Home » Posts tagged 'vladimir putin' (Page 5)

Tag Archives: vladimir putin

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Who profits from the end of the mid-range nuclear treaty?

Who profits from the end of the mid-range nuclear treaty?

The US move to shelve the Intermediate-range Nuclear-Forces treaty could accelerate the demise of the whole post-WWII Western alliance, and herald a bad remix of the 1930s

A large Russian missile is seen in a rehearsal for a military parade in Red Square, Moscow, on May, 5 2008. Photo: iStock

A large Russian missile is seen in a rehearsal for a military parade in Red Square, Moscow, on May, 5 2008. Photo: iStock

“No Chance INF Will Be Renegotiated” Says Top Russian Official Ahead Of Trump-Putin Meeting

On Wednesday a top Russian defense official warned that it’s impossible that Moscow will renegotiate the the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), said to likely be at the top of the agenda when Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are set to meet in Paris on November 11 on the sidelines of commemorative events of the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

Chairman of the Defense Committee of the State Duma, Vladimir Shamanov, is reported to have said there’s “no chances that the nuclear treaty will be renegotiated” citing Russia’s position of there being “no turning point” away from the Reagan and Soviet-era 1987 treaty placing restrictions on nuclear-capable missiles and outlining arms reduction agreements.

This comes after Russian officials reportedly urged US National Security Advisor John Bolton to stay in the treaty during his trip to Moscow this week, something he rebuffed while saying“There’s a new strategic reality out there,” and described the INF Treaty as a bilateral treaty in a multipolar ballistic missile world,” that remains insufficient as it does not account for countries like China, Iran or North Korea.

The two met previously at their controversial Helsinki summit, via Reuters

And separately Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Russian state media on Thursday: “I am confident that this topic [US withdrawal from the INF Treaty] will dominate the agenda,” and added “We need to understand where the US is going with this issue.”He said amidst crumbling dialogue between Moscow and Washington officials that direct contact between presidents are “twice as important,” according to TASS.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Middle East, Not Russia, Will Prove Trump’s Downfall

The Middle East, Not Russia, Will Prove Trump’s Downfall

Photo Source The White House | CC BY 2.0

The Middle East has a century old tradition of being the political graveyard of American and British political leaders. The list of casualties is long: Lloyd George, Anthony Eden, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair and George W Bush. All saw their careers ended or their authority crippled by failure in the region.

Will the same thing happen to Donald Trump as he struggles with the consequences of the alleged murder of Jamal Khashoggi? I always suspected that Trump might come unstuck because of his exaggerated reliance on a weak state like Saudi Arabia rather than because of his supposed links to Russia and Vladimir Putin. Contrary to the PR company boosterism of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and his ambitious projects, Saudi Arabia has oil and money, but is demonstrably ineffective as an independent operator.

The Middle East disasters that toppled so many Western leaders have a certain amount in common. In all cases, the strength of enemies and the feebleness of friends was miscalculated. Lloyd George was forced to resign as prime minister in 1922 because he encouraged the doomed Greek invasion of Anatolia which almost led to a renewed Turkish-British war.

George W Bush and Tony Blair never understood that the occupation of Iraq by American and British ground forces had no support inside Iraq or among its neighbours and was therefore bound to fail. A British military intelligence officer stationed in Basra told me that he could not persuade his superiors of the potentially disastrous fact that “we have no real allies anywhere in Iraq”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Putin: In a Nuclear Holocaust “We Will Be Martyrs, They Will Drop Dead”

Putin: In a Nuclear Holocaust “We Will Be Martyrs, They Will Drop Dead”

Ever since the Euromaidan color revolution in Ukraine, the threat of a thermonuclear confrontation between Russia and the United States has been steadily growing. With the United States and NATO forces having pushed their proxy fighters literally to the border with Russia, the world’s second superpower finally became directly involved in Syria, saving the country from the impending defeat by the Gulf Cooperation Council, NATO, Israel, and American terrorists being funded, trained, and armed for the purpose of destroying the secular government of Syria.

This provided two war fronts where American and Russian soldiers could potentially engage in a direct military clash with one another that itself could potentially escalate to a nuclear war if taken to its logical conclusion.

