Trump gave Putin Fifty days to kiss his royal backside and call him ‘Daddy’. Putin, and others within the Kremlin, immediately said that wouldn’t happen. Not now, not in Fifty days. Simply never. As much as Putin would like to be part of Europe, as a partner of existing countries, bypassing the hostile EU, and trade with the US, he is not going to obey Ursula von der Leijen, Mark Rutte, or Donald Trump. In other words, why wait Fifty days with those sanctions? Bring them on! Satisfy Kaja Kallas’ appetite for self-destruction, and get it over with. Because all these sanctions and tariffs are destroying Europe, even without the desire to pay for overpriced scrap metal Trump is offering Europe to give to Zelensky. Or am I missing something?
The stock-market in Moscow responded with a serious hike, and the Ruble is too ’strong’ again compared to the currencies of Western countries, which are slipping and sliding lower. Interestingly, while the EU imposed a lower ‘price cap’ on Russian oil, the US rejected that move. What does a ‘price cap’ mean? It simply means that the EU is shooting itself in the head. Only oil transported by ships which are insured in ‘London’ is covered by this reduced price. So, the Russians, and their trading partners, use ships insured in Russia, listed as the ’Shadow Fleet’ by the EU, because the British insurance firms are missing out on the insurance premiums, *and* the oil. That oil goes everywhere, now protected by the Russian Navy, after some attempts to pirate these ships in the Baltic, but not to the EU countries. The price could be lower than average on the world market, because Russia has lower production costs than many other countries, still generating a profit for them, but above the ‘Price Cap’, so the EU countries are left with far more expensive oil, while hurting British insurance firms.
These Fifty days before ’secondary sanctions’ will hit trading partners of the Russians is somewhat of a mystery. We’ve seen all kinds of ‘deadlines’ provided by Trump. Twenty-four hours. One-hundred days. And now Fifty. It echoes a similar threat issued in duplicitous peace negotiations with Iran. The day after the ’Sixty days’ deadline issued by the US at the beginning of those talks was passed, while pretenting to be finalizing a deal, the US and Israel bombed Iran. Not in response to anything Iran did to the US, or Israel, but to show the Iranians who is ‘Boss’. The jury is still out, but multiple experts I trust claim it was a disastrous failure on all counts, and that Israel suffered badly, while Iran saved its enriched uranium and centrifuges, and removed itself from the IAEA, which organization spied on the Iranians in the service of the Americans and Israelis. But Trump loved the fireworks. This time there is no formal threat of any bombing, or ‘decapitation strikes’, although Trump prodded Zelensky to bomb Moscow, and one of the weapon-systems reportedly considered are Tomahawk cruise missiles, because they did such a marvelous job in Iran. Trump loved the explosions and the visible destruction of those weapon systems in Iran. But someone in his entourage apparently pointed out that sending Tomahawks to the Ukrainian Emperor, who just gave himself a further extension of his unelected rule, was dangerous, because Russia is not Iran. Unlike Iran Russia has nukes. As well as delivery systems which no air defense system in NATO can intercept. And since the use of Tomahawks requires US military to run the show, an attack on Moscow with these missiles would be regarded as an attack by the US, expanding on the use of Ukraine as a fig leaf for its ill fated attempt to ‘Overextend and Unbalance Russia from Advantageous Ground’. Moreover, since these Tomahawks are ’nuclear capable’, and nobody would know if they are nuclear ’tipped’, or conventional, until they struck their target, with Trump being on record as saying that if he had been president instead of Biden in 2022, he would have nuked Moscow, that massive Russian retaliatory strike could very well be on its way before that missile hit its target, or would have been investigated after having been intercepted by an S-400 or S-500 air defense missile protecting the Russian capital.
Everybody and his or her dog is speculating about those ‘Fifty days’, and which weapon systems will eventually make it to Ukraine. While ‘Daddy’s’ lapdog Rutte confirmed that the Europeans are eager to pay for all that junk, as demanded by Trump, Kaja Kallas, of all people, stepped on the brakes. She wanted the US on Europe’s side, and not as a War-Profiteer, selling it weapons. Alexander Mercouris speculated that this ‘move’ by Trump had to be understood as a preemptive strike on Lindsey Graham’s ‘Bone Crushing’ 500% sanctions bill, which would leave Trump dangling, since Congress would be in the lead, leaving him no room to impose them, or not, or how high those tariffs were going to be. In Fifty days those sanctions could go TACO, ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’, which is unfair to Trump in a way, because this is typical for his ‘Art of the Deal’-approach: Aim high, and settle for what you wanted to achieve, while leaving your counterpart with the illusion of scoring a major victory. The trouble is, that this doesn’t work all that well in politics, since offering a grandiose view of a ‘Magic Mushroom’ future is what people who voted for you will cling on to. And as you declare publicly that you fooled your counterpart, since you always wanted what you got, you are left with two more enemies.
Every day now hundreds of Russian drones and many missiles hit military targets all over the place in all of Ukraine. In the NATO-aligned countries the story is that a ‘Russian Summer Offensive’ could be launched any moment now. Those who have read about my take on how the Russians are approaching this war, will appreciate that I reject that narrative. In my perception the Russians are fighting a ‘War of Attrition’ first and foremost, and ‘Big Arrow Offensives’ are consciously avoided, since they want to be able to secure the territory they take from the Ukrainians. They are not interested in a ‘George Bush’-type of ‘victory’, with Putin declaring defeat of Ukraine at a remote location, far removed from the mess his military made, with insurgents everywhere causing lots of trouble for the ‘victorious’ army. Or like Hillary in Libya, killing the head of state, and destroying the country, and the wealth of the people, turning it over to ISIS and other tribes, removing the existing barrier for ‘Gold-Digger’ refugees going from Africa to Europe, and preparing the ground for *actual* slave markets, congratulating yourself publicly with that result. Or Biden, Rutte, Netanyahu and Erdogan doing something similar in Syria. The Russians are making lots of progress towards their stated goal of taking four ‘Oblasts’, but it would surprise me if they would launch a ‘Big Arrow Offensive’ to take all of Ukraine as the ‘Talking Heads’ in our ‘Sphere of Influence’ seem to expect. But do they *really* expect that?
Unless they are asleep at the wheel, or far gone into ‘Magic Mushroom-territory’, they must have heard of Putin’s demands, figuring out that ‘Big Arrow Offensives’ are not part of the Russian plan. Yet, by deceiving the public they want to secure the funds for their own plans, destroying European wealth, while being able to claim Russia’s imaginary ‘Summer Offensive’ failed, since there is still something to call ‘Ukraine’ left. Because the Russians are not interested in that part, morons. But no use pointing this out to ‘Magic Mushroom-consumers’, who are trapped in their own part of the universe, on another planet entirely. Still, while a deal *could* be struck with Russia, if Zelensky would agree to leave those four Oblasts to Russia, abandon his plans to make Ukraine join NATO, and cut back on its military to invest in something more productive, it is not a given that the Russians will stop advancing once they occupy those four Oblasts, while integrating Ukraine into NATO and stuffing the country with weapons will continue. Other Oblasts may be added, but the speed of their territorial progress is not the result of carefully planned ‘Maneuver Warfare’, but by the collapse of the Ukrainian military, as a result of a growing lack of soldiers, and a lack of weapons and ammunition, and/or funds to pay for them. Ukraine is broke. And the US has left the donor-class. But it will take some time to exhaust Europe sufficiently to make the people of Europe understand that they need to escape ‘Magic Mushroom Policy’-driven spending. We’re not there yet. But we’re close. Fifty days? A bit ambitious, but who knows?