BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR via Indian Punchline

Ukrainian casualties in the conflict are running at a rate of somewhere between 600 and 1,000 a day, according to Guardian.

The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations held a videoconference on May 31 titled Russia’s War in Ukraine: How does it end? The president of the think tank Richard Haas chaired the panel of distinguished participants — Stephen Hadley, Prof. Charles Kupchan, Alina Polyakova and Lt. Gen. (Retd) Stephen Twitty. It was a great discussion dominated by the liberal internationalist stream that has so far guided President Biden’s national security team, which wants to help Ukraine fight a long war against Russia.

The striking thing about the discussion was the acknowledgement candidly articulated by an ex-general who had actually fought in wars that there is no way Russia can be defeated in Ukraine, and, therefore, there has to be some clarity as to the stated endgame to “weaken” Russia. The gloomy prognosis was that European unity apropos the war is no longer holding.

Third, one plausible scenario would be that Russia turns Ukraine into a “frozen conflict” once the current phase of the war reaches the administrative boundaries of Donbass, connects Donbas to Crimea and incorporates Kherson and a “strategic pause and a stalemate in the not-too-distant future” may open the door for diplomacy.

Conceivably, a cold air of realism is blowing across the Washington establishment that Russia is winning the Battle of Donbass and an ultimate Russian military victory over Ukraine is even within the realms of possibility. Notably, Georgetown faculty member Prof. Kupchan injected a heavy dose of realism:

• “The longer this [war] goes on, the more the negative knock-on effects economically and politically, including here in the United States, where inflation really is… putting Biden in a difficult position”;
• “We need to change that narrative [ that anybody who talks about a territorial settlement is an appeaser] and begin a conversation with Ukraine and, ultimately, with Russia about how to end this war sooner rather than later”;
• “Where the front line ends, how much territory the Ukrainians are able to take back, remains to be seen”;
• “I do think that the hot war aspect of this is more dangerous than many people perceive, not just because of escalation but because of the blowback effects”;
• “I think we’re starting to see cracks in the West… there will be a resurgence of ‘America-first’ Republicanism as we get near the midterms”;
• “This all leads me to believe that we should push for war termination and have a serious conversation after that about a territorial disposition.”

None of the panellists argued that the war must be won, or it still can be. But none recognised Russia’s legitimate security interests, either. Gen. Twitty warned that Ukraine may be close to military exhaustion; Russia has established maritime domain control in the Black Sea — and, yet, “as you look at the DIME—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic—we’re woefully lacking on the diplomatic piece of this. If you notice, there’s no diplomacy going on at all to try to get to some type of negotiations.”

The liberal internationalists mistakenly believe NATO is the cornerstone of US national security. Despite the failure of Biden’s reckless decision to wage a proxy war against Russia, the US is transfixed on NATO and unwilling to consider a security deal with Moscow.

If the old narrative in Washington was about winning the war, the new narrative is daydreaming about “partisan activity aimed at Russian occupation forces.” Of course, this narrative is even less possible to verify independently than the tall claims previously.

It is in this twilight zone that President Putin situated his taunting remarks on June 9 drawing the historical analogy of Peter the Great’s 21-year long Great Northern War between 1700-1721 — Russia’s successful contestation of the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. After attending a function marking the 350th birth anniversary of the iconic Russian emperor, Putin was chatting up an elite audience of the best and brightest young scientists in Moscow.

Putin said: “Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it. He was not taking away anything, he was returning. This is how it was… He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing…everyone recognised it as part of Sweden. However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia’s control.”

“Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well. And if we operate on the premise that these basic values constitute the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in achieving our goals.”

Putin gave a complex message here about Russia’s total rejection of NATO supremacy. No matter what it takes, Russia will reclaim its heritage. That is first and foremost a promise to his countrymen, who rally behind Putin, whose poll rating today exceeds 80 percent (as compared to 33% for Biden.)

The point is, there are unspoken fault lines, too. It is no accident that Russian discourses freely use the expression “Anglo-Saxon” to refer to the challenge on the country’s western border. Demons have been unleashed there. Indeed, what was the meaning of the trip to the Vatican by the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen for an audience with Pope Francis at this point?