While Western media promoted each act of war on the part of the West as a valiant fight for freedom and every Russian response as aggression, alt media, MSM, and social media were all nonetheless alight with the stark reality that WW3 could very well have broken out at any minute if the Americans pushed too far or if the Russians failed to respond with their typically cool heads.

MSM, of course, took every chance it could to portray the Russians as aggressive, bent on world domination and the domination of American elections and, thus, if a world war did take place, America would be on the right side of history, even if the earth was uninhabitable.

Recently, however, there have been more rumblings of WW3, with warnings from Russia and concerns from American servicemen and women who are worried that the US is rushing headlong into a world-ending confrontation. Oddly enough, those concerns and worries have not been receiving as much attention in the world press as they have in the past.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump Threatens US Will Increase Nukes Until Russia, China “Come To Their Senses”

After hours of closed door talks in Moscow between US National Security Advisor John Bolton and his Russian counterpart Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, Bolton told reporters that the United States has yet to take a decision on whether it plans to deploy missiles in Europe if the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) is scrapped.

Bolton further said that he now understands Russia’s position on nuclear arms regulations and treaties much better, and added that more consultations on arms treaties are needed, while further denying prior Russian charges that a US pullout of the INF was an attempt at “blackmail,” according to Russian state media sources. He subsequently had a 90-minute meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and later in the trip is expected to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

John Bolton shakes hands with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. Via RFE/RL

This comes following President Trump’s shock weekend announcement concerning the Reagan-era treaty with the Soviet Union, wherein he said after a campaign rally in Elko, Nevada: “We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement,” and indicated, “We’re going to terminate the agreement.” The Guardian had the day prior to the Saturday statement revealed that Bolton – in what some described as an overreach of the position’s typical role – had been pushing Trump to abandon the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Moscow’s reaction on Sunday was fierce with Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warning that Trump’s pledge to “terminate” the treaty was “very dangerous” and that “[Withdrawal] won’t be understood by the international community, but [instead] arouse serious condemnation of all members of the world community, who are committed to security and stability and are ready to work on strengthening the current regimes in arms control.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington’s Latest Cold War Maneuver: Pulling Out of the INF

Washington’s Latest Cold War Maneuver: Pulling Out of the INF

Photo Source White House Photographic Office | CC BY 2.0

The Trump administration has decided to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the most comprehensive disarmament treaty ever negotiated between Washington and Moscow.  National Security Adviser John Bolton, a long-time opponent of arms control, reportedly will inform Russian President Vladimir Putin this week that the United States will do so. The Trump administration will also be briefing our key European allies on the decision, which will complicate relations with Germany and France who favor maintaining the treaty.  This is the latest in a series of U.S. steps over the past 20 years that have put the Russians on the defensive, and led Russian President Vladimir Putin to be more assertive in protecting Moscow’s interests in East Europe.

The INF treaty actually eliminated an entire class of intermediate-range missiles from the U.S. and Soviet arsenals in 1987.  The Pentagon opposed the treaty, and Secretary of Defense Weinberger and his deputy for arms control and disarmament, Richard Perle, resigned in protest over President Ronald Reagan’s decision to go forward.  The Pentagon has opposed all presidential decisions to pursue disarmament, although—in the case of INF—the Soviets destroyed more than twice as many missiles as the United States, and the European theatre became safer for U.S. forces stationed there.  The treaty and the improved bilateral relations actually led to a slowdown in military spending in both the United States and Russia.

In 2002, President George W. Bush created the worst of all possible strategic worlds when he abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the cornerstone of strategic deterrence and one of the pearls of Soviet-American arms control policy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Putin’s Puppet” Advances Nuclear Missile Escalations Against Putin

“Putin’s Puppet” Advances Nuclear Missile Escalations Against Putin

Yesterday the news broke that Swamp Monster-In-Chief John Bolton has been pushing President Trump to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1988 arms control agreement between the US and the Soviet Union eliminating all missiles of a specified range from the arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers. Today, Trump has announced that he will be doing exactly as Bolton instructed.

This would be the second missile treaty between the US and Russia that America has withdrawn from since it abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. John Bolton, an actual psychopath who Trump hired as his National Security Advisor in April, ran point on that move as well back when he was part of the increasingly indistinguishable Bush administration.


