When Vladimir Putin was recently asked about the potential use of nuclear weapons in the context of Ukraine, an understanding of back-alley Russian slang was needed to understand his response.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16, during the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. (Ramil Sitdikov, RIA Novosti Host Photo Agency, President of Russia)
By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News
Russian President Vladimir Putin is known for a lot of things — his “in your face” speeches, his marathon unscripted press conferences and his stoic impassiveness in the face of adversity come to mind.
One thing that doesn’t jump out at the average observer is his earthy sense of humor. Long-time Putin watchers know that the Russian leader on occasion spices up his formal presentations with off-color quips which, unless one is well versed in colloquial Russian of the back-alley variety, can get missed by the casual listener.
During the June 16 discussion period of the plenary session of the 2023 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Russian leader was asked about his views on the potential use of nuclear weapons in the context of the ongoing Ukrainian conflict.
“This use of nuclear weapons is certainly theoretically possible,” Putin bluntly answered.
“For Russia, this is possible if a threat is created to our territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty, the existence of the Russian state. Nuclear weapons are created in order to ensure our security in the broadest sense of the word and the existence of the Russian state.”
Putin’s answer reflected long-standing Russian nuclear doctrine, which postulates the use of nuclear weapons in the case of an existential threat, nuclear or otherwise, to the survival of Russia.
Putin then sought to put the audience at ease. “But we, firstly, do not have such a need,” Putin noted, “and secondly, the very factor of reasoning on this topic already lowers the possibility of lowering the threshold for the use of weapons. This is the first part.”
What came next was classic Putin. “The second is that we have more such weapons [i.e., tactical nuclear weapons] than the NATO countries. They know about it and all the time they persuade us to start talks on reductions.”
Putin paused, before shrugging and, with a half-smile, saying “Khren Im”.
Khren Im is a Russian slang term derived from the word “horseradish” (khren), thus a literal translation of the phrase used by Putin would be “horseradish them.” But khren closely resembles a more salty term used to describe male genitalia, and when used in this manner, khren Im is understood to mean “F*ck them.”
“F*ck them, you know?” Putin said, to the obvious mirth of the audience. “As our people say. Because, in the clumsy terms of economics, this is our competitive advantage.”
The “them” in the horseradish reference made by the Russian president is the United States. Two weeks prior to Putin’s man-in-the-street reaction, on June 2, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, addressed a conference hosted by the Arms Control Association, in Washington, D.C. The topic, not surprisingly, was the administration’s approach to U.S.-Russian arms control.
Biden’s Nuclear Strategy
U.S. President Joe Biden with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Feb.19, during the train ride from Przemsyl in Poland to Kiev. (White House/Adam Schultz)
Sullivan made it clear to his audience that the nuclear strategy that the Biden administration approved in October 2022 would remain intact through 2026, when the last remaining U.S.-Russian arms control agreement, the 2010 New START treaty, was set to expire.
Once the New START treaty expires, and barring any agreement replacing it with a new agreement, Sullivan said that, given the state of play between the U.S. and Russia when it came to arms control, the U.S. would have no choice but to develop and deploy newer, more dangerous nuclear weapons.
Sullivan then laid out the Biden administration’s case against Russia, starting with the Russian suspension of the New START treaty itself. Left unsaid was Russia’s stated reason for this suspension, namely the impossibility from the Russian point of view of engaging in strategic nuclear arms reductions at a time when the United States was pursuing a policy in Ukraine of waging a proxy conflict designed to cause the strategic defeat of Russia.
From the Russian perspective, pursuing the cooperative reduction with the U.S. of the very strategic capability which is, by design, intended to prevent Russia’s strategic defeat at a time when the U.S. was pursuing the strategic defeat of Russia was a non-starter.
[Related: SCOTT RITTER: Arms Control or Ukraine?]
Likewise left unspoken was Russia’s contention that the U.S. was in violation of the New START Treaty by keeping some 101 strategic delivery systems from being inspected, despite being required to do so by the provisions of the New START Treaty.
Khren Im.
Sullivan called out Russia’s decision to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, without elaborating on either the threats made to Belarus by several NATO members, including Poland and the Baltic states. Nor did he acknowledge that the Russian action parallels a similar U.S. policy in stationing some 100 nuclear B-61 gravity bombs on the territories of five NATO nations.
Khren Im.
Four nuclear free-fall B61s on a bomb rack at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, 1986. (DoD, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Sullivan strongly criticized Russia for its total disregard for international law, including arms control treaties such as the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) from which Russia recently withdrew, without putting the Russian decision in proper historical perspective.
