Tag: vladimir putin

Joe Biden’s Time Interview Should Set Off Alarms

On May 28, U.S. President Joe Biden gave an interview to Time. His delivery and content were concerning for a number of reasons. Biden, at times, seemed misinformed and detached from reality. Sometimes, he seemed off message; other times, he seemed convinced by his own talking points. But four answers he gave were especially alarming and deserve to be highlighted.

The first was Biden’s assertion that America is “the world power.” The truth of that claim can be debated, but making that claim is deaf to the changes taking place in the world. Much of the world is angry at the United States for substituting leadership in the global community of international law with the imposition of an inconsistent and hypocritical rules-based order.

If the United States is still the world power, then a multipolar world that includes a rapidly growing BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is closer and closer on its heels. Biden seems not to have noticed what his CIA director has: that the world is in one of “those times of transition that come along a couple of times a century. Today the United States still has a better hand to play than any of our rivals, but it is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical bloc. And our position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.”

In a disturbing defense of his claim, Biden said that “the reason why I cleared the intelligence so we can release the information we knew that [Putin] was going to attack, was to let the world know we were still in charge. We still know what’s going on.”

It is disturbing that Biden says that he released the intelligence, not to alert and protect Ukraine or to prevent war, but “to let the world know we were still in charge.” It is also disturbing that the United States had that intelligence, and knew Ukraine was about to be attacked, but did nothing to prevent it. Hawkishly, they could have massively armed Ukraine prior to the invasion. More rationally and responsibly, they could have seriously engaged Vladimir Putin on Russia’s December 2021 proposal on security guarantees and discussed a promise that Ukraine would not be invited into NATO. Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko of Freie University in Berlin remarks that the United States failing to act on that intelligence in either of those ways “looks sort of strange, and of course very tragic for Ukraine.” It is disturbing that the U.S. impotently released the intelligence, not to prevent war and protect Ukraine, but to show the world that they are still “the world power.”

The second is Biden’s insistence that Putin has clearly stated his intention not to stop at Ukraine but to “reestablish the Soviet Union.” He pulled out a copy of Putin’s February 21, 2022 speech, repeatedly mocking his interviewers, “You probably haven’t read it.” But as Biden explains it to them, and summarizes it as saying “Ukraine is not a neighboring country” but “an inalienable part” of Russia, it begins to sound like Biden has not read the speech, which is highly critical of the Soviet Union.

Discussing the “critical” stage “the situation in Donbas has reached,” Putin references the closeness of the people of Donbas not to justify integrating or conquering them but to justify protecting them. If Biden has read the speech, it must have been a heavily redacted version. As Nicolai Petro, author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, pointed out to me, Biden selectively quotes from the speech while leaving much of contextual importance out.

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Illegitimate Western Leaders Call Putin Re-Election Illegitimate

Western leaders are decrying Russian President Putin’s election to another 6 years in power.

Western leaders condemned the poll as “illegitimate” and neither free nor fair, while Putin hailed the result and turnout as proof of his country’s democracy, reports CNBC.

“Russian authorities have continued to increase the systematic internal repression by cracking down on opposition politicians, civil society organizations, independent media and other critical voices with the use of repressive legislation and politically motivated prison sentences,” the EU said in a statement out Monday.

The circumstances in which the elections were held “deprived Russian voters of a real choice and heavily limited their access to accurate information,” the bloc added, while also condemning presidential votes carried out by Russia in occupied territories of Ukraine.

While the development in Moscow exists within a Russian system of political repression, Western leaders are the pot calling the kettle black.

For example, in Europe and Canada, people are going to jail for their speech. Farmers across The Continent are protesting violently because the EU wants to destroy their businesses. The EU and the Biden regime are importing millions of migrants to destroy Western society. The Jan 6 political prisoners are rotting in jail, and Republican leaders don’t care. The 2020 U.S. presidential election was certainly fraudulent.

Maoist cancel culture is still alive and well in American and the West.

None of this is based on the will of the people, and certainly illegitimate.

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Putin Opponent Alexei Navalny Dies in Arctic Jail, Russia Says

Russia’s most prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny collapsed and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a long jail term, the Russian prison service said.

Mr. Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, rose to prominence more than a decade ago with blogs on what he said was vast corruption and opulence among the “crooks and thieves” of Russia’s elite.

The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said in a statement that Mr. Navalny felt unwell after a walk at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) north east of Moscow into the Arctic Circle.

He lost consciousness almost immediately, it said.

“All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not yield positive results,” the prison service said, adding that causes of death were being established.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin was told about the death.

