by Larry Johnson
What a difference a couple of weeks make. Remember the meme that “Russia is losing” or even “Russia has already lost.?” Exactly one month ago the U.K.’s chief of defense staff said the following:
The head of the UK’s armed forces says Russia is losing in Ukraine, offering a blunt assessment of the state of the war as Moscow’s unprovoked invasion creeps toward its 10-month mark.
“Russia is losing” and the “free world is winning,” Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the United Kingdom’s chief of defense staff, said Wednesday during a speech at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-is-losing-ukraine-will-continue-fail-uk-military-chief-2022-12?op=1That was then. Now, in the wake of the fall of Soledar and intensifying pressure on Bakhmut, some journalists are starting to sing a slightly different tune. Leading Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman grudgingly admits Russia is not losing on the battlefield and may be on the verge of taking over Kiev and ousting the Zelinsky government:
“Don’t write off Russia” — that was the muttered warning of a European diplomat, with long experience in Moscow. It is a fair point. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has gone badly wrong. But Russia remains a huge country, with plentiful resources and a ruthless, brutal government. Ukraine’s intelligence services think that further conscription drives may allow Russia to deploy an army of 2mn for a renewed offensive later this year. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently warned that Moscow might soon make a fresh attempt to capture Kyiv.
But even a battlefield breakthrough could not deliver Russia a lasting victory. Imagine that Putin’s forces achieved some kind of malign miracle, defeated Ukraine and overthrew the Zelenskyy government. What then? The reality is that a wounded and isolated Russia would then be stuck in a decades-long guerrilla war that would make Afghanistan look like a picnic. Occupying forces or a collaborationist government in Kyiv would be under constant attack. “Victory” would lock Russia into a long-term disaster.
https://www.ft.com/content/42367891-bde7-4770-95f4-460d0762215b?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9Looks like Mr. Rachman has bought into a new fantasy. Ukraine is the new Afghanistan. Really? I guess he has not consulted a map. For starters, there are no huge mountains with endless valleys scattered throughout Ukraine. There are no regional tribes or ethnic clans with their own language or dialect. (There are “clans” but these are criminal organizations.) The ability of Ukrainians to sustain a guerrilla war ignores Russia’s experience in the Chechen region. Putin and Medvedev faced a formidable Islamic insurgent force and defeated it. You see, Russia knows the culture and the language. It is not like a Russian intelligence officer trying to infiltrate a Hazara or Baloch tribe. Very difficult to appear like a native. That is not the case in Ukraine. Ukrainians and Russians come from the same ethnic stock.
Gideon Rachman also makes the mistake of arrogance — he presumes that Russia’s lack of relationships with the United States and Europe means that Moscow is isolated and alone. Someone needs to remind Rachman that there are some other countries in the world not willing to ignore Russia, such as China, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Egypt, Turkey and Brazil, just to mention a few.
I think the Russians have discovered they can live without Starbucks and MacDonalds and their lives are not damaged. In fact, if Russia is deprived of Western junk food they just might have a healthier population.
The West is in desperation mode. They are throwing feces against the wall and hoping something sticks.
This group used to be referred to as BRICS, but it keeps growing and adding more countries that want to put their own lands FIRST.
Altho some of them had a few businessmen go to DAVOS they are not, as countries, globalists.
Even we, in the USA, led by globalists, must rely on BRICS nations for much of our manufacturing and imported medical and tech workers.
If BRICS gets treated like how Russia is being treated by the globalists, they can just stop exporting people and goods.
Then watch out!
And, should BRICS’ policy go from benign opposition to malignant toward the globalists, the elites of DAVOS better watch out, too.
What an idiot. Putin will keep pushing into Poland, Romania, and to the Baltics. This was always expected.
Putin wont he wont need to, brics will have Europe on the ropes, he could simply destroy them financially the way Reagan took down the former Soviet Union, selling gas, and fertilizer grain and salt all the while building. The Baltics and Romania will join brics then Poland the others will go along quickly as the petro dollar is nearly history thanks to the IMF, WEF and other unelected goofy retards.