This perspective involves the ongoing disregard by the U.S. and NATO of deliberate inequities in the CFE structure that were brought on by the ongoing expansion of NATO. Nor did the U.S. national security adviser acknowledge that it was the U.S., not Russia, which had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate Forces Treaty, both of which are considered foundational for all arms control treaties going forward.
[Related: U.S. Establishment: Nixing Arms Control]
Khren Im.
Sullivan’s presentation ignored such salient matters as the purpose behind NATO’s certification of the F-35 fighter as a nuclear-capable delivery system, and what the deployment of nuclear-capable F-35s to NATO nations not included in the existing shared nuclear defense scheme meant to the scope and scale of the NATO nuclear deterrence model considering the continued NATO Baltic Air Policing and South European Air Policing operations.
A Hungarian Air Force JAS-39 Gripen is guided into its hangar in October 2022 after a Baltic Air Policing training mission. (NATO/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Sullivan also failed to address the current “launch-on-warning” posture employed by the Biden administration, which positions the U.S. to carry out a first nuclear strike against Russia, and the role that the continued patrols in Europe and Asia by American nuclear-capable B-52H strategic bombers, including aggressive flight profiles appearing to simulate the launch of nuclear-armed cruise missiles against Saint Petersburg.
Sullivan also ignored the impact of the Biden administration’s ongoing plans to bring back medium- and intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles to the European theater will be on the overall nuclear balance of power between the U.S.-NATO and Russia.
Khren Im.
Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, center, during a visit to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Vienna headquarters in August 2020. The IAEA’s director general, Mariano Grossi, on left; Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s IAEA representative, on right. (Dean Calma / IAEA, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
A day before Putin addressed the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov spoke to the media about the “opposing, irreconcilable positions” of Russia and the U.S. concerning the resumption of discussions regarding the New START treaty. “[T]he suspension of New START remains in effect,” Ryabkov said, “and this decision may be revoked or reconsidered only if the U.S. demonstrates a willingness to abandon its fundamentally hostile policy toward the Russian Federation.”
Khren Im.
Neither Putin nor Ryabkov seemed to be concerned about Jake Sullivan’s rhetorical posturing before the Arms Control Association. The same cannot be said for Sergey Karaganov, a noted Russian political scientist, economist and academic. On June 13, Karaganov published an article, “A Difficult but Necessary Decision,” in the journal Russia in Global Affairs. In it, Karaganov praises nuclear weapons as “God’s weapon” and calls for Russia to launch a nuclear strike on “a bunch of targets in a number of countries in order to bring those who have lost their mind to reason.”
Karaganov argues that, in response to the policies of the U.S.-led collective West which seek the strategic defeat of Russia, and because, in his opinion, Russia lacks the conventional military capacity to achieve anything more than a “frozen” conflict in Ukraine that would condemn it to a state of perpetual conflict with Ukraine and the collective West, Russia must “build a strategy of intimidation and deterrence and even use of nuclear weapons” which, if done correctly, would result in “the risk of a ‘retaliatory’ nuclear or any other strike on our territory can be reduced to an absolute minimum.”
“Only a madman,” Karaganov notes, “who, above all, hates America, will have the guts to strike back in ‘defense’ of Europeans, thus putting his own country at risk and sacrificing conditional Boston for conditional Poznan. Both the U.S. and Europe,” Karaganov concludes, “know this very well, but they just prefer not to think about it.”
Biden seems to be leaning toward a similar conclusion. At a fundraiser where he denounced Russia’s decision to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Biden spoke about his fear that Putin may resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
“When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy,” Biden said. “They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real,” Biden concluded.
It’s real.
No kidding, Mr. President. It is as real as it gets. While people are right to be concerned about the policy recommendations made by prominent Russians such as Karaganov, they must also address the root cause of such pronouncements, namely the policies of the Biden administration to achieve the strategic defeat of Russia in Ukraine, seemingly at whatever cost (especially when the cost is paid in the blood of Ukrainian soldiers).
Russia will not use nuclear weapons to fulfil the tasks set forth in its Special Military Operation. It will use nuclear weapons to preserve Russian territorial integrity.
The reality today is, thanks to the irresponsible policies of the U.S. and its NATO allies, who have sought the expansion of NATO up to the Russian borders while foregoing every opportunity to prevent a conflict with Russia over Ukraine, there is a war between Russia and Ukraine that has resulted in Ukraine irrevocably losing 20 percent of its territory (the oblasts of Kherson, Zaparizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk, along with the Crimea).
