Monthly Archives: April 2022

Vladimir Putin: Monster, Madman, or Mastermind?

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Moscow-based analyst Andrew Korybko debunks the false portrait of Putin promoted in the Western media:

Everyone is trying to figure out who exactly President Putin is and what he’s trying to achieve. Many of his opponents and even quite a lot of his foreign supporters alike have regularly misportrayed him as a strongman who’s obsessed with fighting against the West, each propagating this narrative in pursuit of their diametrically different ideological agenda. This storyline, for as compelling as it may be, is grossly inaccurate and deserves clarification.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is the most talked-about man this century thus far after commencing his country’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine in late February. That dramatic move was intended to uphold the integrity of Russia’s national security red lines in Ukraine in particular and in the region more broadly. It followed the US-led West refusing to respect his security guarantee requests from December, which in turn prompted President Putin to kinetically defend Russia’s existential interests. The unprecedented and preplanned response by the US-led West accelerated preexisting multipolar trends connected to the ongoing global systemic transition and led to what many nowadays consider to be the worst crisis since World War II.
Amidst all of this, everyone is trying to figure out who exactly President Putin is and what he’s trying to achieve. Many of his opponents and even quite a lot of his foreign supporters alike have regularly misportrayed him as a strongman who’s obsessed with fighting against the West, each propagating this narrative in pursuit of their diametrically different ideological agenda.
According to this common interpretation of his motives, he simply can’t get over how the USSR’s dissolution in 1991 led to the erasure of Russia’s former superpower status. In their minds, he’s plotted for decades to make the move that he fatefully did in February, though each side differs over their assessment of how successful it’s been since. This storyline, for as compelling as it may be, is grossly inaccurate and deserves clarification.
Beginning with the viewpoint of his opponents, President Putin is either a monster or a madman. The first implies that he’s a bloodthirsty dictator who couldn’t give a damn for any notion of democracy and human rights, whether the objective understanding thereof or subjective interpretations of them that vary based on society. All that he wants, they claim, is to kill as many people as possible. This leads to the second viewpoint of him possibly being a madman, as in, someone who’s literally gone crazy and surrendered to whatever pathology it may be that supposedly controls everything that he does. Those who ascribe to this interpretation insist that he isn’t a rational actor and therefore mustn’t be negotiated with. Whether a monster or madman, his opponents claim that this man must be contained.
The polar opposite camp employed a proto-QAnon model to explain everything that he does by introducing the idea that he’s a mastermind who plays “5D chess”, “is always winning”, and that everyone who sympathizes with even a single element of his policies should just “trust the plan” exactly as former US President Donald Trump’s most passionate supporters suggested about that American leader.
According to them, President Putin deeply despises everything associated with the West, especially its close partners like Israel and Turkey. Anytime he pragmatically interacts with them and is caught on camera smiling alongside their leaders, they claim, he’s just “playing chess” and “tricking his enemies” in order to supposedly “gather intel” to help defeat them at a later undisclosed time.
Suffice to say, all three interpretations are flat-out ridiculous and have no resemblance to reality. President Putin isn’t a monster, madman, or a mastermind, he’s simply a man who history placed in a very unique position that ultimately compelled him to muscularly defend his Great Power’s existential national security red lines in the most dramatic way possible.

FSB Arrests Commander Of The Black Sea Fleet Ossipov?

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Update 2:

I tracked down the source of this report/rumor passed on by an ex intelligence chief of EU. It comes from a Ukrainian source and it is based on the movement of a plane, which is not enough. So at this point I would put this down as rumor-mongering by Ukrainian propagandists, with some, possible basis.

The origin is this:

There are rumors about the arrest of Admiral Igor Osipov, commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. There is no confirmation of this, but at 3:30 this morning a special flight RA-61712 left Moscow for Rostov. Fontanka wrote that RA-61712 belongs to a special Air Force unit of the FSB, which provides “operational support for the most high-profile cases. In other words, the plane could have been sent to investigate the sinking of the RSC Moskva or to apprehend the leader of the ship. #Ukrainianmilitary hits #Russiancruiser by #Neptunemissiles #cruiserMoskva“

WELL THAT IS QUITE A LEAP. Good God, the BS never ends and I am sorry I ran with this without checking closely. But obviously there is a strong suspicion of sabotage if the FSB is involved, which seems to be the case. The arrest part appears to be just conjectural. Sorry about that.

