Sanctions And The Future: A Russian View
As I’ve mentioned in the past, Friend George regularly sends me articles dealing with Russian geopolitical matters—a simple terms for a wide ranging subject, since it embraces the efforts of Western globalists to establish world hegemony. The point of friction, of course, is that Vladimir Putin wants to maintain Russian sovereignty. The parallel in US politics involves Donald Trump’s desire to maintain—in opposition to what Sundance terms the Uniparty—American sovereignty (that’s what MAGA is a code term for, in effect). Thus the continual campaign of the Globalist elite and their proxies to demonize both Putin and Trump. In that respect it’s interesting to review the recent career of disgraced former AG Bill Barr, for whom I had such high hopes.
The Line of Conflict in this big picture war to rule the world has long been focused on Ukraine. Or, put it this way: If you buy into Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of American global hegemony over the Eurasian land mass as running through US domination (West to East) of France, Germany, Poland, and Ukraine, then you could say that the focus on Ukraine attained special importance following Poland’s entry into NATO in 1997. This explains the years of George Soros’ activity in Ukraine, along with our corrupt political hegemons, who used Ukraine to fund political operations in the US. Keep this big picture in mind—it’s not about “democracy,” whatever that may mean to you. The disparagement of Ukraine and Russia as corrupt by American media outlets hides the scale of corruption in the ranks of our Globalist ruling elite that dwarfs corruption anywhere else in the world. This big picture is summarized here:
Back to Friend George. The other day he sent me some material about Sergei Glazyev. Who is Sergei Glazyev? He’s a figure you want to keep in mind as we move into the next stage of the sanctions war against Russian sovereignty:
Sergey Yurievich Glazyev (Russian: Серге́й Юрьевич Глазьев) (born January 1, 1961, in Zaporozhye, Ukrainian SSR, USSR) is a Russian politician and economist, member of the National Financial Council of the Bank of Russia, and, since 2008, a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Glazyev was minister of Foreign Economic Relations in Boris Yeltsin's cabinet from 1992 to 1993, a member of the State Duma from 1993 to 2007, one of the leaders of the electoral block Rodina from 2003 to 2004, a candidate for the Presidency of the Russian Federation in 2004, and advisor to the president of the Russian Federation on regional economic integration from 2012 to 2019.
In the ongoing war, Zaporozhye constitutes a sort of pivot point between East and West Ukraine—the Russian forces moving north from Crimea will be targeting Zaporozhye very soon. In fact, they’re not far away. That will be a key to creating the vast “cauldron” of Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper River. Not unusually, Glazyev has a Russian father and Ukrainian mother—although Wikipedia, not inaccurately, terms him a “Russian”.
On to Glazyev’s views on geopolitics and the world economy—and Ukraine as a flashpoint—which should be of great interest, since he has been an advisor to President Putin since 2004, and could conceivably succeed Putin:
Views on Russia in the 1990s
In his 1999 book, A Genocide: Russia And The New World Order, Glazyev argues that the rate of annual population loss in Russia in the 1990s has been "more than double the rate of loss during the period of Stalinist repression and mass famine in the first half of the 1930s.... There has been nothing like this in the thousand-year history of Russia." Glazyev traces this decline to "the conscious policy of the oligarchy that ruled the country. Its exploitation of power for purposes of personal enrichment effectively led to genocide against the Russian people."
The book then underlines Glazyev's views of the stark choice that confronted Russia on the verge of the 21st century:
Either we passively submit to a suicidal policy of self-destruction and the colonization of Russia, which has been imposed from the outside by deception and graft, or we . . . move to a scientifically grounded strategy for economic growth, improvement of the people's welfare, and restoration of the spiritual-intellectual strength and the scientific and technical potential of the Russian State.
Views on Ukraine
In an interview with the National Interest, Glazyev said:
The entire crisis in Ukraine was orchestrated, provoked, and financed by American institutions in cooperation with their European partners. They financed neo-Nazis. For fifteen years, the U.S. and Europeans financed neo-Nazis' training, their camps, and preparation. By U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's acknowledgement, the State Department spent $5 billion on the creation of an anti-Russian political and paramilitary elite. This work led to the sad situation that now in Ukraine neo-Nazi and neo-fascists ideas prevail, as does admiration for, more than anything, Stepan Bandera's associates who in their time murdered Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and whomever they wanted, burning or otherwise killing them under Nazi leadership.
