Page Text: https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/putin-may-use-ukraine-war-to-meddle-in-us-politics-report/
“Russian President Vladimir Putin might use President Biden’s support for Ukraine as a reason to interfere in upcoming American elections, US intelligence officials have assessed.”
As if he needed a special reason. It doesn’t seem to occur to these “intelligence” officials that they are being paid to stop that.
Xennady
The repetition of absurd, previously-discounted blood libel falsehoods…
Falsehoods? Blood libel? Says who?
I’ve already noted my opinion that one pro-Russian source is nonsense- but I’ve also been aware that the blessed Ukrainians have been outed as a thoroughly corrupt regime by such Russian propaganda outfits as the New York Times. In my view neither the corrupt Russian regime nor the corrupt Ukrainian regime is owed a single thing by the American people. I think we should allow those regimes to kill each other until they have both had their fill of killing. Perhaps then the survivors will recall that they were once countrymen, or perhaps they won’t. Regardless, I don’t care what happens to either bunch, my concern is the fate of the United States.
Who benefits by westerners being made scared of the conflict?
What? By “westerners” I can only assume you mean “Americans,” because for all intents and purposes all the dying in defense of Western Civilization has been done by Americans since well before most westerners alive today were born.
Yes, I know that there were various detachments of European soldiers deployed in support of the Afghanistan and Iraq adventures- but despite the individual bravery of these soldiers their home governments generally wanted nothing to do with these deployments- and I still recall how the British government refused to send their soldiers into Basra during the Iraq War, because it understood a lot of them would have been killed.
The same as benefits from a negotiated settlement that forces concessions from one side only.
My problem here is that I don’t give a rat’s anus about either side. I have real trouble figuring out why I’m supposed to favor one side over the other in this squabble involving foreigners I don’t care about. Unlike Mitt Romney or Joe Biden, I’m not getting a kickback from the foreign aid payments American taxpayers are forced to send to Ukraine- of course at gunpoint, because that’s how the regime rolls- hence I feel no reason to pretend I care about the outcome.
Except, of course, I don’t want to see my country nuked because the idiot grifters of the regime think they’ll be able to grift yet more wealth from Russia if they can replace Putin.
It’s similar to what Instapundit says about leftie peaceniks – they’re not anti-war, they’re on the other side.
I’m on the side of the American people. I think we have spent more than enough blood and treasure attempting to make the world safe for…well, what’s the slogan this war?
I’m now well into my Smedley Butler phase- war is a racket- and I want no more of it. If Ukraine et al want the Russian regime replaced, let them pay the butcher’s bill.
Leave us out of it.
Xennady
April 9, 2022 at 8:35 pm
It’s amazing how many of them, Russians included, make the journey to go to those places, sometimes at great jeopardy. Not many Finns were fleeing to Russia at the start of this.
It’s not amazing, because when they emigrate they’re paid in dollars and euros, which almost always nets them a vast raise. For now.
They may or may not care about the culture of the country they move to- and very often the whole reason they’re allowed in is because the local establishment realizes full well that the polices that local regime is enforcing are not popular with the natives.
Foreign votes are a great help at retaining power.
PJF
April 9, 2022 at 9:27 pm
Falsehoods? Blood libel? Says who?
I say. I said it above in response to Gavin Longmuir. I listed the examples. Examples by him, not by you.
Your isolationist stance has been noted. It’s a perfectly reasonable opinion.
Gavin Longmuir
April 9, 2022 at 9:48 pm
PJF — Old fruit, you are getting to be a bore. For you, the clock started and the world began when the Russian army crossed the border into the sections of the Ukraine that had been under attack from the innocent Ukrainian Government for 8 long years. Oops! I did it again — I was supposed to say when the Russians invaded the peaceful Ukraine.
Ignoring everything that happened before your world started does not make you a better Ukrainian devotee — it makes you blind. Equally, recognizing the context in which Russia involved itself in the Ukrainian civil war does not make one a Russian supporter — it makes one a realistic observer of a far-off foreign situation.
We have to be careful about the Rah! Rah! propaganda over the Ukrainian situation. Clearly, the Political Class is trying very hard to get the empty-headed followers of fashion on board for active involvement in a war on the other side of the world which should be no concern of Americans — a war which will not stay on the other side of the world if our Political Class continues on its current path. Time to use your head, PJF.
Miguel cervantes
The same officials (we are left to infer) who lied about putins objectives deliberately
Miguel cervantes
Ironically one of pipes star pupils fiona hill enabled the russian hoax through her detailee igor danchenko (she was also the one that cautioned against sending weapons to ukraine) a counterpart to steele in british intelligence
PJF
Oops! I did it again . . .
