The Great Russian Restoration, IX: The Military Establishment Factor 

I have resisted the urge to write much about the actual war in Ukraine up to this point for several reasons.

First, I am not a military expert, although I have spoken to several retired military men to get their take on the situation since the start of the conflict. This is made easier by the fact that I come from a military family.

Secondly, I saw Russian military dominance and victory a foregone conclusion and still do. This was always a war for the Russian politicians to lose, not for the Ukrainian military to win.

Thirdly, I do not believe that anyone has any real inside information on Russian troop movements and strategic goals. The Ministry of Defense has kept a very tight lid on that sort of thing. Therefore, all we really have to work with is speculation based on Telegram and Twitter videos and reports from embedded journalists. Or, we rely on the reports of Western intelligence agencies, which do not have a good track record.

We should instead consider Putin’s goals going into this war. The most obvious factor to consider is the fact that Putin has no political future should he fail to achieve his objectives in Ukraine. One way or the other, he needs a victory of some sort or another to hang his hat on. This is perhaps the best metric that we have for figuring out what Putin’s intentions are in Ukraine and since this series of essays is focused on internal changes occurring in Russia as a result of the showdown with the West, we should consider what exactly Russian civil society is demanding from Putin.

First and foremost, the so-called “Atlanticist” faction, which seems to a euphemism for Jews and their puppets as far as I can tell, did NOT want Putin to intervene in Ukraine. He did so anyway. And he did the same in Crimea, Syria and Georgia. Now, many of the most prominent Atlanticists have fled the country. In other words, there is no proof whatsoever that Putin is willing to bend to their demands when it comes to Russia’s security and so, we can safely disregard the opinions and demands of these people and their supporters in Moscow and St. Petersburg because it is quite clear that Putin has already done so.

The largest block in society is what we can broadly call the “Patriots.” They come in all ideological shades and stripes — some are red flag-waving Communist nostalgists, others prefer the black, yellow and white aesthetics of the Russian Empire. Most simply fly the red, white and blue of Russia and have no ideology to speak of other than what we can understand as generic patriotism. They all support the military operation in Ukraine, but they have various goals that they want the intervention to achieve. These people make up 80+% of Russian society and we know this because Putin’s approval rating has soared into the 80s because of the military intervention. The hardliners want an incorporation of the entire territory of Ukraine into the Russian Federation, but are willing to settle for everything east of the Dniepr. The majority of patriotic Russians just want a victory in Ukraine, and have no idea of what exactly that will entail. Liberating the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) and reincorporating them into Russia while giving the Ukrainian army, the “Nats-bats” (mercenary “nationalist” militias), and Zelensky a good thrashing is good enough for them. Russia’s official stated goals in this conflict are just that, simply phrased another way: the “de-nazification” and “de-militarization” of Ukraine and the liberation of Donetsk and Lugansk. To achieve this limited victory, all Putin has left to do is to dislodge the Ukrainian army in the East, where they were massing up to attack the DNR and where they are hunkered down in their fortified positions now.

But let’s examine the military operation in greater detail for a moment. If we’re going to speculate on Russia’s military plans and objectives, we have to focus on the facts and not on the narratives that we can spin based off these facts. For example, we know for a fact that the Russian army reached Kiev within the first three days of the conflict. Now, was this a feint or part of a psychological operation to get Kiev to surrender, or an attempt to prevent a planned Ukrainian offensive on Donbass by splitting the Ukrainian army or the first stage in a preparation to storm the capital and cut the head off the snake? Here, we can only speculate.

We can also add to our speculations that there may have been an attempt to activate Russian assets within the city and take it from within. Russian bloggers are speculating that this was the Russian plan for Kharkiv, which failed to materialize for one reason or another. In fact, there are rumors that Kharkiv’s officials feigned surrender only to lure Russian troops in and then open fire on them, leading to a similar repeat of the Grozny ambush during the Chechen wars. I hesitate to hang my hat on this claim, but it strikes me as having a ring of truth to it. After all, what was the Russian plan for taking the cities if they refuse to bomb and then storm them into submission? Clearly, negotiating with the officials and activating sleeper agents within the cities would be a far more cost-effective method of taking these cities. If that is the case, Russian spooks and diplomats failed spectacularly in Kharkiv, Kiev, and Mariuple.

More facts: the Russian military plowed through the Ukrainian in-field defenses and parked themselves outside these cities or simply went around them. No immediate storming occurred. While they surrounded these cities and continued their targeted destruction of the Ukrainian military, a bloodbath began in these cities targeted at Russia-sympathizers and officials who spoke up about entering negotiations or surrendering ending up being assassinated by the SBU and the “Nats-bats.”