I suspect that Glazyev’s views on these issues are widely shared both within the Russian leadership as well as among Russians generally. As important, I suspect that they are also widely held in areas outside the Ukrainian heartland, as the electoral results probably illustrate—the last free election in original post Soviet Ukraine led to a president who favored closer relations with Russia. Electoral maps like this have been typical as far back as 2004, and perhaps farther. They illustrate a fundamentally divided nation whose political divide is reflected along linguistic and religious lines:
Now, our last Wikipedia selection, which is crucial for understanding the current posture of Russia—that posture was not born overnight:
Views on the Russo-American conflict
In 2015, Glazyev felt that the American capitalist model was entering an inevitable, very dangerous, phase of self-destruction. We are, he felt, "truly on the verge of a global war." Although this coming war poses a great danger for Russia, Glazyev said that the USA will fail to achieve its hegemonic goals of controlling Russia and the entire world.
Following the August 2017 round of sanctions against the Russian Federation by the American Congress, Glazyev suggested that the USA should be officially designated as an "aggressor country." Believing that United States' power is based in part on the status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, Glazyev suggested that Russia abandons the dollar and liquidates its sizeable ($110 billion in August 2017) investment in the U.S. Federal Reserve.
So!
After all that background, we get to the excerpt of an article that Glazyev that was provided by Friend George. George precedes the excerpt with a snippet from John Helmer. I don’t vouch for Helmer’s views or sources, but find them of interest. The excerpt is then followed by speculation on divides within the US-UK alliance:
Helmer:
London banking sources and a leading oil trade figure believe that if the third-strike sanctions halt US dollar and Euro payments for Russian oil, gas, coal, titanium, palladium, diamonds, and other commodity exports, along with servicing of interest and principal loans, then the Russian side will stop all debt payments. They will also stop all deliveries to the US and Europe.
The domestic Russian political implications are not less dramatic; they are potentially revolutionary, though not in the direction US figures like Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and William Burns have been calculating in public. Glazyev is one of the Russian revolutionaries they least want to see take power over the oligarchs now.
You will need to read the full article to get a real taste of Glazyev’s work, but I offer a small snippet:
The main result of the US-European sanctions was a change in the geographical structure of Russian foreign economic relations in favor of China, the expansion of cooperation with which fully compensates for the curtailment of trade and economic relations with the EU. European consumers have to switch to more expensive American energy carriers, and their producers simply lose the Russian market. The total losses of the EU from anti-Russian sanctions are estimated at $250 billion.
Another important result of the US sanctions was the fall in the share of the dollar in international settlements. For Russia, as for other countries which have been subjected to US sanctions, the dollar has become a toxic currency. By tracing all dollar transactions, the US punitive authorities can block payments, freeze, or even confiscate assets at any time. For 8 years after the sanctions were imposed, the dollar’s share in international settlements decreased by 13.5 percentage points (from 60.2% in 2014 to 46.7% in 2020).
Sanctions have become a powerful incentive for the transition to settlements in national currencies and the development of national payment systems. Thus, in the mutual trade of the EAEU states, the share of the dollar decreased by more than 6 percentage points (from 26.3% in 2014 to 20.0% at the end of 2020).
I remember how ten years ago, when considering the risks to the Russian banking system at the National Banking Council, I asked the then head of the Central Bank: ‘Is the risk of disconnecting Russian banks from the international SWIFT banking transmission system being considered, as Western partners did in relation to Iran?’ To which I received the answer: ‘We cannot consider the risk of an atomic bomb hitting the Bank of Russia.’ However, the management of the Central Bank has taken measures — today Russia has its own system for transmitting electronic messages between banks — the Bank of Russia’s Financial Message Transmission System (SPFS), as well as its own payment system for Mir bank cards, which is interfaced with the Chinese Union Pay system and can be used for cross-border payments and transfers. Both of them are open to foreign partners and are already widely used not only in domestic, but also in international settlements. Disabling SWIFT is no longer seen as a large-scale threat — it will benefit the development of our payment and financial information systems.
He ends:
In general, much remains to be done to strengthen national sovereignty in the economy. American sanctions are the agony of the outgoing imperial world economic system based on the use of force. In order to minimize the dangers associated with it, it is necessary to accelerate the formation of a new – integral – world economic order which restores international law, national sovereignty, equality of countries, diversity of national economic models, principles of mutual benefit and voluntariness in international economic cooperation.”
Today in a small town in Belarus Ukrainians and the Russians held several hours of “negotiations. The article below, Win the war and not lose the peace -- Why was Russia asked to negotiate with Zelensky?, sketches a labyrinth of complications.
Again, the Russtrat article is complex, so you’ll maybe want to digest it for yourselves, but on this issue Russtrat writes,
And here one more curious detail becomes clear: the acute internal conflict between the USA and Great Britain. Biden is pushing Putin with all his might to negotiate with Zelensky - it is clear that in order to negotiate as many concessions as possible in order to maintain the position of American agents in Ukraine.
That is, Biden needs these negotiations so much now that he even goes to deepen the conflict with China, just to use all the resources to stop the Russian army. USA has no time! It has reached an unprecedented point: the United States has declared that they are no longer against the neutral status of Ukraine.
