Putin is going to win – what the West needs to do now
With Trump in power, Putin is going to win and we need to understand what has given him to the invasion in the first place to comprehend what happens next.
Because we have the attention span of 1 season of Married At First Sight, we don’t appreciate the power and importance and motivator Russian Orthodox Christianity plays out in all of this.
In 988AD, Vladimir the Great, whom Putin takes his name from, mass baptised 1000 Russians at the River Nee-Proh in what has become the founding spiritual moment in Orthodox Russian Christianity as the moment Russia became Christian and led to a cultural narrative structure that Moscow is the third Rome and was a homeland for Christianity.
What isn’t widely known is that Putin himself is a very staunch Russian Orthodox Christianand that he has used the Russian Orthodox Church as an enormous control mechanism over the Russian people.
Putin has spent billions rebuilding the Churches smashed down by Communism and uses his relationship with the Church for political advantage. It was the Orthodox Church who first praised Putin for annexing Crimea, a region with much religious importance for the Church.
in 2022 the Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox Church severed ties with the Russian branch because they felt Putin was having too much influence over it.
If Moscow is the third Rome, Kyiv is the second Jerusalem.
Putin sees himself as part of a long line of Christian Defenders of the true faith.
Putin looked at himself alongside the pantheon of Russian Authoritarian Leaders and asked if he had left Mother Russia stronger or weaker and decided invading Ukraine would be him rebuilding the great Soviet Empire of old.
Putin has clearly been planning this attempt at redefining Russia in an American Hegemony for some time and I think the trigger was the attempted coup in 2022 in Kazakhstan.
I think the Ukraine is just the beginning and any sense that the Ukraine was ‘winning’ is optimistic in the extreme.
What the West didn’t appreciate is because Putin is an authoritarian Thug, he can butcher and maim 700 000 of his own men and there be no real threat to him.
If Putin is doing this for God and the soul of Mother Russia, the 700 000 dead and maimed are evidence of faith, not failure!
Putin’s only regret is that he didn’t start sooner.
Trump surrendering to Putin and allowing Ukraine to be carved hollow will be payback for all the lies and deceptions about not encroaching into Russia’s sphere after the Minsk agreements but a new cold front between NATO and Russia is here with an American President who couldn’t care less about Europe because he is moving all his military power against China.
Surrendering the Ukraine isn’t peace, it will be appeasement and Putin will immediately start pushing in other fronts.
Putin sees the Rules Based Order as an American Hegemony and understands that Russia can be King again but only in a world of chaos and disorder, that Russia and the True Orthodox God can bring order to a chaos he himself is spawning.
Russia will be emboldened by Trump selling the Ukraine out, it won’t sate Putin.
Trump is happy to allow Putin to play games against Europe while he moves his attention to a military confrontation with China.
Zelensky fought the good fight, but Western attention spans are notoriously fickle and in the end he couldn’t compete with the war crimes of the IDF who have over shadowed Russia’s crimes against the Ukrainians.
The reality to the West is that Trump’s a bigger threat to us than Xi and Putin combined.
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Another example of the USA walking away after stoking the flames to start the conflict .How many wars have the US won ?
Speaking of limited attention spans, here’s Jeffrey Sachs, a US economist, who had a bit to do with shaping Ukraine’s economy in the 90’s, with his easy to understand take of this entire affair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOCBkN-UDd0&ab_channel=LibertyVault
Sorry Martyn but that is baloney. Putin cannot count on destroying USA hegemony as a “win”. You are saying that to achieve that “win: requires filling of the USA vacated vacuum with Russian influence. I somehow cannot see that happening. Just basic economic activity precludes that. Russia has less economic clout than California alone (USA 330 million population versus 140 million for Russia).
A lot of Russian peasantry living outside of Moscow and St Peterburg will need to be better housed, serviced, educated and bought into the Russian economy to make that happen.
I don’t see China filling that vacuum either. Large economic clout but that clout depends on western (external) markets. Bric’s is a dead end, for India is far to powerful and will simply spit out the Brazil and South Africans to suit India’s benefits. China carries a large volume ownership of USA dept and if the USA economy collapses with the US Dollar, they will get no repayments ever. Delicate balance for China.
Perhaps the biggest problem Putin faces is his age (72). He has 10 years left to fulfill his dreams. Unfortunately for Russia, he will leave the motherland in a worse state with no successor to carry on the MRGA (Make Russia Great Again) dream. One can foresee internal wars between various Russian power-brokers as the Russian fascist state breaks down after Putin looses influence or dies.