So: were the Russians planning on taking all of these cities but failed because their sleeper cells were poorly prepared/neutralized? Or was the Ministry of Defense and Putin telling the truth when they said that they weren’t interested in taking territory or these cities but simply in knocking out Ukraine’s military potential and liberating the DNR and LNR?

Choose your own narrative as you see fit or wait until the dust settles. Either way, we simply don’t know the answer yet.

Back on the home front, Putin hasn’t even called up Russia’s reserves. Young men are NOT being drafted to go fight in the Ukraine. Again, this is another fact. What does it tell us? That the war is not popular? Hardly. Not only do we have the polls to prove that the war is, in fact, popular, but we have Western media lamenting the fact that this is the case. Why then not call up the reserves? Perhaps because they were deemed unnecessary for the goals of the operation. This indicates that the goals of the operation were limited, does it not?

And now a few words on the Russian Ministry of Defense.

We can start with Anatoly Serdukov, the former minister of defense. Serdukov was one probably one of the least qualified ministers of defense in Russian history. He was widely reviled and hated by the officer corps in the military and his replacement with Sergei Shoigu was seen as a much-awaited step in the right direction. In the 90s, Serdukov was a furniture salesmen (fine, a general director) in St. Petersburg and it was widely believed in military circles that he was as corrupt as they came. For example, his significant other got caught with millions of dollars in her bank account. There was also regular run-of-the-mill corruption associated with his five-year reign which ended in 2012, such as the use of military resources to build roads to oligarchs’ villas and the like. I suppose one could make the argument that there was no proof of direct embezzlement, but he ended up getting sacked for involvement in corruption all the same. The silver lining was that no one in the West could take Russia seriously with him at the helm, and so NATO relaxed. It was around this time that President Obama declared Russia a regional power and declared that a pivot to China was the path forward for ensuring US hegemony in the world. Russian patriots believe that Serdukov was partially to blame for this insulting demotion from superpower status. Most notably, the army during this period was drastically cut as part of a money-saving campaign that was branded as an anti-corruption effort.

With Sergei Shoigu taking over in 2012, Russia slowly began reinvesting in the military. Shoigu, like many other Russian public figures, was considered a legacy of the Yeltsin kakistocracy that once ruled the country. That being said, he demonstrated actual competence during his time in political office and his time at the Ministry of Emergencies — a rare trait in the Russian government over the last 30 years, to be sure. All that being said, he is not, strictly speaking what the military circles would consider to be a true-blue military man. There are rumors circulating now that he is about to be sacked, which are largely the result of him having dropped out of the public eye since March 11 of this year. Shoigu is widely known as a media enthusiast who enjoys putting himself in front of the cameras, which also lends credence to the rumors. I was hesitant to bring them up or give them any credence, but these rumors aren’t being promoted solely by the Ukrainians and Russian Liberals, but by Russian military men, who would like to see him replaced with one of their people, and ideally, a man with actual combat experience from either the Afghanistan or Chechen campaigns.

Firing Shoigu would be bad PR for the Kremlin now, but in terms of improving Russia’s military capabilities and continuing Russia’s move away from the legacy of the 90s, it’s really not the worst thing that could happen — in fact, military circles would rejoice at the news. This is also partially why the military experts and veteran officers have been so critical of the war effort so far. Russian military people believe that this war is being fought with political considerations in mind, and not as a strict military operation. Clausewitz once famously said that war is a continuation of politics by other means and that has certainly been the Kremlin’s approach to this operation. But now, having exhausted the possibility of taking Ukraine without any major bloodshed through other, more political methods involving diplomacy or subterfuge, the only way forward is to fall back on old-fashioned military force. The Russian army has abandoned Kiev and several other cities and is concentrating in Donbass to surround and destroy the hunkered down Ukrainian army. This is not exactly good news for Russia’s foreign policy and her political ambitions. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are going to die now. Civilians will die as well. Relations with Ukraine will never be the same.

But, internally, this is not the worst possible outcome by any means because what the politicians bungled, the military men are being called in to fix now. This will translate into an increased share of power and prestige for the Russian military establishment within the country. A deeply conservative, militaristic and “old-school” faction is about to start flexing its muscles in Russian society now. This is not too dissimilar to the situation that existed in Tsarist Russia and the USSR, where the military was very much involved in politics and formed a hardcore conservative bulwark in society. This is simply a part of Russia’s pre-Yeltsin political tradition. In contrast, in much of the West, the military simply doesn’t have much to do with internal politics as an institution. But, in many other nations in the world, the military either significantly influences politics or simply runs the country outright. Remember: Post-Soviet Russia was run by a coalition of the office of the Presidency, the Federal Security Service, and the Oligarchs. If all goes well, the power vacuum caused by the shutdown of many oligarchs in recent months will be filled by the military.

