Just because the Ukrainians are victims doesn’t make them always right. Just because Zelenskyy has proven to be a surprisingly strong leader doesn’t mean he never makes any mistakes. Just because Putin is a monster doesn’t mean we should look at the Ukrainian High Command as being the Twelve Apostles. This being said, today I’m going to disapprove the Kursk incursion.

Preamble

I’m no military expert. I’m also not a specialist in Russia’s history, culture, military, or politics. I’m much more informed than the average citizen, though, and I have some experience living in a country that has bordered the USSR since forever.

When I wrote about Ukraine in the past, I tried not to be critical. This time, I’m going to write exactly what I believe. The retards who might label me as “pro-Putin” are free to go get fucked by a rabid Yeti.

Nobody questions the fact that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine. I mean, yes, there are some pro-Kremlin people who do that, but this was a rhetorical means of saying that I myself don’t question that assertion.

Nobody denies that Russia has broken all the rules of war, by committing crimes against humanity in the occupied regions of Eastern Ukraine. The Bucha episode is known to everyone.

It’s worth noting that the Russian society, under Tsar Vladimir Vladimirovich the Shittiest, is an institutionally violent one. Torture is routine in their penitentiary and penal colony systems. Young recruits are physically abused much worse than they were in the times of the USSR. Barbaric hazing has a long history in many countries, and I’m particularly disgusted by the French bizutage, but the Russian dedovshchina (дедовщина) just took it to the next level. In the aftermath of the Crocus City Hall attack, the Russians didn’t even bother to mask the fact that the captured terrorists had been severely beaten, tortured, and even mutilated. They were brought to court in a pathetic state. Even Stalin, in the show trials of the Great Purge, wanted people to believe that the defendants weren’t tortured. Putin doesn’t care, or maybe this is how he believes he’s showing his strength.

This culture of violence and disrespect of human values might explain, albeit not excuse, the atrocities of the Russian army in Ukraine.

So yes, we should support Ukraine. The retards from Latin America and generally from the Third World who are on Russia’s side in this war are doing so because: ❶ They have the nostalgia of the times when Russia was communist, and they don’t know what this really was like. ❷ They have a very simple mindset: “Russia is against America, so Russia is good.” ❸ They’re stupid.

In green, the mentally retarded pro-Russia countries

Therefore, I don’t even question the legitimacy of the West’s military, economic, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

I’m more bothered that a quarter of Ukraine’s population now seems to be outside their motherland. Europe is full of millions of Ukrainians, 90% of whom are Russian-speaking, and most of whom seem perfectly fit to fight for their country. This can be explained by the fact that the eastern regions of Ukraine, where the Russian military committed those atrocities, are Russian-speaking. But there are also millions of genuine Russians that have suddenly appeared in Europe. Let me count: Europe is now supposed to host everyone who wants to leave Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, and those who claim to be coming from these countries as political refugees or war refugees. Or whoever else comes in a boat in the Mediterranean, and whoever speaks Russian or Ukrainian and claims to be a fugitive of some sort. This is unsustainable.

However, here’s the wrong, and blatantly illegal way of dealing with this situation; according to Medusa:

The 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention asserts that a refugee shouldn’t be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. However, Estonia and Latvia have officially stated they won’t grant asylum to Russians fleeing mobilization. And in July 2024, the Finnish parliament allowed border guards to return asylum seekers who had illegally crossed the border from Russia.

Then we criticize China for returning people to DPRK. What a fine world we’re living in!

The war started in 2014

That’s a truism. Let’s take a look at Wikipedia: the Russo-Ukrainian War is “ongoing since 2014.” The page for the Armed Forces of Ukraine lists the following battles for the War in Donbas 2014-2022:

OMFG. All of these, before the 2022 invasion! 21 relevant battles before the many others that followed, some of which were also around Kramatorsk, Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, Avdiivka, etc.

To quote myself, nobody observed the Minsk I and Minsk II protocols. They weren’t meant to be observed, to be frank. France and Germany were part of a fraud.

This is nothing but the truth. But even as the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) have zero legitimacy, why were France and Germany keen to cosign such deceiving agreements that literally nobody intended to respect?

The self-defense mantra and NATO’s expansion

On the “but NATO was aggressively going east, and James Baker told Gorbachev this wouldn’t happen, so Russia felt threatened” argument, I’ll once again quote myself:

Suppose your neighbor is pissing you off. His family is extremely noisy. His barbecues are creating too much smoke that the wind brings to your house. Shady people are visiting him. Drug dealers, maybe? Whatever else annoys you about him, what do you do? You enter his yard, destroy his house, rape his wife and daughter, kill his son, torture the dog, and “denazify” him? Is this how things should be done?

That’s to reassert that Russia’s aggression is unacceptable.

Moving on, let’s talk about NATO’s expansion.

I was myself puzzled at the time.

We all know that NATO was created to defend against the danger posed by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Once the USSR had dissolved in 1991, and its former satellites had become multi-party (albeit imperfect) democracies, which meant that the military alliance known as the Warsaw Pact no longer existed, what was NATO’s raison d’être?

It was obvious that the United States, and therefore NATO, perceived Russia as still posing a danger to the West. The fact that most Central and Western European countries wished to join NATO, as a reflex based on the experiences they had with the Russian Empire and with the Soviet Union, only added more substance to this claim. And yet, NATO claimed it stopped seeing Russia as a threat. Later, when in the 2010s Romania started hosting at the Deveselu military base the United States Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, NATO kept insisting that “this is not meant to defend against Russia, but against actors such as Iran.” Absolutely everyone knows this is not true! Why do we have to lie? Why are we behaving like the Soviets?

Before Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister in 1999, the collective West believed that, under Yeltsin, Russia was mostly sincere in its attempts to create a democratic framework, despite the so many crises, despite the rampant corruption, and despite the new oligarchy having close ties with people from the former KGB. Yeltsin was seen as a weak drunkard, yet a rather trustworthy partner. Nobody could envision that Putin would become a new Stalin!

But if you want to see how the United States saw the expansion of NATO, here’s Senator Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee under the 105th Congress, talking about the prospects of NATO expansion: C-SPAN: June 18, 1997: NATO Expansion.

I selected the relevant portions for you:

(11:10) And the last argument I most often hear is NATO enlargement may assist the nationalists and the communists in Russia and draw new dividing lines in Europe. I will … in one case, it’s sort of the … it would be unfair to say the Kennan argument, but the notion of a new dividing line, and this is going to embolden all those forces in Russia that we do not want to see emboldened. These are legitimate assertions that, I think, have to be answered and will be the subject of debate on the Senate floor. […]

(13:00) The Russian army is in such pitiful shape that couldn’t even, obviously, could not even reconquer Chechnya as part of the Russian Federation, and so, no, in my view, the threats to stability in Europe have changed. […]