All of that territory has been absorbed into the Russian Federation and makes any effort to strip them away from Russia by definition an existential conflict where, if Russia were to lose, would necessarily trigger the use of nuclear weapons.
And yet Biden and his NATO allies continue to feed a Ukrainian fantasy where the reacquisition of these territories by Ukraine is a desirable outcome.
Has either Biden, his advisers, or the American public considered the potential consequences of this action? Are they willing to trade Boston for Poznan, or sacrifice humanity for the sake of appeasing Ukrainian sensibilities?
The answer appears to be “no.”
As for Russia, one is guided by the words of Vladimir Putin: “Khren Im”
F*ck them.
But in reality, F*ck us.
All of us.
If this insanity is allowed to continue unabated, it is lights out for all of humanity.
Chew on that the next time you cheer on the Ukrainian counteroffensive or applaud the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund the Ukrainian military.
It is high time for the American public to recognize that our only hope for a survivable future is one where arms control and nuclear disarmament once again serve as the cornerstone of a U.S.-Russian relationship, and that the shortest possible path toward achieving that objective is for Russia to win its war against Ukraine.
And for those politicians in the U.S. and Europe who have invested their political futures on the suicidal mission of feeding Ukraine’s anti-Russian fantasies?
Khren Im.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Support CN’s Spring
Fund Drive Today
If an organization had the courage to conduct a very large and well-designed poll asking ordinary Americans if we support this current war or the one that is being continually threatened against China, what do you suppose the result would show? My guess or suspicion is that it would show a majority opposed. This is conjecture and speculation on my part.
What isn’t speculation is the unanimity of support for military spending and military activity in DC. Remember that John McCain was just as nuts and warmongering as Joe Biden, and as Linsay Graham continues to be. Those are just a few of the staunch supporters of expanded military spending and bullying. Efforts are underway in the halls of Congress to try to circumvent even the miniscule reduction in military spending resulting from the Biden/McCarthy deal. Both sides of the aisle are onboard to scuttle any restraints on military spending – even advocating more than the obscene amounts already approved.
Biden the warmonger/blowhard infested his White House and the State Department with warmongering neo-cons who know nothing of diplomacy and have no intent to learn or practice the craft. They are ideologues who consider the range of any “negotiations” with others to begin and end with “follow U.S. orders”. The conditions they lay down for any possible negotiations are the same conditions which create the imminent threat to Russia’s existence, i.e. the concession of Russia to Ukraine of the eastern provinces which have chosen to be a part of Russia and Crimea. These people are absolutely insane and need to be effectively removed from power if there is to be any possibility of avoiding a nuclear war. I am 79 years old and have been sickened for many decades by the mass murder and mass destruction caused by the unending U.S. wars of aggression. However, prior to the Bill Clinton administration, we had people in charge of foreign policy who, while continuing the wars of aggression against non-nuclear (and usually very weak) countries, at least had enough sense to not engage in war with a peer nuclear armed power. Beginning with the Clinton administration the U.S. has provoked Russia by expansion of NATO to the east to the point that it has now left Russia no choice but to resort to war. Of course, the murder by the U.S./Ukrainian government of 14,000 Ukrainian citizens in the Donbass during the 2014-2022 period, combined with the plan to imminently invade the Donbass in order to continue the genocide, accelerated the need for Russia’s SMO. I have always regarded the neo-cons as lunatics and sociopaths; however, it appears that I have underestimated the extent of their craziness. Are there any adults in the Beltway who can stop this madness?
Biden and his team have to be given the boot. They are a clear and present danger to their country and the world!
They can’t see beyond the barrel of a gun They can’t say multisyllabic words like rapprochement, reciprocity, and reconciliation. They are the neocon goon squad.
Biden and Blinken are incompetent; they seem to be living in a time that was right after WW 2–when America became a nation that hadn’t experienced having WW 2 war on its own land.
When Russia began invading, I was amazed with how slowly it moved. Sean Penn was able to walk from Ukraine all the way to Poland. I never looked at it at way as America tried to make it into a major move about the “evil “Russians. ”
Considering how evil America was in Vietnam, why would anyone believe George Bush the 2nd about war? Having evaded war in Vietnam, I guess the Texas Air National Guard didn’t care that Bush just walled away from that. I also have trouble believing much of the “war news,” in today’s news. It’s hard to believe anyone about what the TRUTH is. Is there anything useful in the news—–oh wait, 2 words on Russian—-that can come in , at some point to be very useful. ” Khren Im.” : )
Then we have Biden giving power to his brainless son. Maybe wars would have been easier to stop after WW2.
