RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/will-putin-ante-dr-craig-luther/

Geographically, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe (about the size of Texas and some 1800km across from west to east); it has a population of more than 40,000,000. The Russian invasion is being conducted along four axes: 1) from the north, out of Belarus; 2) from the northeast, along the Chernihiv-Sumy-Kharkiv axis; 3) out of the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine (with the help of the two Russian separatist republics of Luhansk and Donetsk); and, 4) out of Crimea in the south. In general, while the Russian assault has been significantly less effective than anticipated, Russian forces are still managing, deliberately and inexorably, to encircle and bombard key Russian cities and towns, e.g., the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second largest city), Mariupol. In the process, they have created the most tragic humanitarian disaster in Europe since the end of World War II, with more than 2,000,000 refugees now fleeing Ukraine.

The Initial Russian Air & Missile Strikes.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Western military observers expected the Russian Air Force (VKS) to unleash something akin to the “shock and awe” campaign of our first Gulf War in 1991. At the start of Operation DESERT STORM, U.S. and Allied air forces conducted literally thousands of sorties, paralyzing Iraq’s leadership, destroying its military infrastructure (including air bases), and eliminating or at least grounding the Iraqi Air Force, giving Allied air forces complete command of the air, something air war theorists call “air supremacy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/03/14/path-forward-david-malpass-president-world-bank-group/

MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. My guest today is David Malpass, the president of the World Bank. The world economy has been a rollercoaster the last two years, first with the COVID pandemic, now with terrible violence and disruption of the Ukraine war. Mr. Malpass is going to help us see our way through this turmoil. Thank you so much for joining us today on Washington Post Live, Mr. Malpass.

MR. MALPASS: Thank you for having me, David. Good to see you.

MR. IGNATIUS: So, sir, I want to begin with the Ukraine war. On March the 1st, a week into the war, you issued a joint statement with Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, warning that the war was creating–and I’m quoting here–“significant spillovers to other countries” and that disruption of financial markets will continue to worsen should the conflict persist and that sanctions that were then being imposed will also have a significant economic effect. We’re now in the third week of this war, and I want to ask you to give us an assessment of the damage to the international economy so far and what’s ahead given current trends.

MR. MALPASS: We can see there’s a massive impact, David. It extends from energy and food supplies to the long-run problems of rebuilding or of reconstruction of all of the destruction that’s going on in Ukraine. So in addition to our horror at the human catastrophe, we have to look at the global economy and see that it’s a big negative. There’s the lost supply from Russia and Ukraine. But there’s also hoarding, which I’ve talked about, that people need to really avoid that, because that in itself drives up prices, and that has the biggest impact on the poor. What our–one of my focuses and the focus of the World Bank is on poorer countries around the world and the people in those countries, and they are immediately affected by the rise in prices that’s occurring now.

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.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/10/klaus-schwabs-tower-of-babel/

The Tower of Babel was real. The structure, reaching far into the skies, was built in the land of Shinar, in ancient Babylon. It was constructed some years after the Deluge, or what is commonly called Noah’s flood.

Globalists in the European project—especially at Davos, in Switzerland, and in the U.S. Democratic Party—have been building their own modern-day tower for many decades. Their punishment of Europe has been Biblical in scale, and now they want to expand it worldwide. Joe Biden and his advisors are fully on board with the project of bringing it full-scale to America.

Today that Tower of Babel is the World Economic Forum, the European Union, and other globalist organizations. Tomorrow, it will expand and include one-world government, currency, and media.

The original tower broke God’s covenant and his commandments—unifying people in sin. Similarly, Davos’ Babel is rapidly becoming the gate through which Hell itself spills onto the continent and spreads its tentacles to places like Canada, Australia, and even the United States.

This warning has been ignored by the Eurocrats in Brussels and Strasbourg—they speak of building a European empire, with sons and daughters drafted into a European Army going off to die for the socialist Chancellor of Germany. Klaus Schwab, in Kungian fashion, preaches a “global ethic” that does away with diverse faith traditions handed down over the centuries. In America, Biden sacrifices our hard-won sovereignty in everything he touches—from healthcare to homeland security to green new deals.

In truth, such actions represent the sinful pride of mankind and an act of ultimate hubris—wanting to reach the heavens—where persons in the elite cadre could become like gods themselves.

Historically, Babel has been explained as an attempt to comprehend the existence of so many diverse languages—an allegorical myth.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/13/volodymyr-zelenskyys-classical-choices/

A number of pincers are poised to envelop increasingly damaged Ukrainian cities. The initial euphoria that Vladimir Putin’s surprise shock-and-awe assault failed may be waning, even as Ukraine inflicts historic damage on the Russian army. Even after three weeks, Russia has failed to grab key infrastructure and decapitate the Ukrainian leadership, as it did in the comparatively quick and relatively bloodless Georgia and Crimean campaigns in 2008 and 2014, respectively.