(16:50) During the Cold War, NATO provided a security umbrella under which former enemies like France and Germany were able to cooperate and build highly successful free societies. It was the framework in which the former pariahs like Italy, Germany, and Spain could be reintegrated into a democratic Europe, and it was NATO that kept the feud between Greece and Turkey from escalating into warfare. The enlargement of NATO in my view can now serve to move that zone of stability eastward to Central Europe, and thereby both prevent ethnic conflicts from escalating and forestall a scramble for new bilateral and multilateral pacts along the lines of the 1930s from occurring. In fact, it’s already happening: in anticipation of NATO membership, several Central and Eastern European countries have recently settled longstanding disputes. I need only mention Hungary and Romania, Slovenia and Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania, Romania and Ukraine, and so on. If NATO were not to enlarge, however, the countries between Germany and Russia, in my view, would inevitably seek other means to protect themselves. The question for today is not in my view, as I stated earlier, as is often assumed, “enlarge NATO or remain the same,” for the status quo is simply not an option in my view.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is one additional argument for NATO enlargement which may have fallen out of fashion, and that is a moral one. For 40 years, the United States loudly proclaimed its solidarity with the captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe, who were under the heel of the Communist oppressor. Now that most of them have cast off their shackles, it’s our responsibility to live up to our pledges, to readmit them into the West through NATO and the European Union when they’re fully qualified. Ironically, within the fruits of NATO’s unparalleled success lie the seeds for its possible demise. Alliances are formed to fight wars or to deter them. Once the adversary is gone, unless alliances adapt to meet changing threats, they lose their reason for being. Thus, enlargement, in my view, must be accompanied by a redefinition of NATO’s mission. The alliance’s primary mission, as outlined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty of April 4th, 1949, remains the same: treating an attack on one member as an attack on all and responding through the use of armed forces if necessary. Now, in the current post-Cold War situation, non-article 5 missions like peacekeeping, sometimes in cooperation with non-NATO powers, have become possible. The S4 joint effort in Bosnia, with Russia and several other non-NATO countries, I believe, is an excellent example of this.

(20:00) But what about our erstwhile adversary, Russia? I firmly believe that NATO enlargement need not adversely affect the US relationship with Russia. I came to this conclusion on a trip to Moscow and several central European countries earlier this spring. Although few Russians I found anywhere from the think-tank folks to the officials in power, although few Russians are fond of NATO enlargement, policymakers in Moscow have accepted it. Moreover, no Russian politician with whom I met, from communist leader Zyuganov to liberal leader Yavlinsky to nationalist leader Lebed, believe that NATO enlargement constitutes a security threat to their country. I did not find a single official, left, right, or center, who believed that to be the case. In fact, nearly all politicians, and I met with a number of members of the Duma as well, all politicians and experts with whom I met understood the non-aggressiveness implicit in NATO’s three NOs. The alliance’s declaration of having no reason, intention, or plan in the current and foreseeable security environment, permanently to station nuclear weapons or substantial combat forces of current members on the territory of new member states. They all understood that, and I don’t think any of them doubted that with whom I spoke. Rather, the Kremlin’s public opposition to enlargement, in my view, is largely a question of a psychological problem they are undergoing now. Connected with the loss of an empire, wounded pride, and most importantly, an uncertainty about Russia’s place in the world of the 21st century. And were you in their spot, you would be the same in my view, and I would.

(21:50) Where do they go? I had one interesting comment, our conversation was the gone off which was repeated with Lebed, they talked about “they don’t want this NATO expansion they know it’s not in their security interest” and on and on, and said, “well and if you do that we may have to look to China.” And I couldn’t help using the local expression from my state by saying to Zyuganov “lots of luck in your senior year,” you know, “good luck and if that doesn’t work, try Iran.” I’m serious, I said that to them, and they know I knew, they knew everybody knows that that is not an option, and everybody knows every one of those leaders acknowledges and needs, and they resent it, but they need to look West. And the question is: when this is designed, completely shut them out, but not in terms of whether or not this is a direct military security threat. Rather, the Kremlin’s public opposition, as I said, is largely a psychological question and an uncertainty about its place in the world of the 21st century. As part of this uncertainty, most Russian leaders are worried about their country being marginalized, and as a result they are eager to move forward with bilateral relations with the United States.

And let’s not kid ourselves: “never” is a long time, and Russia’s current weaken condition is sure to improve. In my view, that means we must continue to engage Russia politically, militarily, and economically. The Clinton Administration, together with our NATO allies, has already begun to do this. Time does not permit me to go into detail, and most of you know the details of the NATO-Russian Founding Act signed in Paris. Except for me to say at this point that it’s a good start at binding Russia closer to the West and soothing his bruised feelings without giving Moscow a decision-making role in NATO’s core structure like the North Atlantic Council. The purely consultative mandate of the new NATO-Russia Joint Council, however, does not mean that it cannot evolve into a truly valuable mechanism for promoting mutual trust. As Russian officials better understand that NATO is not this rapacious caricature of the Soviet propaganda, but rather a defensive Alliance and a force for security and stability in Europe, their animosity toward the organization may dissipate, and if we do it well, I believe it will. And by working together with the Joint Council, Russia can prove that it is a responsible partner for the West to continue to deal with. Through this mechanism and others, over time, Moscow can come to realize that the enlargement of NATO by moving the zone of stability eastward to Central Europe will in fact increase Russia’s own security. I have an expression that I often use in terms of domestic politics: I never tell another man his politics. So I don’t presume to tell the Russian political leadership what they should think, but I truly believe that it is in Russia’s interest for this zone of stability to be extended rather than nothing to happen.

(39:35) The final matter concerns the enlargement of the European Union. From the early 1990s, the EU firmly proclaimed that NATO enlargement had to precede EU expansion. If accession two years ago of Austria, Finland, and Sweden is accepted, with an E, I’m well aware of the complexity of melding the political, economic, and to some extent the social systems of diverging countries into an EU language and an ever closer Union. But many observers and not a few of my colleagues suspect that, to some extent, the EU has yielded to domestic pressure groups like the farmers, and has used NATO enlargement as a convenient way to postpone the admission of Central and Eastern European countries. To put it crudely, for now, NATO should have to serve as a poor man’s EU. And that’s where I think they’re looking, how many of our European allies are looking at it. Now that NATO has set 1999 date for completion of the first round of enlargement, the EU should move ahead with its own expansion, and the first round target date of 2002 has been cited, and should be met. In the meantime, as President Clinton advocated three weeks ago in the Hague, Western governments and private enterprises should cooperate on investment mechanisms to assist the economies of the new democracies to move rapidly forward. This may sound simplistic, but likely attempts at unequal cost sharing of NATO enlargement, unwillingness for a rational division of labor in Bosnia after mid-1999, and the slow policy of EU expansion which would greatly benefit Eastern Europe, all seem to many senators to be variants of taking the United States for suckers.

[Answering questions]

(1:13:10) [Question] I just thought there was one other piece of unfinished business you said earlier in your discussion, well, what about the Baltics? Well, what about the Baltics? If you could tell us what their prospects are for expanding…

(1:13:20) [Sen. Biden] What about the Baltics and what are their prospects. Their prospects are real, but more distant. And I think—this is me and only me speaking, not speaking for the Administration or anyone else in the United States Congress—and, obviously, to state the obvious, I could be dead wrong about this. I think the one place where the greatest consternation would be caused in the short term for admission, having nothing to do with the merit and preparedness of the country to come in, would be to admit the Baltic States now in terms of NATO-Russian, US-Russian relations.

And if there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance, were it to be tipped, in terms of a vigorous and hostile reaction—I don’t mean military—in Russia, it would be that.