Any genuine Russian restoration will have to involve the restoration of the prestige of the military — its reintegration into political life and it’s re-elevation within civil society. Much depends on the success of the Russian offensive in the Donbass.

14 replies
  1. charles frey
    charles frey says:

    01 You mentioned Obama’s pivot to China in order to maintain American hegemony.

    02 The fact is, and has been for some time, that China is vastly overpopulated in comparison to adjacent Russia’s Siberia; rich in water and natural resources of all kinds.

    03 Putin is reportedly a student of history and certainly enough of a strategist.

    04 Add 01, 02 and 03, which will take you unavoidably to Putin’s strategic reasoning, 101, that he can not afford a NATO Ukraine in his rear when the shit hits the fan, sooner or later, however reasoned, in his own Far East.

    05 Nor even an ” independent “, unaligned Ukraine, breast fed to within a millimeter of NATO membership: completed through a two minute call between Washington’s Sanhedrin and Brussels.

    • Birhan Dargey
      Birhan Dargey says:

      The USA had become a WOKE military while Russian Military had carried out an impecable Ucranian Campaign. The future is bleak: In the future the CRT School Board will mail you a letter telling you that your child is a LGBT protected minority. The State will implement THERAPIES chemical/drug/psychological/physical/Surgical and you the parents will NOT have any rights to interfere. While Russians/Chinese children will not be exposed WOKE sexual indoctrinations. American school children will be INDOCTRINATED, castrated, mutiliated, they will force to learn/view/PARTICIPATE en sex curriculam, viewing pronogrpahy, XXXstoty times, masturbation/sexual intercourse sessions, anal penetrations, group sex. These children will become a Zombie populations with severe Mental illnesses. These sick people will engage in sex activities pedo/bestiality/sodomy in plazas, parks, under bridges, schools, etc. They will wake up flooded with urine, excrement, semen, and will NEVER reach absolution/redemption/moral/ PEACE…they will spent their days as LOST Souls, torturing themselves daily with no chance of healing.

    • Emicho
      Emicho says:

      I don’t think that TSWHTF in Russia’s far east, why would it? As long as Russia continues to provide the resources China needs, China will have no need to expand into land it’s never occupied. China never has done this, ever, in it’s whole history that is longer than any other civilisation on earth.
      They don’t want land that isn’t China, they never have. Because they consider China some sort of magical land.
      If a bizarre future events occur where an aggressive Chinese leader appears, with zero interest in China’s past, and starts to demand sparsely populated Russian land, and is so crazy that even Russia’s nukes don’t put him off, Russia could always exchange land for another type of wealth, as they once did with Alaska.
      I reckon though that once America collapses and takes it’s European bitches down with it, many young whites may look to populate Russia’ s vast empty spaces to work the land among fellow whites. This could be a sort of white paradise.
      Russia ain’t losing any sleep over this.

    • George
      George says:

      Why would Ukraine, or NATO, before Russian atrocities, have sided with Communist China against Russia?

  2. charles frey
    charles frey says:

    01 My deceased sister was a photojournalist.
    02 While my mother ran her business, my sister often looked after me, after school, by taking me along on her assignments.
    03 I couldn’t help but acquire knowledge of an effective composition of a photograph: to reflect as much of its purposeful
    storytelling as possible.
    04 When I saw the carefully placed, covered corpses of civilians in Bucha, allegedly murdered by Russian soldiers, I immediately perceived a stage setting.
    05 All six bodies, identified on the photo by superimposed rectangular white boxes were situated in an almost geometrical pattern, so as to completely cover a large open space.
    06 Of course, this is of less evidentiary value, than the black plastic bagged corpse, one of ca 50, also geometrically arranged 5×10, reaching out to cover itself from the cold, after its bag was blown open by the wind.
    07 Shown on a wider angle video camera lens shot, than the one offered up to the western viewers of our complicit MSM: regrettably including FOX.
    08 Even Haaretz commented on the abuse of an aged photo, published to show a teen aged Ukrainian girl slapping a Russian soldier and telling him to leave her country.

    Said girl was dressed in a sleeveless top, in the middle of the Ukrainian winter: the backdrop a desert.