Its China that will crumble under its own top down weight, and population crash.
The idiot’s military can’t even successfully occupy Ukraine. How the hell could he extend his catastrophe into NATO Europe? Putin will be lucky not to be dead or deposed before 2023 is over.
And replaced with another “Putin” with the same objectives.
There are many.
Ukraine is successfully occupied. Russians are inside the nation, and have essential annexed more of the rough territory we traditionally call “The Ukraine.”
Why would anyone repeat Putin’s fatal mistake?
Most of the Russian “occupiers” in Ukraine are corpses. Wagner Group–which has lost 40 percent of their “troops”, doesn’t even try to return their dead to Russia; they declare them “missing” so they don’t have to pay a death benefit to their survivors.
You don’t understand history, and you don’t understand the situation in Ukriane.
Russia hasn’t even committed real troops numbers in Ukraine. That’s coming.
Ukraine’s forces are all mercenaries and NATO troops.
Like all their wars, Russia uses mercenaries as fodder to start.
Putin will be replaced, if killed.
Sorry, son. I’m not sure what failure in your education made you look at war like it’s a sports game.
There’s no “side” here. Just dead people who could have been saved by diplomacy. Trump would have, and Trump will when he’s re-elected.
Diplomacy? Once you roll tanks across a neighbor’s borders, reduce their cities to ruins, and follow up with paid mercenaries that make torture, murder, and rape a standard means of terrorizing the population, you’ve lost any right to whine about diplomacy. Putin wants nothing more than a chance to catch his breath before renewing his offensive. He must not be given that chance. Only an idiot would give him that chance. If he had any current capability to mount another major offensive, he’d be doing it while the fields are frozen. Russia’s military has been revealed as disorganized, poorly led, poorly fed, poorly equipped, and troop morale is totally in the toilet. Wagner, which has “recruited” from Russian prisons, kills its own to enforce obedience. You know what they did to Yevgenny Nuzhin. Wagner had it video recorded as a warning to their other “volunteers”. Human lives–Russian or Ukrainian–mean nothing to Putin’s butchers.
Putin will attempt another offensive as soon as they’ve regrouped, but it will fail. Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom, families, and homeland on their own soil. What the hell are Russian conscripts fighting for? Putin may eventually give them an answer to that question–but he won’t like it.
Ukraine, with the backing of the West, will rid itself of Russia and become a NATO state. THAT–and his own demise–is what Putin will ultimately accomplish. Even if he successfully occupied Ukraine, there would be hell to pay. There would be continuous guerilla resistance and sabotage, which would cross the border into Russia proper. I used to think Putin was smarter. Maybe he once was.
What!? Do you even understand how war and peace works? Zelenskyy committed genocide. You don’t have any right to take the high road.
As two war criminals, both Z and P will negotiate just fine. The issue is that Z is a NATO puppet, a NATO using Ukrainians as fodder for their Black Rock investment opportunity.
How sick they are.
Putin already IS engaged in another offensive, and winning.
Man, I don’t know what’s wrong with your brain, son, but the 5 Covid shots give me hope.
“NATO is fighting to the last Ukrainian”
Well said.
One of the easiest sells to to suckers is the proposition that they’re smarter than they really are. The right quickly swallowed that one, hook, line, and sinker.
Where and when did Zelenskyy commit genocide? You’ve never once answered that question, because you effin’ LYING.
No, you’re just too much of coward to challenge the idea that you don’t know anything, at all.
Fits you to a tee.
Zelenskyy has committed genocide, and is a war criminal just like Putin.
Speaking of real LIARS, here’s puppet Joe telling all of his.
Why should I waste my time?
The entirety of your time here is a complete waste. Certainly you can agree you are not the least bit effective in whatever it is you have as a purpose being here.
I for one am amused at the degree of stupidity your engagement appears to be.
Everyone knows about Zelenskyy’s exploits on the genocide front except greg, it seems.
