Dear friends,
First, I want to thank you all for your support and kind words about the Russia Insider project. I am also truly delighted to be associated with this endeavor.
Second, I wanted to clarify a few things about Russia Insider and my role in it. Russia Insider is not a blog or a collective of blogs. The format used by RI is deliberately kept to short(er) posts, not long analytical essays. The idea is to offer a go-to place to get a quick reaction to current events, along with a short commentary and enough links and sources for any reader to follow up should he/she decide to do so. In my case, this is not unlike what I sometimes do with my mini-SITREPs. I see that as very nicely complementing the much longer analyses I do here on this blog.
Also, no worries, most of my time will still be dedicated to this blog.
As for my contributions to Russia Insider, I have not been told to change my views, not say this or that or not to use this or that term. Just like with any such project, if the editor in chief does not like something he can refuse to publish it, which is fine by me as long as I get to post whatever I want here, on my blog. Please do not worry, my freedom is truly sacred to me and I would never associate myself to any project which would limit it. The beauty in Russia Insider is that they fully share that philosophy. Besides, I dare say that I am in pretty darn good company there, so I have no worries on that account at all.
Finally, please notice the new window on the left hand column which announces that author Yuri Dia Konov, whose book Russia’s Diamond Ruble I recently reviewed on this blog, has offered to send any of his books (in English or Russian!) for free to anybody sending a donation to the Saker Blog. So please do press that “donation” button and then email Yuri and tell him which book you want, and he will email you the PDF right back!
Kind regards and many thanks,
The Saker
Germany collapsing because of the sanctions against RF
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11115080/Putin-leaves-Germanys-factories-in-a-worse-state-than-anyone-imagined.html
I hope so! Merkel deserves it, she has been in favor of the Ukraine coup, and she has always known that there were Nazi thugs working against the Separatist civilians in the East!
May be the Germans will start thinking on their own instead of following Uncle Sam.
Grave with beheaded bodies found on Ukrainian National Guard positions in eastern Ukraine.
http://en.itar-tass.com/world/750835
Oh wow! Now we are talking.
Vladimir called Ban Ki Moon to tell him Barak was being naughty.
That’ll show them
Turns out Russia was a paper bear all along.
Given how Russia assisted its allies Lybia and Iran in the past (not to mention Novorussia) I would be very worried if I were Assad.
The Rift,
Well it looks like the separatists have capitulated completely, pathetic and a waste of all those that died for nothing, to grab defeat from the hands of victory. It is so pathetic, is this really what Ukrainian-Russians are like? I listen to nobodies telling them what to do?
Next part they will be handing in weapons and singing happily towards the waiting death camps.
Go Nuvo Russia has no meaning and is just hollow words. Perhaps they can now supply putsch porky with the same bullets to kill them.
Lifenews states that 12,000 Don Cossacks have decided to join the Novorossia forces.
The Germany Colony of the USA deserves its economic troubles.
Time to grow up and break the shackles. The Israelis and Jews of the world have drained reparations for seventy years. The Germans have been guilted into subservience.
Merkle showed her colors. Dustbin of history for the old bag.
Congratulations Saker!
I wonder will they ever publish any of your texts where you call the Western civilization “Anglo-Zionists” ? :-)
I hope they will.
Regards from Serbia,
The Wend.
Just saw this small reportage in the Culture section:
http://russia-insider.com/en/tv_culture_society/2014/09/15/05_17_43/elite_russian_private_school_emphasizes_christianity_and
Building character and teach kids how to love their country is what will insure the true survival of Russian culture and therefore the Russian state, because one without the other is meaningless. I can see that Putin invests a lot into the military might of Russia (which is cool) but I don’t see much of the cultural growth/investments. Russia milks a lot of its past glory thanks to such giants as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy but what about its current, modern Russian culture? I mean the one that doesn’t try to be Hollywood and MTV driven garbage.
Aonymous 15:34
That is a potential crime scene. The NAF need to be very careful. The evidence probably would be discounted in any criminal trial if it is not handled by qualified forensics experts. But then again, if a crime has been committed, what is the probability the perpetrators could be identified and brought to court? Probably close to zero.
Excellent news about the relationship with RI. The rapid response approach will be a useful complement to the in-depth material you produce here.
god sped your wings over the seas to Russia insider, may you return bearing news that the ‘darn good company there’ is most certainly no match for the ‘darn good company here’ – go well sir saker – forsake folk at the vineyard not!
There are some reports about a doctor in a Belya Tserkov hospital (south-west of Kiev) who has killed two NAF POWs with lethal injections and bragged about it on the social network Odnoklassniki. In this short YouTube clip the author talks about the incident (in Russian) and provides some photographic evidence including a mugshot of the murderous lady. Apparently her entire family are committed fascists.