The Irish professor Dr. Declan Hayes recently wrote an essay titled Holy War in Ukraine against the backdrop of violent assaults on Russian Orthodox priests inside their churches in the city of Stryi, Lviv region and in Zelensky-controlled Ukraine in general. He saw NATO’s “divide and conquer paw marks” all over them. “Although the fascist assaults on vulnerable Russian priests in front of their Galician congregations are one manifestation that the ghosts of Ukraine’s dark past have resurfaced, murals of the Virgin Mary posing with American Javelin missiles are another,” Prof. Hayes wrote.

Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu announced last week that a “land bridge” has been established to Crimea, one of Moscow’s key war aims, and it is working! It involved the repair of hundreds of kilometres of railway line. Simultaneously, the media reported that rail traffic from Ukraine to the border with Russia has been restored and trucks have begun carrying grain taken from the elevators in the city of Melitopol to Crimea.

Shoigu promised “comprehensive traffic” to and from Russia to Kherson and on to Crimea. Alongside, there’s been a steady stream of reports lately that the integration of the southern regions of Ukraine into Russia is rapidly progressing — Russian citizenship, number plates of cars, internet, banks, pensions and salaries, Russian schools, and so on.

Last week, the influential newspaper Izvestiya cited unnamed military sources claiming that any peace settlement at this point should also include Kiev’s acceptance of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as breakaway regions, in addition to Donbass and Crimea. The key question is no longer whether Kiev can retake the captured south, but how it can stall Russia’s “land bridge” from advancing further westward to Moldavia.

On the other hand, obduracy over peace talks may mean Kiev having to accept at a later date the loss of Odessa as well. But who is there in Europe in a position to bell the cat — reason with Zelensky? Besides, Zelensky is also riding a tiger. He survives on Anglo-Saxon support and in turn the Anglo-Saxons swim or sink with him.

There is no clear end in sight yet for this seamless war. At the end of the day, what stands out is that Putin has compared his actions with regard to Ukraine to Peter the Great’s reclamation of lost historical and cultural space (and lands) for the Slavic peoples during his 18th-century war against Sweden.

“Ultimately, what is probably required to end the war is a change not in Washington but in Moscow. In all likelihood, given Putin’s deep investment in the war, it will require someone other than him to take steps that would end Russia’s pariah status, economic crisis, and military quagmire. The West should make clear that it is ready to reward a new Russian leader prepared to take such steps even as it keeps up the pressure on the current one.”

This is what Kudrin said. This is way beyond the exercise of democracy in Russia. This is treason at the highest level. Calling for the overthrow of the legitimate president of the country by the 5th column, a Western lackey.

I can predict more trouble ahead for the Anglozionists and an increasingly possible war involving Russia against Israel. The West won’t let it down until the total wipe out by a coalition of Russia-China-Iran-(Turkey?), tacitly supported by India.

via Voltaire net

The Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, organized this year’s Davos meeting to whip up support for Ukraine against Russia. He not only allowed Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk to set up a “Russian War Crimes House,” but he arranged for key speeches to be delivered at the plenary sessions, including one from President Volodymyr Zelensky.

This unconditional support for the Banderites can be explained if one looks into Klaus Schwab’s origin. Contrary to his family legend, he is the son of a Wehrmacht general (photo). The father was decorated not only for his military feats during the two World Wars, but for his actions in the Ottoman Empire/Turkey during the genocide of Christians, mainly Armenians.

In the 70s and 80s, Klaus Schwab was one of the directors at Escher Wyss & Cie (taken over by Sulzer AG) which played an important role in the atomic research program during apartheid in South Africa; contribution that was carried out in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 418.

With the help of then European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Frenchman Raymond Barre (member of the Trilateral Commission), he created a circle of business leaders that became the World Economic Forum. This name change was made with the help of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), the employers’ branch of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED/CIA). This is why he was registered in 2016 with the Bilderberg Group (an influential body of NATO) as an international civil servant, a status which he has never officially occupied.