But it seemed as if America believed they could do no wrong—-and in believing that, they seemed to come up with even more awful wars. Intriguing though, how Bush the 2nd seemed to relish bombing Middle Eastern nations.
And apparently, America is flooding the novel “1984,” where war is continual, but an enemy is never clearly established——I am sad America that war seems to be your mantra of much of this nation’s short history. I wonder too, why do those who never went war want to start war.
Biden and Blinken are very competent indeed at shrouding major and minor lies, stone-cold sadistic crimes, expertly constructed falsifications and purposefully misleading distortions of historical reality by previous American presidents and associated vermin of blinken&sullivan variety with an even more significant, more audacious and altogether detestable range of unbridled deviancy known AND not yet known to Humanity.
After all, according to Chomsky, if Nuremberg Laws were applied ..
Worse still – nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing in real terms, can be done about it.
American political system cannot be improved or changed for the better.
It will relentlessly continue its march against Humanity for as long as it takes to exterminate all that is good, right and proper on our long-suffering Planet.
Thank you
“If this insanity is allowed to continue unabated, it is lights out for all of humanity.”
And who, pray tell, has the power & will to abate when “deciders” continue to up the ante as they bait their designated enemy?
Chin wags of all stripes on every side (politicos, military honchos, so-called experts, mass media, war profiteers) are locked-in tight & out of range. Or so they seem to think.
Hmmm. Wonder what could possibly disabuse them of that quaint notion?
“Once the New START treaty expires, and barring any agreement replacing it with a new agreement, Sullivan said that, given the state of play between the U.S. and Russia when it came to arms control, the U.S. would have no choice but to develop and deploy newer, more dangerous nuclear weapons.”
The United States is doing that anyway. As far as numbers of deployed warheads are concerned, the US could announce its intention of abiding by the START limits after it expires. Such a move is not entirely unprecedented, the US and the Soviet Union both agreed to abide by the 1979 SALT II treaty (never ratified) and the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (not ratified by the USA until 1990).
The United States and Russia should, in my view, try to reach an agreement on a successor treaty now despite the war in the Ukraine. At the same time, efforts should also be pursued to bring about a ceasefire in that conflict.
“The United States is doing that anyway.”
Exactly.
“As far as numbers of deployed warheads are concerned, the US could announce its intention of abiding by the START limits after it expires. Such a move is not entirely unprecedented; the US and the Soviet Union both agreed to abide by the 1979 SALT II treaty (never ratified) and the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (not ratified by the USA until 1990).”
The chances of that ever happening in the current political climate, especially with balderdash-baloney “national security” highly tendentious fibber-fixers of J Sullivan variety being very much around AND kicking, is ABSOLUTE ZERO.
To put it simply, constructing anything on the deliberately misconstructed sand castle built by the alternative reality expert Jack and The Beanstock Sullivan for the benefit of the most spectacularly self-decapitated warrior Biden would only be deemed reasonable by someone who is wholly self-deluded., as very accurately indeed summed up by Scott Ritter here:
“Sullivan .. laid out the Biden administration’s case(!) against Russia, starting with the Russian suspension of the New START treaty itself. ?Left unsaid was Russia’s stated reason for this suspension, namely the impossibility from the Russian point of view of engaging in strategic nuclear arms reductions at a time when the United States was pursuing a policy in Ukraine of waging a proxy conflict designed to cause the strategic defeat of Russia.
From the Russian perspective, pursuing the cooperative reduction with the U.S. of the very strategic capability, which is, by design, intended to prevent Russia’s strategic defeat at a time when the U.S. was pursuing the strategic defeat of Russia, was a non-starter.
Likewise left unspoken was Russia’s contention that the U.S. was in violation of the New START Treaty by keeping some 101 strategic delivery systems from being inspected, despite being required to do so by the provisions of the New START Treaty.
Sullivan called out Russia’s decision to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without elaborating on either the threats made to Belarus by several NATO members, including Poland and the Baltic states. Nor did he acknowledge that the Russian action parallels a similar U.S. policy in stationing some 100 nuclear B-61 gravity bombs on the territories of five NATO nations.