So the way I look at the calculus here, Mr. Eisenhower, is as follows: I believe—and I once was told that to be in this business you must be an optimist, so some would suggest this is too optimistic a view—I believe time, time meaning in the next several years, will solve this to the degree to which Russia becomes comfortable with, and it has demonstrated that, the enlargement of NATO is not only not in their interest, but ultimately in their interest in expanding stability. It’s the degree to which the accession of the Baltics into NATO becomes a reality. I think there’s a correlation between the two. And so it is my expectation, as well as my hope, that in the near term, meaning by the end of this century or shortly thereafter, the Balts will be admitted to NATO if they still are seeking admission to NATO. […]

Quite a surprise, eh? Let’s simplify. Strictly related to NATO’s expansion eastward and Russia’s feelings, Senator Biden’s perception and his opinions are centered around these ideas:

  1. Russia isn’t a threat anymore; the threats to stability in Europe have changed.
  2. The enlargement of NATO would provide stability to Central Europe, by preventing ethnic conflicts and by bringing cooperation between former enemies, similar to what happened to France and Germany. Such things are already happening in anticipation of NATO membership.
  3. The status quo is simply not an option, NATO must expand.
  4. This enlargement must be accompanied by a redefinition of NATO’s mission. The joint effort in Bosnia to which Russia has participated can be seen as a path to this redefinition.
  5. The enlargement of NATO shouldn’t adversely affect the US relationship with Russia.
  6. While few Russians are fond of NATO enlargement, all the politicians and experts he met in Moscow seem to have accepted it.
  7. Kremlin (still Yeltsin at the time) is the only one to publicly oppose it.
  8. Kremlin’s opposition is largely a question of a psychological problem “connected with the loss of an empire, wounded pride, and an uncertainty about Russia’s place in the world of the 21st century.”
  9. He himself, were he in their place, would feel the same! (Gee, Joe would have made a great Russian president.)
  10. The NATO-Russia Joint Council could, however, provide a mechanism for promoting mutual trust.
  11. Moscow might come to realize that the enlargement of NATO by moving the zone of stability eastward to Central Europe will increase Russia’s own security.
  12. The Central and Eastern European countries seeking adhesion to NATO are doing so because the European Union has rejected them. NATO serves as a poor man’s EU.
  13. A hasteful admission of the Baltic States into NATO would be the best legitimate reason, if there ever was one, to trigger a vigorous and hostile reaction, albeit not a military one, from Russia!
  14. However, once Russia becomes comfortable with the idea that the enlargement of NATO is also in their interest, the Baltic States could join NATO.

So, Senator Biden:

  • managed to redefine NATO’s mission in a way that would not oppose Russia, but rather involve it;
  • acknowledged Kremlin’s opposition to NATO’s expansion eastwards, and also its psychological legitimacy;
  • believed, however, that Moscow would eventually realize that this is not a threat, quite the contrary, and thus accept even the expansion of NATO to include the Baltic States.

Cool. Except that Putin happened. And here’s my interpretation of what followed: 

  • The 4th round of NATO enlargement (March 12, 1999): Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland. Reason: fear of Russia.
  • The 5th round of NATO enlargement (March 29, 2004): Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia. Reason: fear of Russia.
  • The 6th round of NATO enlargement (April 1, 2009): Albania, Croatia. Reason: fear of Serbia.
  • The 7th round of NATO enlargement (June 5, 2017): Montenegro. Reason: fear of Serbia.
  • The 8th round of NATO enlargement (March 27, 2020): North Macedonia. Reason: fear of Serbia.
  • The 9th round of NATO enlargement (April 4, 2023): Finland. Reason: fear of Russia.
  • The 10th round of NATO enlargement (March 7, 2024): Sweden. Reason: fear of Russia.

Regardless of what the United States or Sen. Biden believed, everyone was haunted by the specter of the past empire that was their nemesis. For most countries, it was Russia, acting for the defunct USSR; for a few others, it was Serbia, the inheritor of Yugoslavia.

Cooperation with the Russians never really worked

The war in Ukraine

I won’t discuss anything in detail about it. Not since 2014, nor since 2022. I’m not a war historian. Before explaining why I oppose the Kursk incursion, let me state a few facts:

  • We are at war with Russia, whether we admit it or not. Everyone but Ukraine is only the victim of a hybrid war—the part where you’re the target of a cyberattack orchestrated by a foreign government. Even the Havana Syndrome has been linked to the GRU’s assassination Unit 29155.
  • There is such an “Axis of Evil” Moscow-Pyongyang-Beijing-Tehran. That’s a fact.
  • There are many “Soviet moles” in Western Europe’s governments. There have always been. But there are also more recent lackeys of Moscow, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Most of them have no excuse (especially not Orbán), but if we talk about what Brussels calls “far-right sovereignists,” they’re all a creation of stupid EU policies. When in Europe there’s no freedom of speech and no freedom to question Brussels’s policies, it was the Kremlin who helped such political organizations. Brussels’s own ineptitude led to this situation.
  • There is also this scumbag called Gerhard Schröder. Such a guy would have been condemned for high treason in the 1950s. Of course, he just followed the money. And he did have an excuse!

Here’s that excuse: The unbelievably stupid “Wandel durch Handel” political philosophy started in the early 1970s, when Western Germany supplied the Soviet Union with a new pipeline from the USSR to Europe, the actual pipeline being made in Germany with Swedish iron. Willy Brandt even received the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for “his work in improving relations with East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union.” This laid the foundations for the ever-increasing dependency of Western Europe on Russian natural gas! We’re now paying dearly for this “Wandel durch Handel”.

I finally want to mention an individual called John Mearsheimer. Notwithstanding some of his books, which might be really valuable for the political science, he has openly sided with Russia even since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, blaming the United States and its Western allies for the outbreak of the conflict, and for overturning of Ukraine’s “democratically elected” pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. See “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin” (archived copy). Unsurprisingly, in Mearsheimer’s view, NATO and the EU are largely to blame for the current war in Ukraine, too. As he’s not as retarded as Tucker Carlson, I can only assume that Mearsheimer is probably an asshole paid by Moscow and that he very well knows what he’s doing. How could the European Union constitute a threat for Russia, you fucking shithead?

I only mentioned this guy because I’ll cite him in from a publication where he disapproves of Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk region. As even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day, he manages to articulate a sound argument, as far as I can tell. So there. And read again my answer to “the Mearsheimer argument.”

The Kursk Invasion (Part I)

Kindly labeled by Wikipedia as the August 2024 Kursk Oblast incursion, this is literally such a stupid thing, that I can’t even.

Some pro-Kursk arguments, first:

I disagree with all of them. The first of the above articles makes some completely misguided comparisons. The others are like Baron Münchhausen pulling himself up out of the mire by his own hair tuft*. Or, to be honest, it’s war propaganda. If and when Putin gets his ass kicked, it won’t be because of this kind of spin. It will be because Ukraine will have gotten more guns and aircraft, and because more Ukrainians will have died. If they’ll have enough of them, what with four and a half million runaways across Europe.

The public opinion was taken by surprise by the Ukrainian incursion. And now they are trying to glorify it. Does it sound kosher to you? Not really. It’s not even halal. War is not a chess game. It’s also not like a game of Go, where we count each side’s territory and tell the difference.