Everyone knows McCarthy has rewarded George Santos’ shameless lies with committee assignments, and put three of Trump’s lunatic election deniers on the House Oversight Committee.
I told you Trump was the tainted apple that would rot the whole barrel.
Kevin McCarthy cancels all House proxy voting… Members now must vote in person…
You understand that your incessant b*tching about Trump is actually making him stronger, relevant, and the only real choice for President in 2024.
Right?
Are you really that stupid, or do your employers not understand what they are doing?
A little of both, I suspect. Tell michael I said hi.
Where and when did Zelenskyy commit genocide?
greg, you lie for a living. You’ll make up your own reality when REALITY proves you to be an uneducated drone of a man.
Zelenskyy committed genocide.
Everyone knows this.
The scales will fall from your eyes one day.
It’s an established fact. You live in a Leftwing bubble, parrot fake news, and lie….lie….lie. All the time.
Zelenskyy is a war criminal. He committed genocide, and will be held accountable for his crimes as much as Putin.
And calm down, greg. Raising your blood pressure might cause you have a heart attack, since you purportedly took FIVE Covid shots, like a dunce.
Didn’t he say he took the first and 5 boosters? Are there five additional kill jabs?
Trump reveals he got COVID-19 booster shot; crowd boos him
They know the boosters can be dangerous and want Trump to stay healthy.
The Left has been worshiping their own false sense of intelligence for decades.
Now they think men are women are men, Communism works, and spending more money they don’t have will reduce inflation.
The Left has become, truly, the dumbest among us.
The dumbest among us may screw around and trigger a debt default, tanking the entire US economy for no rational reason at all.
If the the treasury acts in a responsible manner there can be no debt default. Your premise is nothing more than fear porn.
That’s certainly where the Democrats and the bumbling puppet they installed are taking us.
So where and when was it that Zelenskyy committed genocide? I must have missed your answer.
gregs two heroes
Oh… so you understand that questions are supposed to be followed by answers? I wasn’t sure you were familiar with the concept, based on history.
I answered you a long time ago, son. You’re just inclined to step outside your bubble of fake news.
Nope. You’r lying about that, too. Just like you lie about evidence of Trump’s “massive election fraud”, which is no more real than Zelensy’s “genocide”.
Hehe. I knew you’d take the bait.
Your world is crumbling, greg.
Biden was installed. So was Zelenskyy. Z committed genocide in Eastern Ukraine. It’s not a secret.
That you don’t know about it says much about how powerful propaganda can be in minds of dumb people who don’t know their dumb.
Ever since Comrade Greggie showed up on this site, he has denied reality and pimped left wing lies. Ironic, isn’t it, how angry he gets when the truth about Zelenskyy is revealed.
But then, Comrade Greggie denied the Hunter Biden laptop from Hell was real.
The world is full of insular groups of insecure people looking for stronger personalities to follow. Following egocentric authoritarians has always been a bad choice. You’ve given over your minds.
Then it’s pretty pathetic that people like you see idiot Biden as a stronger personality you follow without question.
You don’t get it. Democrats DON’T see Biden as a more forceful personality. They see him as a more rational, compassionate, and principled leader than the fraud he defeated. I hate bullying a-holes like Trump and Putin on sight. I’ll always take the side of a nation like Ukraine over a mind-controlled dictatorship like Russia. It’s always better to kill fascists with a pen, but if they come with swords, you kill them with swords.
Anyone that sees him as that is a moron. He has never demonstrated any such traits. When it is popular, he is racist. When he needs to, he pretends he “fought for civil rights”. When it gets support, he supports the wall and denounces illegal immigration. When the radical forces of the fascist Democrats party demand it, he opens the border, denounces the wall and draws in millions of illegal immigrants. Idiot Biden IS fraud, he represents fraud. The latest scandal, the theft and mishandling of classified documents, shows what a threat to this nation he is. Trump was Constitutional, idiot Biden is opening the gates to the barbarians for a price.
