ER Editor: We’re doing a twofer today, leading with Moon of Alabama, then The Saker.
MoA considers the ramifications of economic sanctions against Russia and how the West is far more likely to come unstuck as a result, both in terms of economics and in terms of leadership changes. But then 2 years of a plandemic has shown us how the western elites/deep state want to undermine us. The Saker gives us a broader range of informational bits and pieces. Both stress the success of the military pincer movement around the Donbass. The US-NATO base on the southern coast between Odessa and Kherson has been bombed by Russia.
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See this from RT today: Ukraine says it will receive jets from 3 NATO countries – Bulgaria, Poland, and Slovakia are said to be delivering 70+ airplanes for the Ukrainian military. And from yesterday: Ukraine goes visa-free for foreign fighters – Kiev suspends entry requirements for anyone who wants to enlist in the foreign legion. Neither of which suggests anything positive militarily speaking on the part of Ukraine.
See this Sputnik link for live updates.
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Disarming Ukraine – Day 5 | Money War On Russia – Day 1
MOON OF ALABAMA
Historian Anne Morelli has summarized Arthur Ponsonby’s classic book Falsehood in War-Time as this:
- We do not want war.
- The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
- The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
- We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.
- The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
- The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
- We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
- Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
- Our cause is sacred.
- All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.
h/t Bernd Neuner
As an example I offer you yesterday’s Policy statement by Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
The above are what you hear and see in current ‘western’ news. It is not reality.
The U.S. and its proxies in the EU and elsewhere have put up very harsh sanctions on Russia to damage its economy.
The final intent of this economic war is regime change in Russia.
The likely consequence will be regime change in many other countries.
This war is being waged on a financial scale that is unprecedented. The consequences in all markets will be very significant to extreme. But experience from Iran shows that such financial wars have their limits, as the targeted country learns to survive. (ER: Russia has already made these adjustments according to what we’ve published because of several preceding years of western sanctions.) Moreover. Russia is in a much stronger position than Iran ever was and is better prepared for the consequences.
The ruble fell some 30% today but Russia’s central bank immediately more than doubled its interest rate to 20%. It is willing to fight inflation before it is really sets in. How much of Russia’s investment and consumption depends on imports from the ‘west’? Can’t most of it not be replaced by imports from China?
All energy consumption in the U.S. and EU will now come at a premium price. This will push the EU and the U.S. into a recession. As Russia will increase the prices for exports of goods in which it has market power – gas, oil, wheat, potassium, titanium, aluminum, palladium, neon etc – the rise in inflation all around the world will become significant.
‘Western’ central banks are still at practical 0% interest rates and will be reluctant to increase those as that will cause a deeper recession. This makes it likely that inflation in the ‘western’ world will increase at a higher rate than Russia’s.
Germany’s crazy move to add $120 billion to defense spending (up from some $40 billion p.a.) will within a few years create a strong military imbalance in Europe as Germany will then dominate all its neighbors. This is unnecessary and historically very dangerous. The shunning of economic relations with Russia and China means that Germany and its newbie chancellor Olaf Scholz have fallen for the U.S. scheme of creating a new Cold War. Germany’s economy will now become one of its victims.
On February 4 Russia and China declared a multipolar world in which they are two partnering poles that will counter the American one. Russia’s move into the Ukraine is a demonstration of that.
It also shows that the U.S. is unwilling to give up its supremacist urges without a large fight. But while the U.S. over the last 20 years has spent its money messing up the Middle East, Russia and China have used the time to prepare for the larger conflict. They have spent more brain time on the issue than the U.S. has.
The Europeans should have acknowledged that instead of helping the U.S. to keep up its self-image of a unipolar power.
It will take some time for the new economic realities to settle in. They will likely change the current view of Europe’s real strategic interests.
—
Some tactical observations:
This map shows the ground taken by Russian military over the first days.
Source – bigger
Source – bigger
- There are 12 to 15 brigades of Ukrainian forces (blue) at the Donbas front. If the Russian’s (red) move fast enough, they can cut those off from the rest of the country or bomb them while they try to escape on the only big road between those two pincer arrows.
- After a lull, Russia has reintroduced Su-34 fighters to Ukraine. They will attack Ukrainian troop concentrations.
- The Russian elements north of Crimea have taken two important bridges and crossed the Dnieper towards the west. This opens the way to Odessa further west as well as for a march northward towards Kiev on the western side of the Dnieper.
Source
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Day 4 of the Russian offensive in the Ukraine
THE SAKER
First, a hodgepodge sample of the kind of recent news (sorry for the chaotic presentation, I am going this all under time pressure).
The International Chess Federation (FIDE) wants to sanction a Russian chess player for supporting the Russian intervention in the Ukraine. Hey, losers! This won’t help you! If you remove the Russians, the Chinese and Indians will still take all the titles from you 😛
The Scala in Milan has dropped the Russian conductor Gergiev because he “failed to condemn” the Russian military operation. Bravo Italy! Bravo!