Yes, Gavin Longmuir, you did. Repeating the lie doesn’t make it true.
Since Russia seized Crimea and fomented rebellion in the east there has been a low grade war going on. The Ukrainians built substantial defensive positions to stop more of their territory being stolen. Far from this lazy, idiotic notion of the “evil Ukrainian kleptocrats” heartlessly shelling their own people (just for a laugh?), the Ukrainians have been defending their land (and resources) from further Russian theft. As has been mentioned before, attacks were going both ways. It was a war. The same war as the current invasion.
Gavin Longmuir
April 10, 2022 at 10:13 am
PJF — How does it benefit yourself to ignore the facts? The roots of the Russian decision to intervene in the Ukrainian civil war run deep back into time. When you pretend that that history does not exist, the only person you are fooling is yourself.
Remember that you are not supporting your local soccer team by going Rah! Rah! for the Ukrainian leadership. This is a very serious geopolitical situation where the resulting “soccer riot” could end up destroying much of Western civilization. This is a time for clear-headed thinking, and honest evaluation of the facts.
Some people seem to want to see thermonuclear war — and if they don’t get sensible soon, they may get their wish. Those of us who want to see an end to the conflict need to recognize that this is not a black & white situation. We need to understand the background in order to find a path to defusing the conflict.
MCS
Funny how your “path to defusing the conflict” always comes down to giving Putin everything he wants. That, just as with your average three year old, never seems to result in lasting peace.
Gavin Longmuir
April 10, 2022 at 3:12 pm
MCS: “Funny how your “path to defusing the conflict” always comes down to giving Putin everything he wants.”
Don’t be shy, MCS! Come on — be constructive. What is “your” proposed path to defusing the conflict?
MCS
April 10, 2022 at 6:17 pm
Once the bullets start flying, the easy answers are gone. There isn’t any more appetite for some sort of ground support from our NATO allies than here and considering their capabilities, that’s just as well. As a practical matter, we can’t provide more sophisticated weapons than we already have. The Ukrainians wouldn’t be in a position to deploy a Patriot battery for example. Their late Warsaw Pact allies may still have some hardware that they are familiar with like those Migs or a few tanks.
The true scope of the Russian debacle is starting to be apparent back in Russia, the cost of the sanctions is just starting to bite and the Russian energy leverage is less every day. I doubt Putin is in any immediate jeopardy but he doesn’t exist in a vacuum either. He’s running out of just about everything, he most especially doesn’t have the deep reserves of cannon fodder that have made previous Russian “victories” possible and filled innumerable graves in the past. If he has significant troop reserves, the time to deploy them is long past. Now his troops in the field have been fighting for a month. I’d bet his material situation is even more dire than his personnel. A man may driven forward at gun point, not so a broken tank.
All Ukraine can do is not collapse. As long as they don’t, Russia continues to bleed. Ukraine has been served ample notice that any sort of surrender will not end their bleeding, merely grant license and scope to the Russians for further depredations. As long as the Ukrainians can shoot back, they have a vote.
Time is not on Russia’s side. Ukraine’s situation is probably looking up with the “withdrawal” from Kiev. Russia still doesn’t seem to be able to put more than a couple of planes in the air at a time. Thus they lose the ability to project force into the interior except by using expensive and ever diminishing missiles.
My proposed path is to just continue on the path we have stumbled upon. Let’s not get in the way of Russia’s further decline.
Xennady
April 10, 2022 at 9:31 pm
My proposed path is to just continue on the path we have stumbled upon. Let’s not get in the way of Russia’s further decline.
Holy fscking sweet jebus. Forgive me for once again butting in a conversation Gavin is having with someone else- but we haven’t merely stumbled upon this path and we aren’t somehow getting in the way of Russia’s decline by potentially ceasing to support the Deep State’s efforts to overthrow the present Russian regime. Russia has enthusiastically embraced decline, without our input. Putin’s various actions may or may not be working to reverse that, but I don’t care.
We are actively and willfully taking a side against Russia, costing us many billions of dollars, inspiring various nations to ditch the US dollar as a medium for trade, and potentially causing Russia to use nuclear weapons against us and Europe. This wasn’t a clumsy stumble, it was a deliberate policy decided upon years ago. There has been a clip going around on twitter, with John McCain and Lindsay Graham declaring that Ukraine’s struggle was our struggle, etc- and that 2017 was going to be the year of offense against Russia. Side, taken, years before Russia invaded the Deep State’s Ukrainian playground.
The true scope of the Russian debacle is starting to be apparent back in Russia, the cost of the sanctions is just starting to bite and the Russian energy leverage is less every day.
How do you know this? Russian news sources are apparently now blocked throughout the entire west- so how do you what is actually happening in Russia?