You follow idiot Biden like a puppy because you are told to. What you need is a mind of your own. Try to get one.
Yes. We implore you to turn back, now.
Otherwise, we’ll be forced to stop you from turning our nation authoritarian.
When he refused to negotiate and sent Ukaines into the Russian meat grinder, he still is while grifting and buying mansions outside Ukraine.
That would be the Democrats, if they don’t agree to spending cuts and controlling debt and waste.
If House republicans cause a debt default, they’ll be swept away by a Democratic tsunami in 2024.
If there is a debt default it will be the result of irresponsible actions on the part of the treasury. There is enough revenue to pay all debts.
The treasury will then need to make decisions on cuts in discretionary spending.
It is not necessary to raise the debt ceiling. Your ignorance knows no boundaries.
It is not the responsibility of the house to prevent a debt default.
Democrats are causing a debt default.
We don’t have legal elections anymore, greg. Don’t worry. We citizens are going to decide on who we listen to moving forward..and who we don’t.
F-15s aren’t enough.
We have never had a debt crisis. It is a manufactured narrative by democrats and rino republicans.
There has always been ample revenue for the treasury to pay Santa as they come due monthly, quarterly and annually.
We have spent in excess of incoming revenue and the cuts necessary with have to be proportionately in discretionary spending.
That does not include social security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The default will be caused by democrats refusing to sign spending cuts.
It will be the Democrats that cause a default, if there is one. Because Democrats always have the support of the Ministry of Propaganda, they never feel obligated to negotiate in good faith. So Democrats will be obstinate and cause the default when they should what is right and discuss necessary spending cuts.
Lots of luck selling that to American voters, when the real world effects of a default hit home.
We need to go back to a Reagan Era progressive tax schedule. F*ck the multimillionaires and billionaires. Their insatiable greed is the problem. They’ve set up the entire system for themselves. It’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Discretionary spending is not debt obligation. You cannot default on discretionary spending. Get back to us when you have completed a tutorial in OMB.
The debt ceiling isn’t about spending. It’s about honoring existing debt obligation.
“I don’t like paying for goods and services previously received, so I think I won’t” might be how Trump often conducts business, but it can bring a nation to ruin.
There is enough revenue to meet debt obligations. Discretionary spending is not debt obligation.
It seems you lack basic understanding of the OMB and the treasury.
Only if the worst treasury secretary in history under bidens direction makes a decision to not pay social security.
Again, you need to inform yourself of the workings of the treasury.
There is no debt crisis.
I really don’t care if you get your check, son.
(you told us you’re retired and on SS. Not sure if that’s still your story).
My generation won’t get SS, so I’m fine letting it die.
Good. Then I guess you can support your parents and grandparents, and provide for your wife and children in the event of your unexpected disability or untimely early demise.
Why do you assume everyone is the loser you are?
Yes. I don’t need welfare from the government like you do, son.
My guess is, since greedy piece of shit, multi-millionaire idiot Biden is collecting Social Security, he will make sure those payments continue to go out. Idiot Biden sells US influence, US intel, classified documents and US energy independence for dollars. Nothing matters more to him than his money.
Fmr. Sen. Toomey: Trump’s behavior after 2020 ‘disqualifies him from ever serving in public office’ (msnbc.com)
You might want to watch former senator pat toomey school Andrea Mitchell on your favorite network, msnbc.
He bench pressed her on her ignorance of debt obligation.
You too might learn something.
Actually, it is. And it is sad that you are so eager to show your stupidity.
Think of it this way, you ignorant punk; you have a $5,000.00 credit limit on your Mastercard. You reach that limit but you appeal to MC to increase your credit limit to $10,000.00. What you are asking for is an increase in your debt ceiling.
Let’s assume you get turned down. Does that affect your ability to pay other debts that you are currently paying? Nope.
Take an Econ 101 course, dumass.
Apparently you know much ‘cash on hand’ is currently in the federal piggy bank to make all of its monthly payments. Please share that information. Otherwise, your reassurances mean nothing more than a cow fart.
