Russia has warned the U.S. and Britain they will be seen as “full-fledged” participants in the war in Ukraine if HIMARS or Storm Shadow missiles are used by Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia or Crimea.
The Daily Mail reports that Vladimir Putin’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu warned he will target “decision-making centers” in Ukraine, implying he plans to order his military to target President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top government officials in Kiev.
Shoigu said: “According to our information, the leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is planning to launch strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation, including Crimea, with HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles. The use of these missiles outside the area of the special military operation would mean a full-fledged involvement of the US and UK in the conflict entailing immediate strikes on the decision-making centers in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Lt. General Ben Hodges, a recently retired four-star general who commanded all U.S. troops in Europe, came out recently and said the goal for Ukraine in its counter-offensive should be to “retake Crimea” from the Russians.
This comment by Hodges has been characterized as an unnecessary provocation by several other military analysts such as U.S. Army Col. Douglas MacGregor (retired), former CIA agent Larry Johnson and former British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
Russia considers Crimea to be part of Russia while the West considers it part of Ukraine and this is the thorny issue that could bring the war to a new and dangerous stage.
Crimea has a complex history with Russia dating back to the 19th century. Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great annexed Crimea in 1783, a decade after defeating the forces of the Ottoman Empire in the pivotal battle of Kozludzha.
Crimea remained part of Russia proper until 1954, when the government of the former Soviet Union transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This would be the equivalent of the U.S. moving the state of Maine from the U.S. proper to the U.S. Virgin Islands or some other U.S. territory. So when the West claims that Crimea should be part of Ukraine, it is defaulting to the Soviet era, when all Soviet republics essentially still answered to the Kremlin even if they operated under the façade of being an independent state.
And it’s an undeniable fact that a majority of the people living in Crimea speak Russian and would rather be part of Russia than Ukraine.
Western propaganda mouthpieces such as the UK-based Daily Mail, skip over all this complex history and simply report to the ignorant masses that “Putin forcibly annexed the Black Sea peninsula in 2014.” They refer to this peninsula as simply “Russian-occupied Crimea.”
According to the Wilson Center, the population of the Crimean peninsula — approximately 1.1 million in 1954 when the Soviets threw it into the Ukrainian Republic — was roughly 75 percent ethnic Russian and 25 percent Ukrainian.
The Wilson Center concludes that “The peninsula did have important economic and infrastructural ties with Ukraine, but cultural ties were much stronger overall with Russia than with Ukraine, and Crimea was the site of major military bases from Tsarist times on, having become a symbol of Imperial Russian military power against the Ottoman Turks.”
To remove Russia from Crimea would essentially gut its entire naval fleet, the bulk of which is stationed at Sevastopol on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea.
In March 2014, the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a national referendum to join Russia.
So until the United States is willing to accept that there are two sides to the regional feud between the folks in Kiev and the folks in Moscow, they will never be able to broker an honest peace. But it appears Washington is not interested in peace, only in dealing Russia a death blow. Because of this delusional path the U.S. has put itself and its allies on, it appears this volatile part of the world will once again draw the nations of the world into a devastating conflagration.
For more insight on this issue, check out the excellent analysis below from former British diplomat Alastair Crooke in an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
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Always enjoy your guest segments on “Stand In The Gap” Thanks for keeping us informed and up to date Leo.
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what was left out of this “untold ‘complicated’ history of Russia’s relationship with Crimea was The Holodomor, also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. Just as Russia does not want western powers on it’s borders the Ukrainians do not want the Russian powers on it’s borders as well, because in the primarily Russian Regions in the south and east have a long term goal of taking over all of Ukraine and making it fully Russian. They will fight this war now or later.
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I don’t believe Russia wants anything to do with taking over “all of Ukraine.” Sorry, I just don’t see any evidence of that. They want a neutral Ukraine and they will take and keep possession of the areas to the east that are predominantly Russian speaking. The U.S. since the fall of the Iron Curtain has gradually been forcing all of the former Soviet republics to choose a side. But what’s wrong with maintaining neutrality in that volatile area of the world? I just think Col. Douglas MacGregor has the best insight on this of all the many sources I have read and listened to. But thank you for your comment Daniel. God bless!