*CULTURAL NOTE: In continental Europe, Rudolf Erich Raspe’s original Munchausen (full text), published in English, despite the author being German, is less known than its retelling by Gottfried August Bürger (full text, with proper spelling: Münchhausen), which is often but wrongly assumed to be its author. The German version was translated in languages such as French (a famous translation by Théophile Gautier fils, illustrated by Gustave Doré) and Romanian. The English and Continental versions of the text continued to diverge, with the second English-language volume of an anonymous author being sometimes added to some translations: I’ve found an Italian “Raspe & Bürger” version that actually translated a 2-volume Raspe edition, with very little of Bürger’s contribution, if at all. The baron’s adventures in North America do not exist in Bürger’s version. Baron Münchhausen’s pulling himself up out of the mire by his own hair tuft is Bürger’s own addition: »Ein andres Mal wollte ich über einen Morast setzen, der mir anfänglich nicht so breit vorkam, als ich ihn fand, da ich mitten im Sprunge war. Schwebend in der Luft wendete ich daher wieder um, wo ich hergekommen war, um einen größern Anlauf zu nehmen. Gleichwohl sprang ich auch zum zweiten Male noch zu kurz und fiel nicht weit vom andern Ufer bis an den Hals in den Morast. Hier hätte ich unfehlbar umkommen müssen, wenn nicht die Stärke meines eigenen Armes mich an meinem eigenen Haarzopfe, samt dem Pferde, welches ich fest zwischen meine Knie schloß, wieder herausgezogen hätte.« (Viertes Kapitel: Abenteuer des Freiherrn von Münchhausen im Kriege gegen die Türken)

My personal opinion is that it is more rational to kick the Russians out of the Donbas than to conquer some Russian shithole that nobody bothered to defend.

Initially, the Americans did not know how to disguise their bewilderment and how to hide the fact that they, too, were at a loss as to the purpose of the Ukrainian incursion. Olaf Scholz believed that the Kursk operation was “limited in time and space”, but in the allied countries to the east of Ukraine, the “experts” knew it all: Syrskyi (i.e. Ukraine) is preparing for a possible “Trump peace”, which requires you to have which territories to give in exchange. I mean, beyond the tactical strike, here is the strategic importance of the whole thing.

That may sound good in theory, except that NO ONE is going to return what they stole from Ukraine in exchange for a completely worthless piece of territory, other than the fact that it belongs to Russia.

Even some of these supporters of the incursion into Kursk admitted that the Ukrainians went in like a hot knife through butter because there was no army in the Kursk region, only the FSB, which was asleep or drunk (or both).

It is interesting to note that, beyond his delayed and inadequate reaction, Putler has conveyed to his subjects that the Ukrainian presence in Kursk is of a lasting nature. The message is easy to decode: Russia will not send valuable troops to that region in order to continue to focus on the Donbas. I don’t know if the Ukrainians got the message. Their friends and allies apparently didn’t.

The Ukrainians are really starting to bore me. They’re conquering crappy towns in the Kursk region and demolishing statues of Lenin. They think they’re gaining leverage against Putin in a possible negotiation. They won my ass.

Let them take back what’s theirs! But Ukrainians on the streets are talking shit when they’re asked about it, and don’t rule out a march “all the way to Moscow!” Yeah, sure. Goddammit, you’re not able to recover your stolen regions in the East (not to mention Crimea)! That’s ridiculous; it’s embarrassing; it’s dumb. Zelenskyy got soft in the head lately.

Supposedly, this action eased the pressure on Ukraine by diverting Russian troops to the Kursk region. You fools, with what forces have you conquered parts of the Kursk region, if not with troops that instead of fighting the Russians at home and driving them out, dead or alive, went to Timbuktu (so to speak), because Oleksandr Syrskyi sent them there? You mofos, if you’ve got troops to waste in Russia, why don’t you liberate your own fucking country?

Anyway, I don’t think this will get Putin to negotiate. On the contrary, it will make him even more emboldened and send even more cannon fodder to the front. Oh, maybe this will create internal instability when more and more Russians are recruited and sent to the front? That’s wishful thinking, methinks. Putin will fight to the last dead Russian soldier. Or North Korean, Nepalese, whatever, ’cause I hear he’s got some of those, too.

Only an idiot, when he can’t get back what’s rightfully his, does that. “You kidnapped my wife and kids? I’ll kidnap your cat! If you return my family, I’ll give you your cat back.” (Applause.)

I predict that such actions by Kyiv will undermine the support it enjoys from Western public opinion. They have already lost me. I want Putin dead; I want the lost regions to return to Ukraine, but beyond that, cut the crap of glorifying the brilliance of the Ukrainian armed forces. The Ukrainians have also lied big time when they had the chance. À la guerre comme à la guerre, no doubt about it…

On a venting note, I myself got tired of all this Zelenskyy, Zelenskiy, Zelensky, or whatever the correct transliteration of the Ukrainian name is. Oh, it’s Kyiv, not Kiev. Just like Erdoğan likes us to write Türkiye instead of Turkey. In English! You know what? I don’t fucking care! I can write Beijing, Peking, or Pekin, if I want to. To me, the former Soviet country is still Gruziya, not Georgia. Georgia is a U.S. state. Today’s countries are like snowflakes. They need therapy.

The Kursk Invasion (Part II)

It’s time for the Mearsheimer episode. But it’s not just him.

It has to do with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a fishy think tank based in Washington, D.C., founded in 2019. Its declared mission is to promote a foreign policy that moves away from endless war and prioritizes diplomacy, peace, and restraint. To do so, they challenge the official U.S. foreign policy. No, Mearsheimer is not in their board, but he’s sometimes asked on international conflicts, and it’s not difficult to imagine how anti-American he can be.

I only found out about his contribution after it was mentioned by TASS: Expert calls Kiev’s attack on Kursk ‘strategic blunder which will accelerate its defeat’. Various news outlets, mostly the pro-Kremlin ones, have relayed this assessment.

Here’s the full article: Aug. 15, 2024: Symposium: What does Ukraine’s incursion into Russia really mean? Ten experts gauge the short and long term effects of Kyiv’s bold invasion on the war. From the ten experts, I’ll cite nine, selectively:

● Jasen J. Castillo, Co-Director, Albritton Center for Grand Strategy, George H.W. Bush School of Government, Texas A&M University:

In the short term, this is a public relations boost for Ukraine and a morale blow to Russia. … My worry is that in the longer term, Ukraine, which is facing dangerous shortfalls in manpower and equipment, will deplete elite units that would have been needed elsewhere. In a war of attrition, manpower and equipment are essential. Ukraine’s attack reminds me of Germany’s audacious Western offensive in 1944 that surprised the Allies, made gains, and ended with a defeat at the Battle of the Bulge, which then wasted manpower and equipment it needed months later on the Eastern Front.

● Ivan Eland, Director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty:

Conducting offensive operations is usually much more costly in personnel and equipment than being on defense, so is it worth it for Ukraine to divert forces from already thin defense lines to go on a risky offensive with only nebulous benefits? Russia’s offensive is already making headway, and because Russia outnumbers and outguns Ukraine, it may not need to denude its attack forces in Ukraine to defend Russian territory. Ukraine indeed may desire to occupy Russian territory to eventually trade Ukrainian-occupied Russian territory for Russian-occupied Ukrainian land in any truce negotiations, but Ukraine risks being surrounded by superior forces.

● Mark Episkopos, Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University:

The Kursk incursion seems to have been premised on the assumption that Ukraine can exploit Russia’s thinly manned border defenses to seize large swathes of land — including the Kursk nuclear power plant — in the first 48-72 hours, presenting Moscow with a fait accompli that can be used as a bargaining chip to quickly force a ceasefire and potentially even set the stage for peace talks on Ukraine’s terms. But Russia appears to have thwarted the AFU’s attempts to significantly expand its initial beachhead, and Ukraine lacks the long-term capacity to hold even the modest territory that it is currently contesting.