A transhumanist and promoter of equitable globalization, he is the author of The Great Reset, a prospective reflection on what civilization could become.

via @sputniknewsus

Official documents have been published by the Russian MoD confirming that the US Department of Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is working in Ukraine with a specific military-biological focus:

▪The memorandum regarding the UP-2 project was prepared by the office of the US Secretary of Defence: according to the document, the mapping of especially dangerous pathogens in Ukraine should have been held;

▪The document notes that the main task of this project is to collect information on the molecular composition of pathogens that are typical in Ukraine and to transfer samples of strains;

▪A similar memorandum was prepared as part of the UP-1 project, aimed at studying rickettsia and other diseases spread by arthropods. The document noted the need to transfer all collections of especially dangerous pathogens to the central reference laboratory, which would make it possible to facilitate the process of exporting them to the United States;

▪The large-scale UP-4 project was carried out to study the possibility of spreading especially dangerous infections through migratory birds. The documents show that for the period from November 2019 to January 2020, 991 biological samples were collected;

▪There is information about the implementation of 10 such projects (including UP-3, UP-6, UP-8, UP-10), which included work with pathogens of especially dangerous and economically significant infections. Among them are the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis, tick-borne encephalitis, African swine fever

The Russian MoD has commented on documents found in Ukraine regarding American instructors’ data on training Ukrainian specialists in emergency response to smallpox outbreaks:

▪The interest of the Pentagon in this infection is far from accidental: the return of the causative agent of smallpox will be a global catastrophe for all mankind. So, compared to COVID-19, this pathogen is just as contagious, but its lethality is 10 times higher;

▪Back in 2003, the US Department of Defence developed the Smallpox Vaccination Program, according to which all US military personnel are subject to mandatory vaccination. Vaccination in the US is also mandatory for diplomatic and medical personnel. This indicates that the United States considers the causative agent of smallpox as a priority pathogenic biological agent for combat use, while these vaccination measures are aimed at protecting US military personnel;

▪The lack of proper control, as well as violations of biosecurity regulations in the US, could lead to the use of this pathogen for terrorist purposes. In the period from 2014 to 2021, unaccounted ampoules with the virus were found in laboratories of the Food and Drug Administration, the US Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (Maryland), and the Vaccine Research Centre (Pennsylvania).This fact constitutes a violation of World Health Assembly resolution number 49.10 of 1996, according to which the causative agent of smallpox can be stored in only one American laboratory (the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta);

▪Smallpox vaccination, which is currently not available in many countries, provides protection against monkeypox;

▪To date, 98 percent of people infected with monkeypox have been homosexual males older than 20 years old. Dr David Hermann, who previously headed the WHO’s emergency department, said that the main reason for the spread of the disease is the sexual transmission of the virus;

▪According to a WHO report, the spread of the West African strain of the causative agent of monkeypox originated in Nigeria, a country where the United States has placed its biological infrastructure;

▪According to European and American media reports, in the materials of the Munich Security Conference in 2021, a simulated scenario to counter an outbreak caused by a new strain of the monkeypox virus was carried out;

▪Amid the numerous cases of US violations of biosecurity regulations, the Russian MoD calls on the leadership of the World Health Organisation to investigate the activities of US-funded Nigerian laboratories and inform the international community about the results

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via Пинта разумa

Joseph Biden confirmed the readiness of the United States to fight with China in the event of his attempt to regain control of Taiwan by force. That is, the United States twice confirms its military guarantees to the Taipei regime in less than a year (for the first time, immediately after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan).

Interestingly, Washington did not provide such guarantees to Ukraine, which was recognized as an independent state. But Taiwan, which the United States itself considers part of China and which the US does not recognize its sovereignty, is given guaranties. At first glance, this is some kind of a paradox.

But no, there is logic in such decisions. It’s just that the United States considers the Pacific basin (or even more broadly, the Indo-Pacific region) to be the main theater of the new geopolitical confrontation. Here, concessions to China, which is the main rival of the United States, are impossible in principle.

But the European direction is secondary. Therefore, here you can afford to not give Ukraine any guarantees. On the contrary, use its territory for a proxy war with another competitor – Russia. Along the way, solving the problem of weakening the ally/rival – the European Union. The task of reindustrialization of the United States at the expense of deindustrialization of the EU is now possible.

We can say this: the loss of Taiwan and the Chinese breakthrough into the open Pacific Ocean are perceived by the United States as a critical threat. As well as any strengthening of the PRC’s positions in the Pacific direction in general (hence the nervous reaction to China’s attempts to obtain military bases in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Kiribati).

