Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
The blunder began years before February 2022. Putin failed to realize that the US was preparing the overthrow of the Ukraine government. When the overthrow began, Putin took no action to prevent the overthrow. Instead, Russia permitted Washington to take over the former province of the Russian state.
A hostile Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia. Why did Russia stand aside and permit Washington’s takeover? Why did Russia sit for the next 8 years on its hands, rejecting the votes of the independent Donbas republics to be reunited with Russia from which they were torn by Soviet leaders and stuck in Ukraine? The culprit in these strategic blunders was the Kremlin’s lack of realism. Putin relied on diplomacy despite the fact that Washington relies on threats, bribes, and coercion. The Kremlin simply did not understand that with the Minsk Agreement it was saddling a dead horse that could go nowhere.
When Putin was finally forced to intervene by the prospect that the inhabitants of Russian Donbas were about to be slaughtered like Palestinians in Gaza today, Putin failed to respond decisively. Still playing all by himself a diplomatic game, he insisted that there be no Russian invasion of Ukraine, only a “special military operation” to clear hostile Ukrainian forces from Donbas. Lost in a diplomatic world that no longer exists, Putin failed to realize that regardless of what he said or did, Western propaganda would present the intervention as a reconstruction of the Soviet Empire that would extend to all of Europe.
It was immediately obvious that the limited and slow-paced “special military operation” would provide Washington and its NATO puppets abundant time to become involved in the conflict, thus endlessly widening the conflict until the conflict became an existential issue for Russia. This is what has occurred.
Still the Kremlin thinks unrealistically. Putin is on the verge of succeeding with his purpose of driving Ukrainian forces out of, and away from, the Russian populated areas, and the assumption is that the war will be over and Russia’s success will be acknowledged in a negotiated settlement.
This delusion persists despite Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s acknowledgement that Washington intends Russia’s destruction. Both Lavrov and Putin continue to stress that they are willing to negotiate with Washington Washington’s intention to destroy Russia. It would be hilarious if were not so deadly.
Listen to Lavrov’s speech. He understands the threat to Russia but is incapable of matching a Russian response to the threat. https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2024/05/19/the-west-has-decided-to-sort-things-out-on-the-battlefield-russia-is-ready-lavrov/13/
Thinking Russia’s intervention to be limited, Putin was unprepared for war. He has done very little to hamper the Ukrainian government’s ability to conduct war. Rather than shutting down Ukraine, Putin chose a long drawn-out village by village conquest. The West interpreted this as limited Russian military capability, and this provided both encouragement and time for the West to involve itself in the conflict.
The West is so involved now and the Western political leaders are so certain that Russia intends more aggression that they are preparing for war against Russia. Still, Putin and Lavrov speak of negotiation. After a decade of the West’s rejection of negotiation, how can the Kremlin still see negotiation as a solution?
What needed to be done was to knock Kiev out of the war, install a Russian friendly government in place of the American puppet regime, and present the West with a fait accompli before the West had time to get involved. It is Western involvement that presents the danger of the conflict widening into a war between Russia and the West.
Possibly the solution is still viable. It would leave a neutral Ukrainian state west of the Dnieper River with no Black Sea access. It is highly unlikely that such an outcome can be achieved by negotiation. It can only be imposed by force.
By restraining Russia’s use of force, Putin has opened the road to nuclear Armageddon.
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Now tell us about his strategic blunder to reunite Crimea with Russia, in 2014.
Same thing I thought, Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama. Even the die hard lying liberal media outlets acknowledge that.
Crimea would have gone even more betterer if they had left the people unsupported for 8 years, given Ukraine more time to prepare, and helped ambush, gun down, bomb, or poison all the supposedly allied leaders. Look at how strategically brilliant that was in Donbas!
Be unsarcastic for once. Name one good thing that came from waiting.
Easy:
The whole Russian economy was able to withstand the MoaS (Mother of all Sanctions) in 2022.
And Russia has become food-self sufficient over those 8 years, turning from importer to major exporter for example in grains.
PCR went from being a minor Raygun eCONomic parasite to the worlds greatest statemen………..in his head.
Admin seems to keep re-posting them. He must have some fans, including Admin.
I would read PCR even if admin didn’t post his essays. All information has value. If you’re not astute enough to be discerning, well that’s on you.
Not buying the unbiased observer shtick, are we?
Let me ask you this: What good is Freedom of Speech if there’s nothing to talk about?
Do you know of anything that will start a conversation faster than a controversial topic? I don’t. Well…shameless flattery might work as well. On some people.
Quinn republishes a wide variety of opinion. He can’t agree with them all.
strawman argument
Anonyhole argument.
empty argument
He is indeed a legend in his own mind.
I’m gobsmacked that Putin has sacked the whole of Stavka and replaced it with PCR.
“Why did Russia stand aside and permit Washington’s takeover?”
Could be wrong, but I think it may have had something to do with the collapse of the USSR and the decades of economic and social chaos that followed, not to mention the Deep Shekel oligarchs who rushed in and bought up the country in a fire sale. These things do not sort themselves out over night, but apparently the old Wallstreet tool never played a game that wasn’t rigged, so it’s hardly in his realm to understand this.
We will all get our chance to become strategists and tacticians here in river city when the brigades of sofa recliners with dual cupholders are finally mobilized into the streets.
Or maybe not. Maybe we already did and failed. The Armagedon came and went while we were sleepwalking.
Something something about ‘existential’ threats to Our Democracy.
“It can only be imposed by force.”
Whoa now. Easy there fedpoast. There is still one more most important election ever to vote harder and harder for the status quo while I get mine whiile the gettin is still good.
President Putin remains a member in good standing of the “club,” which means that he plays a given part of the equation to the best of his ability. Having a seat at the “table” has many perks and privileges, but it still requires absolute obedience and fealty to those who shape the world events. The wars will end when the desired agenda has been achieved and not a minute sooner.
Collateral damage is acceptable in these plans, because as always, the end justifies the means. The bolsheviks who control the U.S. also control the other nations that are players in all of the staged events for our entertainment. May want to buy stock in popcorn companies, as the events will continue to quicken with a “grand finale” event on the horizon. All the world’s a stage, indeed.
Putin, the autocrat and unrivaled dictator, waited 24 years to finally (slowly) kick off his globalist master plan in 2024!!
I WAS gonna abstain from comment, but its just too obvious to ignore or let pass.
PCR’s Strategic Blunder was believing he knew jack about global politics OR human nature. In short, it was this article.
That is all.
Russia’s failure to respond forcefully to US instigated coup in Ukraine may be due to the fact that the original Vladimir Putin was disappeared and replaced by a Kremlin-trained double around the time Russia took Crimea without firing a shot in early 2014. The new Putin is the one who met the gymnast at the Sochi Olympics and had an affair, keeping her in Switzerland afterwards without marrying her. The new Putin divorced Lyudmila almost immediately, famously saying “Any man who could spend 3 weeks with that woman deserves a national monument.” The original Putin had been with Lyudmila some 25 years, not 3 weeks,
Compare photos. The new Putin has noticeably different features. He is simply not the same man. Lyudmila herself told the story: the Kremlin was looking for her double too, but didn’t find one. Otherwise she too would have been “disappeared”. This story has been published twice on stateofthenation.co, and is convincing. The original Putin, in my opinion, would not have been so ham-fisted in his invasion of Ukraine.
Now why should I believe something that your double is posting here?
PCR and shit smell the same. The former fifth column of Cointelpro, of which the PCR is part of it is slowly dying from the headquarters next to the river.
FY PCR.
Your points are correct along a certain length of time line. There is also a longer time line with a wider focus and results. It might not look like it….but though slow….success in weakening the cabal/ the dark IS succeeding here. hold on.
putin literally wears a kaballah bracelet
where do you think the word ‘cabal’ comes from?
I’m sure Vlad thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t running against PCR for President of Russia – he might’ve been upset by PCR in a landslide!