Another Russia-Turkey War Seems Inevitable

But only side is capable of fighting it.

First, I wrote an article explaining what the Odessa strikes were about and what they weren’t about. You should check it out here:

If I am wrong, we should be seeing some kind of offensive or some kind of naval attack or some kind of follow-up by Russia, right? If not, then we are simply seeing a repeat of what happened last time, that is, yet more attempting to hide the fact that Russia is not fighting this war seriously.

Also, the grain strikes don’t even make sense as a tit-for-tat punishment/retaliation measure following the Crimea bridge bombing. Wouldn’t a bridge for a bridge make more sense? Bog knows, there are plenty of intact bridges all over Ukraine transporting supplies and equipment to the army in Donbass that remain untouched. Ukraine, it seems, can knock out strategic bridges like in Kherson and Crimea, but Russia can’t. Curious, no?

So, why do command/leadership centers remain unmolested by Russian missiles? Ah, you reply that this is simply not part of the grand plan, that the higher-ups know better anyways and that I’d better shut up or end up like Strelkov, right? OK, but let me exploit your knee-jerk defense of MoD incompetence by pointing out that Shoigu has already threatened to target Ukrainian leadership multiple times. So, clearly, the option to hit these leaders is on the table and is technically feasible at least, right? And yet, the latest threat fizzled out almost immediately after Shoigu issued it, proving that the Kremlin’s warnings are nothing but hot air. We have a very specific example here to analyze that everyone can understand so let’s do just that.

Q: Didn’t Shoigu pledge to punish Kiev for continuing to attack Crimea? And shortly afterwards didn’t Ukraine, defiantly, attack Crimea again?

A: Yes

Q: And did Shoigu hit a decision-making center?

A: No

What then is the explanation for this? No, seriously, I often zoom out and take a very wide, bird’s eye view of the SMO and the political squabbling in the Slavlands, and perhaps there is some disagreement about the overarching picture that I paint. I think my arguments are well-reasoned and well-supported, but OK, fair enough, even I acknowledge that I don’t have the full picture. This specific example though, is different in that it is very clear-cut and easily understandable without diving deep into Slavlands lore.

Shoigu promises a response Y if Ukraine does X. Ukraine does X and there is no response Y. It begs the question: WHY?

And why can’t we have a serious discussion about this with ZAnonners? I would like to hear their explanation for why Moscow issues idle threats that it never follows up on. Is their silence a denial of this threat and the red line having ever existed? Are they saying that we ought to wait two more weeks, this time for sure? Is there a secret checkmate that I am not seeing? Or, perhaps they simply don’t like to ask questions that might lead to uncomfortable observations about who is running Russia and how. That’s probably it.

Anyways, as we can see for ourselves, targeting civilian infrastructure in Odessa and other parts of Ukraine is fine because it doesn’t help the war effort, turns ordinary Ukrainians against Russia, and doesn’t threaten Moscow’s esteemed oligarchic partners. The golden rule to follow is that if action A hurts Russia in some way, you can be sure that Russia’s leaders will take action A, every time, always.

If there is a better explanation, why are Z-NPCs so unwilling to provide it?

So that’s my last word on the Odessa farce. I think I’ve made my point. The larger point for today is how all of this relates to the grain deal and the one-sided conflict between Russia and Turkey. Let’s start with the implications of the suspended BlackSea Grain Initiative graciously provided to us by Nikola Mikovich:

Russia’s recent decision to suspend participation in the BlackSea Grain Initiative, a UN-backed agreement that has allowed Ukraine to export food during the ongoing conflict, will have repercussions that go beyond threatening global food security.

It could also rewrite the region’s political map. In the eyes of many Russian propagandists, the grain deal reversal is payback for humiliation levied by Turkey on July 7, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repatriated five captured Ukrainian commanders.

The fighters had spent several months in a secure facility in Turkey after surrendering to Russian troops in the port city of Mariupol last year. The soldiers were part of the Azov regiment, which Russia considers a terrorist organization. 