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Then why did Putin attempt to seize Kiev at the beginning of the war and believed he could do it in three days and fight an extended guerilla war to seize the entire country, believing NATO would not get involved? We did the exact same to Saddam Hussein in the first Iraq war. We set up Saddam and we set up Putin, he was totally unprepared for what has happened. We set up the Tali-ban in Afghanistan for the sole purpose to attack Iran. When Putin was interviewed by Oliver Stone, Putin clearly believed Ukraine (all of it) is naturally and rightfully Russian.
All major world wars are trade and currency wars. This is not about Ukraine, this is about the big picture of who runs the world trade and be the dominate world currency after the dollar dies. If you want to believe the speech Xi gave last year at a WEF meeting, you would think Xi is about openness, fairness sharing and equality, go for it and Putin is doing the same and so is the west, everyone lies. Everyone in the media on all sides are issuing nothing but propaganda.
This will end in some form of limited tactical nuclear exchange, where nuclear black mail will be used to get the other side to back down.
Just that alone will trigger the economic collapse of the entire planet including the Russian and China economies, this is a race to the bottom.
America won the world in WW I & II we have done so ever since and China now aligned with Russia want to stop that at all costs, thus we have war coming.
Jesus said war will continue until He returns, it’s regrettable but these things must take place and H e also ordained that His saints will be persecuted by the final world system and America may be at the very heart of that. Remember God Himself said there would be a final world empire run by Satan’s man before He returns, this is the Lords will to bring judgment on the earth for it’s rebellion (just look at America now) God has turned us over to evil as judgement and it can’t be stopped.
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Putin has reason to believe the Ukraine is Russia. That’s where Russia began—in the Ukraine with its capital city of Kiev about 1000 years ago. It’s called the Kievan Rus era, which existed from the 9th-13th century before the capital was moved to Moscow. Prince Vladimir (a Viking) was its first prince.
Russia doesn’t want to take over all of Ukraine because it would be an expensive administrative nightmare for them. Western Ukraine is largely Catholic and there’s been a lot of hostilities between the Catholic majority and the Orthodox minority there for a long time. So there would be constant rebel activity that the Russians would have to deal with there. Why take that region over?? Makes no sense. Poland, though, has been floating the idea (and US/UK leaders are encouraging it) that they would take over western Ukraine. Did Putin think NATO wouldn’t get involved in this conflict? He knew NATO was already involved and had been since 2014. What he didn’t expect was that NATO would utterly refuse to negotiate a peace and even sabotaged all negotiations last year between Ukraine and Russia.
As for Russia and China wanting to take us down economically, that wasn’t true until our government decided they were our enemies and we openly advertised we wanted to take them down. Especially Russia which our think tanks have speculated how it could broken up into provinces and exploit the resources there for our benefit. (If you were Russian, how would that sound to you?) So about 15 years ago they formed BRICS as an alternative to dollar hegemony (by which the US had long dominated the world since Bretton Woods agreement). Our irrational foreign and predatory financial policies have inspired much of the rest of the world to join BRICS, even some of our allies.
Putin particularly wanted a close and mutually beneficial relation with the West and had long tried to facilitate that, but our leadership consistently rejected Russia, even at last sabotaging German-Russian infrastructure to stop their cooperative relationship (the recent Nordstream destruction) in order to totally freeze out Russia from any European interaction. A really stupid move on our part for we actually sabotaged an ally (Germany).
We need to look at facts about ourselves. The tense global situation we find ourselves in is entirely our fault. We have very bad, even evil, leaders who refuse to learn from their mistakes, who refuse to negotiate with other nations in good faith, who have spread destruction everywhere for decades. One phone call could stop all the current problems and begin to mend the damage, but there’s no leader in our camp willing to do so. The monsters we should fear are our own.
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The Holodomor is not forgotten, but what is forgotten is who carried out this genocide. Was it today’s Russian Federation? No—it didn’t exist then. It was the Soviet Union, which had a wholly different ideology and leadership than today’s Federation. Who ordered it? Stalin, who was a Georgian gangster. Who carried it out? Solzhenitsyn said in a 2008 Izvestiya article (mentioned by the Guardian April 2, 2008) that it was the Ukrainian themselves, for there was a Communist Party in Ukraine, made up of Ukrainians, in those years. So what ethnic group is directly responsible for the Holodomor? Who carried out Stalin’s orders (and who could have chosen to disobey a genocidal order against their own people?) I think who’s guilty is open to debate.