Update: I cannot find confirmation of this arrest on any Russian state outlet, so I should put a question mark against it, for now.

ORIGINAL POST

Remember this post yesterday about the archpriest Khalyuta gifting a “relic” from the Catholic church to Vice Admiral Ossipov that I posted  on this blog. I linked that post at  comments on Saker.is and on disqus at Martyanov’s site, where it got a downvote.

Lila Rajiva  a day ago

https://lilarajiva.com/2022…

Seems really obtuse to accept some supposed relic from anonymous donors to place inside a flagship, of all things.
The relic is not Orthodox at best, and they don’t know for sure from where it comes, so why accept it? This was probably just staged, in coordination with the mine attack [or whatever] for maximum propaganda effect, but could there also be some technical angle, as for instance, some kind of gps embedded in the so-called relic or a guide for detonation or even some AI device? 

The gifting suggests, does it not, that this whole incident was planned well before hand. Before even Snake Island. And that maybe there was an internal[onboard] element to it?

Then there is this, today:

From Twitter Eerik N Kross Ex intelligence director, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Iraq

FSB arrests the commander of the  Black Sea fleet vice admiral Igor Ossipov. Obviously for the bad weather and an accidental fire on board of Moskva. 8th general out of commission by  action in this war.

5:24 PM · Apr 16, 2022Twitter Web App
Does the FSB usually get involved in oversight, errors, or poor performance in the military? In my layman judgment, no. But if there was sabotage, internally, as was my guess, then they would get involved. That is, if this report is true.
Andrei Martyanov in his last talking head on the subject, laid out what he was careful to say were three contexts for the incident. He was not speculating or putting out a hypothesis, merely contextualizing.
He said, while there was some chance of the explosions/fire being caused by Neptune or other missiles from the Ukrainians, he put it as fairly low, given that he wasn’t even sure if the Neptune missiles were fully operational and given that the Slava/Moskva was well-capable of defending herself from them. [I am writing this from memory of his talk and so cannot recall all the exact military minutiae.]
The second context was that since the Moskva had not been renovated to a state-of-the-art condition, it had some vulnerabilities to attack from underwater diversionary forces. Meaning, some frogmen might have managed to attach a mine to the ship’s hull.
The third context he gave was the possibility of internal sabotage involving people on board  who might have sympathies for the other side, due to propaganda, family ties or something similar.
He also mentioned NATO intelligence support and monitoring, such as, via Romanian private companies in Odessa, but did not feel that the mere fact of NATO support being there meant they were involved. As always, he said to wait and see.
I commented then and posted here about the new jet suits devised in the UK that allow boarding of a hostile ship without helicopters as an example of some cutting-edge technology that might be used to board surreptitiously, because I always felt this was internal sabotage plus NATO involvement.

US Intel Contradicts Biden “Genocide” Claim

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Sputnik News:

The US intelligence agencies do not have information collected to support President Joe Biden’s claims that Russia is allegedly committing genocide in Ukraine, NBC News reported citing senior Biden administration officials.

The report said on Friday that Biden administration officials have said US intelligence reports on Ukraine do not support Biden’s claims that genocide is taking place in Ukraine.
A US intelligence official said in the report that genocide includes the goal of destroying an ethnic group or nation but so far that is not what they are seeing in Ukraine.

British Jet Suits For Boarding Hostile Ships

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The British have been showcasing new technology this past year, out of which, this jet suit is definitely out of a James Bond movie.

The British Royal Navy is testing futuristic jet suits to help its marines defy gravity and fly – like Iron Man – to board ships moving at a distance, a new video by the UK-based Gravity Industries, the firm behind the suit, showed. The video showed a Royal Marine taking off from a high-speed inflatable boat using the suit, flying above the seas, and then landing on the deck of the navy’s offshore patrol ship HMS Tamar. The marine has a machine tied to his shoulders that resembles a backpack, and another cylindrical pair tied to either of his hands.

