk

[RottingCorpse]

You know...maybe America could use a little bit of Stalin.

Where's McCarthy when we need him?

Being skull-fucked by Donald Rumsfeld?

[monkey!]

Will Ukraine attack those "pro-Russian demonstrators"...?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27018199

[RottingCorpse]

Am I the only one paying attention to Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter and Putin's saber rattling in response?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/putin-sends-air-defense-missiles-to-syria-to-deter-turkey_5655af7fe4b08e945fea839d

Putin Sends Air Defense Missiles To Syria To Deter Turkey

The S-400 missile systems, which will be sent to the Hemeimeem air base in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia, located just about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the border with Turkey, are capable of targeting Turkish jets with deadly precision.

Click through fro all the details but the short and skinny is that a Russian fighter entered Turkish airspace. The Turks gave warnings that weren't heeded. They shot it down. Let's keep in mind that The Turks and the Russians have two different goals in the "War against ISIS." (The Turks wants to keep the Kurds out because holy hundreds of years of racism. Russian wants Assad to remain in power in Syria because $$$, oil, and WTF.)

This has all the makings of, well, a really bad war. I don;t want to say WWIII (which is what Twitter went off on yesterday), but this feels bad, you know?

[Reginald McGraw]

I think this one will amount to no more than sabre rattling. Unfortunately, what it does is give Russia more leeway to push troops and equipment forward.

[nacho]

Non-liner war, RC. No way will Russia and Turkey go to war. That would actually be a war they couldn't easily win. I mean, hell, they're stuck Vietnam style in the Ukraine now (the news we're all suddenly ignoring)! So they can't even defeat the nation with a barely functional army that no one will help.

Russia tested their limits, they got a bloody nose, and now they try to play up the outrage while they move against softer targets. The fact here is that Russia and Turkey have been doing exactly this over and over since 1798. So that's why it seems like we're not paying attention. It's not news.

If you want to talk about Russia, really, everything in the west is a sideshow...perhaps even a distraction. The US is looking to Russia's Asian presence. They've spent the equivalent of a trillion dollars to completely overhaul their Pacific fleet.

And where's that money coming from? Why, China... Who has their eyes on Russia's oil. The absolute impossible scenario has slowly come to light in the last year -- Russia and China are working together.

We're also wondering what the fuck Russia is doing with India. They're handing off their surplus to the Indian military, and the two powers have been cozying up.

So, in 2015, Russia has become a silent partner in a vast Asian conglomerate. By 2020, they hope to be fully in bed with China and to possess the second strongest navy in the world. And, with China on board, it'll be a navy that could rival ours.

Russia's eyes have been solidly on the east for over 100 years. Western expansion was a lucky break, a happy accident. The fruits of WWII. It never has been, nor is it now, their real agenda. 

We always blather on about boycotting Chinese imports, and express our rage when American corporations get in bed with China... But what happens when the day comes where China decides to embargo us?

[monkey!]

The great Yellow Peril.

[RottingCorpse]

Things are just getting spookier and spookier.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/mystery-death-of-ex-kgb-chief-linked-to-mi6-spys-dossier-on-donald-trump/ar-AAmkp4E

Mystery death of ex-KGB chief linked to MI6 spy's dossier on Donald Trump

 © The Telegraph
An ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump may have been murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up. it has been claimed.

Oleg Erovinkin, a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on Boxing Day in mysterious circumstances.

Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is repeatedly named in the dossier.

Erovinkin has been described as a key liaison between Sechin and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mr Steele writes in an intelligence report dated July 19, 2016, he has a source close to Sechin, who had disclosed alleged links between Mr Trump’s supporters and Moscow.

The death of Erovinkin has prompted speculation it is linked to Mr Steele’s explosive dossier, which was made public earlier this month. Mr Trump has dismissed the dossier as “fake news” and no evidence has emerged to support its lurid claims.