As for Ukraine, its loss as an ally does not hurt American interests so much. Therefore, the United States deliberately sacrifices its ally without giving it guarantees. Taiwan, however, is a completely different story.

The Economist published an issue entitled “The Approaching Food Crash”.

The material says that the number of those who do not have enough food has already grown by 440 million people, to 1.6 billion people.

Russia and Ukraine supply 28% of world trade in wheat, 29% of barley, 15% of corn and 75% of sunflower oil.

In Ukraine, elevators are now full of grain, farmers have nowhere to store the future crop, it can rot. In the end, the publication smoothly brings the reader to the main idea (which is promoted by the collective West) – we need to unblock the Black Sea ports of Ukraine under the escort of NATO warships.

“Russia must allow Ukrainian navigation; Ukraine must clear the approaches to Odessa; and Turkey must let a naval escort through the Bosporus.”

Russell Bentley has been living in the Donetsk People’s Republic for eight years where he now has obtained official citizenship. – partial quote of interview -.

Question: Western news media have been full of reports on how Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine is a failure. From the perspective of people on the ground in Donbass, how is Russia’s campaign going?

. . . The fact is that Russia has actually achieved a stunning victory. Standard military doctrine dictates an assault force requires a 3-to-1 numerical superiority to have a reasonable chance of victory, and Russia has achieved all its strategic goals thus far with an assault force of less than 1-to-1. The casualty reports from both sides should be taken with a grain of salt, but no serious observer can deny that Russia has dealt strategic losses to Ukrop army men and equipment while maintaining their own numbers at militarily acceptable and operational levels. Russia has used a small fraction (about 15 percent) of its military capabilities so far in Ukraine. The armchair Generals and keyboard commandos who criticize Russia’s military operations in Ukraine are for the most part far too ignorant of military tactics and strategy to even be considered qualified to have an opinion on the subject, so they should be silent. Don’t worry, we got this. . .

. . . Ninety-eight percent of Western media are professional liars and propagandists. What they write and say is almost always the exact opposite of the truth, and when it’s not, they are only using a fragment of truth, out of context, in order to deceive. Like former White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, they will lie, straight-faced, knowing that they are lying, and knowing that you know they are lying, and knowing that you know they know you know they know they are lying. Can there be a more contemptible creature on this Earth? Lord, I hope not.

. . . These scum are well-paid “presstitutes”, but even whores have more honor, humanity, and dignity. Western propagandists are like whores who work knowing they have venereal disease, and willingly and knowingly pass it on to their clients. It has correctly been said that “respect for the truth is the basis for all morality”, and this saying is really, really true. And these Western media whores are the mortal enemies of the truth, and thus, morality 
 
. . . I believe that the chances that this conflict/confrontation will end in an all-out nuclear war are more probable than not. Maybe not this year or next, but as more time passes, I think the chances increase until they become inevitable, without divine intervention or some other natural disaster that precludes the use or need for it. I hope I am wrong. But I am quite sure things will get worse before they get better.

The fact that the man who presided over the  horrible Iraq war – the war that drew the largest protests in human history – has the nerve to call out Russia’s actions in Ukraine is a display of narcissism. It’s so clearly ridiculous that even he himself let it slip that, yes, what happened in Iraq was a travesty.

Updated: By May 20,  2,439 “lions” of Azovstal, the elite forces of Ukraine in Mariupol, have surrendered.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, all the Western mass media is talking about the victory of the Ukrainian army. Zelensky even said that the Azov battalion,  “having completed their combat mission in Mariupol, are now being evacuated in order to save lives”.  

Time Magazine: “Mariupol’s defenders have fully accomplished all missions assigned by the command,” she said. Officials also planned to keep trying to save the fighters who remained inside. Military experts generally put the number of fighters at the plant at anywhere from a few hundred to 1,000. “The work to bring the guys home continues, and it requires delicacy and time,” Zelenskyy said. 

Here is more from the same lunatics:

Ukraine can defeat Russia – NATO. Secretary General believes that Russian military operation in Ukraine is not going the way it was planned.

AP: In Ukraine and internationally, scenario darkens for Russia.

