By Ollie Richardson for The Saker Blog

On September 30th, 2015 Russia drove (or flew!) the definitive nail into the coffin of what is known as “Sykes-Picot”. I.e., it marked an end to the era of “incidentally” drifting into this or that Middle Eastern country because of this or that so-called “dictator”, which, of course, must be removed for “democracy” to prosper in the region. No more mandates, no more “shock and awe”, and most importantly – no more Israeli regional dictat. And of course, such a decisive chess move couldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the terrain-preparing prequel known as the “Minsk Agreements”, which for some is a sheer lunacy and a “betrayal of Novorossiya”, but for others – a way of dialling in the coordinates for the boomerang’s return to sender. In other words, as the proverb known as “Wittgenstein’s ruler” affirms:

“Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table, you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.”

And it is this exact principle – one’s statement being more revealing of oneself than of the information one intends to convey – that can help us to enter the mind of not only social media “experts”, but also of politicians and diplomats who have carried the torch of “combatting Russia” from the blood-soaked hands of the Brzezinskis, McCains, Kissingers (who at the time of writing is still alive) and Churchills of this world.

Almost exactly 1 year on since the Russian Air Force touched down at the Hmeymim airbase in the Latakia province of Syria – at the request of the legitimate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qasem Soleimani – the very perpetrators of the carving up of MENA and the launching of fratricidal madness in the post-Soviet space gathered to lick their wounds at the “2018 Yalta European Strategy” annual meeting that took place between September 13th and 15th… in Kiev. Yes, not in Yalta, as the name prescribes, but in precisely Kiev – we are supposed to blame “polite people” petting cats in the streets of Crimea for this, apparently…

For those who are not familiar with the purpose of this annual event, the official “yes-ukraine.org” website provides the following Orwellian description:

“Yalta European Strategy (YES) is a leading forum for discussing Ukraine’s European future and global context. YES fosters new ideas. It connects Ukraine to international partners, supports forces for change in the country, and builds networks of supporters for a new Ukraine worldwide… YES meetings have brought together heads of state and government such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Bill Clinton, Dalia Grybauskaitė, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Bronisław Komorowski, Mario Monti, Shimon Peres and Donald Trump. Among the speakers were also heads of international organizations like Kofi Annan, José Manuel Barroso, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Ronald Noble, James Wolfensohn, Lamberto Zannier and Robert Zoellick. Senior officials, such as Hillary Clinton, Valdis Dombrovskis, Robert Gates, Johannes Hahn, Chrystia Freeland, Victoria Nuland, Condoleezza Rice and Martin Schulz, have spoken at the meetings. In addition, thinkers and social leaders like Richard Branson, German Gref, Richard Haass, Niall Ferguson, Alexei Kudrin, Arthur Laffer, Yurii Milner, Larry Summers, Nouriel Roubini and Strobe Talbott have been among the panelists. Presidents and Prime Ministers of Ukraine, as well as Ukraine’s political, business and social leaders, regularly speak at the meetings.”

So, those who have an IQ greater than their shoe size and are able to see further than the end of their own nose can already offer a fair assessment of what this annual meeting entails just by reading this description. In short, to say that it is anti-Russia in nature is to say a very large understatement. And in fact, the 15th version of the “YES” forum (2018) can almost be described as “anti-people”.

Below is a list of some of the “esteemed” guests who spoke on the stage and the vilest comments they made. It should be noted that there is pattern here – all the speakers are both traitors to their own people and should already be center stage in The Hague.

  • Carl Bildt – a member of Ukraine’s “International Advistory Council on Reforms”; was awarded the “Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise”; an honorary member of the “Institute for Information on the Crimes of Communism”; a writer of hyper anti-Russia articles, etc…

    “If we look into the polls held in Europe in the last two years, we will see that people support the EU more and more. Why? Is it because everyone fell in love with Jean-Claude Juncker, or with Brussels? I doubt it. I think that the reason for increasing support of the EU is, as I call it, the ‘PTB’ – Putin-Trump-Brexit – effect. People understand that our world is much more complex. If one looks at this world one may see the revisionist Russia, and it scares people. We can see the United States tormenting here and there; we can see China, which is rising. In addition, there are events in the Middle East, and they are neighbors of Europe. There is population explosion in Africa. All this is of a tremendous transformational effect on us.”