What’s not up for debate is that it was Communist policy that forced genocidal collectivization upon Ukraine to rapidly industrialize. Collectivization attacked and destroyed traditional village life, which most resisted collectivization. (Russia itself suffered the same thing in those years. Solzhenitsyn said that the ethnic group that suffered most from communism were the Russians themselves.) Then as those areas were emptied of their inhabitants, the Soviets imported Russians to settle the area. Question: Were those Russians forcibly uprooted by the communists from their lands to settle among a people not their own? Some research need to be done to find out.
Is Soviet ideology and policies the motive of the Russian Federation actions against Ukraine today? No—today’s Russian Federation is reacting instead to NATO threats, particularly our arming and training Ukrainian Nazis who have proved to be as dangerous to other Ukrainians as to the Russian -Ukrainians of the Donbass. Suffice it to say that the West has NO business provoking hostilities and trying to profit off of the tragedy there, as we’ve done in so many places.
That Ukraine must share a border with Russia…how can that be avoided?? It’s like our trying to avoid having a border with Canada or Mexico. Geography is geography, but unlike Ukraine, no alien power is sending arms to Canada or Mexico to go to war with us.
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Your analysis is spot on!
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The Russian Federation is still run by hard-line Communists. Former KGB Lt. Col. Victor Kalashnikov and GRU defector Stanislav Lunev have said themselves that the same party elites (Soviets) are in charge of the behind the scenes today.
Their long range strategy is still the same today as it was 50+ years ago. And now, we are witnessing “the two fisted” approach of two major Communist regimes working together to take the US down.
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I graduated high school in 1984. I remember how everyone loved Ronald Reagan after the idiot Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostages were released. Hmmmm, does anyone know of the mob connections that Reagan had to MCA? Oliver North’s connections? Read Whitney Webb’s book, 2 volumes “One Nation Under Blackmail”. Republicans and Democrats sold us all out decades ago. Intelligence agencies across the globe, especially the US, have been sympathetic to Communist influence.
But, But…..did Ronald Reagan actually manage to end the Cold War? We all remember those famous words “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” But what if the Soviets made everyone believe Communism was magically transformed in 1987 to a capitalist system? It was a world wide stage…but what if it wasn’t? Would the Soviet political elected somehow confide in Western journalists to “get the word out”?
Mmmmm, I would argue that the Russians/Soviets cannot be trusted today any more than they could back then. But plenty of US media personalities and many ordinary citizens on this blog, who have no clue about history or political moves via the Communists since WW1 and 2, somehow want to get on a journalists blog and argue to believe their favorite reporter’s information according to their sources like a Scott McGregor or a former UN arms inspector. McGregor had it all wrong from the beginning that the war was gonna be over in 10 days, Russia wins. We are now 16 months into this war.
Pay attention to defector testimony and literature. Screw the media. US media spews propaganda. And many so called independent journalists fall into that trap.
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Your opinions are welcomed here. We welcome all opinions that are presented with tact and grace. But if you continue to make it personal by bashing the “ordinary citizens on this blog… who have no clue about history” you will be banned. I happen to think the readers of this blog, over all, are among the most intelligent on the internet. So when I see a pattern of someone attacking them, I simply won’t tolerate it. This is your warning.
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Tact and grace? Leo, again, I find myself somehow defending a comment I posted here. Two posts ago, you accused me of posting a link, jrnyquist.blog that you stated you don’t allow but yet say nothing to other fans here when they post YT videos or otherwise all the time in their conversations and interactions with you and your readers. And now, tonight, you falsely accuse me of somehow insulting other fans?I disagree. You’ve zeroed in on me over the past 3-4 days now simply because you took offense at comments those 3-4 days ago. I didn’t call names or anything disrespectful then or now, it was simply you being “butt hurt” as it’s YOUR blog and opposing views seemingly aren’t tolerated. You don’t want someone objective or going “against the grain” on your blog. Fans are only to give “atta boys” to you and agree with whatever you choose to write and opine.