Idiot Biden, slut Kamala and the Democrats have clearly demonstrated how little they care about the massive humanitarian and criminal disaster they have intentionally created. I have to wonder if Democrats are even aware of what they are actually supposed to be doing as citizen representatives.
Obviously, you already know the answer to that question because if you don’t, and I gave you a number, you would not know if it was wrong, now would you?
Here’s your problem; if your car note with Bank of Indiana is $1,000/month, increasing your credit limit with Mastercard doesn’t mean you are more capable of making your car note. Judas Priest, must you expose how dumb you are to everyone?
You mean like every damn thing you have ever posted on this website? Yeah, you’re a loser.
Are you aware that the Social Security trust fund consists of federally guaranteed treasury bonds? What debts do think it will be acceptable for the government to default on? Or have you not considered that?
Maybe we could solve the problem with more corporate and high-end tax cuts—because everyone knows tax cuts always increase revenue.
Are you aware our deficit is record breaking, and Biden has run up more debt than Trump?
National debt tops $31 trillion for the first time. How much accrued under Biden?
Biden owns it.
More debt under Biden, the Trump.
Cope more.
Obama and Biden have racked up debt.
Trump? Not so much.
After 2 years in office, Biden still isn’t halfway to the $7.8 Trillion in deficits run up on Trump’s watch.
Biden has run up more debt than Trump in two years.
You’re silly “Trump debt” myth has dispelled like all the rest.
Get some new material.
Obama ran up debt with nothing to show for it. Trump spent with clear, tangible results, and was getting us Trllions in savings and payments in return. That’s called leverage.
I know you’re relatively uneducated, which is how the Left gets you to vote for them: ignorance.
Biden is now spending trillions on things that don’t matter, punishing the American People.
Doesn’t look like he’ll be in office much longer, though.
And much of that was run up by Democrats using COVID as an excuse. Pelosi held taxpayers needing relief due to the ill-advised shutdowns hostage for more pork, waste and potential theft in aid bills. A completely unnecessary $1.4 trillion in “aid” was passed before the previous aid had even been spent.
And since then, idiot Biden has loaded another $5 trillion on it.
Are you aware that no one here cares one whit about your idiotic blatherings?
You are nothing more than the class clown.
What everyone but you crybaby leftists DO know is that corporations don’t pay taxes; higher taxes are passed along to the consumer as expenses. So, it is the consumer that is taxed and the lower and middle class consumer is hit hardest.
Or, it may make goods and services so expensive companies are put out of business or forced to move overseas. Stealing from the taxpayer is not ever a good solution to the problems you Democrats create.
Greg every day money goes to the treasury from all forms of taxation, payrolls to those fees on your electric bill.
Democrats demonstrate every day they have no idea how wealth is created and what “work” is. They think a magic fairy (probably in the literal sense) just finds the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and funds their spending and theft.
What is the point of a limit on our debt has been created by law to control our out of control debt if, as you imply, it is just automatically expected to be increased each time it is reached? The debt limit was created to curb spending. You irresponsible Democrats, loving passing massive bills that are unmanageable and easy to steal from, have added $15 trillion to the debt since Obama. Your spending is unsustainable, using taxpayer money to build monuments to yourselves to celebrate your failure.
According to my Facebook memories, 9 years ago, the Democrats shut down the government holding out for DACA passage. But, when Democrats disrupt the lives of taxpayers to benefit non-citizen non-taxpayers, you cheer it on.
Democrats think they hold all the cards politically (thanks to the Ministry of Propaganda) so they don’t have to stop their theft of taxpayer money and drive the US out of business due to unsustainable debt. While McCarthy wants to open negotiations, idiot Biden refuses to discuss. If or when we default, it will be Democrat’s fault, regardless of what the lying, corrupt, propaganda media says.
That’s right, it has to be “sold” because the leftist media will lie about it. The let White House liars brag about lowering the deficit by $1 trillion after they jacked it up to $4 trillion but won’t report the truth as Republicans try to get Democrat spending and theft under control.