Sullivan strongly criticized Russia for its total disregard for international law, including arms control treaties such as the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), from which Russia recently withdrew, without putting the Russian decision in proper historical perspective.
This perspective involves the ongoing disregard by the U.S. and NATO of deliberate inequities in the CFE structure that were brought on by the ongoing expansion of NATO. Nor did the U.S. national security adviser acknowledge that it was the U.S., not Russia, which had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate Forces Treaty, both of which are considered foundational for all arms control treaties going forward.
Sullivan’s presentation ignored such salient matters as the purpose behind NATO’s certification of the F-35 fighter as a nuclear-capable delivery system, and what the deployment of nuclear-capable F-35s to NATO nations not included in the existing shared nuclear defense scheme meant to the scope and scale of the NATO nuclear deterrence model considering the continued NATO Baltic Air Policing and South European Air Policing operations.
Sullivan also failed to address the current “launch-on-warning” posture employed by the Biden administration, which positions the U.S. to carry out a first nuclear strike against Russia, and the role that the continued patrols in Europe and Asia by American nuclear-capable B-52H strategic bombers, including aggressive flight profiles appearing to simulate the launch of nuclear-armed cruise missiles against Saint Petersburg.
Sullivan also ignored the impact of the Biden administration’s ongoing plans to bring back medium- and intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles to the European theater will be on the overall nuclear balance of power between the U.S.-NATO and Russia.”
The current crisis shows no prospect of ending in victory for either side. Unless that is realized, paradoxically, there is no way of avoiding WWIII.
Our best chance for a peaceful outcome is to hope Russia makes Biden—and his little troublemakers—an offer they cannot refuse. Khren Im to NATO.
Thank you, Scott Ritter, there is much we have learned from you.
The article’s reference to “the continued patrols in Europe and Asia by American nuclear-capable B-52H strategic bombers, including aggressive flight profiles appearing to simulate the launch of nuclear-armed cruise missiles against Saint Petersburg” stood out for me as the most frightening thing I’ve read in a long time. I don’t think that any cold-war practice was as dangerous as this is. (Not that there were not similar patrols then, but they were not based so close to the Russian heartland, leaving so little time to react in a reasoned manner.) If things continue this way, the only thing that can stop a third world war starting by accident will be the US choosing to start it on purpose first.
A very good summation of the state of affairs, the causes and consequences and identification of the guilty parties. I also agree with the observation, as I would put it, to never underestimate the destructive power of a piss poor leader. There’s a couple of aspects to this that you’ve left unmentioned.
One. The US/UK/EU/NATO axis is broke. The US is $32T in the hole and accelerating for the stratosphere. The UK has been hammered hard by a combination of BREXIT and other spectacularly stupid moves like trying to act like the BOMC without either the military hardware to pull it off or the wisdom to not play “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes” as they send lots of military hardware that they’ll never get paid for to the hole (strategically located next to Russia). The EU is not far behind since they let the US destroy the real source of their wealth (since they’ve lost the income from their colonies) namely inexpensive energy from Russia. European businesses from the UK to Germany are beginning to fail. It’s not going to take a whole lot to completely upend the Western financial house of cards built on debt.
Two. Russia has a much greater military depth than the US/UK/EU/NATO realized or is willing to admit. Russia will be able to keep this up for a very long time. And they have ramped up their military production. And that guy rusticating in the can for reporting on Russia’s military production? Yeah, he was a spy. The US has suborned journalists like that for time out of mind. The reality is that Russia is smokin’ the Ukies. For the third time.
Three. De-dollarization is a real thing. This will hurt the US more than it will Europe but it will lead to real financial turmoil that will affect the US and to a lesser extent the EU but will have no effect on Russia. How quickly will this happen? I dunno. But it will have a cascade effect. So look out.
Four and finally. Arrogance. The UK & EU have both traveled to China. They all acted like they were doing China a favor just talking to China, Frau Baerbock doing a superb imitation of Winkin and Blinkin in Anchorage. Not a recommended technique to win friends.
It is amazing that the United States and the European Union, which seek to damage Russia in every possible way, could imagine that Russia would reciprocate by making itself more, rather than less, vulnerable to our machinations. But amazingly, our policymakers seem to believe that the Russians are as easy to fool as the US electorate. And it may cost humanity its very existence, something the Biden administration seems to feel makes sense.
No, no, no. Anything said by US officialdom and reported in US media is purely for consumption by US proles. I believe it is fairly certain that both the US and NATO leaders know exactly how Russia is going to respond to whatever is said or done by them.