This is why John Bolton shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near US foreign policy. This would undo decades of bipartisan arms control dating from Reagan. We shouldn’t do it. We should seek to fix any problems with this treaty and move forward. https://fxn.ws/2q1FqTi 

US poised to pull out of nuclear arms treaty with Moscow: source

foxnews.com


“This is why John Bolton shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near US foreign policy,” tweeted Senator Rand Paul in response to early forecasts of the official announcement. “This would undo decades of bipartisan arms control dating from Reagan. We shouldn’t do it. We should seek to fix any problems with this treaty and move forward.”

“This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, told The Guardian. “If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Putin: Russia Will Only Use Nuclear Weapons ‘If We Are Victims Of Aggression’

Speaking at a policy forum on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled-down on a warning to Russia’s geopolitical foes first made earlier this year when he declared that Russia would only use its “unstoppable” nuclear weapons in response to an incoming missile attack.

While Russia would undertake a preemptive nuclear strike, Putin said Russia wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate if its warning systems spot incoming missiles, even if it would mean the mutually assured destruction of both parties, as ABC News reported. Any “aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable, and that it will be destroyed” Putin said.

Putin

At least Russia can be secure in the knowledge that its citizens “will go to heaven” because they would be on the defensive. Meanwhile, its aggressors would meet a much less desirable fate in the afterlife.

“When we see a coming strike on the territory of Russia, we will retaliate.” He acknowledged it will mean a global catastrophe, but emphasized that “we can’t be those who initiated it.”

We are victims of aggression, we as martyrs will go to heaven. And they’ll just die. Because you can’t even repent.”

Putin also claimed that ISIS had taken 700 hostages in Syria, some of whom were European and US citizens. And while their governments do nothing, the hostages are being killed off at a rate of 10 a day.

During a speech earlier this year, Putin unveiled a bevy of new weapons, including nuclear subs equipped with hypersonic missiles that could evade NATO ABM defenses, that he said will be ready in the coming years, as other Russian officials have warned that the US’s aggressive sanctions and abusive policies toward Russia had succeeded in instigating a revival of the Cold War-era “arms race.” 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Muli-Polar Political Project Pushed Forward by Putin In India

Muli-Polar Political Project Pushed Forward by Putin In India

I have to wonder when Russian President Vladimir Putin sleeps.  He’s busier than any other leader, traveling the globe while consistently changing the board state geopolitically.

While everyone, including me, has had their eye on the turmoil in U.S. political circles over the past couple of weeks, Putin visited India and in a little less than two days ended most speculation as to where India stands in the emerging multi-polar world that Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping are building.

Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inked deals with huge future consequences for both countries.  So, while the headlines were all about the Trump Administration trying to pressure India into not buying S-400 missile defense systems from Russia, Putin and Modi put the final touches on Russia building India no less than six more nuclear power plants.

One of the things holding India back as a first-world economy is a reliable electricity grid.  Having eight Russian-designed and built plants operating around the country will upgrade the landscape for India’s electricity usage immensely.

Part of the reason India is such a large oil and gas importer is their electricity base load needs are being met with expensive hydrocarbons.  Shifting that to nuclear,more like France and the U.S., changes everything, especially in the long run, from a foreign exchange perspective.

Bernard at Moon of Alabama was first on interpreting what the scope of these deals mean for the U.S.’s attempt to cleave India from the BRICS alliance.  He rightly linked the western media’s finally picking up the Rafale fighter jet corruption scandal dogging Modi as a sign that the U.S. is very angry over these deals and is beginning the process of undermining Modi’s government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Self-Defeating US Empire

The Self-Defeating US Empire

Trump is trying to square a globalized world through a national-based American capitalism. It won’t work.

Former President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09) described the essence of US foreign policy as “speaking softly while carrying a big stick”. Under the incumbent president, Donald Trump, it seems to be all about “speaking loudly”.

What Trump is carrying in reserve is a moot question.

The difference comes down to a question of credibility. A century ago, America was a formidable military, diplomatic and economic power. Hence, Roosevelt could afford to speak softly because there were other indisputable means at his disposal to reinforce US power.

Today, the US is still a formidable military power, that’s for sure. But as for its economy and the role of the American dollar as a global payment mechanism the evidence suggests that it has lost much of its former dominance.