    A dated picture of the Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, in the Occupied West Bank, interacting, with friends, against an Israeli soldier. Goebbels would roll over in his grave, were he to witness the depths his specialty had sunk to.

  3. Captainchaos
    Captainchaos says:

    I am beginning to doubt even the efficacy of the Russian nuclear deterrent. At the present rate of military performance Russians would probably find some way to have their nuclear missiles explode on the launch pad before leaving Russian soil. Fake “Nazis,” on the payroll of Jewish mobsters, are fighting to the death like towering NS Supermen whilst Russians haven’t yet concluded they should drastically reduce the vodka rations of their soldiers. This is a national humiliation for Russia. They should have just hired German mercenaries to fight the war for them.

    • Hillary Goldberg Levin
      Hillary Goldberg Levin says:

      Putin could have bombed Ukraine back to the stone age (which is what our jew run govt. does)
      We murdered a million innocent civilians in Iraq on behalf of world jewry.
      Putin is trying to avoid civilian casualties…..the Russians have been holding back for a reason.

  4. Karl Haemers
    Karl Haemers says:

    We are up to 9 now. I read the first 6, and missed a couple. I think they might go well all together.
    They are somewhat polemic, but seem to have clear basic insights from a community-level view.

  5. Rapparee
    Rapparee says:

    No mention of Israel or the Chabad Lubavitch’s, hidden hand?
    Or is “Atlanticists” an euphemism including the Chabadniks?

  6. sauli niinisto 33 freemason suomi
    sauli niinisto 33 freemason suomi says:

    UKRAINE END GAME

    WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE JEWS – must always be the primary consideration.
    1. Regardless of who wins, abundant sales and eventual replenishment of arms stocks for the Arms Industries which have largely jewish stockholders.
    2. Regardless of who wins, white Christians and Muslims are killing each other in the thousands.
    3. Regardless of who wins, the last bastion of white nationalism will be destroyed by Russia, and the Azov and other Nazi Battalions will eventually be turned on and demonized by their own current Ukrainian-Jewish leadership.
    4. The creation of the Petro-Ruble will devalue the US dollar and the EURO, thus devaluing the billions in debt created at the lowest interest for largely Jewish firms that have been accumulating the best assets around the world with cheap debt. The reset will happen on Jewish terms.
    5. Millions of Ukrainians have left the Ukraine never to return. This opens the opportunities for Jews:
    a. Before the dollar is completely devalued, Jewish investors will buy up the best vacated and distressed Ukrainian real estate for development.
    b. They can now ramp up their Middle East aggressions to create a larger Eretz Israel, by funneling the fleeing Muslim immigrants into the Ukraine as a disposable work force.
    c. Clearing of a large portion of the Ukrainian population will facilitate the re-establishment of the Jewish Kazarian empire to its historical location in the Ukraine.
    6. Jews have been invested in the thousands of new apartment complexes, hundreds still under construction, in the United States. Much of these remain unrented. The millions of Ukrainians immigrants will immediately be funneled, with government vouchers and subsidies from US taxpayers, into these brand new homes.
    7. Ukrainian immigrants will provide an abundance of skilled and semi-skilled workforce for Jewish businesses.
    8. Ukrainian immigrants will provide an abundance of new and sorely needed consumers for Jewish retail and entertainment.

    WHAT’S IN IT FOR EVERYONE ELSE
    1. Death and destruction.
    2. Inflation and high prices.
    3. More suppression of privacy and freedom an further empowered Jewish controlled media, government and security/surveillance state.

  7. Tarrasik
    Tarrasik says:

    Very interesting article.

    I don’t believe that Russian politicians bungled the Ukraine operation and the Russian military needs to step in. It’s been planned for years. Russia had lots of time to test their military in Chechnya and Syria. They closely watched the Ukrainian military since 2014. Russia has a ton of new military hardware such as the Armata tank, new submarines, guns, aircraft, hypersonic missiles. They have a lot on their plate and seem determined to make it work properly. I think they know what they’re doing.

    IMHO, Ukraine is a peripheral goal. The invasion had a higher purpose, to trigger the US and EU to sanction Russia. That gave Russia the moral justification to enact the rubles for energy policy which will deliver a drubbing to the EU. It will lead to diminution of the dollar as reserve currency. Russia wins if they force the EU to buy rubles. There is little chance the EU will develop alternate sources of energy. They refuse to develop nuclear or indigenous coal. Wind and solar are inadequate. So they’re hosed for the next few decades. Russia holds four aces. The world is very dependent on Russian gas, grain, fertilizer and other natural resources.

    This seems to be a joint Russia/China plan to take down the Zio-US hegemony.

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