From the Russian perspective, Erdogan’s decision to send the men home was a slap in the face. If Russia had extended its participation in the grain deal, which uses Turkey as a transit hub, Putin would have looked even weaker, the thinking goes. 

Not ready to reimpose another full blockade of the Black Sea

But Russia’s withdrawal from the deal does not mean that the Kremlin is ready to reimpose another full blockade of the Black Sea, as it did at the beginning of the war, or that it plans to jeopardize its relations with Ankara. However, there is no doubt that one of the major goals of Russia’s recent missile strikes on Ukrainian ports is to prevent, at least temporarily, the country from exporting its grains.

Despite having different views on the UN-supported initiative, Putin and Erdogan remain “friends,” according to the Turkish leader. Putin is expected to visit Turkey in August, and the grain initiative will be high on the agenda. Although Russia has shown its hand, Erdogan insists that Putin is interested in a continuation of the agreement.

What any new deal might look like remains unclear. Russian officials claim that Turkey will have to purchase Russian grains “at normal world prices.” Ankara, on the other hand, hopes to continue buying both Russian and Ukrainian grains at discounted prices.

This is an interesting point. Moscow has portrayed its grain deal as a selfless initiative to feed the starving Third World masses. You see, the Kremlin is very concerned about feeding black babies and this only further proves that the West are the real racists and that Russia is the world’s most Antifa/BLM country! Which is a good thing, of course! I fully support it! Go #BLM! But, in reality, the deal was all about oligarchs in both Russia and Turkey increasing profit margins and passing the burden onto third parties. So, in Russia’s case, on Russian farmers and taxpayers and in Turkey’s case, to the regular customers of Russia’s exports who can’t get them by ordinary means because of sanctions.

Nikola continues:

Erdogan seems to have the upper hand

And yet, because Erdogan seems to have the upper hand, it’s conceivable that Putin will have to accept Turkish conditions. Failure to do so could be costly for Moscow.

For one, Ankara could effectively close the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to the Russian navy and civilian ships headed to Syria, complicating Russia’s engagement in the Middle East country.

Russian energy companies involved in multibillion dollar projects in Turkey could also be squeezed. Rosatom, which is building a nuclear power plant in Turkey's southern Mersin province, and Gazprom, which seeks to turn Turkey into a gas hub, would almost certainly pressure the Kremlin not to anger their Turkish counterparts. 

Barring that, Turkish authorities could follow the West and impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs who have found safe haven in their country. 

Turkey and Ukraine might even start implementing a grain deal without Russia’s participation, which would represent another humiliation for Moscow. Under this scenario, Ukraine could simply continue exporting its grains to Turkey, ignoring Russia’s threats. Along these lines, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently called on Erdogan and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to support grain shipments without Russian involvement.

Kyiv and Ankara understand that the Kremlin would unlikely dare sink Ukrainian or Turkish civilian ships, as such an action could lead to direct Turkish involvement in the Ukraine war. Thus, Ukraine and Turkey could simply continue doing grain business as usual. However, if Moscow decides to escalate, and really starts attacking ships going to or from Ukrainian ports, Kyiv will almost certainly respond. As a last resort, Turkey could even start supplying Ukraine with weapons via the Black Sea route, which would represent another blow to Putin and his war effort.

To avoid any of these outcomes, the Kremlin may have no choice but to take Ankara’s steer. Its propaganda machine could always spin Moscow’s policy as another “goodwill gesture,” with the goal of helping poor countries in Africa. Erdogan might even insist that Moscow continue sending free grain to nations such as Mali, Djibouti, Sudan, and Somalia – places where Turkey has been trying to increase its influence. 

The fact that Turkey’s combat drone producer Baykar has begun buildinga plant in Ukraine clearly indicates that Erdogan feels self-confident and does not see Russia as a threat to its interests. Erdogan knows that if Turkey is at the table, Putin’s room for political (and even military) maneuvering is limited.