  • Tony Blair – a fully-fledged war criminal that needs no introduction.

    “The key reason for Europe to get united after the Second World War was peace. We have had 60 years of peace which is a great achievement. However, the main objective for Europe today is to be powerful. In the middle of this century, there will be three giants – USA, China and, probably, India. They will be so much bigger than others that middle-sized countries like Germany or France will have to stand together to resist pressure. Now the goal is not just peace, but also capacity and power.”

  • Anders Fogh Rasmussen – the former Secretary General of NATO; worked with Blair and Bush to butcher Iraq; was awarded the “Order of Liberty” by Petro Poroshenko’s criminal regime; created the “Friends of Ukraine” pro-genocide group, etc…

    “We were monitoring social networks when [Donetsk separatist leader, Aleksandr] Zakharchenko was killed in Donetsk. We were struck to learn that a third of conversations on certain social media platforms were controlled by accounts which were created for propaganda purposes only. According to our estimates, all conversations on social networks in Ukraine are prone to artificial influence in a much stronger manner than in other countries. This influence is 50% stronger than what we have been observing in other countries we monitor such as Sweden, Italy or Mexico <…> This challenge is very serious all over the democratic world… Therefore, I want to set up a transnational committee for fair elections. We would like to work together with businesses, politicians and mass media on both sides of the Atlantic to find new solutions <…> Today we announced that our working group for Ukrainian elections will monitor election meddling in Ukraine. We will offer practical solutions to these problems. However, the best antidote against this influence is for citizens to understand that they have to take everything they see with a grain of salt and do the fact-checking.”

  • Vladimir Groisman – The current Prime Minister of Ukraine, who replaced Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was in turn ousted by Poroshenko after they fell out; Groisman also heads Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers, which was tasked by the CIA with culling the population of Ukraine.

    “With regards to mass media, this landscape has not changed for many years. Recently, it has seen a certain change. I think my Ukrainian colleagues know what I am talking about – we saw quite aggressive rhetoric concerning events in Ukraine <…> The Anti-corruption court is finally established. It is important to select judges who are capable to administer and restore justice. I truly believe that after setting up a new anti-corruption independent institution, in the coming months we will be able to see real judgments in real cases.”

  • Vitaly Klitschko – the current Mayor of Kiev, who oversaw the process of streets in Kiev being renamed in honour of Banderists.

    “Ukraine needs to continue moving towards its European democratic future regardless of results of the elections due in 2019 <…> A lot depends on the next year, on how we will deliver on Ukrainians’ huge expectations. After all, we want to see our country wealthy, to see new standards of living […] Next year we are also having the presidential and parliamentary elections. Regardless of their results, we hope our European course will remain unchanged <…> We must deliver on public expectations to live in a modern and democratic country […] I said this many times and would like to repeat it again: our success, the success of Ukraine, is the best answer to our friends as well as enemies.”

  • Bernard-Henri Levy – much like Tony Blair, he needs no introduction.

    “There is a very interesting quote by George Orwell: ‘History is a book on a night table of tyrants’. He meant that one of the key goals, and perhaps even the ultimate objective and the most effective instrument of tyrants, was to interfere not only with the course of history, but also with the history that was being taught. He was right – all totalitarian states can see this paradigm and act just in line with it <…> If you look into what is happening in this country, into the war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine, you will see that Putin attacked not only with his military troops, but also by manipulating the truth … Putin is the president of Russia, commander-in-chief, but he is also the chief historian, chief journalist, and a man who tries, at any price, to erase, reprint, and rewrite the history.”

  • Yury Lutsenko – the current Prosecutor-General of Ukraine who replaced the “son of a b*tch” Viktor Shokin, who was overthrown by Joe Biden; Lutsenko actually has no qualification in the judicial branch, despite being the chief prosecutor.

    “Ukraine is a huge boat: the lower holds of which were full of water after the revolution. Installing a pump and getting rid of the water without plugging the gaps in the budget, these colossal opportunities, is a Sisyphean task.”

  • Michael McFaul – he also needs no introduction.