EUFA/FIFA have banned all Russian clubs sine die.
The battle for Russia House is over. That can, I suppose, count as a Nazi victory over Russia. Bravo!
Russia House, a restaurant and dining lounge in DC, has been vandalized. I guess a few local Nazis had their own, private, mini-Kristallnacht. That will show ’em Snow Niggers who’s boss! Bravo!
The EU has closed most of its airspace to Russian carriers.
Russia has closed her entire airspace of carriers from 36 countries.
The Ukies are doing two things at the same time: they are blowing up bridges, and explaining that they have defeated the Russian attack and are now counter-attacking on all fronts (Note: blowing up bridges is not what a winning force does).
You know what else the Ukronazis are doing? Distributing huge amounts of weapons to anybody willing to pick them up. Question: is that “tactic” known as something the winning sides does? Exactly…
And, finally, Ze (ER: Zelensky) has said that anybody in jail who is willing to pick up arms will be freed and armed. As a result, gangs of looters are shooting each other in Kiev and other cities. Question: is that “tactic” known as something the winning sides does? Exactly…
At the same time, a Ukrainian delegation and a Russian one met in Belarus (ER: See this from RT). They are still talking, but I don’t expect anything to come out of this, at least not in the early stages of these negotiations.
Still, apparently the two delegations have agreed to “certain things” and have adjourned for the day. I have no idea what that means, but I certainly do approve of ANY negotiations as long as they do not slow down the Russian movements in the Ukraine (and the current ones do not, the Russians refused to make even a short stop).
There is also REALLY good news: the Zaparozhie nuclear plant is under Russian control. Thus, no false flag there and no false flag in Chernobyl. Good!
The big story today is the gradual closing of the operational cauldron in the East.
Now the latest map:
The big story here is the gradual closing of the operational cauldron in the East. Once it it closed, about 10-12 Ukie brigades will have to chose: surrender or die.
Next, Kiev: the city is blocked from three directions, but the Russians have left one open corridor which anybody can take to safely get out.
Mariupol: the Russians have entered the surrounded city and combats are taking place.
Kharkov: heavy combats are taking place with both sides using artillery and MLRS.
Volnovakha: surrounded, but the Russians are not storming the city.
Schastie and Novaia Astrakhan: have been liberated
The Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman has declared that Russia has air supremacy over the entire Ukraine.
In the meantime, the US-NATO base in Achakkov has been totally destroyed by Russian missiles, as shown on this video (ER: Achakkov is located on the Black Sea coast between Odessa and Kherson):
This is crucial – it shows that US or not US, NATO or not NATO, Russia will destroy any threat to herself or to the Russian military anywhere in the Ukraine. This clear warning strongly suggest that NATO hotheads might want to think long and hard before sending in hardware or troops inside the Ukraine.
Finally, A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT OUR SERVERS:
Due to the incredibly intense traffic we are getting, we had to do some hardware upgrades on our servers. This is why the blog was down for about 1 hour this night. We hope that these upgrades will give you all a quicker load time (which was very slow over the past 2 days). Please remember that hardware costs money, even rented hardware, so one way for you to help us is send us donations to increase our IT budget, making our servers both quicker and more secure against attacks.
RT is under constant DDoS and their anti-DDoS protection does not work very well.
TASS in English was accessible yesterday, but not the Russian version.
RIA, Izvestia and Commersant are all under DDoS attack.
There is a real possibility that Telegram will be blocked or, at least, throttled down around the Ukraine.
Finally, and let’s be honest here, besides Andrei Martyanov’s “Reminiscence of the Future…” blog and Bernhard Horstmann’s “Moon of Alabama” – there are no news sources which I could recommend to you even though there are A LOT of websites and authors which are desperate to use the situation in the Ukraine to increase their visibility. This is especially bad considering the absolutely HUGE increase in fakes, false narratives, trolls (paid or not) and the hammering of the brains of those who still expose themselves to the western media.
So please be aware of the fact that we are definitely losing the “informational battle” so far.
Now, finally, I have a real gem for you. Remember the Russian spies which were betrayed by Poteev and eventually expelled from the USA? Yes, the one in which the entire western media focussed on the sexy Anna Chapman aka Anna Kushchenko? Well, she was amongst the LEAST interesting of the lot, except for her looks I suppose.