The Spectator (UK): Sergey Radchenko, Why Russia needs to be humiliated in Ukraine. Too little was learnt from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

New York Times: Growing evidence of a military disaster on the Donets pierces a pro-Russian bubble.

The National Interest: Joergen Oerstroem Moeller, The End of Empire: Can Russia Become a True Nation-State? The time has now come to make peace—not from a position of weakness, but a position of strength.

Financial Times: Gideon Rachman, Russia learns a hard lesson about the folly of war. Great powers usually come off worse when they invade smaller countries.

The National Interest: Zalmay Khalilzad, Vladimir Putin’s Pyrrhic Choices in Ukraine. If current trends continue, it seems likely that Putin will soon face three stark choices in Ukraine.

Now, here are the facts on the ground. The elite Ukrainian battalion Azov was defeated and has surrendered. The Western mass media doesn’t show these videos or images. Pathetic. (We’ve spared you the most gruesome images.)

by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle

While we are all familiar with Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher who penned the incomparable Art of War, less known is the Strategikon, the Byzantium equivalent on warfare.

Sixth century Byzantium really needed a manual, threatened as it was from the east, successively by Sassanid Persia, Arabs and Turks, and from the north, by waves of steppe invaders, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, semi-nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and Magyars.

Byzantium could not prevail just by following the classic pattern of Roman Empire raw power – they simply didn’t have the means for it.

So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin and his diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov.

But when military means became necessary for Byzantium – as in Russia’s Operation Z – it was preferable to use weaponry to contain or punish adversaries, instead of attacking with full force.

Strategic primacy, for Byzantium, more than diplomatic or military, was a psychological affair. The word Strategia itself is derived from the Greek strategos – which does not mean “General” in military terms, as the west believes, but historically corresponds to a managerial politico-military function.

It all starts with si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace prepare for war.” Confrontation must develop simultaneously on multiple levels: grand strategy, military strategy, operative, tactical.

But brilliant tactics, excellent operative intel and even massive victories in a larger war theater cannot compensate for a lethal mistake in terms of grand strategy. Just look at the Nazis in WWII.

Those who built up an empire such as the Romans, or maintained one for centuries like the Byzantines, never succeeded without following this logic.

Those clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘experts’

On Operation Z, the Russians revel in total strategic ambiguity, which has the collective west completely discombobulated. The Pentagon does not have the necessary intellectual firepower to out-smart the Russian General Staff. Only a few outliers understand that this is not a war – since the Ukraine Armed Forces have been irretrievably routed – but actually what Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov calls a “combined arms police operation,” a work-in-progress on demilitarization and denazification.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is even more abysmal in terms of getting everything wrong, as recently demonstrated by its chief Avril Haines during her questioning on Capitol Hill. History shows that the CIA strategically blew it all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Ukraine is no different.

Ukraine was never about a military win. What is being accomplished is the slow, painful destruction of the European Union (EU) economy, coupled with extraordinary weapons profits for the western military-industrial complex and creeping security rule by those nations’ political elites.

The latter, in turn, have been totally baffled by Russia’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities, coupled with the stunning inefficiency of their own constellation of Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers and Turkish Bayraktar drones.

This ignorance reaches way beyond tactics and the operational and strategic realm. As Martyanov delightfully points out, they “wouldn’t know what hit them on the modern battlefield with near-peer, forget about peer.”

The caliber of ‘strategic’ advice from the NATO realm was self-evident in the Serpent Island fiasco – a direct order issued by British ‘consultants’ to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, thought the whole thing was suicidal. He was proven right.

All the Russians had to do was launch a few choice anti-ship and surface Onyx missiles from bastions stationed in Crimea on airports south of Odessa. In no time, Serpent Island was back under Russian control – even as high-ranking British and American marine officers ‘disappeared’ during the Ukrainian landing on the island. They were the ‘strategic’ NATO actors on the spot, doling out the lousy advice.

Extra evidence that the Ukraine debacle is predominantly about money laundering – not competent military strategy – is Capitol Hill approving a hefty extra $40 billion in ‘aid’ to Kiev. It’s just another western military-industrial complex bonanza, duly noted by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.