However, it is easy to guess that the United States, through Zelensky, will agree to the neutral status of Ukraine only in exchange for the rejection of its federalization. Which means in fact the preservation of their dominance over this country. For Russia, this is unacceptable, as it will make all the costs of the decision to denazify Ukraine in vain. This is where the line of conflict will lie, including in the negotiations, if they are destined to take place.
You may be surprised at the alignment of the issues as Russtrat and Macgregor formulate them. And this is tricky. It was Boris Johnson, according to Russtrat, who wrung Zelensky’s neck to stop him from negotiating with Putin (what did he threaten or offer?), but “Biden” wants and needs such negotiations. Therefore, according to Russtrat, it was after a “Biden” call to Xi that Xi called Putin to get him to agree to negotiate as if Xi were afraid that “Biden” can unleash a color revolution in China! Well, … Russia’s reformatting of the European security space, so the “Biden” gambit with a carrot - neutrality of western Ukraine, leaving the Nazis and oligarchs in power - indeed seems a no-go.
So, the short version. The Zhou administration’s pivot to allowing Zelenskyy to negotiate—after the initial refusal—is a desperate effort to salvage US influence in a postwar Ukraine. That influence has been based on US funding of “Nazis and Banderists” (followers of Stepan Bandera) in Western Ukraine, and on collusion with Ukrainian oligarchs—with whom the Biden crime family, in particular, has long established ties.
The Russtrat article argues for a “federalized” Ukraine—in other words, annexation of Ukraine into union with the Russian Federation. There are plenty of ways to accomplish that, and it’s possible that the lightning admission of Ukraine to the EU is a desperate attempt to fend off closer ties between Russia and Ukraine. Russtrat argues that Russia, having been forced to take drastic action, is unlikely to back off from full success in the end game of postwar Ukraine.
That is the importance of the Glazyev article. It shows, for anyone who doubted, that Russia has been doing the hard work of planning for the new wave of sanctions. I doubt that anyone in the US has truly done the hard work of planning for the postwar New New World Order that Putin has in mind—with other world leaders, as well.
Meanwhile, one trial balloon after another is getting shot down. The former Warsaw Pact MiG 29s have all been firmly grounded by Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia. BoJo’s proposed “no fly zone” is also not going to fly. But the Dutch stand shoulder to shoulder with … Turkey? Talk about nuance!
Here's something else to throw on the side of the scale for Putin:
https://www.rintrah.nl/the-collapse-of-the-they-them-empire-western-elites-have-overplayed-their-hand/
"Here is the physical reality we’re dealing with: Europe is dependent on Russia, not just for electricity or heating, but for the very food that we consume.
Russia and the European Union both produce enough food to feed their own population. There is however a major difference between the two: According to the most recent figures, Russia applies 20.8 kilogram of fertilizer per hectare of arable land, whereas the European Union applies 154.8 kilogram of fertilizer per hectare of arable land.
This leads to important differences in yield. Europe harvests 5,240 kilogram of wheat per hectare of harvested land. We use very little space, to grow enormous amounts of food. On the other hand, Russia harvests 2,616 kilogram of wheat per hectare of harvested land. Places like the Netherlands and Belgium are at the top of the chart, with 8,318 and 8,154 kilogram respectively. The secret to our success is very simple: We’re highly dependent on technological tricks, to produce the maximum amount of food, with the maximum amount of inputs.
And looked at in this way, the European idea of food self-sufficiency is a myth. We don’t produce our own food. We’re about as self-sufficient as a college student who lives by herself but has her father pay for her rent. Because ask yourself: Where does all this fertilizer come from? We produce it ourselves, by fixating nitrogen from the air. But what do we use to fixate the nitrogen? We use natural gas. Nitrogen fertilizer costs have gone up by 263% last year.
But that’s not all. The Netherlands is a massive exporter of food, thanks to our greenhouses. How do you think we produce our food? With natural gas. We don’t just use the natural gas to warm our greenhouses, we use the carbon dioxide released from burning it to massively enhance carbon dioxide concentrations in the greenhouses, because this makes the plants grow faster. This is not to mention the artificial lights that are used for the plants, allowing us to produce fruit and vegetables during dark winters.
If Russia won’t deliver us natural gas, we will literally die of hunger. The greenhouses stop working, we become unable to produce fertilizer so grain yields plunge too. And what are Russia and China now doing? They’re declaring that they’re not exporting fertilizer."
"The Zhou administration’s pivot to allowing Zelenskyy to negotiate—after the initial refusal—is a desperate effort to salvage US influence in a postwar Ukraine."
But but I'm told by all the media and experts that Russia is losing and Putin is going to be chased out of the Kremlin by mobs of freedom loving transgenders. /sarc.