Earlier today I posted my take on the economic and military developments on the Russian front. Based on news reports, I envisioned a gold ruble dethroning the US dollar and collapsing the Bretton Woods system which has enabled the US and its financial sector to exploit the world. I wrote at the time that the Western news blackout on reporting from Russia in order for Washington to control the narrative left actual facts hard to ascertain. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/03/29/the-western-world-has-had-its-run/

During today a little more information has reached me. The information has caused me to develop concerns that the Russians are not sophisticated enough to see that they can bring down the Bretton Woods system and dethrone the US dollar by creating a gold ruble, and in conjunction with China’s gold Yuan, create a bloc that rules financially. I think all the Russians are doing is fixing the price of gold inside Russia so Russians fearing the sanctions don’t desert the ruble and flee into gold. Possibly the internal gold/ruble price fix can develop into a broad system, but why give the enemy warning and time to prepare roadblocks? Is the conclusion that the Russians don’t have a clue?

Russian economists were brainwashed during the Yeltsin years by American economists who trained them to be servants of Washington’s empire, and now they hold senior positions. Consequently, Russian national assets were looted, and Russia was left exposed to Western sanctions and other punitive measures. Here we have a case of a superior military power disarmed by its own intellectuals.

It is absolutely incredible that the Kremlin has relied on anti-Russian de facto Western-agents like Alexei Kudrin, Elvira Nabiulina, and Anatoly Chubais. These three serve not Russia but the oligarchs and the pro-western Atlanticist Integrationists. They can’t help it and are not really traitors, just American brainwashed poor souls. Their obvious replacement is Sergei Glazyev, who at least partially understands what Russia must do. But he is demonized by the West and although the Kremlin keeps him around is wary of him. Until recently, the Kremlin has favored those of whom the West approves. These people are seen as Russia’s entry into the West.

Russia will never be able to successfully protected itself from the West as long as the Kremlin is constrained by the desire of elites to be part of the West. This constraint, in my view, will result in nuclear war. Washington will push and push against a government that has elements who desire to be part of the West until that final red line is crossed. Then the world blows up. Washington’s idea is that pressure will collapse the leadership that values Russian sovereignty, and Washington will install a puppet as in Ukraine.

As for the reporting on the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, it is extremely strange that the Victor of the conflict is making concessions to the Loser. This is an indication that the Kremlin itself has been affected by the West’s psyops operation against Russia. The Kremlin is on the verge of making peace partially on Ukraine’s terms in order to shut down the West’s psyops campaign against Russia.

To repeat myself. As I have said many times, my goal is to prevent nuclear war. But nuclear war is what Washington and its European puppet states are driving us toward. To avoid kicking the can down the street, Russia should sign no agreement unless it contains Ukraine’s acceptance that Crimea and Donbass are not part of Ukraine. It is unclear that Washington will allow its puppet Zelensky to sign the agreement, or keep it if it is signed. Washington will continue to cause problems for Russia. Russia should consider if Ukraine can be trusted to keep any agreement when Ukraine refused to keep the Minsk agreement. Western Ukraine is likely to remain a US puppet, so how can Ukraine be neutral in fact? Russia should keep in mind that she is the victor, not Ukraine, and not accept an agreement for the sake of peace, or the trouble will reappear. Ukraine is losing the conflict and perhaps just wants to save as much of itself as it can. There were guarantors of the Minsk agreement, and they did nothing.

Putin and Lavrov have said many times that it was a mistake to trust the West. So why repeat the mistake again?

I think the only successful agreement would be one in which Ukraine allies with Russia and looks to Russia for protection. Unclear how Ukraine can be in the EU and be neutral. Austria is a neutral country and a EU member. Did Austria participate in the sanctions against Russia? After the treaty, would Ukraine participate in future sanctions against Russia?

Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries. It has never been part of the West. Russia must reclaim Ukraine, if not by conquest then by diplomacy. Whether conquest or diplomacy, Russia must deal decisively with Ukraine NOW, and leave no room for the reappearance of the issue.

The Kremlin made its fundamental strategic error in 2014 when the Kremlin refused the request of the Donbass Russians to be reunited with Russia. The Kremlin was afraid of offending the West beyond its reunification with Crimea and afraid of confirming Western propaganda that Putin was rebuilding the Soviet Empire. From this amazing stupid blunder by the Kremlin came 8 years of Ukrainian shelling of the Donbass Russians, massive loads of Western weapons delivered to Ukraine, massive propaganda against Putin and Russia, protests by Russian patriots within Russia at the Kremlin’s acceptance of the Ukrainian Nazis killing Russian people in Donbass, thus setting the stage for the present Western psyops against Russia. And, as I predicted, required more decisive action from Russia than was needed in 2014 by honoring the Donbass request.

The question before the world is: Will Washington’s exploitative empire over the world prevail because Russia and China and India haven’t a clue?

Because Russia has elites who had rather be part of the West than sovereign?

Will the naivete of Russia and China result in the encouraged West crossing red lines that end in nuclear war?

What the Kremlin’s go-slow war, so-anxious-to-negotiate persona has done is to defeat the image of Russia as a military power. Here is Bloomberg News: Russia’s cease fire and pullback from Kiev came because “Putin is simply looking to cut his losses after a month-long invasion that failed to take a major city and reportedly cost him thousands of dead soldiers.”

In other words, Putin is begging Ukraine for mercy and will make concessions for an end of the conflict.

