by James Tweedie for the Saker blog It has been said often over the past year, most recently by Emmanuel Todd, that the conflict in Ukraine is “existential” for Russia. Certainly, the Great Bear cannot abide a NATO ballistic missile launchpad just 300 miles from Moscow in a country run my rabidly-Russophobic Nazis — not neo-Nazi skinhead cosplayers but the literal descendants of the real deal. But others have argued
by James Tweedie for the Saker blog Back in August 2022 I wrote that NATO was ‘demilitarising’ itself, sending such huge amounts of arms to the Ukraine before and during the Russian special military operation (SMO) that its armies had nothing left to fight with. That process has continued, with Slovenia, the northernmost of the former federal republics of Yugoslavia, sending its entire armoured vehicle fleet to Kiev. The last
by James Tweedie for the Saker blog, Britain, 12th September 2022 The Pro-Russian online commentariat have been appalled by the retreat from north-eastern Kharkov in the face of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. But they may take comfort that Special Military Operation (SMO) has begun to live up to President Vladimir Putin’s paraphrasing of the ‘classic’ Bachman Turner Overdrive (BTO) song ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’. Never mind that the Russian Ministry
By James Tweedie for the Saker blog In a scene from the 1974 film The Four Musketeers, the second part of the previous year’s The Three Musketeers, the vain Porthos (Frank Finlay) shows the pious Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) his new trick: He draws his rapier and throws it into the bullseye of a target. Aramis tells Porthos to try that again, but with himself as a live target. The musketeer
by James Tweedie for the Saker Blog On May 8, when Victory in Europe (VE) Day is celebrated in the West, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told CNN that Russia had “nothing to celebrate” on its own Victory Day on May 9. Her reasoning, faithfully transcribed on the US mission’s website, was that “They have not succeeded in defeating the Ukrainians.” Given that Victory Day and VE
By James Tweedie for the Saker Blog What is fascism? With the Russian ‘de-Nazification operation’ in the Ukraine entering its fourth week and “Black Lives Matter” replaced with “I Stand With Ukraine” as the virtue-signal de jour, now seems like a good time to define it. While I’m a big fan of the Iranian journalist Ramin Mazaheri, I have to disagree with his latest article on The Vineyard of