President Trump seems to be trying to compensate for the decline in US power overall by way of adopting more bellicose and foghorn rhetoric for others to comply with American demands.

This week saw a record fall in the American stock market. That suggests that the supposed strength of the US economy is not what it has been cracked up to be under Trump. A major factor in the collapse of the US stock market is reported to be the uncertainty prompted by the growing US trade war with China.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin lamented the US policy of imposing sanctions against other nations and its over-reliance on the dollar as the main global currency exchange tool. Putin said the US was making a “strategic mistake” by using the dollar as a weapon with which to punish other nations to comply with Washington’s diktats.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Sanctions Against Russia Are “A Colossal Strategic Mistake”, Putin Warns

As Russia is preparing plans to wean its banking system off the dollar, advancing a trend of de-dollarization among the US’s largest economic and geopolitical rivals, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Washington of making a “colossal” but “typical” mistake by exploiting the dominance of the dollar by levying economic sanctions against regimes that don’t bow to its whims.

“It seems to me that our American partners make a colossal strategic mistake,” Putin said.

“This is a typical mistake of any empire,” Putin said, explaining that the US is ignoring the consequences of its actions because its economy is strong and the dollar’s hegemonic grasp on global markets remains intact. However “the consequences come sooner or later.”

These remarks echoed a sentiment expressed by Putin back in May, when he said that Russia can no longer trust the US dollar because of America’s decisions to impose unilateral sanctions and violate WTO rules.

While Putin’s criticisms are hardly new, these latest remarks happen to follow a report in the Financial Times, published Tuesday night, detailing Russia’s efforts to wean its economy off of the dollar. The upshot is that while de-dollarization may be painful, it is, ultimately doable.

The US imposed another round of sanctions against Russia over the summer in response to the poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, and the US Senate is considering measures that would effectively cut Russia’s biggest banks off from the dollar and largely exclude Moscow from foreign debt markets.

Putin

With the possibility of being cut off from the dollar system looming, a plan prepared by Andrei Kostin, the head of Russian bank VTB, is being embraced by much of the Russian establishment. Kostin’s plan would facilitate the conversion of dollar settlements into other currencies which would help wean Russian industries off the dollar. And it already has the backing of Russia’s finance ministry, central bank and Putin.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Putin: Trump Is To Blame For Higher Oil Prices

Just hours after President Trump implicitly threatened Saudi Arabia with a withdrawal of military protection (a threat that was possibly inspired by OPEC+ ignoring Trump’s demands to raise production at its Algiers meeting last month) Russian President Vladimir Putin said out loud what many oil traders have been thinking: That the recent run up in oil prices is Trump’s own fault.

Putin

During a speech at the Energy Week conference in Moscow, Putin said higher prices are “to some extent the result of the US administration” and its decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran (which will take effect next month) as well as its sanctions against Venezuela – not to mention the disastrous US military intervention in Libya, which was masterminded by Trump’s erstwhile political rival, Hillary Clinton. Before Trump decided to withdraw from the Iran deal, OPEC and other major exporters (including Russia) had more or less pushed the global market back into balance after several years of oversupply. Putin also said he believes a “good range” for oil prices would be between $65 and $75 a barrel and that Russia has the capacity to ramp up production by 200,000-300,000 barrels a day (and according to media reports, Russia is indeed planning to ramp up production through the end of the year).

“President Trump has said he thinks the oil price is too high. Well, probably to some extend he’s right, but we are absolutely OK with it at $65 to $75 per barrel to ensure the efficient operation of oil companies and ensure investment,” Putin said Wednesday during an address to delegates at the Russia Energy Week forum in Moscow.

“But let’s be frank, such oil prices are to some extent the result of the U.S. administration. I’m talking about sanctions against Iran, about political problems in Venezuela and just looking at what’s happening in Libya.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are the Neocons the Greatest Threat to World Peace?

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I have heard people say that the Russian sanctions were intended to overthrow Putin. Is it true that the Neocons believe that Russia will collapse and they will then walk in and take control of all their nukes?