@ Anpn,
Q: Given how Russia assisted its allies Lybia and Iran in the past (not to mention Novorussia) I would be very worried if I were Assad.
R: Fer now ye ain’t nuttin but an ‘ass-hat.’ Keep trying and one day someone might believe your corrosive drivel.
Excellent news! I hope the moderation on the Russia Insider is as stellar as yours, Saker. Your blog is a refuge from the Youtube I-can-piss-further-than-you brigade.
The Telegraph article posted above is quite telling. Russia will emerge stronger thanks to sanctions, while the EU poodles can keep sniffing Uncle Samantha’s dirty underwear ;)
@Daniel Rich:
Show me precisely where I am factually wrong?
Russia appears particularly weak at this point.
What are they going to do about Syria, huh?
http://en.itar-tass.com/world/750891
Norway, joins the Europoodle Brigade. Pathetic. Give ’em an inch they take a mile
[from Blue]
I keep hearing this stuff, here, and from trolls on RT: Russia is weak, Putin is weak, they both sold out NR, etc. etc.
Time to get some facts straight.
Putin is a guy, not a god, and his job is president of Russia, not ruler or peace keeper or policeman of the world. Of course Syria and all is important to Russia, but he is not in charge of those places and does not control the empire or the crazies or the various factions in the rest of the world.
He is also trying to juggle the situation between the 5th and 6 columns — the latter being the anti-fascists of the world and the NR indepents and resistance, as well as managing all the other things Russia needs to be managed. And, frankly, he’s done a very good job of it so far, and acted ‘professionally’, which seems to be a core value for Putin, and one of the major criticisms he has for other ‘leaders’ of the world who have acted like psychotic adolescents.
Time to get a grip and put things in proper persepctive. Simply because the Western media focus on Putin so much, turn him into an icon, demonize him, and tries to make him the centerpiece of the blood banquet they all want to feast at, is no reason to jump on that and join in with the mob of hyperbolic children, drama queens, and mass media sensationalists and personality cultists. Get real.
If Putin retired tomorrow it wold be a significant loss to Russia and the world, but the tide of world events would continue pretty much as they have, albeit with some waves and squalls along the way, and that includes the collapse of the US/Western empire and of capitalism, with it’s concept of endless growth in a finite word, as a political economic paradigm — which will be happening in the decades to come.
Americans will continue to be dumbed down zombies for a while, enforced by the media, the schools, and the popular culture, until the collapse is much further along and the institutions dissolve, and the culture remade. Similar with the rest of the West, and even humanity as a whole — unless we destroy ourselves first. None of the great paradigmatic shifts throughout history happened overnight.
__Blue
“Putin leaves Germany’s factories in a worse state than anyone imagined” (Telegraph)
Just goes to show how they’re lying. What’s hitting our manufacturing is not Putin but the sanctions Merkel agreed to.
About the text itself, we may remind it was written specially for Russia Insider where all is still to be done; of course to long time readers of The Vineyard of the Saker it looks obvious… yet as we say in France “Cela va sans dire, mais cela va mieux en le disant” (“it is obvious but better to be said”, very poor translation).
@ Anonymous 17:09
I don’t know if you like ballet, President Putin doesn’t (nobody’s perfect ;-) ) but to me Paris Opera, the “third world ballet capital” is progressively losing its talent, only remain Moscow and St Petersbourg, which both have now, not one, but two world-class ballet companies (Bolshoi Theatre and Stanislawsky in Moscow, Mariinsky and Mikhailowsky in St Petersburg), fed by the two very best ballet schools.
Russian ballet have outstanding dancers, and though the best dancer of all times, Nikolay Tsiskaridze, was forced to stop dancing early after an awful accident and an awful vilification campaign, he is now head of the Vaganova ballet school, one of the two best, and being an extremely kind, demanding, knowing, and reliable teacher and head, I have no doubt this school will get even better dancers as ever. Had I a son or a daughter wishing to become a dancer, and gifted, I would send him or her nowhere else. Svetlana Zakharova is a MP at the State Douma for United Russia, I think since 2004, and her husband is violinist Vadim Repin, also internationally known, as well as many Russian talents.
Less and less “most prominent” Russian artists “flee to the West” while American principal dancer David Hallberg, who was a principal at the American Ballet Theatre, was named principal at the Bolshoi. I dare say there are Russian dancers as good as him in Russia (not even speaking of Tsiskaridze who after all, could not dance every evening) and this tuto by Ballet Uni I find quite informative :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF-HxE688EM
and Tsiskaridze performing the same :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wna0dLJDsBI
I am sure that under his direction, the Vaganova school will give better dancers than ever.
But of course it is difficult to see what has been achieved in the last 15 years, we need a decade or two to get a better idea.
I forgot to sign, sorry…
TR