Efforts to keep open the Kursk pocket are unlikely to yield any strategic benefits for Ukraine and will demand a massive sustained investment of troops and equipment that may weaken Ukrainian defenses, inadvertently creating opportunities for Russian forces along the lines of contact in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

● Lyle Goldstein, Director of Asia Development, Defense Priorities, and visiting Professor at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University:

No doubt the operation has served its primary end to embarrass the Kremlin and so dramatically alter the conventional narrative on the war. Still, legitimate questions can be asked regarding the wisdom of the new offensive. Casualties for the attacking side are inevitably high, especially in circumstances when Russia retains a substantial firepower advantage. This may, in turn, create grave weaknesses on other part of the battle line that Russian forces could exploit. Most informed American strategists had been counseling Ukraine in 2024 to stay on the defensive to preserve its forces and thus adopt a “long war” strategy. Nor is it clear that such a symbolic gambit will make a peace easier to negotiate.

● John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute:

Ukraine’s invasion (of Kursk) was a major strategic blunder, which will accelerate its defeat. The key determinant of success in a war of attrition is the casualty-exchange ratio, not capturing territory, which Western commentators obsess over. The casualty-exchange ratio in the Kursk offensive decisively favors Russia for two reasons. First, it has caused relatively few Russian casualties because Ukraine’s army effectively overran undefended territory. Second, once alerted to the attack, Moscow quickly brought massive airpower to bear against the advancing Ukrainian troops, who were in the open and easy to strike. Unsurprisingly, the attacking forces lost many soldiers and a huge proportion of their equipment.

To make matters worse, Kyiv removed top-notch combat units from the front lines in eastern Ukraine — where they are desperately needed — and made them part of the Kursk strike force. This move is tilting the already lopsided casualty-exchange ratio on that critically important front further in Russia’s favor. It is no wonder — given what a foolish idea the Kursk incursion is — that the Russians were caught by surprise.

● Sumantra Maitra, Director of research and outreach, the American Ideas Institute, author of “Sources of Russian Aggression”:

If Ukraine taking the war to Russia was to bring Russia to negotiate from a position of weakness, it will fail, simply because Ukrainians don’t have the manpower to sustain this push and subsequent occupation. It is a good PR victory for Ukrainian backers in the West, and it shows how catastrophically backward, incompetent, and Soviet, Russian strategic thinking still is, but the Russian advantage in numbers will remain.

What it also might do is harden the Russian position, embolden the hardliners in the Russian government, and dissuade Putin from pushing for any negotiations for peace, especially after a new administration is elected in the U.S. Which, maybe, was the actual aim of the Ukrainian government, or whoever is advising them. In scuttling that particular process, Ukraine has been successful.

● Rajan Menon, non-resident senior fellow at Defense Priorities and the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair Emeritus in International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York/City University of New York:

Ukraine’s Kursk gambit has been widely praised — appropriately. But its enduring success remains uncertain. Whether Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi seeks to retain Russian territory to trade in future negotiations; to divert Russian forces from the Donetsk battlefields, where they have been advancing; or to make Russians feel some of the pain Ukrainians have since 2022, his ability to achieve one or more of these goals remains uncertain.

Once Russia mounts a persistent counterattack, will Ukraine muster the logistical capabilities, troop numbers, firepower, and air defenses required to sustain its soldiers in Kursk? Will Russia be forced to redeploy forces from Donetsk (so far it has used reserves and troops from the Kharkiv and Kupiansk fronts)? Or will Russia foil Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, transforming the current euphoria into a blame-game in which Ukraine’s leaders are attacked for dispatching to Kursk troops that were badly needed elsewhere?

● Peter Rutland, professor of government and the Colin and Nancy Campbell Chair for Global Issues and Democratic Thought at Wesleyan University:

The Ukrainian incursion is the most significant challenge to face Putin since the Wagner mutiny of June 2023. It highlights one of the central claims of Evgeny Prigozhin — the corruption and incompetence of the Russian army’s commanders, who did not foresee the attack, and who have been slow to expel the Ukrainian invaders. It refutes some of the central themes in Kremlin propaganda — that Russia is winning the war, that Putin is protecting Russians from a hostile world. It has also called the bluff on Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons in the event of escalation of the fighting onto Russian territory. Irrespective of the military costs and benefits of the raid, there is no doubt that it has been a political coup for Kyiv.

● Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Yale University:

Ukrainian forces have reportedly seized about 1000 square kilometers of poorly defended Russian territory. Russia’s total land mass is more than 17 million square kilometers, which means that Ukraine now “controls” 0.00588% of Russia.

By comparison, Russian forces currently occupy roughly 20 percent of Ukraine and the failed Ukrainian offensive last summer shows how difficult it will be for Ukraine to retake these areas. The incursion may be a minor embarrassment for Putin (as well as additional evidence that Russia is far too weak to invade the rest of Europe), but Ukraine’s fate will be determined by what happens in Ukraine, and not by this operation.

Do all these people look like they were paid by the Kremlin, or like useful idiots? Really?

But if Zelenskyy wants us to believe that Kursk is the way to victory, who am I to contradict him?

The “red lines”

If there was a useful purpose to the Kursk incursion, it wasn’t any of the following claims:

Undoubtedly, Putin has been humiliated. This major blow to Moscow—the first time Russia has been invaded since Operation Barbarossa!—shattered to pieces what was left of Putin’s attempt to project an image as Russia’s protector. OK, so what? Will this bring his demise? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Even if Putin disappears, there are many imperialists in Moscow. Just listen to Sergey Lavrov, Maria Zakharova, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Solovyov, Margarita Simonyan, Dmitry Kiselyov, and many others. Despite being probably aware that Russia is anything but a democracy, and notwithstanding the fear of being conscripted, many Russians still support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The narrative of Ukraine being “Nazi” started in the 1940s, and such a person as Stepan Bandera did exist. The propaganda only intensified after 2014, but it was always there, right in the history textbooks.

And the incursion in Kursk is bound to intensify the anti-Ukraine feelings of many Russians. I don’t deny that it would also decrease their faith in Putin, but this is a different story altogether. I cannot decide whether attacks on Russian territory, especially as civilians cannot be spared, are morally justified or not. When Russia sends drones to Kyiv, they’re murderers, and indeed they are. But when Ukraine sends drones to Moscow, they’re… I don’t know… saints?

Mykhailo Podolyak, one of Zelenskyy’s advisers, admitted that the invasion of Russia was a provocation meant to prove that Moscow’s “red lines” are empty talk.

Side note: Romanian-language articles about Podolyak’s interviews: part one, part two. Plus a Russian-language video interview with Romanian subtitles. Guess what? Podolyak confirms the assertions of a former chief of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), Silviu Predoiu: it was precisely a provocation to demystify the so-called “red lines.” Nonetheless, a Romanian historian with expertise in Russia, Armand Goșu (he’s no Mark Galeotti, but a rabid hater of Russia, while a historian should be objective), declared (also here) Predoiu “and his colleagues in the secret services” to be pro-Kremlin! This is neo-McCarthyism, if there ever was such a term. Predoiu tried to defend his stance, but nobody cared: he was labeled as pro-Kremlin, and the blame is there to stay.

The “red lines” were constantly invoked by Washington and NATO to justify their limited military help. Not such long-range missiles, as Moscow might get angry and push “the red button.” Not F-16s, because this would breach a “red line.” OK, you can have this and that, but you cannot use them to attack Russia proper, but only the territory that Russia took from you, including Crimea.

So Kyiv now wants any and all conditions and limitations regarding the use of weaponry and aircraft to be left. Putin has no guts to push “the red button,” so there are no more “red lines,” full stop.

