The German publication ‘Bild’ had this story about Scholz calling Macron, after both spoke to Putin, because Putin never mentioned the sanctions to Scholz. As it turned out, he didn’t bring them up in his talk with Macron either. The only thing Putin was interested in, was bringing this tragedy in Ukraine to an end as quick as possible. These German and French politicians are worth their weight in gold for allowing us to take a peek in the kitchen.
First we had Merkel and Hollande who were not shy to admit they lied about seeking a peaceful outcome of the conflict which started with this ‘Regime Change’ coup in Ukraine in 2014. Signing these ‘Minsk Accords’ was only meant to buy time, for NATO to prepare Ukraine for this proxy war. Please forget all those messages saying Russia started this war when it invaded Ukraine in February of last year. They did, and called it a ‘Special Military Operation’ to enforce the ‘Minsk Accords’. But NATO/Ukraine were seeking this escalation actively, and today they are claiming they are after taking back the Donbas and Crimea with military means, since NATO considers these territories to be ‘Ukrainian’ without further debate. And that idea didn’t just ‘emerge’ out of nowhere the moment the Russians kicked off their ‘SMO’. Nor were the Ukrainians or NATO interested in diplomacy to resolve the issue, as Merkel and Hollande made perfectly clear.
What Scholz and Macron just did, was to confirm the preconceived strategy which relied heavily on ‘Sanctions’ as the most important weapon to bring Russia to its knees. Imagine the horror, when both European leaders found out that Putin wasn’t bothered. Like this big impressive ‘chunk of meat’ threatening a midget with teaching him a lesson, and this dwarf says: ‘Whatever! It is your funeral!’ I can’t help it, but I like that kind of attitude. Even more so if you can make it stick. And clearly the Russians have no difficulty to teaching NATO a few things about humility!
These sanctions were extremely harmful. For Europe and (only slightly less so) for the US. Not so for Russia. The Dutch beer giant Heineken just ‘sold’ their breweries and network in Russia to a Russian entrepreneur for one Euro, and one company after the other is writing down billions worth in investments in the only serious growth market on the table. The Netherlands just published very hopeful figures about the economy, as we approach one million people living in poverty on a total of seventeen million, and counting, with a ‘robust’ growth in ‘exports’ over two years. Now, these previous two years were ‘Lockdown-years’, where you couldn’t move or you would be executed. So some improvement was to be expected, right? But what the Dutch call ‘exports’ is allowing goods to be imported into Holland, ‘rubberstamping’ it in exchange for a fee, and ‘exporting’ it again to the country which bought the stuff in the first place. The classic ‘Toll Booth’. And calling it a ‘service’. Hey! We are a ‘Service Economy!’. Yeah, right…………
This entire Ukraine charade is making me angry. I can see the proud parents of Mark Milley from laid back, wealthy Winchester Massachusetts as he made it to general, and then on to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From what I understand he and his NATO-colleagues did all of the planning, and most of the operational execution of this war against Russia on Ukrainian soil, using Ukrainians and ‘Guns For Hire’ (predominantly Right-Wing extremist) mercenaries to bring the Russians to their knees. Last week, apparently, Milley showed up in person in Ukraine because defeat was around the corner. I do not claim to know how these people are thinking. But no doubt they do not want to be remembered as this disappointment which took a wrecking ball to everything we once valued in our part of the world. Or allowing others to do so, while they were formally responsible. But as the military under Milley went ‘Woke’, engaged in mandatory 'vaccination' with an experimental fluid which did not render the soldiers immune to the virus doing the rounds, but is suspected of giving them myocarditis and other ailments, and Putin is asking him to ‘get real’, I’d say I don’t envy Milley and other career officers who never imagined they would be in a position like this.
People make mistakes. They take their cues from the wrong people, sign off on a strategy or ‘improvement’ as imposed on them by the political class, and by the time they discover their mistake, there is no turning back. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. As a US general you have no notion of what sanctions will do to a country like Russia. You trust the ‘experts’, of which you are one in your own right. And those ‘experts’ think you can perform miracles with the most costly military organization by a large margin. Both classes of ‘experts’ are mistaken. Now what?
The readers of this blog may have a better understanding of where we are, how we go here, and where we are going, then those ‘experts’, because of a different set of assumptions and observations, which are still producing predictions closer to what we are witnessing. All these attempts to make us believe that the sanctions are working, and that NATO/Ukraine is winning the military conflict, while the ‘experts’ are frantically engaged in alternative ways to revive the dream of ‘Regime Change’ in Moscow, are making matters worse. It is not out of pity that Putin won’t crush Scholz, Macron, Milley and the ‘Devil’s Tail’ leading NATO. He simply refuses to do our laundry for us.