Russian forces, meanwhile, have brought diplomacy to the battlefield, handing over 10 tons of humanitarian assistance to the people of liberated Kherson – with the deputy head of the military-civil administration of the region, Kirill Stremousov, announcing that Kherson wants to become part of the Russian Federation.

In parallel, Georgy Muradov, deputy prime minister of the government of Crimea, has “no doubts that the liberated territories of the south of the former Ukraine will become another region of Russia. This, as we assess from our communication with the inhabitants of the region, is the will of the people themselves, most of whom lived for eight years under conditions of repression and bullying by the Ukronazis.”

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, is adamant that the DPR is on the verge of liberating “its territories within constitutional borders,” and then a referendum on joining Russia will take place. When it comes to the Luhansk People’s Republic, the integration process may even come earlier: the only area left to be liberated is the urban region of Lysychansk-Severodonetsk.

The ‘Stalingrad of Donbass’

As much as there’s an energetic debate among the best Russian analysts about the pace of Operation Z, Russian military planning proceeds methodically, as if taking all the time it needs to solidify facts on the ground.

Arguably the best example is the fate of Azov neo-Nazis at Azovstal in Mariupol – the best-equipped unit of the Ukrainians, hands down. In the end, they were totally outmatched by a numerically inferior Russian/Chechen Spetsnaz contingent, and in record time for such a big city.

Another example is the advance on Izyum, in the Kharkov region – a key bridgehead in the frontline. The Russian Ministry of Defense follows the pattern of grinding the enemy while slowly advancing; if they face serious resistance, they stop and smash the Ukrainian defensive lines with non-stop missile and artillery strikes.

Popasnaya in Luhansk, dubbed by many Russian analysts as “Mariupol on steroids”, or “the Stalingrad of Donbass,” is now under total control of the Luhansk People’s Republic, after they managed to breach a de facto fortress with linked underground trenches between most civilian houses. Popasnaya is extremely important strategically, as its capture breaks the first, most powerful line of defense of the Ukrainians in Donbass.

That will probably lead to the next stage, with an offensive on Bakhmut along the H-32 highway. The frontline will be aligned, north to south. Bakhmut will be the key to taking control of the M-03 highway, the main route to Slavyansk from the south.

This is just an illustration of the Russian General Staff applying its trademark, methodical, painstaking strategy, where the main imperative could be defined as a personnel-preserving forward drive. With the added benefit of committing just a fraction of overall Russian firepower.

Russian strategy on the battlefield stands in stark contrast with the EU’s obstinacy in being reduced to the status of an American dog’s lunch, with Brussels leading entire national economies to varying degrees of certified collapse and chaos.

Once again it was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – a diplomatic master – to encapsulate it.

Question: “What do you think of Josep Borrell’s (Lavrov’s EU counterpart) initiative to give Ukraine frozen Russian assets as ‘reparations?’ Can we say that the masks have come off and the west is moving on to open robbery?”

Lavrov: “You could say it is theft, which they are not trying to hide … This is becoming a habit for the west … We may soon see the post of the EU chief diplomat abolished because the EU has virtually no foreign policy of its own and acts entirely in solidarity with the approaches imposed by the United States.”

The EU cannot even come up with a strategy to defend its own economic battlefield – just watching as its energy supply is de facto, incrementally turned off by the US. Here we are at the realm where the US tactically excels: economic/financial blackmail. We can’t call these ‘strategic’ moves because they almost always backfire against US hegemonic interests.

Compare it with Russia reaching its biggest surplus in history, with the rise and rise of commodity prices and the upcoming role of the stronger and stronger ruble as a resource-based currency also backed by gold.

Moscow is spending way less than the NATO contingent in the Ukrainian theater. NATO has already wasted $50 billion – and counting – while the Russians spent $4 billion, give or take, and already conquered Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kherson and Melitopol, created a land corridor to Crimea (and secured its water supply), controls the Sea of Azov and its major port city, and liberated strategically vital Volnovakha and Popasnaya in Donbass, as well as Izyum near Kharkov.

That doesn’t even include Russia hurling the entire, collective west into a level of recession not seen since the 1970s.

The Russian strategic victory, as it stands, is military, economic, and may even coalesce geopolitically. Centuries after the Byzantine Strategikon was penned, the Global South would be very much interested in getting acquainted with the 21st century Russian version of the Art of War.