The Russian state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Erovinkin’s body was “found in a black Lexus... [and] a large-scale investigation has been commenced in the area. Erovinkin’s body was sent to the FSB morgue”.

No cause of death has been confirmed and the FSB continues to investigate. Media reports suggested his death was a result of foul play.

It was later claimed he died of a heart attack.  Christo Grozev, an expert on Russia-related security threats, believes Erovinkin is the key source to whom Mr Steele refers in his dossier.

Mr Grozev said on a blog: “Insiders have described Erovinkin to me alternately as ‘Sechin’s treasurer’ and ‘the go-between between Putin and Sechin’. One thing that everyone seems to agree  – both in public and private sources – is that Erovinkin was Sechin’s closest associate.”

Mr Grozev, of Risk Management Lab, a think tank in Bulgaria, said: “I have no doubt that at the time Erovinkin died, Mr Putin had Mr Steele’s Trump dossier on his desk. He would – arguably – have known whether the alleged... story is based on fact or fiction.

"Whichever is true, he would have had a motive to seek  – and find the mole... He would have had to conclude that Erovinkin was at least a person of interest.”

Experts expressed scepticism about the theory.

“As a rule, people like Gen Yerovinkin don’t tend to die in airport thriller murders,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services.

Mr Steele, 52, a Cambridge graduate, remains in hiding following his unmasking as the author of the Trump dossier.

[RottingCorpse]

This Ukraine situation has me all, "OMG, everybody with nukes is arguing!"

Seems like a lot of wagging the dog from Biden here since Putin has had his claws in the Ukraine for a decade now.
On the flip side, it also seems like Putin is testing the waters here to see how successful his U.S. disruption campaign of the past few years has been.

[nacho]

I just think this is the conventional war we've all been longing for since 1945. The nuclear thing doesn't worry me. I can't see America ever dropping a nuke again, and Putin is obsessed with showing his muscle. I think, for him, a nuclear war would be cowardly and dishonorable. He wants to prove that he has tanks, and men, and strategy. He wants to prove that the West is a bankrupt culture that's afraid to commit to anything.

Meanwhile, in terms of Biden wagging the dog, I think that's 100% true. After the last two years there's no doubt anywhere that America has bankrupted itself quite literally. We're ten years away from China exceeding us GDP-wise and the dollar sinking to catastrophic levels. In our very near future, the Republic is over.

Unless...there's a juicy war to get everyone back in the office and fueling the economy.  War is very good for business.

We'll have a little tussle over Ukraine. It'll be scary and people will die. And then we'll roll over and give Putin the Partition that he and the Us State Department worked out and agreed on in 2014 -- eastern Ukraine, the "Russian-speaking" part (LOL) -- will go to Russia and the western part will become an independent Ukraine. We're expecting this partition now which is why we've evacuated Americans and other western expats to western Ukraine but not actually out of Ukraine. This is also why we get all these reports about how some Ukrainians aren't upset by this. The Partition is all but a done deal and has been expected for eight years. Unfortunately, Putin wants to put on a bit of dinner theater and we want at least a solid year of fighting so we can rebound the economy after COVID.

That's all a dangerous game, of course. But the gamble from the dog waggers and the musclebound autocrats is that no one actually wants WWIII on either side. Let's make a point, let's make some money, and then let's meet at the table by Christmas and shake hands.

[RottingCorpse]

Really great analysis of Ukraine here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/22/russia-ukraine-putin-goes-stalin-crazy/

[nacho]

We're actually at war now, right? I've been too focused on truckers threatening to block the Beltway and wondering how Washingtonians will react. (With rifles...)

[RottingCorpse]

Shots fired last night.

Washington Post coverage is pretty good for a recap. I'm wonder what other impetus there is for this, because Putin has degenerated into batshit crazy far quicker than I thought he might. I always though him to have that old CIA/KGB firm grip. But he seems to have cracked in a way that I can't put my finger on.