RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/hanging_81_high_in_saudi_arabia.html

While much of the world is coping with the fallout from the Russian-Ukrainian almost-war, inflation, ever-increasing energy prices, supply chain issues, more crime, now you have, now you don’t WuFlu coronavirus, oil-rich U.S. supplier Saudi Arabia, announced Saturday that it had executed 81 people in one day on a variety of terrorism-related offences, exceeding the total number of executions in the kingdom  the whole of last year.

All had been “found guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes,” the official Saudi Press Agency reported, saying they included convicts linked to the Islamic State group, or to Al-Qaeda, Yemen’s Houthi rebel forces or “other terrorist organisations.”

They had been plotting attacks on vital economic sites, or had targeted or had killed members of the security forces, or had smuggled weapons into the country, the SPA added.

Saturday’s announcement marks the kingdom’s highest number of recorded executions in one day, and more than the total of 69 executions in all of 2021.

Incidentally I couldn’t find any reference to this on the SPA site, but it could just be me.  But all is okay because they were tried in Saudi courts with judges.

https://www.investigativeproject.org/9150/the-strange-alliance-between-russia-and-chechen

As Russian casualties in Ukraine continue to mount, numbering in the thousands, Moscow is turning to Syrian and Chechen Islamic fighters as strategic assets. “We do believe that the accounts of them, the Russians, seeking Syrian fighters to augment their forces in Ukraine,” Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. “We believe there’s truth to that. […] we’re in no position to refute the accounts that they might be seeking to recruit Syrian fighters.”

Chechnya is a land-locked region located in the North Caucasus, a member republic of the Russian Federation, a strictly conservative state with a majority of Sunni Muslims. Chechnya attempted to form a breakaway independent state after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia suffered a humiliating defeat in 1996, which was reversed by a fierce crackdown in 2000. The Russian authorities went on to establish a pro-Russian regime in 2003, managing to gain the support of a great faction of Chechen warlords.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen strongman and close Putin ally, has served as head of the Chechen Republic since 2007. The Kremlin-backed leader has imposed strict Islamic social norms encouraging polygamy and promoting dispatch of his Islamic fighters abroad.

Known in Russian as Kadyrovtsy, those fighters have been deployed in special operations in Lebanon, Georgia and Syria as strategic assets of Russian foreign policy. They have also taken part in counterinsurgency cooperation programs between Russia and China.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18329/russia-putin-ukraine-invasion

Those who believe Putin is trying to reestablish Russia as a great power say that once he gains control over Ukraine, he will turn his focus to other former Soviet republics, including the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and eventually Bulgaria, Romania and even Poland.

“The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.” — Aleksandr Dugin, Russian strategist, “Foundation of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia.”

“Make no mistake: For #Putin it’s not about EU or NATO, it is about his mission to restore Russian empire. No more, no less. #Ukraine is just a stage, NATO is just one irritant. But the ultimate goal is Russian hegemony in Europe.” — Jan Behrends, German historian.

“Normally wars that take place between states are about conflicts they have between them. Yet this is a war about the existence of one state, which is denied by the aggressor. That’s why the usual concepts of peacemaking — finding a compromise — do not a apply. If Ukraine continues to exist as a sovereign state, Putin will have lost. He is not interested in territorial gain as such — it’s rather a burden for him. He is only interested in controlling the entire country. Everything else for him is defeat.” — Ulrich Speck, German geopolitical analyst.

“Because the primary threat to Putin and his autocratic regime is democracy, not NATO, that perceived threat would not magically disappear with a moratorium on NATO expansion. Putin would not stop seeking to undermine democracy and sovereignty in Ukraine, Georgia, or the region as a whole if NATO stopped expanding.” — Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and Robert Person, a professor at the United States Military Academy.

“I don’t think that this war is about NATO; I don’t think this war is about Ukrainian people or the EU or even about Ukraine; this war is about starting a war in order to stay in power. Putin is a dictator, and he’s a dictator whose intention is to stay in power until the end of his natural life. He said to himself that the writing’s on the wall for him unless he does something dramatic. Putin is just thinking short-term … ‘how do I stay in power from this week to the next? And then next week to the next?'” ­— Bill Browder, American businessman and head, Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign.

Nearly three weeks have passed since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, but it still is not clear why he did so and what he hopes to achieve. Western analysts, commentators and government officials have put forward more than a dozen theories to explain Putin’s actions, motives, and objectives.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/how-vladimir-putin-lost-the-wests-soft-left/

Ukraine has some resemblances to France: both are large, temperate, fertile, rectangular land masses at each end of the European continent. Putin claims Ukraine is not a nation. It was recognized as a country under the United Nations, and became fully independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Crucially it signed an agreement with Russia in 1996 whereby it gave up its nuclear weapons and granted a lease of the Sebastopol naval base to Russia, in return for Russia guaranteeing its sovereignty. The fact that Putin soon broke this agreement does not annul this Russian recognition of Ukraine’s existence, but it did give us a foretaste of Putin’s attitude to his international obligations.

There is a more sinister meaning to Putin’s claim that Ukraine is not a nation: it is both a threat and a forecast. We normally take notice of events happening around us and then try to understand them. Putin’s mind, unlike ours, starts with his ideological fixations and then contorts reality into bizarre shapes so that it may live up to his preconceived expectations of it. His present invasion has the effect of confirming in Putin’s mind his long-held notion of Ukraine’s non-existence in the natural scheme of things. In one mood, Putin, to justify his takeover, claims Russians and Ukrainians are Slavic blood brothers, members of the same race, which is a little difficult to reconcile with his present treatment of Ukrainians. Ludicrous statements recently made by Putin include: Ukrainians are Nazis and drugs addicts; Ukraine committed genocide in Donetsk-Lugansk; the West is the aggressor; Western sanctions are a declaration of war; Soviet invaders are peace keepers; the invasion of Ukraine is not a war, just a limited military operation.

Russia claimed to be insecure (unlikely for such a powerful nation) because NATO was aggressively moving its forces up to Russia’s sphere of influence. This convoluted argument was an example of role reversal: Russia had been acting so aggressively that the newly released nations of Eastern Europe felt genuinely insecure and asked for NATO protection. The West became so justifiably scared of provoking the nasty Russian bear it did little to reinforce Ukraine. Russia invaded not because the West was aggressive but because, on the contrary, Ukraine had been left weakened.