All of it is solely for domestic political cover.
@ Scott Ritter??
Thank you once again Mr. Ritter for this informed update on this insane use, in our name, of the MIC by our elected, career civilian and military representatives and numerous others of questionable intent.
Thanks also to Consortium News for the courage to publish this important truth.
Whew. Scary, Scott, very scary.
Puts me in mind of what the recently deceased and lamented Daniel Elsberg commented to his RAND boss as they left the theater after viewing Dr. Strangelove: “My god, that wasn’t a satire, it was a documentary!”
Brrrrrr.
Despite all of this, even Democrat sources like CNN and CNBC are now saying that it looks like Ukraine is winning the war.
Reference:
June 10, 2023
Russia-Ukraine news cnn.com › europe › live-news › russia-ukraine-war-news-06-10-23 › index.html President Volodymyr Zelensky has given his clearest indication yet that Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive is underway.
hxxps://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-06-10-23/index.html
June 13, 2023
Russia-Ukraine war updates on June 13, 2023 cnbc.com
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city of Kryvyi Rih has been hit by what was described as a “massive missile attack.”
hxxps://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/13/ukraine-war-live-updates-latest-news-on-russia-and-the-war-in-ukraine.html
Once both sides can make the rubble bounce, the number of weapons doesn’t matter much, outside of d**k-waving contests.
But thanks for translating the slang.
Oh dear. I’ve been a great lover of horseradish all my life. Never going to be able to ask for it in the same way again. There is something about Vladimir Putin I’ve been saying for years, and few understand. He was a street kid, a rough and tumble street fighter, who would fight anyone who took him on. And believe me, as one who also spent her early formative years with street kids, there’s some of that which never leaves you. And those soft little wussies from protected upper classes can never understand that. I do. When push comes to shove, Putin is a street fighter, and he will always think that way, and always win.
Thanks for a little humor and a dose of reality!
Picture of Biden with legal pad. A blank legal pad at that. PHOTO OP.
Kinda telling Putin still has a sense of humor.
Ann M Garrison, we may find out.
Thanks CN
Thanks Scott, for an insightful and very frightening article.
On a related note, the LA Times recently ran an article wherein NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced to a gathering that he wasn’t worried about Russia stationing nukes in Belarus. What would it take to worry Mr. Stoltenberg? He’s an intelligent, educated man who should surely be worried, even terrified of this event. Is it blind arrogance in the power of the west, is his place assured in the big bunker, or is he bluffing, secretly petrified at the though of these Russian rockets? I can only wonder.
The article’s accompanying photo was telling. It shows Stoltenberg being affably greeting by US Defense Secretary Austin. Next to these two stands General Miley, the US the Chief of Staff, who (in my view) stares at Stoltenberg with a mixture of distain and disbelief.
Miley has rightfully been calling for a negotiated settlement of the Ukraine/Russia war. As a military veteran he knows war folly when he sees it, folly fueled on death and destruction to no good end. Maybe the old saying of wars being too important to be left to the generals should be amended to included politicians and think tanks.
@ Bob Newly?
Well said good sir?
Right now the way I see it it is ONLY Putin and company’s rationality and sense of graduated and responsible escalation that is holding back the out break of WW III. NATO (Nut Action Tease Only) is a cabal of rent-seeking lapdogs kept under velvet leash by the Atlantic master venture capitalist. The world and humanity are safe as long as the Russian nuclear threshold stays high; God forbid the Russians don’t ape America at Hiroshima by recklessly lowering its nuclear threshold ; this time both the reactions and reaction time will be varied and short. The current scenario is quite grim when one decodes the convergence presented by a) various global capitalist hubs heavily invested in BlackRock, b) Karaganov’s dire warnings of a Divine right to correct evil and c) the unyielding status quo of elites driven by pure greed and blind to human even their own citizens’ sufferings ! Ritter is again revealing and right not just about horseradish. By the way, Russians have yet to achieve parity with the West on their cornholing, LOL !
Reportedly, the UKRAINE was sold to BlackRock last December. Also, BlackRock is now officially involved in the Agenda 2030 and “woke” agenda from the World Economic Forum.
So if the Ukraine “WINS” this war, it will be world’s premier test site for new bio-labs, mindcontrol exploration, electronic warfare labs and all sorts of inhumane experimentation such as new WHO pandemic research.
Dr. Evil would endorse BlackRock, LOL.
Can you see Putin and Russia allowing an American company to own any part of what has always been Russia? The bits that were Poland maybe. But Russia—-never.
