I don't know if you have noticed this, but the usual crowd of Putin bashers is being uncharacteristically quiet these days, especially the ones I call the "hurray patriots". Some of their blogs have simply been closed, others are apparently frozen, and those still minimally active are getting very few visitors (nope, I shall not name them here, both on principle and in order not to direct any traffic towards these cesspools). They are all apparently getting tired of chanting their favorite mantras ("Putin has sold out!", "Putin has betrayed Novorussia!", "Putin is a puppet of the oligarchs!", etc.). The reason for that sudden drop in energy is simple: the Putin bashers have just suffered a series of painful political defeats. Let's look at them one by one:
No wonder they are silently licking their wounds now...
Complete story at - The Vineyard of the Saker: Bad times for Putin bashers
1) Russia has fully reopened the Voentorg spigot and done so quasi overtly (hence the huge convoy of trucks in the Donetsk city center, to make darn sure it is filmed and posted on YouTube). Whether this will be enough to deter a junta attack is unclear, but the fact is that the notion that Russia has "sold out Novorussia" is now demonstratively false.In other words, in a relatively short span of time all the lies of the Putin-bashers were proven false, the people of Novorussia made the "wrong" choice, and now even Strelkov has firmly condemned these pseudo-patriots.
2) At the Valdai club Putin made his most anti-Western speech (transcript here) since his famous Munich speech in 2007. As Mikhail Khazin correctly interpreted it, it appears likely that Putin is about to deliver an ultimatum to the West about new rules in international relations. We will see that at his address to the Federal Assembly.
3) Several key Novorussia leaders have openly expressed their total support and trust for Vladimir Putin, including Givi, Motorola, Bezler and others.
4) Alexander Zakharchenko was elected by a landslide in Novorussia. For weeks the Putin bashers had told us that Zakharchenko was the Kremlin's man (for the sellout of Novorussia, that is) and that the people of Novorussia did not trust him. This myth is now also dead in the water.
5) Finally, the hurray-patriots have tried to lure Igor Strelkov to participate in a nationalist demonstration "for Novorussia" but, in reality, "against Putin" and he harshly turned them down. He said that while everything was far from perfect, those who were calling for the removal of Putin were acting in the interest of the "enemies of Russia" and that they were trying to "set fire to their own home" (Colonel Cassad covered this - in Russian - here, here and here, hopefully the English Cassad will translate this).
No wonder they are silently licking their wounds now...
Complete story at - The Vineyard of the Saker: Bad times for Putin bashers
Hello, good to see you up and operating!
ReplyDeleteAbout the alleged information from Vineyard of the Saker that, "Russia has fully reopened the Voentorg spigot and done so quasi overtly (hence the huge convoy of trucks in the Donetsk city center," I simply want to point out that there is no proof the convoy of trucks is from Russia. Some local witnesses say they are NAF militia trucks. I challenged Saker to present proof of this assertion, among others, and was essentially shut off from further comments. Although I, of course, have no proof either way, my hunch is that Russia has NOT sent a convoy across the border. If they had, the OSCE, which, biased as it may be, watches the border and reports on it publicly, would have published reports that I probably would have seen on Twitter. And even the OSCE has said they do not really know who these trucks belong to. Moreover, the propaganda that "Russia has invaded" has been tweeted daily since last May and was never true in the past. Also, Putin has shown a great deal of restraint in this regard, and I doubt he would compromise his position now. And as a last point, Saker has been promoting a prediction that Russia will intervene militarily for a long time, and this would be a fulfillment of his prediction.
I did not read Saker's new article, as I do not believe he is always truthful nor supportive of Novorossiya, which disturbs me. But if there is independent proof a convoy of Russian trucks is in Donetsk, that would indeed be news. Thanks for the article. The end of senseless Putin bashing, combined with the message of Gorbachev at the Berlin wall celebration, might help reduce the tension the West has perpetrated with Russia, our good partner.