If this was the sole purpose of the Kursk incursion, this is ass-fuckery at its best. A useless sacrifice of one’s own military, with weakening of one’s defenses, only for that?! And don’t expect the population of the occupied Russian territory to thank you!

Meanwhile, Czech president sees no connection between Russian successes near Pokrovsk and Ukraine’s operation in Kursk Oblast. For fuck’s sake, are they all fucking retarded?!

With no “red lines” whatsoever, Ukraine Seeks UK Green Light to Strike Moscow and St. Petersburg Targets With Storm Shadow Missiles. The Netherlands allows Ukraine to use F-16s to strike targets on Russian territory. Additionally, the Commander of the Dutch Armed Forces refers to Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region, calling the operation “brilliant!” Podolyak expects Ukraine-made ballistic missiles to have a range of 600-700 km, thus being able to hit Moscow. Only Italy Prohibits the Use of Its Weapons for Strikes on Russia, claiming that “we are not at war with Russia, NATO is not at war with Russia.”

Well, we are at war with Russia! Or rather, Russia is at war with us. Intelligence on a possible threat of Russian sabotage action against Geilenkirchen NATO air base. Russia is ramping up sabotage across Europe. An alleged plot to assassinate Germany’s top weapons manufacturer, and phone taps on a high-level Luftwaffe call. This is Europe today.

Red lines or not, NATO has lost the opportunity window to prove that they have cojones. At the very beginning of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they should have used NATO aviation to bomb the Russian military within Ukraine. Right then, on February 24, 2022. Everyone knows that the CIA has helped Ukraine’s military between 2014 and 2022 to prepare for an upcoming Russian invasion. They did know about the invasion! When Zelenskyy, a couple of days before the invasion, insisted that there’d be no invasion, this lie had a triple purpose: ❶ To make Russia believe that Ukraine is unprepared. ❷ To avoid a mass panic among the population. ❸ To prevent a mass exodus from Ukraine, especially of those in age of being conscripted (this later occurred anyway).

But why didn’t the United States establish small, symbolic military units in Ukraine, alongside new airbases in Poland and Romania? This could have been accomplished after the election of Zelenskyy in 2019. Should they have done that, Russians would have had to attack U.S. forces during the invasion of Ukraine, and you don’t attack the United States without being annihilated! Bombers should have been deployed by the closest NATO countries, provided that such bases had been created. But the preparedness had been deficient. 

Mine is a naive scenario, but better than what we have today. If the United States has had the cynical plan to test the Russian’s military capabilities in a proxy war, the result is catastrophic. NATO has proven that its member states have low ammunition stocks and insufficient manufacturing pace. This might be a lost cause à la Vietnam, a future frozen conflict à la Korea, and a decade-long division similar to the two post-WWII German states.

Post-war Russia will never be the same, says Podolyak. No kidding? But what about Ukraine? What about Europe? Should we, “the Nazis,” flee to Argentina?

Ukraine was no little lamb

Throughout history, Ukraine wasn’t necessarily a peaceful, benevolent state. Neither was Poland, which had imperial ambitions since the Middle Age, starting from early clashes with German states, the Bohemian Kingdom, and the Kievan Rus’, continuing with the 1386 Union with Lithuania and the 1569 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to other imperial ambitions in Eastern Europe. Poland frequently clashed with the Ottoman Empire, the Tsardom of Russia, and Sweden. While fighting the Ottoman Empire, the Poles were seeking control over the Moldavian and Wallachian principalities (on John III Sobieski, Negruzzi’s Sobieski și românii is a picturesque, albeit anecdotal, count).

To date, Poland and Ukraine still have territorial issues and unsolved historical events. Don’t get fooled by Poland seemingly being Ukraine’s best ally: Poland would do anything to weaken Russia! The other day, Polish PM Donald Tusk suggested that Ukraine cannot join the EU before resolving its historical issues with Poland. Ukraine’s FM Dmytro Kuleba replied, invoking Operation Vistula, when the Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities forcefully resettled 150,000 Ukrainians. Donald Tusk then admitted that, “I know that this truth is not black and white, that on the Polish side there aren’t only angels and on the Ukrainian side criminals, but all the more, a reliable assessment of what happened during World War II, and after it are necessary elements to establishing good Polish-Ukrainian relations.”

Remember Senator Biden having said in 1997 that, “in anticipation of NATO membership, several Central and Eastern European countries have recently settled longstanding disputes … Hungary and Romania, Slovenia and Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania, Romania and Ukraine, and so on”? Well, there you have it. This is Central and Eastern Europe for you.

If Poland wasn’t particularly friendly with Romanians centuries ago, Ukraine wasn’t friendly at all towards Romania until very recently. The Romanian-Ukrainian relations became friendly only after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine!

A few examples:

  • In June 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania, which led to the cession of Northern Bukovina, along with Bessarabia and Herța region, to the USSR. Northern Bukovina, Herța, Southern Bessarabia, and the Ismail County were subsequently incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This wasn’t strictly Ukraine’s fault, but after the demise of the USSR, we expected a more favorable treatment of the Romanian minorities in the now independent Ukraine. It wasn’t the case. Ukraine had frequently switched between granting more rights to national minorities, and taking back such rights. Implementing the 2017 Law on Education, effective on Jan. 1, 2021, all ethnic minorities of Ukraine, including Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Poles, and Russians, started being taught everything exclusively in Ukrainian. Previously, they had the right of using their mother tongue in the first four years of elementary school. In practice, to please the EU, an amendment has been adopted, to the effect that education in EU languages, therefore also in Romanian, benefits from exemptions from the general provision, namely that “education in Ukraine is exclusively in the Ukrainian language.” In other words, Romanian would be privileged over Russian, for example. However, since Sept. 2023, even “the schools of national minorities, who speak a language of the European Union” will switch to teaching in the Ukrainian language. The mother tongue will be taught as a language, but all other subjects are to be taught in Ukrainian. As a tiny concession, since November 2023, Ukraine admitted that the language in question is called Romanian, not Moldavian (the same way there is no Austrian language, nor are there Canadian and Australian languages). I’m not sure about the current situation. The published form of the law states: “Persons belonging to national minorities of Ukraine are guaranteed the right on education in municipal educational institutions of pre-school and primary education in the language of the national minority they belong to and in the official language of the State.” The exact implementation of this provision is unclear, and I can’t see anything differentiating EU languages from Russian.
  • The Ukrainian vessel Rostok capsized on September 2, 1991, in the Sulina channel of the Danube Delta. This event led to a significant obstruction in the channel, which is a key navigational route connecting the Danube River to the Black Sea. It wasn’t until 2001 that the Rostok was finally removed, restoring full navigational capabilities to the channel. This has helped Ukraine promote the development of its Bystroye Canal (not channel, because it’s mostly man-made) as an alternate deep-water route from the Danube to the Black Sea.
  • The Romanian-Ukrainian conflict regarding Snake Island (also known as Serpents’ Island; Острів Зміїний in Ukrainian) remains an unsolved territorial dispute between Romania and Ukraine over the ownership of this Black Sea island. A small island situated approximately 35 kilometers off the coast of the Danube Delta, Snake Island has a strategic importance due to its location and the potential for oil and gas reserves in the surrounding waters. Romania has legitimate claims over the island based on historical documents and the fact that it was part of Romania before World War II. However, Ukraine asserts its rights over the island based on its inclusion in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Soviet era and subsequent inheritance by independent Ukraine. In 2004, Romania filed a case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to resolve the maritime boundary dispute with Ukraine, which included the status of Snake Island. The ICJ ruled in 2009 that Snake Island should be considered an island, not a rock, which has implications for the delimitation of the maritime boundary. However, the court did not rule on the sovereignty of the island itself. The ICJ’s 2009 ruling gave Romania a larger portion of the continental shelf, but not the Snake Island. Should I add that the legal dispute with Ukraine wasn’t in any way amicable, and that they didn’t necessarily play fair?