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Putin Confirms Boris Johnson Sabotaged Peace Deal With Ukraine

During his interview with Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sabotaged a peace deal with Ukraine that would have ended the war 18 months ago.

During an interview conducted in November last year, David Arahamiya, the leader of Ukraine’s ruling party, revealed that Johnson had scuppered a peace deal that would have put an end to hostilities just a few months after the Russian invasion.

“They [Russia] were ready to end the war if we took neutrality—as Finland once did—and made commitments that we would not join NATO. This was the key point,” said Arahamiya.

However, despite the negotiations going well, Johnson “unexpectedly arrived in Kyiv on April 9th, 2022” and told President Zelensky that he, “Shouldn’t sign anything with them at all—and let’s just fight.”

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Putin Claims War In Ukraine Was Started By A CIA Coup

During the interview with Tucker Carlson, Russian leader Vladimir Putin stated that the war in Ukraine “did not start in 2022,” but rather was a result of a 2014 coup in the country, directly backed by the CIA.

Putin recalled the moment he decided he had to invade, noting “initially it was the coup in Ukraine that provoked the conflict.”

Putin claimed that a decade ago the United States proposed a joint effort to for a diplomatic settlement in Ukraine and the then President Yanukovich agreed not to deploy troops or police. However, an armed opposition, which Putin alleges was run by the CIA, orchestrated a coup in Kiev.

Putin further stated that “the representatives of three countries, Germany, Poland, and France, arrived. They were the guarantors of the signed agreement. Despite that, the opposition committed a coup and all of these countries pretended that they didn’t remember they were guarantors of the peaceful settlement.”

He continued, “President Yanukovich agreed to all conditions which included holding an early election he had no chance of winning”, Putin stated, adding “Why the coup? Why the victims? Why threaten Crimea? Why threaten the Donbas? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“The CIA did its job to complete the coup,” he continued, adding “The political mistake was colossal. All this could be done without victims.”

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Putin ally ‘falls to his death from third-floor window’

The body of pro-Putin regional politician Vladimir Egorov, 46, has been found after a suspected fall from a third-floor window.

A member of the ruling party United Russia, he was a prominent and wealthy politician in oil-rich Tobolsk in western Siberia.

The Tobolsk City Duma dropped to his death from the third-floor window of a home on Kedrovaya Street in Tobolsk in the Tyumen Oblast, Russian Telegram channel Baza, which has links to Russian security services, reported. 

One source said there was ‘no visible sign of a criminal death on the [politician’s] body’. Pathologists are to examine the cause of death.

His corpse was found in the yard of his house, according to reports.

According to the 72 news outlet, Egorov may have suffered from heart problems.

‘One of the most likely reasons is heart problems,’ a source told the publication.

Heart issues are frequently given as the explanation of multiple untimely or suspicious deaths among prominent people in Russia since the start of the war against Ukraine.

How this related to falling around 30ft from a third-floor window is unclear.

The report said: ‘In the near future pathologists will conduct an autopsy to establish the true cause of Egorov’s death.’

News outlet Baza reported: ‘Police are now investigating what exactly caused his fall.’

A trained lawyer with business interests, he had earlier been forced to leave the city administration in 2016 after a corruption scandal for which he was ultimately not convicted.

He returned to politics and was the wealthiest local deputy in Tobolsk.

He leaves behind a wife and two children.

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The Myth That Putin Was Bent on Conquering Ukraine and Creating a Greater Russia

There is a growing body of compelling evidence showing that Russia and Ukraine were involved in serious negotiations to end the war in Ukraine right after it started on 24 February 2022. These talks were facilitated by Turkish President Recep Erdogan and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and featured detailed and candid discussions on the terms of a possible settlement.

By all accounts, these negotiations, which took place in March-April 2022, were making real progress when Britain and the US told Ukrainian President Zelensky to abandon them, which he did.

Coverage of these events has focused on how foolish and irresponsible it was for President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put an end to these negotiations, given all the death and destruction that Ukraine has suffered since then – in a war that Kyiv is likely to lose.

Yet an especially important aspect of this story regarding the causes of the Ukraine war has received little attention. The well-entrenched conventional wisdom in the West is that President Putin invaded Ukraine to conquer that country and make it part of a Greater Russia. Then, he would move on and conquer other countries in eastern Europe. The counter-argument, which enjoys little support in the West, is that Putin was mainly motivated to invade by the threat of Ukraine joining NATO and becoming a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. For him and other Russian elites, Ukraine in NATO was an existential threat.