Do you remember Zelensky saying, “Ukraine is for sale and open for business!” He invited the whole world to come into Ukraine and capitalize on anything they wanted. Now they’ve become the DIIA (digital ID) and CBDC darling of the world, along with Estonia. Soon we all will be under the complete control of the government. That future Vaxx will have to be used for that coming contrived virus; not to agree will cost you everything you’ve ever had. Think I’ll borrow Putin’s choice phrase.
I’ve missed Scott lately and am glad he’s back; his insight is unique.
The necessary outcome for those who oppose US/NATO aggression is the defeat of Ukraine by Russia, and this implies a defeat of NATO as well. NATO is the aggressor and NATO should be made to pay a political price for its aggression. While this would be salutary, it also would most likely contribute to further conflict and instability. There is probably no outcome of the war in Ukraine that can restore a stable relationship between Russia and the US or Russia and NATO. Defeating NATO in Ukraine would be only one step toward bringing the US and NATO warmongers to heel; until NATO is de-fanged Europe will be fraught with conflict and international relations will be increasingly dangerous and uncertain. Right now we are drawing closer to a Third World War, and unfortunately there is no way out through Ukraine.
Thanks Symbolon. NATO is visibly defeated already. It is shown to be unable to deliver sustained force, manpower, equipment, ammunition and intelligence. It has had at least a decade to arm and train a NATO force in Ukraine which is being destroyed in real time. NATO, in Stoltenberg’s words, does not have the industrial base necessary to manufacture consumables (ammunition) let alone replace capital equipment (tanks). Its membership is fractured. Its decision-making model is broken. Its delivery is completely inadequate. NATO is fighting for its own survival. It could take any rash action at present. NATO aircraft in RF airspace would be shot down. NATO missiles in RF skies would be intercepted. NATO publics have been primed for WAR. Only a civil uprising seems to me capable of stopping the path of NATO to WAR. It’s a major concern when I wake at 3AM, still alive, for how long?
And don’t forget Harold, there is the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius soon. I’m sure there will be a lot of in-house fighting at that particular bun fight. Macron said a few weeks ago that future support for Ukraine would depend on the outcome of the counter offensive. And we all see how that’s “not” going. But we surely must get some indication of where we will all stand after the summit.
What would Russia winning the war with Ukraine look like?
Remember the Minsk Accords? Something like that. After negotiations, of course. Probably a neutral Ukraine, not part of NATO and full civil rights for everyone, not just those speaking one language instead of another.
Remember that the Minsk Accords were admitted to be a stalling tactic and never a real solution? Remember that Angela Merkel confirmed this?
Hopefully, the end of NATO and the stopping of U.S. aggression.
Wouldn’t that be marvellous. But the UK apparently has a “death wish”:
“The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said all Nato allies are backing a plan to give Ukraine a fast track to Nato membership of the kind offered to Sweden and Finland earlier this year.”
“Speaking on the margins of the two-day Ukraine Recovery conference in London, Cleverly said the UK was “very, very supportive” of Ukraine being able to join Nato without the usual need for it to meet the conditions set out in a Nato membership action plan (Map).”
21st June
Obviously though, with this “Ukraine Recovery” conference, they are confident of winning.
It will look a lot like Afghanistan. The US will declare victory and suspend further military aid to Ukraine, and NATO will follow suit. Within 2-3 weeks afterward, Ukraine will collapse militarily and will sue for peace with Russia. With few or no conditions. Russia will administer a change of government in Kiev to maintain order in the rump state of Ukraine and will annex whatever oblasts it requires for its own security. Ukraine will agree to perpetual neutrality (i.e., no NATO alliance) and will purge the far-right Banderista elements from its government and military. That’s a rough sketch, but a fair approximation of what Russian victory will look like.
RF victory “will” look like, thank you for the sense of certainty. I arrived at the same conclusion some time ago, as did Scott Ritter before me.
the entire territory of the 4 oblasts becomes part of russia. initially there will be a demilitarized zone of some 50 miles along the new russian border. the russian and european refugees return to the new russian and remaining ukrainian territory respectively. the european refugees along with the common ukrainians overthrow the zelensky regime and their right-wing nationalist cohorts and chase them to (western) europe. they will become europeans. the remaining ukrianians will make up a new constitution in which neutrality, multilingualism and multi-ethnicity is enshrined (the thing about the state preserving the ‘ukrainian gene-pool’ gets scrapped). russian culture in ukraine is restored. russia and ukraine rebuild together (maybe even with the frozen russian assets and the help of china). ideally, i think. (somewhere along the line there might also be a trial in which western and nato leadership is personally held accountable and banned from entering ukraine ever again.)