That supposed easy conquest didn’t happen because of dogged Ukrainian resistance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “Finest Hour” Churchillian leadership has captivated the West. For a while, Europe, and the United States seem awakened from wokeness, as they rush thousands of sophisticated anti-armor and anti-aircraft shoulder-fired weapons to Kiev, along with leveling global financial sanctions on all things Russian. 

But in response, Vladimir Putin has now pivoted to a traditional Russian medieval tactic of annihilation. In the fashion of the World War II-era Red Army, he is razing with bombs, shells, and missiles stubborn enemy strongholds as a prequel to surrounding the ruins, starving out the population and then absorbing what is left. Apparently, Putin feels he must destroy much of Ukraine to save it for Russia, or at least show former Soviet territories—and the world—the wages of resisting reunification. 

Putin ostensibly is not bothered by the global outrage over his savagery—especially given that he is on the road of no return, and defeat could mean his own end. But for now, he would probably channel Hitler’s remark about “Who remembers the Armenians?”—both now and in the context of earlier Western silence during 1999-2000, when Putin flattened Grozny (the U.N. labeled its ruins as the most destroyed city on earth). Then he killed up to 80,000 Chechens and nixed the idea that a former Soviet republic inside the Russian Federation could secede. 

In other words, if Putin cannot easily reabsorb Ukraine and immediately benefit from its manpower, natural resources, and industrial base, then he is perfectly willing to destroy it on his theory that what is lost in the short-term is more than gained in long-term deterrence. 

Putin appears to believe that by leveling cities he can at last squeeze half of Ukraine back into Russia, declare victory, digest the rubble, and be ready for a second helping of western Ukraine in three or four years. In the meantime, he conjectures that current grandiose European talk of defiance, sanctions, and rearmament will fade in accustomed Western ennui in a year or so—but not the fear of nuclear Russia, an unpredictable and supposedly nutty Putin on the prowl, and the European green need for Russian gas and oil.

What are the options left for Zelenskyy, as perhaps 4 to 5 million of his Ukrainian brethren will have fled the country by early April? He will probably still not have air parity with Russia and will find no way to disrupt Russian supply depots and air and missile bases inside the borders of Belarus and Russia.

So far Zelenskyy has been brilliant as he expresses his appreciation for Western sanctions and arms. His insight seems to balance his otherwise unhinged demand for far more dangerous escalations—specifically to establish a no-fly zone and thus in World War III style confront, in the air above Ukraine, a bellicose Russia with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/bashar-al-assad-putins-loyal-lapdog-hugh-fitzgerald/

While most of the world recoils in horror at Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a handful of fellow dictators have been loyal to the Kremlin. One is the unspeakable Alexander Lukashenko, the semi-literate dictator of Belarus, and Putin’s lapdog who has even threatened to use nuclear weapons – presumably given to his country by Russia – to fend off the West. Lukashenko has said that his country would use such weapons “”and more” as conflict escalated against its ally Russia, according to AFP.

“If such stupid and mindless steps are taken by our rivals and opponents, we will deploy not only nuclear weapons, but super-nuclear and up-and-coming ones to protect our territory,” Lukashenko said last week.

Got that? Lukashenko will stand by his man, Vladimir Putin, and is prepared to deploy on his territory not just Russian “nuclear” weapons, but “super-nuclear and up-and-coming ones” to “protect our territory.”

“Protect” our territory against whom? It’s the Russians who have been doing all the invading in Lukashenko’s neighborhood. No member of NATO has threatened Belarus; no NATO member has any intention of invading Belarus.

And then there is Bashar Assad, who was saved from defeat in the Syrian civil war by the Russians, who in 2015 began to bombard the rebels who were then close to winning the war. Thus Assad owes his victory in the civil war and, very likely, his life, to his friend Vladimir Putin.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-sends-its-missile-regards-northern-iraq-consulate-nuclear-deal-putin-regime-weapons-11647200353?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The Biden Administration’s hell-bent pursuit of a new nuclear deal with Iran grows harder to understand with each provocation from Tehran. The latest came Sunday in a missile attack near a U.S. consulate under construction in northern Iraq.

Iran typically commits mayhem through proxy militias, but this time Tehran took credit. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s paramilitary group, said it carried out a missile attack on what it claimed were Israeli targets inside Iraq. The group said it was in response to an Israeli airstrike in Syria last week that killed two IRGC commanders.

Notably, however, the missiles landed in Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. The Kurds are America’s best allies in that country. No one was killed but at least two individuals were injured. It’s likely the IRGC wants to send a message about the vulnerability of U.S. interests and allies in the region as the two sides close in on a renewed nuclear deal.

The deal would hand Iran tens of billions of dollars in money and investment. Iran also wants the U.S. to remove the IRGC from its list of terrorist groups as part of the deal. Iran knows the U.S. is preoccupied at the moment with Ukraine and Russian aggression.