A top US general says Russia’s military failure in Ukraine indicates “an intelligence gap in US that caused US to overestimate Russia’s capabilities.” https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/29/politics/tod-wolters-intelligence-gap-us-russia-ukraine/index.html

Whatever the actual facts are, the impression created by the presstitutes among Western peoples is that what Putin has accomplished is a demonstration of Russian military weakness. This belief will result in more provocations against Russia and end in nuclear war.

A Russian foot has come down. The euphemistic language “our Western partners” is discarded for the realistic “our opponents.” Russian patience with Washington has come to an end.

“If our opponents go against us, they will see that their security is not strengthened. The consequences for them will be dire. . . . Lack of progress towards a political and diplomatic solution to this problem [Ukraine] will lead to our response being military and technological.” –Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov

Excerpts:

As a pretext, the West is using the situation in Ukraine, where it embarked on encouraging Russophobia and justifying the actions of the Kiev regime to undermine the Minsk agreements and prepare for a military scenario in Donbass.

The course has been chosen of drawing Ukraine into NATO, which is fraught with the deployment of strike missile systems there with a minimal flight time to Central Russia, and other destabilising weapons. Such irresponsible behaviour creates grave military risks for all parties involved, up to and including a large-scale conflict in Europe.

We insist that serious long-term legal guarantees are provided, which would exclude NATO’s further advancement to the east and deployment of weapons on Russia’s western borders which are a threat to Russia. This must be done within a specific timeframe and on the basis of the principle of comprehensive and indivisible security.

To ensure the vital interests of European security, it is necessary to officially disavow the decision taken at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest about “Ukraine and Georgia becoming NATO members” as contrary to the commitment undertaken by all the OSCE participating States “not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.”

We insist on the adoption of a legally binding agreement regarding the US and other NATO member countries’ non-deployment of strike weapons systems which threaten the territory of the Russian Federation on the territories of adjacent countries, both members and non-members of NATO.

We also insist on receiving a concrete response from NATO to our previous proposals on decreasing tension in Europe.

Paul Craig Roberts

The Kremlin demonstrated indecision and weakness, and left a festering wound that Washington is exploiting. As I have long warned, the Kremlin’s passivity will result in war.

The situation has developed precisely as I forecast. The Kremlin’s failure in 2014 to reincorporate the Donbass Russians back into Russia has played into Washington’s hands. The Kremlin gave Washington years to arm and train the Ukrainians, to continue the hostilities toward the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics, and to conduct a propaganda campaign that paints Russia as the aggressor. Mistakes of this magnitude usually result in war.

If Russia had accepted the vote of the breakaway republics to be reincorporated into Russia, the hostilities would have ended as not even the Ukrainians are stupid enough to attack Russia herself. If the hostilities had been ended, Washington would have had no opening, and the current dangerous situation would not have been able to emerge.

Live and learn, but is the Kremlin learning?

Kremlin Says Half Of Entire Ukrainian Army Is In Donbass As Blinken Warns Putin: US “Prepared To Act”

WEDNESDAY, DEC 01, 2021 – 05:30 PM
A Wednesday statement out of the Russian Foreign Ministry has charged Kiev with stoking tensions along the Ukrainian border. The statement alleged that over 100,000 Ukrainian troops and military hardware have been moved into the restive Donbass region, where the national forces have been in a stalemate with pro-Russian separatists for half a decade going back to 2014.

While rejecting prior accusations out of Kiev and Washington – and especially Western media – that it’s Russia that’s stoking tensions by sending 90,000 regular forces near the border, Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had this to say: “According to some reports, the number of troops… in the conflict zone already reaches 125,000 people, and this, if anyone does not know, is half of the entire composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Further she accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of breaking the peace, particularly the Donbass ceasefire terms of the Minsk agreement, after he submitted a bill to Ukrainian parliament which would allow foreign troops into the country to participate in joint military drills next year.

The rival sides are now in a full-blown media and information war, trading tit-for-tat accusations of military build-up, in a dangerous situation that could be barreling toward renewal of actual armed conflict:

“In recent weeks, we have seen a stream of consciousness from the Ukrainian leadership – especially when it comes to the military – that is excessively inflamed and dangerous,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in follow-up to Zakharova’s words.

Just last week the foreign ministry used similar language which denounced the “hot heads” in Kiev which have a “feeling of complete impunity” and “are in favor of a military solution to this internal Ukrainian crisis.”

But Secretary of State Antony Blinken also weighed in on Wednesday, escalating the rhetoric further. He charged Putin with “laying the groundwork for an invasion” of neighboring Ukraine. He demanded the Kremlin pull back it’s forces from near the border (an implicit admission that we are still merely talking about the “movements” of Russian troops within Russia’s own territory). This despite the Pentagon this week appearing to downplay the ‘invasion threat’.

Meanwhile The Washington Post is reporting that top Biden admin officials are wildly speculating over ‘false flag’ scenarios… and they are already blaming Russia.

“We don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so in short order should he so decide,” Blinken told reporters in Latvia after meeting with NATO foreign ministers, where the crisis was discussed.

“Should Russia follow the path of confrontation, when it comes to Ukraine, we’ve made clear that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we have refrained from pursuing in the past,” Blinken added. While stopping short of any direct threat of American military intervention, he said that Western allies have expressed “tremendous solidarity” to take action in the event of a Russian offensive in Ukraine.

Paul Craig Roberts