These machines provide him with enough thrust to launch from the speedboat, fly above the water and balance his movement while he is airborne and during the landing. After he lands on the deck of HMS Tamar, the marine throws out a rope ladder for his colleagues to climb up the ship from their boat.

 

The Royal Marines simulated a “visit, board, search, and seizure” operation, one of the most complex and dangerous maritime missions. The only other alternative available to the marines was using a helicopter to drop down on the ship. But that would have taken time.

Could something like this have helped someone board and sabotage the Moskva? Just random uninformed speculation, of course.

Crusaders: Moscow No More Center Of Orthodoxy

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The sinking of the Moskva could not hold clearer significance.

The supposed relic of a piece of the true cross, gifted from a Catholic church, no less, and then placed inside the ship’s chapel by a priest appointed by Putin, went down with the ship. The Ukrainians claim they hit it with Neptune missiles; the Russians say the ship capsized in stormy weather when it was being towed back after sustaining damage from an explosion on board.

Put this next to the completely invalid consecration of Ukraine and Russia [in that order] to Mary, by Jose Bergoglio the incumbent of the Holy See, who has previously desecrated the church by importing the Amazonian fertility goddess and demon, Pachamama, into it. Bergoglio, ethnically of Sephardic descent, announced the consecration ahead of time, on March 17, which, it so happens, fell on Purim, the Jewish feast of revenge against enemies.

The message is crystal clear.

Moscow, the third Rome is not going to be the seat of Holy Orthodoxy, despite Putin’s attempts to revive the Romanovs as a figure-head for his traditionalist state. Moscow with its small portion of Christ [the true cross, if we take it to be such] is going to go down like its flagship.

It will be struck down by the Vatican-approved Ukrainian Orthodox church.

Relic Of True Cross From European Church On Moskva?

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From Tass.com on Feb 26, 2020:

[Elsewhere I saw that the delivery to the ship had been made on Feb 26, 2022…perhaps a mistake]

SEVASTOPL, February 26. /TASS/. A Christian relic, a piece of the True Cross on which the believers say Jesus Christ was crucified would be kept at the Moskva missile cruiser, the Black Sea fleet flagship, archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Sevastopol District Sergiy Khalyuta told TASS.

He explained that the relic is a wood chip only several millimeters long. It is embedded into a 19th century metal cross, which, in turn, is stored in a special reliquary.

“This relic used to belong to a Catholic church, but was acquired by anonymous patrons of arts, and it was their will to send the relic to the [Black Sea] fleet. The Moskva cruiser has an onboard chapel, where services take place,” Khalyuta said.”

Now why would anyone accept a supposed religious relic from a Church that has aligned itself against Russia? That is, apart from the fact that it is likely not a holy relic at all, coming from the current Catholic church led by Francis, but something pagan and abominable that is embedded in the metal cross.

Actually, my cynical mind wonders if this “relic” is a chip of some kind that can help guide or pinpoint a detonation or even cause a detonation?

Why would anyone accept such a thing, given that heretic Francis announced his “consecration” of both Ukraine and Russia to Pachamama on Purim and the consecration itself is invalid? Some digging is warranted into Khalyuta, [apparently a Putin appointment but not historically very well-versed?] who accepted this unknown relic and into the anonymous [of course they would be anonymous] donors, who so fortuitously gifted this to the ship, preying on the piety of crew.

Naturally, the media is using this to score a second propaganda coup against Russia, but the laugh is on them…

Now I see this:

Amidst the relentless military aggression by Kremlin troops in Ukraine, a secret monitoring group of NATO comprising officials of the Romanian PMC has commenced work in Odessa. A source in the Russian law enforcement agency citing informants in the Ukrainian troops confirmed the development to RIA Novosti. This comes at a time when the Russian military action against Ukraine continues for day 48 with visuals of deaths and destruction in the war-torn nation surfaced recently sending jolts across global powers.

The Russian law enforcement agency’s interlocutor has claimed the presence of a secret base of the NATO monitoring group in one of the suburbs of Odessa, RIA Novosti reported. The secret base of the NATO monitoring group has equipment that allows identifying the “exact coordinates of any ship in the Black Sea within a radius of up to 200 kilometres.” According to the agency’s interlocutor, the specialists in the monitoring group include employees of Romanian PMC Nordstarsupport Group.