I posted Nyquist’s link on a previous post. And you deleted it. Ok, so what? And again, been a fan of your stuff for a while, particularly of Stealth Invasion, but you’re illustrating Marxist characteristics in censorship simply because I offer a different opinion on Communism and your own
sources. The Marxists are grand strategists in propaganda and you already admitted that my source was not credible and yet yours is? When he’s been wrong on the Ukraine war? Nyquist explains quite eloquently of the long range strategy of Communists over years of pieces on his own blog and he has actually interviewed and reported on Russian defectors and their own words, Leo.
So, go ahead and blacklist me, or delete me. I’m done with you. And I’ll soon reach out to several contacts I have made in alternative media and I’ll let them know of your actions when someone offers another opinion.
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As I said, I welcome all opinions here. Attacking other readers is not welcomed or allowed, nor is it allowed on most blogs that I’m aware of. God bless you in all your endeavors.
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And who is Scott MacGregor?
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Douglas MacGregor.
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This is so much bigger for both sides than Ukraine itself. For a long time Russia and China have been at odds with each other even had a few military engagements. But now they are united for one goal, and that is that their BRICS digital gold backed basket of currencies replace the west’s IMF SDR digital basket of currencies. This is a war to dominate trade and global economics when the dollar dies in the great reset and is replaced by the IMF’s new system led by the digital gold backed Unicoin. A super currency backed by almost 300 million metric tons of gold. Thus China and Russia are on a major campaign to de-dollarize the world. As it stands, the current western alliances alone have 60% of gold reserves and trade on the planet. In order for the BRICS to be dominate that western alliance must be broken up and America and Western Europe isolated economically. Thus China wants and needs to be dominate in the Western Pacific and Russia needs the same in Eastern Europe. All they wants is for these nations in these regions to abandon the SDR system and economically align with the BRICS system and if they have to go to war to achieve that, both sides are preparing for just that. War in Europe, in the Middle East and war in the Pacific over Taiwan and and S Korea. Done with the threat of not mutually assured destruction (MAD) but now with tactical “nuclear blackmail.”
They know the west has limited military resources, that the west could only fight in the pacific and in Europe for only a few months before running out of beans bullets and band-aids. These will be wars of attrition as Ukraine has already set the stage. Both sides betting neither will pull the nuclear trigger first. This will not end well conventionally, but as a retired Navy Capt. who worked on setting up the Space Force openly stated in 2019 that “the next war that is a few years away, will be primarily be fought and won in space.” And the Space Force just announced they are ready to go to war now, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/28/us-ready-to-fight-in-space-military-official.
The problem is there is so much going on we don’t know about we will have to wait and see how this all plays out.
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Alastair Crooke said something interesting in this video Leo posted in this article about our relationship with China and our inflation. How China’s manufacturing helped us to achieve “zero” inflation by making cheap goods. Is this was why Nixon—the anti-communist—opened relations with China in 1972.? Did the Federal Reserve have anything to do with this decision? I wonder. Because the year before he announced that the dollar would no longer be on the gold standard thereby inflating the dollar (to pay for the Vietnam war, just as LBJ debased the coinage in 1965 to pay for the war.) I remember how our inflation was getting to be a serious bone of global contention and even France withdrew its gold from Ft. Knox. The war inflation was not tolerable for the US economy at that time. By the time of the Carter Administration, Paul Volcker dramatically raised the interest rates to squeeze the inflation out, causing a recession which eventually drove Carter out of the WH (among other things). An interesting geopolitical angle to mull over. We export our debt all over the world to avoid hyperinflation and China has been one of the biggest holders of our debt. I would suppose that was another condition we made to China for opening relationship with them. By the 2000s, China was catching on to the trick and began using our cheap dollars to buy valuable commodities in many countries, like copper mines, industries etc. Better to hold a valuable commodity than to be stuck holding increasingly worthless dollars.
On another note, recently China gave Blinken a scolding about our idiotic foreign policy, saying we have to stop behaving irrationally or relationships between China and the US will continue to deteriorate, leading to hostilities. But it’s likely our foreign policy irrationality will continue to become even more crazy and move the world into WWIII. I don’t understand why our fascist leadership can’t even see their own danger—they surely know how abysmal NATO performance was in supplying Ukraine in their war, how NATO’s own arsenals got drained, how the stupid sanctions did nothing but strengthen Russian-Chinese alliances and alienate the rest of the world. Including some important allies, like Saudi Arabia, If the neocons were slavering for a war with Russia and/or China, why can’t they see how much more weakened we become to fight a major war, let alone another costly proxy war like Ukraine? Alastair Crooke voiced a big concern about our side refusing to talk to Russia and that this might be because our leadership is trying to save face before the 2024 elections. A year is a long time to wait and a lot of bad things can happen in that time. As he said, it would take some Western leader, particularly a US leader, of some courage to go against this insane impasse to attempt negotiations. But courage is a virtue and our leadership on every level is peculiarly lacking in all virtues.
We need another JFK who risked going against the neocons and paid with his life for it. I think that’s why there’s now a heightened interested in the history of his administration because of his battles with the neocons in the government who were then pushing us towards nuclear war. He averted the nuclear war, but in the wake of his death were many smaller wars. IMO, if that man had been allowed to live, millions would not have died in all our wars since and the world would have been much better off generally.
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WE want the world to comprehend that Vladimir Putin is a good leader and that the inside of the world will hear too that he isn’t. And the ways to hearing that all children born to Crimea-is-Russian too are born to this: they voted to be that.
All that wins is that the WE suspects that all credentialed scholars take the payments to produce the results that the research supports the better off now that the need to remember that Crimea is the port of call to return to Charles III there now.
Queen Victoria tried to take the Crimean peninsula way back in the 1850s and that was not well to the Russians that were too the family, meaning the way to the aristocracies using too the United States to pony to the shows that the entire time the world is at war for the USA to be indicted the god-father of the entire show, the man called King Charles III, is there to remember that he is to lose that war.
The WE wants all those that support the war for the Ukrainian lands to support instead the peace to end too the aristocracies that made up the story that covid-19 is the way to return to the identification that the vaccines are to enforce to the travelers too. And the traveling to the insurance agencies travelers to the ways of the WE needing to remember to all writers that the way out of the war cycles is to defund the Pentagon!
And that wins the ending the Federal Reserve system that is too the EU.
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War should only be used for self defense. We have no business there (other than money laundering and biolabs).
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Reblogged this on Klartext Translated.
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Russian Communism, Chinese Communism, European Communism, American Communism. Take your pick of flavors. Benjamin Franklin said it best. “In the final analysis, man will either be ruled by God or by tyrants.
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The tyrants will be ruled by demons.
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Hello Mr. Hohmann,
Thank you for your newsletter. I’m writing to you based on a statement in the newsletter regarding Russian speaking Crimeans prefer to be ruled by Russia over Ukraine. In the book “Ukraine’s Maidan Russia’s War,” which I highly recommend, the Ukrainian author, a business and economic scholar as well as a contributor to “Thoughts from Kyiv”, Mr. Mychailo Wynnyckyj, states from first hand knowledge regarding the Maidan and the Russian counter revolutionary threat:
“On 22 February 2014, Ukraine awoke to the shocking news that Yanukovych had fled the capital (headed straight for Moscow – my added note). Parliament quickly convened and passed a resolution entitled “On self-withdrawal of the President of Ukraine from performing his constitutional duties and on setting early elections for the President of Ukraine.” Given that Ukraine’s Constitution does not allow for “self-withdrawal” by the President, a legitimacy crisis ensued, and was not effectively resolved until 25 May with the election of a new President. The power vacuum needed to be filled quickly due to immanent counter-revolutionary threat emanating from Russia first in Crimea and then in the Donbas. Shielded by an impressive global propaganda campaign, (which most of the right and the left are promulgating- I may add) “little green men” – the euphemism that came to be used to identify Russian Special Forces personnel active on Ukrainian territory – facilitated an effective coup d’etat in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and supervised an illegitimate and falsified “referendum” that purportedly demonstrated the overwhelming desire of the Crimean population to join Russia. The peninsula was annexed to the Russian Federation, but the attempt to stage a similar “separatist uprising” in Ukraine’s eastern and southern oblasts (in the regions Putin later referred to as “novorossiya” or New Russia”) failed.”
Please for the love of freedom and for the Ukrainian “Revolution of Dignity,” make sure you are researching from proper sources. Communist Russia, Marxist Russia, KGB Putin in 2017 held on the 100th year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Sochi, Russia The Young Communist Convention. He told them the world is yours, go take it! (I am paraphrasing)
We are surrounded by Communists while Putin decries he is surrounded- take a look at Latin America! All of these countries, except El Salvador, have fallen to communism. Socialism is a “soft” word used for us in the West – it’s based in Lenin and Marxist teachings make no mistake. This same disinformation propaganda from Russia was used in Vietnam – ask any soldier or general – at every turn our government thwarted their ability to conquer the Viet Cong. It happened in Korea as well. It’s happening again with Ukraine.
Please read, which I have, A. Golitsyn’s books, “New Lies for Old” and “The Perestroika Deception.” One incredible fact is that the Sino-Soviet split was a fake out performance for the West. They have been signing treaties for decades. A teaser from his writings – guess who created The Department D with General Shelepin at the healm? (The “D” stands for Disinformation) Leonid Brezhnev! A word that has come into the West’s vernacular of recent. Why? Biden has been for many years along with many leftist been captured by Moscow and Bejing. That is why they are using their terms. But, you ask – “then why would they be helping Ukraine?” Biden did not send support for some time. Uk and Poland put pressure on him. We have not sent tanks. F-16s are useless due to Russia anti-air defense and will take months to train the Ukrainians in their use. Biden’s effort is half-hearted. He must stand against Russia because the far-left said Trump was working for Russia. Gotta keep the optics right. Moreover, t’s so interesting how any one with a brain knows they lied about Covid-19. With line of thinking, they must be lying about Ukraine, right? The best reverse phycology I’ve ever witnessed!
Another good source -jrnyquist.blog He is neither right or left, but an historian.
Thank you for reading and considering.
Mrs. Burnworth-Weiner
Sent with Proton Mail secure email.
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That is all information provided from the Ukrainian and Western perspective. The facts presented in my article are irrefutable. Crimea has a much longer and more substantive historical and cultural connection with Russia than with Ukraine.
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Please watch this for a more balanced perspective:
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Dear Mr. Hohmann,
Mr. Macgregor stated at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that Ukraine would last two weeks. He is not credible. From the perspective of an historian: https://jrnyquist.blog/2022/09/08/defeatism-and-revolutionary-strategy/
As I was reading other comments, I was disheartened that the American people think Putin is a Christian, that he is not evil. In his own words he has equated Communism to Christianity. The only church allowed is the Christian Orthodox church and it is overlorded by the KGB. There are no Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. The only other religion allowed is Muslim. What is ironic is that the cultural revolution Putin denounces here in the West is what the world communists push for in the West to subvert it, to bring it down. Of course he doesn’t want it in his country, as he knows it is divisive that is why it is a tactic of war. We are at war.
Respectfully, Joy
Sent with Proton Mail secure email.
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Respectfully, we shall agree to disagree. I’ve been studying this for years and have seen no proof from solid sources for most of what you have stated above. There are some half truths, taken without proper context, but that’s the best I can give you. Sorry. God bless.
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joyrburn–When it comes to predicting at the start of a war how that war will be conducted and how it will end, it’s never a sure thing. How many times we were told that “the troops will be home by Christmas” when a war starts (like our Civil War, like WWI and WWII) and that didn’t happen? It’s a common problem at the start of any war—it never goes as expected and so it lasts longer than expected because the predicted conduct of a war is almost always based on past wars
If the Russians had invaded Ukraine with its entire army and propelled them through Ukraine to its western borders in a blitzkrieg (as they did during WWII), then yes—MacGregor would have been correct in his initial impressions. But Russians did the unexpected—they only sent in 90k troops, a small force and moved slowly and carefully, trying not to cause a lot of damage or casualties. As it turned out, the reason for their rather feeble initial invasion was they were waiting for NATO to negotiate with them. After nearly a year when it became clear that NATO refused to negotiate and even sabotaged all attempts by Ukraine to negotiate peace with the Russians, the Russians then ramped up their military presence and aggressiveness and began to seriously wage war. That’s why MacGregor got it wrong at the beginning, but as he observed the unfolding strategy, he has been able to make corrections and analyze the situation more accurately. That he corrected his initial prediction and impressions to agree with reality does not discredit him. Just means he now sees the real situation. Compare that the our Pentagon who from the beginning to the present hour still maintains that the Ukrainians are winning this war, when it’s been clear they are losing badly and at great cost. And they correct none of their incorrect statements nor intend to. So who is really to be discredited?
As to whether Putin is a Christian, neither you nor I are the judge of his soul. At least he has actively supported the cause of the Orthodox Church in his country, even to the point of mandating religious instruction in the public schools there. He encourages the growth of families, morals and outlawed the gay agendas. Compare that to Biden who is an apostate to his church’s teachings (he married 2 gay couples) and has actively supported programs to introduce LGBT+ and trans agendas into our public schools. So who is really acting as the enemy to Christians?
While the Moscow Patriarchate was once overlorded by the KGB during the Soviet era, that is not the case now and if you read their literature, they are not pushing communist ideology at all, but genuine Christian teaching. Russian Orthodoxy has struggled for centuries with the state trying to impose its control upon them—first with the Czars, then with the communists. So when communism fell, Russian Orthodoxy was free once again. Putin compared communism to Christianity because there really are some outward similarities (which has been observed by many Western scholars); but the important difference is that communism eschatology leads to a man-made utopia which destroys the personhood of man, while Christianity affirms man’s personhood as the image of God and leads man to his true destiny with God. Putin himself said that communism was a disaster for Russia and twice warned Obama in 2009 not to go down the path of socialism, citing that it proved extremely harmful to Russia. No one in the West appeared to have listened.
Russian Orthodoxy is the religion of Russia because Orthodoxy is what made Russia a nation. It even gave them their first written language, most of their classic art, music and literature and it’s hard-wired into their culture. Currently, Russia allows Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Baptists and Islam to practice in their country. The reason why is that these religions have been “grandfathered” in as legal religions (even during the late Soviet era) because they have been present in Russia for centuries. They do not accept other Protestant groups seeking to enter because of Protestantism’s innate divisiveness and plurality of contradictory theologies, some of which are outright heretical (like Mormonism). They see these as bringing confusion and chaos, which is why they are not welcomed. They have had their experience with sectarianism before and the turmoil it brought them, so they are not willing to import anymore of this from the West.
I think it’s interesting to see the far Left/far Right in the US and the West have been very opposed to modern day Russia and they are the ones most wanting war with Russia. They are the ones shutting down free speech here, stealing our civil rights, and oppressing Americans in many ways and subverting our Christian culture. So where are the real communists, the totalitarians? They are HERE ruling us and that is what I find disheartening. We need to clean our own house of our own evil monsters before looking overseas for them. Our problems are here, not there.
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Another thought-provoking story, Leo – thanks! I’ve been enjoying the conversations between Daniel Benson, kkayjae and others here on the current topic. As always I learn from your readers’ insightful comments, and wholeheartedly agree with your statement, “I happen to think the readers of this blog, over all, are among the most intelligent on the internet.”
Thanks also for providing a forum where we can think things through in a more lengthy dialog if we need to – another thing that makes this website unique among other conservative/Christian sites.
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Joyrburn, Putin may be evil, but Zelenskyy is worse. We have no business over there and should let them battle it out on their own. Remember how costly the Vietnam War turned out to be?
Almost as if the world powers want to wear us out with pointless fighting.
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“And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet.”
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Will this Country EVER learn to keep its nose out of other peoples’ business? I think not. Those trolls in Washington need to clean up their own garbage can instead of piling more manure in other peoples.
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DC: We meddled in Korea 1950 and failed to accomplish anything, same with Viet Nam, the middle east incl Afghanistan (twenty years and a total failure also). We just cannot win wars since 1950 onward. This makes U.S. leadship a farce to the world. We cannot even control our borders.
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