Another problem for Russia is the waste of nearly 2 million men from the gene and economic pool (killed in Ukraine or living abroad).
Ukraine will survive and will never again be under Russian control. That boat departed at the invasion. The west includes Poland and they are just itching to get into the fight. Only NATO is keeping them out (ou say the west is weak but they are keeping their members in check — for now). Belarus could easily “swing” westwards when that old time “leader” departs the mortal plane (again no successor — the problem for all dictatorships unless one relies on total control by family dynasty like North Korea).
You summation is plainly too simple.
Watch what’s happening in Georgia.
Yup , here we go again .
No doubt another CIA/NATO/Nazi plot
As Palestine and Syria show, a popular insurrection can never be completely defeated.
No matter what agreement Trump and Putin cook up between them, if history is any guide. Russia is never going to win. Not over the long term anyway.
After being driven out of Aleppo in a popular revolt against Assad. A full scale aerial bombing campaign of civilian areas by Russia, helped the Assad regime regain control over the city. The Assad regime has not been able to hold the city and surrounding territory in the long run.
The same for Ukraine.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-saboteurs-poisoned-russian-soldiers-crimea-arsenic-rat-1859455
Liberation of Kherson
From Wikipedia
Cars took to the streets honking their horns, while residents tore down pro-Russian propaganda posters.[1] Similarly in Bilozerka, a town on the western edge of Kherson city, residents tore down propaganda billboards with a young girl holding a Russian flag, which read: “Russia is here forever (Россия здесь навсегда)”.[16] Kherson residents were seen dancing in the darkness around a bonfire singing “Chervona Kalyna”, a Ukrainian patriotic song that had been banned by Russian occupation authorities for nine months.[21][22] Following liberation, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy called it a “historic day”.[23]
Liberation of Aleppo.
Aleppo Videos Show Syrian Celebrations as Assad’s Forces Seem to Retreat
Published Nov 30, 2024 at 10:05 AM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/syria-aleppo-assad-russia-1993661
“The arc of history may be long, but it bends towards justice” Martin Luther King
As Palestine and Syria show, a popular insurrection can never be completely defeated.
No matter what agreement Trump and Putin cook up between them, if history is any guide. Russia is never going to conquer Ukraine. Not over the long term anyway.
After being driven out of Aleppo in a popular revolt against Assad. A full scale aerial bombing campaign of civilian areas by Russia, helped the Assad regime regain control over the city. The Assad regime has not been able to hold the city and surrounding territory in the long run.
The same for Ukraine.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-saboteurs-poisoned-russian-soldiers-crimea-arsenic-rat-1859455
Liberation of Kherson
From Wikipedia
Cars took to the streets honking their horns, while residents tore down pro-Russian propaganda posters.[1] Similarly in Bilozerka, a town on the western edge of Kherson city, residents tore down propaganda billboards with a young girl holding a Russian flag, which read: “Russia is here forever (Россия здесь навсегда)”.[16] Kherson residents were seen dancing in the darkness around a bonfire singing “Chervona Kalyna”, a Ukrainian patriotic song that had been banned by Russian occupation authorities for nine months.[21][22] Following liberation, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy called it a “historic day”.[23]
Liberation of Aleppo.
Aleppo Videos Show Syrian Celebrations as Assad’s Forces Seem to Retreat
Published Nov 30, 2024 at 10:05 AM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/syria-aleppo-assad-russia-1993661
Same say he’s an aberration, but no, he’s just a more thorough version of the accepted line.
“Surrendering the Ukraine isn’t peace, it will be appeasement and Putin will immediately start pushing in other fronts.”
I’m willing to put money down that won’t happen. Unlike Ukraine, counties like Poland are NATO members.
BTW, Russia’s issues with Ukraine started in 2014, when the CIA orchestrated a coup to replace the Russian puppet with a Western puppet.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/22/russias-putin-accuses-us-of-orchestrating-2014-coup-in-ukraine
This war was imo inevitable after the US said it was okay for Russia to join NATO which breached a long standing agreement between the US and Russia that this would not happen.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-nato-red-line/31312756.html
It was US’s Victoria Nuland who along with UK’s Boris Johnson destroyed any chance of a peace deal at the start of war:
https://unherd.com/newsroom/victoria-nuland-west-advised-ukraine-to-reject-2022-peace-deal/