The negotiations in March-April 2022 make it clear that the conventional wisdom on the war’s causes is wrong, and the counter-argument is right, for two main reasons. First, the talks were directly focused on satisfying Russia’s demand that Ukraine not become part of NATO and instead become a neutral state. Everyone involved in the negotiations understood that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was Russia’s core concern. Second, if Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would not have agreed to these talks, as their very essence contradicted any possibility of Russia conquering all of Ukraine. One might argue that he participated in these negotiations and talked a lot about neutrality to mask his larger ambitions. There is no evidence, however, to support this line of argument, not to mention that: 1) Russia’s small invasion force was not capable of conquering and occupying all of Ukraine; and 2) it would have made no sense to delay a larger offensive, as it would afford Ukraine time to build up its defenses.

In short, Putin launched a limited attack into Ukraine for the purpose of coercing Zelensky into abandoning Kyiv’s policy of aligning with the West and eventually bringing Ukraine into NATO. Had Britain and the West not intervened to scotch the negotiations, there is good reason to think Putin would have achieved this limited objective and agreed to end the war.

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Former commander who criticised Putin for the state of Russia’s air force is mysteriously found dead alongside his wife

A former commander of Russian air defences has been found dead alongside his wife under mysterious circumstances.

Highly-decorated Lieutenant General Vladimir Sviridov, 68, and his wife Tatyana, 72, were dead for around a week before their corpses were found, it is reported.

The retired pilot once criticised Vladimir Putin for running a ‘third-ranking’ air force, warning top officers were leaving the armed forces because of dire pay and conditions.

Russian authorities have been unable to ascertain the cause of death, local media reported. 

The general and his wife were found in their home in the village of Adzhievsky in Stavropol region.

‘Gas service workers have already taken measurements and no excess of the permissible concentration of harmful substances has been detected,’ an initial report into their death read. 

‘What caused the death of Vladimir and Tatyana Sviridov is still unknown.’

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Zelensky Bizarrely Blames The Israel-Gaza Conflict On Putin

Clearly, Ukraine’s war effort will suffer even further setback given that the attention of international media coverage has seemingly in an instant switched from the Russia-Ukraine war to the shocking scenes to have emerged from Israel. The world has pivoted from the battlefields of the Donbas to beholding scenes of southern Israel and the Gaza Strip.

On social media for example, masses of Americans have switched their Facebook profiles from Ukrainian flags to Israeli flags, or on the other side of it… to Palestinian flags. Perhaps trying to regain some of the lost spotlight and media focus, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has bizarrely laid blame on Russia for the outbreak of fresh conflict in the Middle East.

Zelensky said in Monday statements that Moscow stoke war in the region in an effort to weaken global unity and spread destabilization.

“Based on available information — very clear information — it is in Russia’s interests to inflame war in the Middle East to create a new source of pain and suffering that would weaken global unity, create divisions and help Russia in undermining freedom in Europe,” Zelensky said in a nightly video address.

Of course, he cited no evidence for the claims. The new talking point seems a desperate attempt to link ‘the current thing’ to the Russian invasion and the plight of Ukrainians. Zelensky in a series of messages has expressed solidarity with Israeli victims of Hamas terror.

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“He’ll Do It Again”: Hillary Clinton Claims Putin Will Interfere In 2024 Election

Hillary Clinton maintained her assertion of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interference in American elections, and warned he’ll interfere in the 2024 presidential race “if he has a chance.”

“I don’t think, despite all of the deniers, there’s any doubt that he interfered in our election or that he has interfered in many ways in the internal affairs of other countries—funding political parties, funding, you know, political candidates, buying off, you know, government officials in different places,” Ms. Clinton said in a Sept. 25 interview with MSNBC.

She said Mr. Putin “hates democracy” and hates the West and the United States.

“I fear that the Russians have proved themselves to be quite adept at interfering. And if he has a chance, he’ll do it again,” she said.

Ms. Clinton said that Mr. Putin has determined “he can do two things simultaneously.” First is that Russia can “continue to damage and divide us internally. And he’s quite good at it.”

The 2016 Democrat presidential candidate said that the Russian president has “a lot of apologists and enablers in our own country.” Ms. Clinton believes part of the reason Mr. Putin “worked so hard against me is because he didn’t think that he wanted me in the White House.”

Ms. Clinton insisted that the United States is heading toward fascism.

“We have to reject authoritarianism, we have to reject a kind of creeping fascism, almost, of people who are really ready to turn over their thinking, their votes, to wannabe dictators. And we can’t allow that to proceed.”

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