Why is idiot Biden receiving Social Security? Doesn’t he have enough money to not take more out of the failing system? What a f**king thief. Trump waive his salary because he didn’t need the taxpayer’s money but idiot Biden takes every nickel he can squeeze out of the taxpayer.
How long can the reserves ponzi scheme go on? borrow to pay debt?
We really need to go back to a constitutional standard of Gold and Silver.
Article 1 section 10.
Why would Putin repeat Hitler’s mistake?
01/16/23 – The Depth and Breadth of Russia’s Losing
Yes. We’re aware the Western Propaganda you post is as bad as Putin’s Russian propaganda.
The truth is, we don’t know what’s going on in the Ukraine, beyond that NATO goaded a war with Russia, is fighting it now since the Ukrainian military was destroyed, and is allowing regime-installing Black Rock to “rebuild” Ukraine.
The blood and bondage of the dead and captured Ukrainians sits squarely on the demented shoulders of not-the-president Joe Biden.
Haha. What hack do you find who writes this garbage? Russia’s got a “card” up their sleeve, alright.
It’s a deck of megatons.
I think that’s what you Leftist idiots want.
Russia has no “card up its sleeve” that it could play without ending Russia. That pretty much neutralizes the option. Nor does Putin have any ally that wouldn’t drop him like a hot potato, if push came to shove. China would abandon him–or turn on him–the moment it became advantageous to do so.
If the US decided to nuke Russia because they used a tactical nuke in Ukraine, that would be irrational, and pretty much the US initiating Armageddon.
Silly conjecture. India, SA, Iran, and many others are waiting to see how this new “multi-polar”, post American hegemony pans out. China is a “dead-nation-walking”, and has no leverage or sway in that. They are ending as a nation. Xi will be killed within a few years, no doubt.
The myth that Russia is “losing” in Ukraine has been abandoned by your media, son.
Try to keep up.
Ukraine’s long-range precision weapons, there is nowhere safe in Ukraine for the Russian occupiers…or farmers in Poland!
greg is trying to get this posts in before his 5 Covid shots end in him having myocarditis or stroke.
The odds are not in his favor.
gregs toolbox of topics is drying up at an accelerated rate. No longer has the CCP virus and related vaccines that work in his favor. Nor does attempting to vilify President Trump as it now appears biden is far more the anti American criminal than President Trump. January 6th is no longer the democrats “insurrection” narrative targeting MAGA supporters as insurrectionists. And, the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is about to become a scandal in and of itself.
So, perhaps if greg took all available jabs as he claims, his own demise may end his misery. I happen to not believe he took any of the jabs, I think he is an anti-vaxxer…
Then there is this;
BREAKING via ALEX BERENSON: New Chinese Study Shows that More than Four COVID Jabs Produced Near Complete Collapse of Immune System in Mice
Prediction: greg hasn’t had a single covid shot, because these paid government disinformation operatives know what the shot is really for.
I’ll bet you greg hasn’t had one…not even one.
I really hope he hasnt who would we prove wrong over and over?
UK is no longer buying gas from Russia, it now is buying from India who buys it from Russia, marks it up to make it more expensive for the English. BRICS
I wonder if cut and paste from some IMF funded site counts as a post. Zelensky has top people calling him an liar then quitting. Oleksiy Arestovych.
01/19/23 – Putin ally warns NATO of nuclear war if Russia is defeated in Ukraine
All the bastards have to do to end this is cease their aggression against Ukraine.
Both Putin and Zelenskyy called for ceasefires and negotiations for the past year. NATO, the real force fighting Russia, said “no.”
Why is the United States pushing for nuclear war, greg?
Cokehead Zelensky in Davos: ‘I will not negotiate with Putin, because I am not sure if he is the guy to speak to, I am not sure if he is even still alive.’ Why does the West (the CIA) still tolerate this lunatic?
And Putin will not give money, he doesnt like my acting and gayness comedies.