It depends on what victory requires of them.
The full goal seems to have been what we all once called detente. Russians would like to see this as including commercial participation with the EU. This might not only be lucrative for them, but it would also satisfy longtime cultural urges in Russia to see themselves as more European and cosmopolitan and less Asian and (in a Russian context) rural. However, whatever else the Neoconservative US policies since 1980 have failed, they have surely shown Russians that dealing with the West is closer to dealing with Hitler or Napoleon than it is to rhetoric about democracy or equality.
In previous negotiations, the Russian position was that Ukraine should be a neutral and “de-Nazified” state. That might still be a possibility, though of course the Ukrainian states that were primarily of Russian descent and that Kiev was shelling from 2014 forward will surely remain either Russian or at least independent of Kiev.
Now, Kiev does not accept it, or at least Zelensky and his Nazi allies do not. Among allies, it is most important that the US and NATO do not accept it. With warlike aims, the West has repeatedly broken agreements with Russia over like matters since at least the fall of the Soviet Union, when Westerners declared an “end of history” and imagined that they would retain the sort of nearly free hand in Russia that they had enjoyed in colonial operations.
All of this means that Russia has to take more to achieve an agreement that can be trusted.
For this reason, treaties with other entities must become more prominent–at BRICS, with India, with Africa, with China. Washington keeps insisting that a NATO victory means crippling Russia. So Russian victory involves ending the war without being crippled, given all the broken treaties, this might mean that Russia undertakes the de-Nazification of Ukraine itself–a great and bloody pity, surely. The US keeps issuing these imperial commands over trade that they call “sanctions,” so economic communities must be set up that are independent and immune to that and to manipulations of the dollar.
But there are direct military considerations, too: how can Russia neutralize and de-Nazify Ukraine without shelling everything and posting personnel right up to the Polish border?
Until a believable plan can be devised and implemented, I don’t know that Russia is so concerned that victory come soon as it is that the war proceed without undo cost in such a way that does not contribute to any relative disadvantage against the West in the wider conflict that NATO keeps threatening. The governing of Ukraine can only be undertaken in that context.
At present, it seems to me that it is not Russia that is the more drained. Further, Ukraine is de-Nazifying itself by pushing Nazi forces into combat. Western gun runners have great control over governments, and happily burn money and arms with little regard to security. Western military 3-letter folks are at least as bad: no one can even audit them for all the graft.
So here’s a guess as of June ’23. It is strategically advantageous for Russia to let the West bleed itself as it hustles double-time to undercut the petrodollar and develop and stabilize economic relationships with BRICS and the global South, to diminish the odd sleight of hand by which Washington can keep directing ridiculous masses of resource towards war. At the same time, hitting mostly military targets will selectively bleed off Ukraine’s Nazi contingent–though it will also create more, as these things do.
Accords will be refused in Washington, but enough of Washington will be unhappy about the economic costs that the US will eventually stop supplying arms. At some point of balance, that will mean that Russia is spending more than the US in Ukraine. Russia will then move right to the Polish border, since no other believable accord will have been implemented. Remaining Ukrainian Nazis will move west as refugees and agency assets, as has happened elsewhere.
International commerce will increasingly favor connections that go around Europe and–to a lesser extent at least at first–North America. The Polish-Ukrainian border will remain a tense spot with arms pointed every which way for a long time.
It’s a result no one really wants. But what’s the better guess?
Ukraine will no longer have a Black Sea coast. Moldova would gain enough coastline to happily let Transnistria go it’s own way, possibly as part of Odessa, while other Russian speaking areas in Moldova could gain a sought after negotiated semi autonomous status within Moldova. The Dniepro River and associated oblasts on the coast that tended to vote for politicians associated with Russia could vote to become Russia’s western border. Something like this might have a chance for stable, peaceful future. Martin’s idea, “…there might also be a trial in which western and Nato leadership is personally held accountable and banned from entering Ukraine ever again”— will be interesting to watch for.
As Putin said at the beginning of the Special Military Operation, the goals are to demilitarize and deNazify Ukraine. Putin is still willing to talk about the agreement reached with Zelensky in March 2022 that the US and UK told him to reject. Then the rebuilding can begin, with the Russian language again, being protected. How about starting there?