What I Saw Coming From The Outside One Year Ago

 What I Saw From The Outside One Year Ago--

I posted this forecast and assessment (Link below) on January 24, 2021. The comments here today are a kind of postscript companion piece which I've included in the archived Blog version for sharing. 

My assessment then was that with Putin's decision to jail Navalny, he was making a statement of intent which foretold of Russia launching a strategic military move within the year as a test of the new incoming Administration, which it now has. I documented the repeated history of such Russian provocations over the last Century, including the Cuba and Berlin crises thrown at JFK in his first year or two.

I wrote two dozen articles on Putin's growing hostility, driven in part by desperation, given that he miscalculated badly on a second Trump term, and was humiliated when his FSB turned in an "amateur hour" performance in bungling the great "Novichok underwear caper" attempt at a Navalny assassination, even to the point of leaving a forensic trail directly to "The Boss" as documented by CNN and Bellingcat. 

A combination of factors, the defeat of Trump, the Pandemic, the support of 90% of Ukrainians to align with the West, the economic effects of the pre-existing sanctions on Russia, the emergence of an authentic Russian "anti-corruption" movement, and Putin's revanchism driven paranoia and arrogance, all pointed toward the crisis we have now. 

My intent is not to be a "Biden critic", or imply that we, the US somehow invited this action by Putin through some failure of vision or misconduct. It is to reiterate that strategically right now Putin is deploying to unleash maximum chaos and division inside the US. That is his end game, it is why he interfered in our elections twice on behalf of Donald Trump, and why he is still trying to orchestrate Right vs Left civil conflict through playing a number of his manipulated or compromised assets.

He justifies his authoritarian actions in Russia with the claim that Navalny is a Western Intelligence agent bent on destabilizing Russia and bringing about regime change. Therefore in an effusion of Fox News like "whataboutism" he defends his operations as "tit for tat" for what we did to him. (You can see why he and Trump get along so well).  Likewise he has made the equally false claim that the Ukrainian government of Zelenskyy is Nazi, and Russians in Ukraine are the victims of genocide. 

There has been an eight year long partisan conflict in the East. Yes, there are fascist Militias (The Azov Brigade) joining in the fighting. But much of Putin's propaganda is indeed rooted in Russian false flag operations and disinformation, using fascist irregulars trained in Russia to carry out fabricated provocations against Russians, giving Putin his excuse to move in as has been made clear recently by the White House. 

My purpose in reposting this year old piece is to help people to rise above the agonizing and tragic reports of war news, heart rending as it is, in order to look at the dynamics from above which caused it. This is how we the citizens can understand more fully just what it is that we can do. 

Hours after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt ordered his Commanders to organize a counterattack on the Japanese mainland, saying with deep emotion that the American people wanted and needed us to "hit back". This evolved into the near suicide mission which we know today as "The Doolittle Raids". These were successful but not decisive at all and mainly symbolic in its effect. 

Our efforts to "hit back" at Putin should by no means be confined to financial sanctions against Putin, Russian officials, companies and Oligarchs. 

We should hit back at his Western "Fifth column". Joe Biden and Merrick Garland must commence a full deployment of Presidential power against the entity which we now know as "The Insurrection". They are responsible for enabling Putin, and the blood of Ukrainians is on their hands, not Joe Biden's. Donald Trump's partnership with Putin let this Joker out of the box, this thing which both unleashed bloody violence at our Capitol, and empowered Vladimir Putin to attack US and NATO interests. Trump's movement is Putin's asymmetric warfare capability, and that is what needs to be disabled and scattered to the four winds. Anything else will be a waste of our energy, and our remaining valuable time.