So the “new friendship” with Ukraine is based on having a common enemy, Russia, not on being on genuinely good neighborly terms.

The old Ukrainian folktale called “The Mitten” is just that: a folktale. Accommodating various ethnicities under the same roof is not easy in these parts of the world. We’re also very territorial.

We can be partners in NATO or in the EU, without this meaning, like Biden thought in 1997, that this would solve our differences. Romania and Hungary still aren’t best pals. Greece and Turkey aren’t, either. The problem of Northern Cyprus has zero chances of being solved. But Turkey had to be in NATO, otherwise it would have been on Russia’s side (take a look at the map to understand Turkey’s geopolitical importance).

Otherwise, Hungary is nationalistic. Poland is nationalistic. Ukraine is nationalistic. The Baltic States are nationalistic. These parts of Europe are nuts. The only difference between them and Russia is that they don’t invade other countries, and that they’re not dictatorships—although Hungary is not quite right, and the abortive rights in Poland are minimal. But at least you don’t have to fear windows, cups of tea, stuff like that. You can’t commit suicide by shooting yourself in the back several times while falling from the fifth floor after having drown yourself in a bathtub with no water situated in the basement.

The uselessness of Kursk

At some point, this would have to end. It is a war of attrition involving the limited human resources of both parts, and the limited weaponry of everyone. If Russia is the new naked emperor, NATO also came out of it pretty battered: Its arsenal can so easily be depleted! Sure thing, we thought the 21st century to be one of the triumph of reason over force. Oh, did you really think that? With DPRK and Iran being the way they are, and not only them? (Don’t start me on Israel.)

We still don’t know what “winning the war” means in this case. I really don’t know. But how could this war end?

❶ Ukraine winning back all its Eastern territories, including Crimea? Why, sure. Then what, Moldova will get Transnistria back, now that Russia is in shambles and those independentists lose their support? I want to remind you that both regions were “gifts” from the Soviets: Crimea didn’t legitimately belong to Ukraine before 1954; and Transnistria was part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine prior to 1940, only to be incorporated into the newly created Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic once the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania. Oh, I forgot. Once everything gets so graciously solved, Putin is replaced with a real democrat, the FSB commits seppuku en masse, and pigs start flying really low when rain is approaching. Otherwise, there is a pig shuttle service to the Moon and back. On Tuesdays.

❷ A stalemate leading to a forever division of Ukraine? That’s more likely. Ukraine might then to become a NATO member from 2025, but with Article 5 applying only to the territory currently under Ukrainian control. The border between Ukraine and Russia will be like the DMZ between South Korea and the DPRK.

❸ How about Russia winning? Say, Trump gets elected. The military help to Ukraine decreases. Ukraine is depleted of forces, and conscripts are few and far between. (As previously said, Putin will fight until the last Russian dies.) The war of drones and of missiles doesn’t only have Ukraine as a possible winner. Then, there is Belarus, which strongly supports Russia, at least at the top level. Putin won’t recreate Novorossiya, but Russia would want to incorporate Ukraine’s eastern regions, if not the entire portion east from Kyiv. Maybe Kyiv itself will be divided into Eastern Kyiv and Western Kyiv.

In which of these scenarios Russia gives everything back to Ukraine because of the territorial gains of Ukraine in the Kursk region? In the first one, right. But the first one is the least probable of all!

I have as much optimism regarding a favorable solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict as I have in a two-state solution or to a peaceful cohabitation between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in Israel. 

To end on a jocular note

Once upon a time, there was a Soviet writer named Alexander Melentyevich Volkov. His most famous writings belonged to the Magic Land series. First, The Wizard of the Emerald City (Волшебник Изумрудного города), published in 1939 and revised in 1959, followed by Urfin Juice and his Wooden Soldiers (Урфин Джюс и его деревянные солдаты), published in 1963, and four other sequels.

The series started as a blatant plagiarism of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Well, such things happened in the USSR. Aleksey Tolstoy retold Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio as The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Burattino (let’s use the proper Italian spelling with “tt”). I really liked Burattino much more than Pinocchio. But, heck, I also liked Gottfried August Bürger’s Münchhausen, while completely ignoring Rudolf Erich Raspe’s original Munchausen (with stupid single “h” spelling at that).

But Volkov’s real strike of genius was Urfin Juice and his Wooden Soldiers (no English version, sorry). This second volume became quite popular in parts of Eastern Europe. In Eastern Germany, it was translated as Der schlaue Urfin und seine Holzsoldaten. In Romania, as Urfin și soldații săi de lemn. The only valuable editions are those illustrated by Leonid Vladimirsky. (He also illustrated the 1953 edition of Burattino.) So, please ignore the more recent Romanian edition that features retarded, manga-like drawings.

Urfin Juice is a contradictory character, starting as a grumpy and resentful carpenter who discovers a substance with which he can bring objects to life: the Powder of Life. Isn’t this somewhat similar to Geppetto’s giving life to Pinocchio? Well, yes and no. Urfin’s use of the Powder of Life is manipulative and self-serving. Was he really a carpenter, or a KGB operative?

Just like Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Urfin Juice becomes power-hungry. I won’t tell you the whole story, as it’s a complex one. Just a few ideas.

So Putin, I mean Urfin, gave life to soldiers and generals…

He also created the KGB…

And eventually his army was ready!

His army was a fierce one as it attacked Ukraine…

But also extremely dumb!

It persecuted innocent people because they needed to be “denazified”:

One day, however, under smart guidance and good preparations, this evil army started being trapped…

And I mean trapped!

Even the worst of them:

The once glorious army was now on the run:

They really had no chance:

The Russian army, I mean Urfin’s army, was in shambles:

The dictator was defeated!

What remained of his army was transformed into a benevolent corps (not corpse!):

The real ending is uncertain

What’s wrong with such stories, apart from being just naive stories for kids?

Reality is worse than any story. The situation in Ukraine is extremely dire. It’s not something we should take lightly. The crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine are unprecedented in post-WWII Europe. There is no way such murderers can redeem themselves. The entire chain of command, down to the most low-grade soldiers, is responsible for countless atrocities. Even if a positive outcome were possible, the “deputinization” of Russia would be more difficult than the denazification of Germany after WWII.

Ukrainians, will all their faults, have been fantastic! No, not those who ran away, often bribing the border police, sometimes being mobsters or traffickers. I’m exclusively thinking of those who stayed back home, although it’s understandable that Ukrainians from the Eastern regions, which have been the most affected by the Russians’ criminal attacks, wanted to leave. Ironically, Russia has alienated the Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the first place!

From day one, Zelenskyy surprised everyone. The Ukrainian Army surprised everyone. Amidst an everlasting war, Ukraine’s economy still performs pretty much as usual, which is miraculous, given that the corruption is still abundant in Ukraine. Heck, even the Ukrainian Railways are running smoother than the neighboring Romanian Railways, and the only country at war of the two is Ukraine! Soon, even Deutsche Bahn might perform on average worse than the Ukrainian Railways, if the degradation of DB continues.

The way the Ukrainians have adapted to design and manufacture advanced drones and missiles is praiseworthy. NATO’s members, mired in bureaucracy and “modern management” policies, seemed rather moribund in contrast.

The West disappointed. “Red lines” or not, NATO failed to provide the necessary military support needed by Ukraine. In other proxy wars, the United States hasn’t been so shy. It might have been because in those wars, the Russians were only “advisors” and usually not on the battlefield, while here they’re the direct enemy force. However, Russian forces outside Russia, and not in international waters or international airspace, are legitimate targets if they threaten a sovereign country. As crazy as he is, Putin wouldn’t have pushed the “red button” if NATO offered direct support to Ukraine, including air support, from day one.

By behaving like cowards, the Americans and the Europeans have actually created the bombastic rhetoric of Putin and Solovyov and Zakharova and of the other scumbags. They talk a lot because NATO whines a lot. “Don’t do this, as the Tsar might get angry.” Oh, so he’s calm and sensible now?!

But mistakes have been made by Ukraine. I didn’t count how many high officials, including high military commanders, have been sacked by Zelenskyy. The might have been corrupt, incompetent, or both. But the overall image is of a struggle to find the right people for the job.

I’m no military expert, but strategic and tactic errors have been made too. In my view, the Kursk incursion is such a mistake. Further going eastwards toward Moscow would only make things worse. Technically, an invasion of Russia isn’t quite the best way of fighting Russia invading you, and it would also legitimize Putin’s claim that Ukraine is the aggressor. This is a really thin line they’re walking. If, in my view, NATO were justified to bomb Russian forces in Ukraine (yet they didn’t), using NATO weaponry to attack Russian territory, including Moscow, is a gray area from all possible standpoints. No matter how much some Russians might hate Putin, they will all genuinely hate Ukraine if Russia proper is under attack. No, “make them feel it on their own skin” is not the proper approach. We’re not in WWII, and we’re not advancing towards Moscow to depose Putler. Also, by today’s moral standards, unjustified civilian collateral damages are not acceptable. Dresden and Hamburg, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and similar operations are unacceptable. Even if Russia as a whole would be the evil itself, we cannot take it as a huge Gaza Strip and start bombing everyone. (By “we” I actually mean “they, the Ukrainians.”)

It’s enough already that many Russian soldiers are driven to suicide by the Kremlin’s propaganda. With torture being prevalent in Russia, it’s no wonder that they believed it. Let’s hope something will happen, and Russians will start revolting against their Establishment, not against Ukraine and NATO. As unbelievable as it seems, many of today’s Russians sincerely believe, just as they did in Brezhnev’s time, that America wants to destroy Russia. 

What I fear the most is the depletion of Ukraine’s military capabilities, and the West going even more stupid than it already is. For the second part, take a look at how they interpret the winning by the far-right AfD of regional elections in Thuringia: as Putin’s next coup! Once again, the far-right European parties are not Putin’s friends! They are the result of the suicidal immigration, asylum, and public security policies enacted by the EU and at country levels. When it’s politically incorrect, when not downright illegal, to discuss and question such policies, this is what you get. Sure enough, Putin’s Russia took each and every opportunity to weaken the collective West, but whose fault is this? Not Putin’s, but Brussels’s. And I hate Western gross propaganda as much as I hate Putin’s gross propaganda!

This is why I don’t believe that NATO will do all that’s necessary for Ukraine to win. NATO, and its European and American members, can barely survive their own stupidity. I won’t discuss internal politics of the United States or individual EU countries, but we’re living in times when only the most retarded individuals are called to rule over the equally retarded populace.

If anything, the duo Poland-Ukraine, possibly extended to include the Baltic States, might become the only belligerent force to actively oppose Russia. The Poles will never forget Katyn. Poland has ‘duty’ to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine, says minister:

Poland and other countries bordering Ukraine have a “duty” to shoot down incoming Russian missiles before they enter their airspace despite the opposition of Nato, the Polish foreign minister has said.

Radosław Sikorski told the Financial Times in an interview that Warsaw had an obligation to ensure the safety of its citizens irrespective of fears that interceptions over Ukrainian territory could embroil the Atlantic alliance in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“Membership in Nato does not trump each country’s responsibility for the protection of its own airspace — it’s our own constitutional duty,” Sikorski said.

“I’m personally of the view that, when hostile missiles are on course of entering our airspace, it would be legitimate self-defence [to strike them] because once they do cross into our airspace, the risk of debris injuring someone is significant.” …

However, Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing Nato secretary-general, rejected the proposal, saying it risked the alliance “becoming part of the conflict”.

Sikorski insisted on his country’s right to intercept after a suspected Russian drone crossed into Poland on August 26. …

Other missiles have landed in Poland since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, while Russian drones also recently strayed into Romania’s airspace.

Sikorski said the risk of Polish casualties increased the closer a missile was to its target when intercepted, so it was preferable to shoot it down at a higher altitude over Ukraine.

There’s also the danger of China’s imperialism in the South China Sea, which is by no means limited to Taiwan. The Philippines are now a hot area. But even as Taiwan’s president wants to treat economic security as national security, what is the West doing? The West is still relying on China for most everyday products! This is more than insane, this is outright suicidal! And the moving back of industrial production to the US and the EU won’t happen anytime soon, except for a few crucial fields, such as semiconductors. Kamala Harris made it clear that taxing imports from China would mean the consumer will pay more, which she can’t accept. She thought she fought Trump, but she fought national security at that. So there’s no incentive to manufacture products in the US, as long as it’s cheaper to make them in China. Even if in the long run, the manufacturing of more and more products would “return home,” this will be strongly opposed. That’s because such products will be increasingly expensive. Such a move would need a radical change in consumers’ habits from “buying more and buying often” to “buying quality products that last longer,” provided that someone offers such products. Even so, people should understand that they need to work in factories instead of moving a mouse and making video conferences. I don’t see the TikTokers doing that; they seek quick enrichment, either as social media influencers, or as cryptominers, if not stock exchange speculators. Unless, of course, they’re Europeans from the Last Generation, in which case they deface paintings, block roads and airports, because their goddess is that stupid bitch who goes by the name of Greta Cuntberg.

Our society is doomed, with or without Putin’s Russia. We might be facing another Fall of the Western Roman Empire. There are 210 different theories on why Rome fell, but contemporary views include among causes: climate change, migrational crisis, political crisis, financial crisis, social crisis. It wasn’t me who wrote that Wikipedia page! Either way, is any of these possible causes something we don’t have today? Another Wikipedia page mentions, as an underlying cause, a greatly weakened army. Wow. Doesn’t this sound like the NATO of the last decades to you?

But we have one more reason for the demise of our Western civilization: the fact that we now prioritize gender equality (or is it sexual equality?) over competency. Instead of assigning the most competent person for a job, we want it to be a woman (it’s not clear whether the biological sex is what matters, or the self-declared gender). Vox: Ursula von der Leyen is piling pressure on EU countries to nominate women for the next European Commission: “The EU has the legal obligation to ensure equality between women and men and to apply gender mainstreaming to EU policies. This goal cannot be achieved without equal representation of women at the top decision-making positions and it is time member states fully realize it.” As long as white males are not nominated, the Eurodogma is satisfied. This Europe is a dying shithole.

All in all, I’m highly skeptical and, in contrast with the so many military analysts, the Kursk incursion increased my pessimism rather than decreasing it. I hope time will prove me wrong.