    “It would not be correct to say that they are united. When the post-Putin era begins, do not expect all the elites to behave in the same manner. I think we should expect a big fight. Also, some of theses people, who did not like the path taken, will start questioning: are we going the right way? … I think there will be a split in the elite <…> The Russians won’t go for Bortnikov or Patrushev. There were twenty years of ‘Putinism’, and now they promise another twenty years of the same course but without that charisma and luck Putin has had? I think it would be very difficult to hand over the reins of power to the security agencies.”

  • Mustafa Nayyem – a Ukrainian deputy who is one of the key perpetrators of the massacres on Maidan in 2014.

    “Corruption is not the only problem. I think that the biggest problem for our generation is that, based on research studies, Ukraine’s population will shrink by another 8 million in 20 years. These people must be returned to our country.”

  • Viktor Pinchuk – the host of the event; a Ukrainian oligarch who betrayed his motherland in 2014 and sided with the West; he is the son-in-law of the second President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.

    “The future cannot be lenient towards those who do not care about it. Our conference focuses on the next generation of everything. One of the main issues today is the Ukrainian political season of 2018-2019 and risks resulting from disinformation, election meddling, and fake news coming from abroad. We need to foresee all these challenges. Here in Ukraine we cannot afford the luxury of underestimating the future.”

  • Petro Poroshenko – no introduction is needed, but it must be said that the crimes that he has committed have no statute of limitations.

    “Our European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations should be considered in a broader international and European context <…> It is not that we need just the EU, we also need NATO. In the same way, they need us <…> Ukraine is a euro-optimistic nation, it’s people have a unique belief in Europe <…> My personal experience taught me that it is important to be very careful and responsible about what you promise people. Over four years ago, I said that the antiterrorist operation (ATO) would take hours, not months. I would like to say this once again, I am sorry for creating inflated expectations….I am calling for real action programmes, not fantastic promises of manna from heaven, promises of the moon, sunshine and rainbows.”

  • Condoleezza Rice – the 66th US Secretary of State who is elbow-deep in blood.

    “President Donald Trump is one of many actors within our political system. The US Founding Fathers – and this will be a good lesson to young democrats in Ukraine – were very cautious about the executive power. They provided for a system of checks and balances: a two-house parliament, the civil society, the press … This system is not one-person based, it is not relying on one person <…> The US has their own challenges. We are a polarized country where many citizens feel left beyond the new reality that has emerged due to globalization and automation.”

  • Yulia Tymoshenko – also known as “Kytsyunder”, due to her manner to look cute and alluring like a kitty; if there is a dollar to be found, she will almost certainly find it; at the time of writing she is the favourite (sponsored by Igor Kolomoisky) to replace Poroshenko as Ukraine’s president in 2019.

    “I am holding here the Budapest memorandum. I am opposed to the idea of throwing it away and pretending that it does not exist. I think that after the rebooting of the Ukrainian government, we will have every opportunity to open a new door, without destroying the achievements of the Minsk accords, and spell out new strategies. One of them is the fulfillment of the guarantees that were given to Ukraine, and the return to the Budapest format.”

  • Svyatoslav Vakarchuk – a Ukrainian musician who was asked by the West to masquerade as a candidate in Ukraine’s 2019 presidential elections.

    “I am ready to change the country. I do not think that to “play politics” is the proper name for the things we are talking about now. I am tired of those political games. They have being “playing politics” for the last 27 years, and I do not want us to “play politics”, I want us to do something.”

  • Kurt Volker – the US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, whose mission is to ensure a smooth political transition in the Verkhovna Rada from the 2014 junta to the 2019 “new” and “reformed” government.

    “We shall not fall asleep and forget about this [the situation in Donbass]. All of our societies and governmental bodies have to direct the spotlight at this humanitarian disaster, as it is just a few hours to fly from Berlin or Munich.”


Whilst it is possible to enumerate all the lies heard from the mouths of the speakers and to prove that the truth can be found simply by inverting their statements, for the sake of time the following conclusions can suffice:

  1. The cost of maintaining Ukraine as an anti-Russia battering ram now causes losses for the West.

    If in 2014 the London-Washington-Brussels axis perhaps was making short-term geopolitical gains by massacring the population of Donbass (putting pressure on Russia to enter Ukraine militarily), then in 2019 capturing one small village in northern Donetsk became completely unviable. It’s not that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are incompetent or that Kiev needs a large delivery of weapons from the White House, but rather that the essence of the Minsk Agreements dictates both the creation of events and the pace between each successive creation.

    In other words, the minimum wager in this particular round (Ukraine) of the “great game” was raised by Russia, and the West could thus bet (recognise the DPR/LPR and establish “peace” in Ukraine), raise the stakes even more (send more and more troops to Debaltsevo or Ilovaisk and forcefully destroy the cauldron), or go all in (attack Russia directly), but in no way could it dictate the flow of the game to Russia. Instead, not being able to compete in this theater after the Minsk Agreements were signed, the West switched to the Syrian theatre and tried to encircle Damascus. And what then happened? Russia started a military operation in Syria (covered by international law!) and raised the stakes in a different, but happening in parallel round (Syria) of the “great game”. The West could bet (make the opposition meet with the “regime” and negotiate over “peace”), raise the stakes (increase the presence of EU/US troops in Syria [covertly, of course] and help Al-Qaeda capture more territory), or go all in (attack Russia and/or Russian troops in Syria). What did the West do at this juncture? Only having enough chips for a couple more rounds (occupying North-East Syria and Al-Tanf), it once again tried to change the overall balance and hopped to different rounds of the “great game” – using its pet fifth column inside Russia to increase the domestic pressure on Putin (the latest manifestation of this being the “pension reform” protests of the CIA-controlled “Communist Party” and Alexey Navalny), using the Skripal card to justify more “sanctions” (which are the US’ way of blackmailing the EU and bringing the bloc to heel), using the Autocephaly card in Ukraine as a way to circumvent the effect of the Minsk Agreements, increasing the pressure on Maduro in Venezuela by crippling its economy even more, attempting to stage a coup in Turkey, etc.

    And it is this ability to raise the stakes that Russia was stripped of when the CIA installed their Gorbachev/Yeltsin coup project in Moscow. Hence why Yugoslavia was smashed during the late 90’s, and why Libya could not be saved in 2011.

  2. The West debunked its own “Russia interferes in elections” fairytale…

    According to Rasmussen, NATO/Anglo-Saxons are allowed to interfere in Ukraine’s elections, because they are combatting “Russian aggression”. I.e., millions of dollars is spent on propaganda designed to present sovereign states as part of some ambiguous large family known as “democracy”, which has borders and is subject to a political center. But this doesn’t correspond to reality, since “Ukraine” is a sovereign country that is recognised by the UN along with its borders. So NATO can’t talk about Russia “violating” Ukraine’s territorial integrity and at the same time present Ukraine as being the 51st US state. And of course, there is no uproar about Rasmussen’s announcement about the creation of a “working group for Ukrainian elections”, because the mainstream media simply doesn’t report it. This is a classic case of projection, whereby (coming back to Wittgenstein’s ruler) one’s accusations reveal the very framework within which one’s mind works.

  3. If one wants to have a relatively good understanding of geopolitics, just invert what Bernard-Henri Levy says.

    Mr Levy fails to provide any proof of his claim that “Putin attacked [Ukraine] not only with his military troops, but also by manipulating the truth”. But this isn’t surprising, since nobody has been able to present any evidence that Russian troops are in Ukraine. Viktor Muzhenko, the chief of the General Staff and the commanding officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, admitted this in 2015; the UN has never published proof in any of its reports on Ukraine (see for yourself), the OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier has admitted on more than one occasion (for example) that they can’t prove this, Ukrainian Deputies, public figures, and troops have admitted the same thing (Links – 1, 2, 3, 4 ), and even laypeople have confirmed that Russian troops have yet to be seen. What Bernard-Henri Levy says about the Kurds, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Lukashenko in Belarus, migration, etc is just as deceitful as the myth of “Russian aggression”. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and when Levy says “Putin is … a man who tries, at any price, to erase, reprint, and rewrite the history” he is referring to the fact that Putin is indeed erasing the package of lies known as “history” that is taught in Europe and awakening people to the fact that the US landed on the shores of Normandy to occupy the vacuum left by its Nazi Germany proxy, in the same way that the US occupies Syrian land after “liberating” Raqqa.

  4. Michael McFaul gave us all a glimpse of what the US “deep state” is hoping for vis-à-vis Russia…

    As if Rasmussen’s admission of the West’s intention to interfere in Ukraine’s upcoming elections wasn’t disgusting enough, Michael McFaul openly stated that “a split in the elite” can happen in Russia after Putin steps down from the presidency, and that “it would be very difficult to hand over the reins of power to the security agencies”. Of course, he isn’t saying this because he was asked a question and just made an educated guess about what will happen. Once again, Wittgenstein’s ruler allows us to affirm that McFaul has opened a window into the CIA’s world, according to which destructive creatures can come out to play once Putin is gone. I.e., all the work Washington has done in Ukraine, treating the entire country like a testing ground with Slavic laboratory mice, will be exported to Russia. And here it can be said with certainty that the schismatic “Kiev Patriarchate” receiving Autocephaly from Constantinople is the West’s latest attempt (since the 2014 coup in Kiev failed to destabilise Russian society) to toss a grenade into Russia, the explosion of which is timed for the post-Putin period – a religious conflict in the entire post-Soviet space. The issue of Putin handing down the baton is explored more here.

  5. The West and its puppets in Kiev intend to pull wool over the public’s eyes and write off the failures of the 2014 coup on “corruption”…

    Being unable to fulfil their pseudo-promise and turn Ukraine into Switzerland after the so-called “Revolution of Dignity”, the “neocons” will simply point to the generic concept of “corruption” (remember Wittgenstein’s ruler!) and shrug their shoulders. They will say: “Poroshenko was just unable to pursue the needed reforms persistently enough, and ‘Russian aggression’ meant that the country’s economy simply could never remain above the water. The Ukrainian people have been let down and deceived, and they deserve better. That’s why we will defend the 2019 elections against ‘Russian interference’ and ensure that the Ukrainian people receive the government that they deserve.” And they will indeed receive this. Being unable to stand on their own two feet and to accept that Mother Russia will not bail them out every time they do mischiefs, the Ukrainian nation will score another hit of “democracy” and will actually believe that this time real change will be synonymous with the holding of elections.

    Regardless of whether it is Yulia Tymoshenko, Anatoly Gritsenko, Vadim Rabinovich, Yury Bokyo, or Svyatoslav Vakarchuk (or, heaven forbid, Petro Poroshenko somehow manages to deny the odds and win/buy a second term) who will win the 2019 presidential elections, absolutely nothing will change. The IMF (CIA) owns the infrastructure, society is exhausted after 5 years of aggressive Banderism and general mob rule, and a religious war is about to be unleashed by Washington & Co. Things only get worse from here. It is only the Ukrainian people who can change this. But it is possible to say that project “Ukraine” was always doomed from the start – a permanent conflict between Galicia and Novorossiya, which was predictable since the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Taking into account the fact that the West cannot defeat Russia militarily, the main stake is being placed on destabilising and demolishing the Bear from within. But at the same time, the West must look over its shoulder, because whilst it is trying to strike a blow in Russia’s rear, the global credit bubble may burst and strike a blow into the West’s rear. Putin knows that to activate this scenario there is a need to not only deflect the West’s attempts to subvert Russian society and to meddle in places like Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, etc, but to also ensure that the magnitude of the blowback follows a 2:1 loss:cost ratio – at a minimum. And it is here that the CIS, BRICS(T?), and SCO can help Russia to defend its rear whilst allowing the Russian military to do the necessary groundwork and remove levers of influence from the Anglo-Saxon’s hands. History does indeed repeat itself – Russia finds itself constantly severing the arteries of the beasts that the West creates and sends East. But this vast experience in “pest control” will come in handy when the circumstances demand it. In the meantime, the Red Army won’t be coming to save the EU on this occasion. This particular “Union” made its bed when it aided and abetted “regime change” all over the world, and now it will lie in it. And Washington will not play any violins when it eventually dies.

“There was once an old man walking home from work, and he’s walking in the snow and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice. He took that snake and he brought it home, and he took care of it. And he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health. And as soon as that snake was well enough, it BIT that old man. And as that old man laid there dying, he asked the snake, ‘Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life’. And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, ‘You stupid old man. I’m a snake’.”