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:
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.
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).
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.
No wonder they are silently licking their wounds now…
For the record, however, I want to clarify the following. While I do really despise these Putin-bashers for their intellectual dishonesty and for being, at best, useful idiots, I am not accusing all those who are critical of Putin of being Putin-bashers. There are real and objective problems in Russia and the Kremlin is zig-zagging. As I have said it many times, there is a fight to the death going on between the “Putin people” (Eurasian Sovereignists) and the pro-Western “big money” (Atlantic Integrationists). Putin is fighting on both fronts at the same time: against the US Empire outside Russia and against what he called the “5th colunm” inside Russia. True, he is winning on both fronts (his latest popularity rating are something close to a “stratospheric” 88% I think), but he has not won any decisive victory yet on either front yet.
The good news is that the people of both Russia and Novorussia are clearly understanding what is taking place and that the pseudo-patriotic arguments of the Putin-bashers are having very little traction with them. This is not to say that Putin is some deity which cannot be criticized, but that to be credible with the Russian and Novorussian people, that criticism needs to be intellectually honest, factually informed and well-intentioned, not just a mud-slinging campaign.
The Saker
Bad times for Putin bashers
(co-posted on Russia Insider)
To Josh Cohen at 7:34
Hi Josh !
Just curious…what don’t you like about Putin…?
I think he’s fantastic…how could you not like Putin…?
Hi Penelope !
That was a brilliant synopsis…I always like your comments. !!
Ann
Jlian said “Left Wing = Big Government (Decreased Personal Freedom & Liberty).
Right Wing = Small Government (Increased Personal Freedom & Liberty).”
Julian, I have to disagree with you. When considering Big Gov vs Small, you have to ask “Which PART of the govt do I want to be smaller? If the part of the govt that was sposed to regulate derivatives hadn’t been reduced to ONE person we might not have had the crash of 2008. Most of us don’t want Social Security to be smaller & a majority want Medicare to be expanded to cover everyone instead of giving all that moeny to the crooked medical insurance companies. We cd use a whole lot less CIA & military. Well, you get my drift; it’s much too simplistic to merely speak of small vs big govt.
Julian, you also said,
“The fact “NeoCons” want to project American Empire and use force to do it makes them inherently “Left-Wing”.”
I don’t think this is conventional usage of the terms ‘left-wing & ‘right-wing’. I actually avoid using this terminology cuz I don’t find it precise enough,but if you are going to use it & want to be understood you really have to stick to the conventioonal usage.
Regards
Larchmonter445: Interesting montage of comments. I agree w you, except I’d like to make just one point: I think the lower oil price is not frowned upon by oil producers– only because they are the same people who are the banksters and the controllers of the Deep State. There is one thing they like better than money. It’s the only thing that can be bought w money in the quantities they have: Power. The lower oil price they expect is on the path to more power by defeating Russia. People mostly don’t realize that the big oil/banksters are behind the Global Warming hoax cuz it seems to be against Big Oil. (Ah, but it’s for the power that’s gained by preventing the development of the 3d world, among other things)
The sewer formerly known as The Guardian is going utterly ape-shit in raw hatred directed at Putin and Russia. There is no subtlety, no nuance, just rank, hysterical hatred and lying. I suppose this not only reflects the psychopathy of the Atlanticist thugs now that there has arisen a global leader who will lead the opposition to their Thousand Year Reich of Full Spectrum Dominance, but also a certain gut-wrenching fear that their whole sordid Empire is on the edge of Collapse, from moral and spiritual rottenness. Nowhere in the Western MSM, and I only look, a little, at the ‘liberal’ offerings, is there anything but 100% Groupthink and Newspeak, uttered with increasing fanaticism. No attempt at argument, discussion, seeing the other’s viewpoint, just that good old Manichean discourse- the ‘Judeo-Christian West’ is morally perfect, the enemy of the day is Satan. No moral or spiritual growth since we clubbed each other on the African savannah.
Kat Kan, Nietzsche hid out in an asylum at the end of his life. In the Atlanticist Reich it is not so much a case of the ‘lunatics taking over the asylum’. That’s old hat. Now it’s the diabolicals ransacking the cathedral, and offering blood sacrifices on the de-consecrated altar. The real catastrophe hidden somewhat behind the geo-political chaos is the consummation of the sin for which there is no forgiveness. That committed against the Holy Ghost, the sanctity of life on the planet. The drive by the globalist vampires to destroy the habitability of the planet for our species, is the ultimate crime. Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, et al, were beginners before this, the ultimate crime-the destruction of the human race.