One of these spies, Andrei Bezrukov, now is a teacher and a member of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. He is also often a guest of various Russian talkshows. Yesterday he made rather interesting comments and I ask our new volunteer interpreters to race with each other for a quick translation. This morning, one was already in (thanks, N.!!!!!!!). Just to clarify: Andrei Bezrukov used to be an “illegal” (NO COVER) spy for the PGU/SVR, and he is superbly educated (I read his writings and listen to his interviews, he is truly a world-class specialist of the West). Listen to what he (and people like him) are saying nowadays:
Transcript of Andrei Bezrukov’s comments on Russian TV yesterday: (emphasis added by me)
I cannot forget several things…which I would just like to mention
Firstly, I want to state the fact that the West succeeded in dragging us into this war
No matter how we tried to resist this, so, this is their tactical victory.
They succeed in colliding two brotherly nations against one another
From this we can draw the following conclusion – now we have been practically forced, especially after the latest packet of sanctions, into a position where we have no other choice but to totally restructure our economy, financial system, and in essence our domestic policy.
De facto, war has been declared against usWar…I don’t want to say that. Who am I to use such terms?
Nonetheless, we have been put before the fact – our very survival is at risk.
Here we have both danger and a gigantic opportunity
The point is, by tactically winning and by successfully quarrelling us with the Ukrainian people, and war, naturally is the ultimate level of quarrel, they have not understood that now, by doing so, they have totally destroyed the very system which they had built in the world.
It is not visible yet, but in a few months, it will become apparent that the severed financial chains, broken ideological messages and the broken security system –
I agree – this is the breakdown of the security system.Allow me a question:
Given such sanctions, does it make sense for us to stop with Ukraine?
Of course not! Of course not.I want to go further…
Two short messages which shows the mentality which we should consider.
We are being intimidated and, in fact, many are now afraid that for decades Russia will be disconnected from everything, will become impoverished, she will lose all her friends, etc. etc. etc.We’ve been through this before. The young Soviet Republic was encircled and even worse off. Then everyone formed diplomatic relations and it all normalized…This does not last long…
But I’m not talking about thisThing is, western people, and especially Anglo-Saxons – all their thinking is based on the concept of “the rational man”…their entire legal system is based on this concept of “the rational man”…All their strategic solutions are built on the concept of “the rational man”.
What does this mean? When you are put before a choice: “Look, we will punish you. You don’t want to be punished, right? Then you must behave in a way to avoid this punishment”… and so on… “If you are threatened with sanctions, you won’t like that, will you? You will do something to avoid it… you will come and negotiate on our terms.”This principle of “the rational man” is in effect now. They think this way even now: “We will push Russia to the limit and she will surrender”. But, for Russian mentality, Slavic mentality, Orthodox mentality, Eastern mentality …
this rational mentality is totally alien!
Here, we have: “I’d rather die than surrender!” It’s a completely different mentality.Here, it’s not about that at all. This they didn’t consider. And the main mistake.
The point is – this is not the time to judge Russia.
It is time to serve Russia. The serving class of Russia has always pulled her out of all the liberal failures – of which there have been four over the last 200 years.I begin with the Decembrists, and so on…
And it has always been the serving class, those people who are in uniform, those who don’t ask a lot of questions…pick up their machine guns and go when they are commanded….those that stand, hungry, for 24 hours at the machine bench …it is these people that have served and will continue to serve… they will pull Russia out!The Russian people don’t think about “Courchevel and iPhones”…in their midst they are thinking about fairness and development…. That is what the people want from their leadership…and they will support it.
For us… now we have an enormous opportunity to build an entirely different economy
Well, they gave us no choice…we will have to. But I remind you, this economy will be based on those principles that we will have to build again, it was the second largest economy in the world… and it was developing the fastest.
So, here I am an absolute optimist.
And if they have committed such a gigantic strategic error, why shouldn’t we show them the whole stupidity of this mistake?Right now, discussions are going on … in the USA, and in other countries… they have rational people there saying: “Look, how we have cornered the Russians…what are we going to get from that? Nothing good. The main thing is, we are not thinking…”
“Never mind” – others are saying: “In the short term, things will be pretty bad for Russia, but in the long term, in a few decades, things will get really bad… and it will just collapse” – I’m talking about the sanctions, how they argue.
In actuality it is exactly the opposite.
It will be really bad for us for a short time. Maybe not for everyone, but, nonetheless…and then, later on, in the long run, it will give us the opportunity to breathe normally, build a self-sufficient economy, because, in that shell that was formed in the 1990’s around us, Russia can no longer live. It cannot remain in that small, tight shell….in Domestic Policy, in Foreign Policy…
They are the ones that have broken that shell.
Tonight I need to leave my home for several hours.
I will do my best to report here again, but no promises.
If not, I hope to “see you” all tomorrow morning, probably with some major news.
Andrei
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Source
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Thanks! And yes, he has. Putin, that is.
Putin certainly managed to bury all the great news happening around covid-19.
Anyway thought I’d leave a link to a lecture from Scott Horton, editor for antiwar.com, about the history of the Ukraine-Russia crisis.
https://odysee.com/@scotthortonshow:4/scott-horton-speech-on-the-history:9