PV

ANSWER: Believe it or not, the answer is YES!!!!! These people are HIGHLY dangerous for they eat, sleep, dream, and take every possible step to try to eliminate Russia. Why? I really do not know. I think that cannot sleep at night without hating someone. They were terrified when the Soviet Union fell. Suddenly there was no arch enemy. My opinion, as kids they took the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons way too seriously.

The Neocon have concluded that the sanction will NOT create an uprising against Putin. Now instead, they rewrote their script and forecast that Putin will see his support wither and his ability to control the Russian Federation will collapse creating a vacuum into which the Neocons will convince the White House to send in the troops, which why they have to get rid of Trump and paint him as a puppet of Putin.

The Neocons have told people in Washington that WHEN this vacuum emerged, then the individual fragments of the Russian Federation will separate. They argue that this is the real purpose of the sanctions to overthrow Russia. They further argue that declining oil prices will turn the ruble into rubble. Putin will be unable to meet the rising cost of his military and this will lead to its collapse. They further argue that Russia will NOT officially break up into multiple countries, but Moscow will have some loose power hold on semiautonomous regions that eventually fight among each other. They are telling Washing that it is HIGHLY unlikely that the Russian Federation will survive in its current form.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Has Russia Given Up on the West?

Has Russia Given Up on the West?

Has Russia Given Up on the West?

By the end of his second term, President Ronald Reagan, who had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” was strolling through Red Square with Russians slapping him on the back.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.

And how have we husbanded the fruits of our Cold War triumph?

This month, China’s leader-for-life Xi Jinping stood beside Vladimir Putin as 3,000 Chinese troops maneuvered with 300,000 Russians, 1,000 planes and 900 tanks in Moscow’s largest military exercise in 40 years.

An uncoded message to the West from the East.

Richard Nixon’s great achievement in bringing Peking in from the cold, and Reagan’s great achievement of ending the Cold War, are history.

Bolshevism may be dead, but Russian nationalism, awakened by NATO’s quick march to Russia’s ancient frontiers, is alive and well.

Russia appears to have given up on the West and accepted that its hopes for better times with President Donald Trump are not to be.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is berating Russia for secretly trading with North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, saying, “Lying, cheating, and rogue behavior have become the new norm of the Russian culture.”

Cold wars don’t get much colder than defaming another country’s culture as morally debased.

The U.S. has also signaled that it may start supplying naval and anti-aircraft weaponry to Ukraine, as Russia is being warned to cease its inspections of ships passing from the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov.

The three-mile-wide strait lies between Crimea and Kerch Peninsula. In Russia’s eyes, both banks of the strait are Russian national territory.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Skripal Affair – Another False Flag in NATO Litany to Criminalize Russia

The Skripal Affair – Another False Flag in NATO Litany to Criminalize Russia

The Skripal Affair – Another False Flag in NATO Litany to Criminalize Russia

If we start from a premise which understands that Britain and its NATO allies are capable of mounting false flag events in Syria with chemical weapons, then it is entirely possible that British secret services carried out a similar propaganda stunt in England with regard to former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal.

We also need to bear in mind that British state intelligence agencies are plausibly running a covert assassination program targeting Russian exiles living in Britain – for the purpose of incriminating Moscow.

Over the past two decades, more than a dozen Russian dissidents have met untimely deaths while residing in England, including Alexander Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky. Their deaths provide propaganda fodder for the British to accuse Moscow of carrying out “revenge killings”.

However, the suspicious circumstances surrounding each death could more conceivably point to the British liquidating the Russian exiles as propaganda assets.

In the case of Sergei Skripal, the disgraced former Russian military intelligence officer was convicted in Russia of being a spy working for Britain’s MI6. He was exiled to England more than a decade ago as part of an espionage swap deal.

When Skripal was apparently poisoned in his resident town of Salisbury in southwest England on March 4, along with his adult daughter, Yulia, the British authorities immediately pointed the finger of blame at Russian President Vladimir Putin for allegedly ordering an assassination. The Kremlin was accused of dispatching agents who supposedly poisoned the Skripals with a deadly nerve agent.

The publication last week by Scotland Yard police of CCTV images showing two Russian men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, walking the streets of Salisbury on the weekend of the alleged attack was reported in the British media as “proof” of the supposed Kremlin assassination plot. The Skripal affair is conveniently portrayed as “one more” example of Putin’s “Kremlin killing machine”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress