Posted on 11/12/2022 7:11:38 PM PST by UMCRevMom@aol.com
There are always reasons to doubt Russia is playing it straight.
For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has bundled U-turns and lies together, making it hard to distinguish between evasion and fiction, and weaponizing the toxic mix to blackmail, divide and bewilder his foes.
In recent days, Russia has pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal, then gone back into it, and issued bloodcurdling threats of nuclear attack before reversing course to endorse the language of non-proliferation. This week, Putin ordered his forces to retreat from Kherson only weeks after declaring that the city would-be part of Russia “forever.”
How should the world interpret Putin’s wildly contradictory statements, actions and signals? And when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons, does Russia’s most recent rejection provide any reassurance at all?
“For Russia, inconsistency is an integral part of its foreign policy strategy, particularly under Putin,” noted Fiona Hill, a former official at the U.S. National Security Council. Hill was commenting back in 2013, a year before Russia illegally annexed Crimea after disavowing what it called the “little green men” occupying and blockading Simferopol International Airport and military bases on the Ukrainian peninsula.
In January and February, less than two weeks before intense rocket fire rained down on Kharkiv, and Kyiv’s airports were blasted by pre-dawn waves of cruise missiles, the Kremlin and its top officials waved away any suggestions that Putin intended to invade and conquer Ukraine.
The troop buildup along Ukraine’s eastern and northern borders were part of normal military exercises, they said. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova labeled as “absurd” accusations that Russia nurtured any aggressive plans. “We learn from U.S. newspapers that we will attack Ukraine,” Zakharova mocked. Her boss, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, insisted “there won’t be a war,” assuring all and sundry Russia didn’t want one.
Was this a brazen lie aimed to deceive and maintain an element of surprise or a genuine policy reversal? It’s hard to tell — and that may be the intention. Or it may just be the West’s failure to understand how Russian policy is made, say some seasoned Putin-watchers. They argue Western governments struggle to comprehend the abrupt U-turns and too often can’t differentiate between such policy reversals and purposeful deception.
“I think he makes some of this up as he goes along, some is out of desperation, but he also looks for openings in the West,” said David Kramer, who was an assistant secretary of state in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. The result is — whatever the motivations for the changes in direction — everyone wonders what Putin going to do.
Maybe Winston Churchill’s definition of Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” has never been truer since Britain’s wartime leader struggled to parse Joe Stalin.
Western policymakers, who must shape strategies, don’t have the luxury of just throwing up their hands and lumping together all the inconsistencies, lies and about-turns as part of a deliberate Kremlin policy. They might miss something important and revealing if they did.
“Overall, Putin thinks where there is chaos, there is opportunity, so confusion and deception is all part of his ‘spy training,’” said Orysia Lutsevych, research fellow at Britain’s Chatham House.
Even so, there are different reasons for shifts and inconsistencies, she warned. “In some cases, Putin is testing the limits of the possible, as with the grain deal, and if the opposing side shows force and determination, he does a U-turn.”
But she thinks Putin’s about-turn ordering a partial mobilization of reservists in September after insisting there wouldn’t be one “was a domestic deception operation; they were secretly mobilizing for a long time, and he made it public at the moment it was expedient.”
The White House, apparently, does not want to take too many chances. According to recent reports, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with senior Kremlin aides with the aim of reducing the risk that the Ukraine war could escalate into a nuclear conflict.
According to Emily Ferris, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank, Putin’s thinly-veiled nuclear threats over the past few weeks were a way “of escalating to test the waters and see what the response would be.”
He has recently dialed back the threats, claiming that he “had never talked about using nuclear weapons,” and that a nuclear strike on Ukraine would make neither political nor military sense.
Ferris and other Putin watchers think the backtracking this time was a result of pressure from Beijing. “Given the concerns from China, Putin likely noted the limits of that rhetoric and has now moved on from it and they’ve now said quite clearly they want to avoid any kind of nuclear conflict, so it did reveal some of the influence China has to help deescalate here,” she said.
Ferris said the decision to invade Ukraine was probably made at the last minute, which would be “quite in keeping with Putin’s tendency to put off big decisions.”
And when it comes to operational matters there’s an underlying “general incompetence and inefficiency among security establishment in Russia which shouldn’t be understated,” she said. “Putin sometimes is kept out of the loop of the details,” forcing him to intervene subsequently, she added.
Andrei Illarionov, a former senior policy adviser to Putin and now an opponent, thinks there is less logic than meets the eye when it comes to sudden policy changes. He said: “It looks like he has become quite nervous because if he’s not losing the war, he is definitely not winning either.”
Politico lol. CIA DEEP STATE LYING RAG.
Russia does not have a monopoly on this.
Politico as always late!
Contemplate this and think what this means:
How to read your lies, mom?
Fortunately, our rulers never speak out of both sides of their mouths or reverse themselves on foreign policy matters.
We are pure. That’s why we send young men to die.
THE REST OF THE STORY...
The far-left Washington Post reported on March 3 that Ukraine was dealing in crypto.
The Ukrainian government has gathered more than $42 million in cryptocurrency donations since Saturday, plus digital artwork including a limited edition worth roughly $200,000, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. The CHAALENGE is how the country cashes in on these assets to fund its war needs.
Then LESS than a week later FTX made the news for involving itself in Ukraine:
Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the CEO of FTX, SAM BANKMAN FRIED has come forward to HELP a crypto donation project. HE HUMBLY ANNOUNCED that FTX will be SUPPORTING the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance and other communities in COLLECTING CRYPTO DONATIONS FOR the country. The UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT HAS RECEIVED over $60 MILLION in CRYPTO DONATIONS from all over the world.
FTX’s CEO, Sam Bankman Fried highlighted that the war in Ukraine has been dragging on. The country is in full need of humanitarian help and access to global financial infrastructure. He also called attention to sanctions and crypto during this kind of situation. He indicated that crypto exchanges should enforce sanctions announced by the government seriously.
FTX has stressed across all of its regulatory and policy efforts, active coordination and communication with regulators and policymakers is crucial to ensuring that laws and rules achieve their intended outcome, reads a letter by FTX
Pointing out the urgency to help the nation Sam Bankman announced that the FTX team is honored to SUPPORT the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance in SIMPLIFYING the DONATION PROCESS.
This money was laundered in to sponsoring voter fraud here in the US. You are all wet and so wrong.
“How to read...”
Take it sentence by sentence. Stop & consider meaning. Then, paragraph by paragraph & consider wontext of sentences together.
“Agent of chaos: How to read Putin’s lies, U-turns and retreats”
“There are always reasons to doubt Russia is playing it straight.
For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has bundled U-turns and lies together, making it hard to distinguish between evasion and fiction, and weaponizing the toxic mix to blackmail, divide and bewilder his foes.
In recent days, Russia has pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal, then gone back into it, and issued bloodcurdling threats of nuclear attack before reversing course to endorse the language of non-proliferation. This week, Putin ordered his forces to retreat from Kherson only weeks after declaring that the city would-be part of Russia “forever.”
How should the world interpret Putin’s wildly contradictory statements, actions and signals? And when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons, does Russia’s most recent rejection provide any reassurance at all?
“For Russia, inconsistency is an integral part of its foreign policy strategy, particularly under Putin,” noted Fiona Hill, a former official at the U.S. National Security Council. Hill was commenting back in 2013, a year before Russia illegally annexed Crimea after disavowing what it called the “little green men” occupying and blockading Simferopol International Airport and military bases on the Ukrainian peninsula.
In January and February, less than two weeks before intense rocket fire rained down on Kharkiv, and Kyiv’s airports were blasted by pre-dawn waves of cruise missiles, the Kremlin and its top officials waved away any suggestions that Putin intended to invade and conquer Ukraine.
The troop buildup along Ukraine’s eastern and northern borders were part of normal military exercises, they said. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova labeled as “absurd” accusations that Russia nurtured any aggressive plans. “We learn from U.S. newspapers that we will attack Ukraine,” Zakharova mocked. Her boss, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, insisted “there won’t be a war,” assuring all and sundry Russia didn’t want one.
Was this a brazen lie aimed to deceive and maintain an element of surprise or a genuine policy reversal? It’s hard to tell — and that may be the intention. Or it may just be the West’s failure to understand how Russian policy is made, say some seasoned Putin-watchers. They argue Western governments struggle to comprehend the abrupt U-turns and too often can’t differentiate between such policy reversals and purposeful deception.
“I think he makes some of this up as he goes along, some is out of desperation, but he also looks for openings in the West,” said David Kramer, who was an assistant secretary of state in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. The result is — whatever the motivations for the changes in direction — everyone wonders what Putin going to do.
Maybe Winston Churchill’s definition of Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” has never been truer since Britain’s wartime leader struggled to parse Joe Stalin.
Western policymakers, who must shape strategies, don’t have the luxury of just throwing up their hands and lumping together all the inconsistencies, lies and about-turns as part of a deliberate Kremlin policy. They might miss something important and revealing if they did.
“Overall, Putin thinks where there is chaos, there is opportunity, so confusion and deception is all part of his ‘spy training,’” said Orysia Lutsevych, research fellow at Britain’s Chatham House.
Even so, there are different reasons for shifts and inconsistencies, she warned. “In some cases, Putin is testing the limits of the possible, as with the grain deal, and if the opposing side shows force and determination, he does a U-turn.”
But she thinks Putin’s about-turn ordering a partial mobilization of reservists in September after insisting there wouldn’t be one “was a domestic deception operation; they were secretly mobilizing for a long time, and he made it public at the moment it was expedient.”
The White House, apparently, does not want to take too many chances. According to recent reports, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with senior Kremlin aides with the aim of reducing the risk that the Ukraine war could escalate into a nuclear conflict.
According to Emily Ferris, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank, Putin’s thinly-veiled nuclear threats over the past few weeks were a way “of escalating to test the waters and see what the response would be.”
He has recently dialed back the threats, claiming that he “had never talked about using nuclear weapons,” and that a nuclear strike on Ukraine would make neither political nor military sense.
Ferris and other Putin watchers think the backtracking this time was a result of pressure from Beijing. “Given the concerns from China, Putin likely noted the limits of that rhetoric and has now moved on from it and they’ve now said quite clearly they want to avoid any kind of nuclear conflict, so it did reveal some of the influence China has to help deescalate here,” she said.
Ferris said the decision to invade Ukraine was probably made at the last minute, which would be “quite in keeping with Putin’s tendency to put off big decisions.”
And when it comes to operational matters there’s an underlying “general incompetence and inefficiency among security establishment in Russia which shouldn’t be understated,” she said. “Putin sometimes is kept out of the loop of the details,” forcing him to intervene subsequently, she added.
Andrei Illarionov, a former senior policy adviser to Putin and now an opponent, thinks there is less logic than meets the eye when it comes to sudden policy changes. He said: “It looks like he has become quite nervous because if he’s not losing the war, he is definitely not winning either.”
Who’s talking about a nuclear war? Folks need to calm down a bit around here.
only ass fool libs are yapping about nukes
“This money was laundered in to sponsoring voter fraud here in the US.”
Not to burst your Ukraine got’cha bubble.
But, if this BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: GATEWAY PUNDIT is true, then READ the rest of the article that pertains to Ukraine that didn’t get their funds. If this article is true, this was a ponzi scheme created and advanced by FTX’s CEO, Sam Bankman Fried that which committed fraud luring Ukraine to be an INVESTOR by paying them investment profits with funds from more recent investors. Ukraine was the clear victim that believed their ‘profits’ would be coming from legitimate business activity while remaining unaware that other investors were the source of funds.
THIS IS A DIRECT QUOTE, WITH MY EMPHASIS, FROM THE REST OF THE ARTICLE YOU POSTED FROM GATEWAY PUNDIT REGARDING UKRAINE:
“The far-left Washington Post reported on March 3 that Ukraine was dealing in crypto.
The Ukrainian government has gathered more than $42 million in cryptocurrency donations since Saturday, plus digital artwork including a limited edition worth roughly $200,000, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. The CHAALENGE is how the country cashes in on these assets to fund its war needs.
Then LESS than a week later FTX made the news for involving itself in Ukraine:
Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the CEO of FTX, SAM BANKMAN FRIED has come forward to HELP a crypto donation project. HE HUMBLY ANNOUNCED that FTX will be SUPPORTING the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance and other communities in COLLECTING CRYPTO DONATIONS FOR the country. The UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT HAS RECEIVED over $60 MILLION in CRYPTO DONATIONS from all over the world.
FTX’s CEO, Sam Bankman Fried highlighted that the war in Ukraine has been dragging on. The country is in full need of humanitarian help and access to global financial infrastructure. He also called attention to sanctions and crypto during this kind of situation. He indicated that crypto exchanges should enforce sanctions announced by the government seriously.
FTX has stressed across all of its regulatory and policy efforts, active coordination and communication with regulators and policymakers is crucial to ensuring that laws and rules achieve their intended outcome, reads a letter by FTX
Pointing out the urgency to help the nation Sam Bankman announced that the FTX team is honored to SUPPORT the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance in SIMPLIFYING the DONATION PROCESS.
Sir Thomas More was first to use the term utopia to describe an imaginary, nearly perfect society.
There is no earthly utopia.
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