I suspect MSNBC isn’t giving you the whole picture. But your mileage may vary, as the saying goes.
Thank you for the opportunity to vent. You too, PJF.
I hope I’m wrong and you’re both right.
Miguel cervantes
Dominoes are falling from lebanon to peru, kind of the way the opening to the road warrior shows us
MCS
April 11, 2022 at 7:33 am
“We are actively and willfully taking a side against Russia, costing us many billions of dollars”
Not many billions, maybe a hundred million or so, pocket change. Russia has stolen a rope, tied one end to a tree, the other around their own neck and stepped over a cliff, the least we can do is stand out of the way. We’re supposed to run away and hide every time they rattle their nuclear skeleton? We have paid many billions of dollars to be able to counter that with the only plausible answer anyone’s been able to come up with since Trinity. Maybe “Star Wars” would have offered a more palatable alternative, we’ll never know. You play nuclear brinkmanship with the weapons you have.
Accusing me of watching MSNBC is a step too far, in an earlier age, I’d be forced to demand satisfaction. The internet leaks both ways, just as the Russians know we are saddled with the most inept government since Buchanan, we can see the funerals of the heroes returned from the front in the zinc coffins. We can see the empty shelves.
Gavin Longmuir
April 11, 2022 at 10:42 am
MCS: “My proposed path is to just continue on the path we have stumbled upon. Let’s not get in the way of Russia’s further decline.”
Not much of a plan, is it? The path we have stumbled upon is to become an active belligerent, albeit with limited presence on the ground. And apparently the big hope is that the Ukrainians will bleed out Russia, albeit at very high human cost to themselves. Then the hope is that Russia will quietly accept defeat, and go home. That could happen, but it does not seem at all likely.
We are all limited by the fog of war and by the tidal wave of Western-financed pro-Ukrainian propaganda — we know we are being lied to, big time! But we do know that the noble Ukrainian government spent 8 years failing to win a civil war against under-equipped Ukrainian citizens in the east. Who will bleed out faster — the Ukrainians or the Russians?
We also see the relentlessly increasing anti-Russian rhetoric from NATO — fighting words as well as fighting weapons. It is much more likely that if Russia starts to lose this war, it will strike back at those sideline belligerents. If President Putin is replaced, it is almost certain that he will be replaced by someone who is more hard-line, someone more willing to take the fight to the countries that are propping up Ukraine’s rather undemocratic rulers.
The great risk is that we have stumbled once more into 1914. Rather than foolish bravado and wishful thinking, we in the West should be striving to defuse the conflict. Any other course is madness.
PJF
April 11, 2022 at 11:06 am
There has been a clip going around on twitter, with John McCain and Lindsay Graham declaring that Ukraine’s struggle was our struggle, etc- and that 2017 was going to be the year of offense against Russia. Side, taken, years before Russia invaded the Deep State’s Ukrainian playground.
Well, Twitter clips. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. And the “side” was taken against Russia long before that, ever since it was clear the Russian Federation was going to do its best to be USSR MkII.
As to the BRICS thing, they’ve been trying to set up an alternative to the US$ based economy long before the current unpleasantness. It’s their own agenda, whatever the US does or does not do; whether it is weak or strong.
Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Russian Central Bank, in 2014:
“BRICS partners the establishment of a system of multilateral swaps that will allow to transfer resources to one or another country [ . . . ] If the current trend continues, soon the dollar will be abandoned by most of the significant global economies and it will be kicked out of the global trade finance. Washington’s bullying will make even former American allies choose the anti-dollar alliance instead of the existing dollar-based monetary system.”
What’s amazing is how easily this Russian propaganda has made its way into the minds of ostensibly conservative, patriotic Americans.
MCS
April 11, 2022 at 2:07 pm
To call it a plan is a wild exaggeration I admit. Of course, I was no more consulted in the run-up than anyone else here. It’s more that things are proceeding painfully and bloodily in a direction I believe is long term positive, with Russia’s ability to create problems further diminished. It’s pretty clear that the Ukrainians are going to fight any way they can for as long as they can or until some solution acceptable to them presents itself and I don’t have a problem with supplying them with weapons.
At the same time our erstwhile allies have been given a solid kick toward looking to their own defense rather than depending on us. Talk about untold billions of dollars down the drain.
As I said, right up to the point where Germany starts eyeing Alsace or Silesia, positive though painful and bloody.
PJF
April 11, 2022 at 3:00 pm
Interesting to see the Russians issuing “terrorist” alerts in Crimea and inside Russia. This follows fighting and sabotage well behind Russian lines in the last couple of days, including in Donetsk city. The alerts could just be anxiety or some form of agitprop, but maybe Ukrainian special forces have gone deep.