For now, Turkey is in the driver’s seat. Erdogan won’t hesitate to push Putin to reach a new grain deal that saves Ankara money, and keeps the world fed. Moscow’s move might appear strategic, but in reality, it is a desperate ploy by a leader quickly running out of options.

Quite the analysis. But hey, that’s just Nikola Mikovic, who, like Edward Slavsquat (I doubt that’s even his real name!) is a well-known crank and malcontent and all-around bad internet person.

Sworn enemy of the blog! Totally out of his depth! Strongly disavow!

Hardly worth listening to even:

Still, I wonder what Russians are saying about all of this. To answer that question, we turn to the patriotic doomers over at TopWar:

After the announcement of Russia's withdrawal from the grain deal, Ukraine, unexpectedly for itself and its owners, found itself in a naval blockade. The Ministry of Defense has been conducting missile strikes on the ports of Odessa and Nikolaev for two nights in a row, and has also issued a statement that “all ships that go to Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea will be considered as potential carriers of military cargo.” This situation was clearly unexpected both for the US (which refused to guarantee the security of sea convoys to Ukraine), and for the UK, with its agents Abramovich and Erdogan, the former main lobbyists and beneficiaries of the “grain deal”. The Turk hid, but this is by no means a good sign, but another reason to think about his main weapon in Russia - namely, the migrant hordes that occupied the major cities of our country, including Moscow.

So, a miracle did happen: Russia did not just chew on snot after the terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge, but began, reluctantly and not very strongly, to bomb Odessa and Nikolaev. According to official data from the Ukrainian side, as of this morning, 60,000 tons of grain have been destroyed in the ports, as well as storage facilities for sunflower oil, warehouses with "fireworks" (read - ammunition that NATO supplies to Kiev in exchange for grain) and the grain infrastructure of international and Ukrainian traders and carriers Kernel, Viterra and CMA CGM Group.

There could be more - after all, port warehouses are not buried bunkers, and they burn well, but this is not bad for a start. Moreover, the non-brothers can downplay the scale of their disaster, and their Ministry of Agrarian Policy has already stated that the restoration of objects is inexpedient. What, or rather who interfered with doing all this a year and a half ago, is generally clear to everyone. And yet, better late than never - especially since the starving Africans would not have seen this grain anyway, and Putin promised at SPIEF not to leave them hungry.

The psychological and economic effect of the event is much more important: Western insurers immediately refused to insure sea transportation to Ukraine, the United States dissociated themselves from their lackeys, recommending that the country use land transport, and the Russian Defense Ministry yesterday completely upset Roman Abramovich and his comrades by announcing that "all ships that follow in the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be considered as potential carriers of military cargo." This means they can be sunk.

Erdogan, who over the past year has turned his country into almost the main grain hub in the world, instantly flew yesterday's arrogance (the day before he threatened to transfer Russian S400 complexes to Ukraine and almost take the fly on the Black Sea residences of the Kremlin elite) - he quietly hid under the bench and squeals something about hoping to convince Russia to return to the "grain deal" after some time.

However, people who know history (and there are few of them in the presidential administration of the Russian Federation, as well as in the government of the Russian Federation - otherwise they would not have invested in “friend Rejep” for so many years, giving him gas pipelines and nuclear power plants along with the latest types of weapons, do not speaking of tomatoes, construction sites and tourists) they understand that such behavior, although quite typical for Turkish "friends", should not relax anyone.

Like any oriental person faced with real power, the sultan will smile in his face, bow and just wait for the right moment to stab him in the back with a dagger.

In our case, Erdogan did not even pretend to be an exception. Regular hugs with Putin did not prevent him not only from not recognizing the Russian Crimea and supplying Bayraktars and other weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but also for years almost openly financing the Wahhabi "fifth column" in Russia, especially in the Caucasus and the Volga region, as well as in the Muslim republics of the former USSR, especially in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Moreover, in recent years, Erdogan, in fact, openly built, with the blessing of his English bosses, an empire - the great Turan, the agreements within which Kazakhstan places immeasurably higher than its obligations within the framework of the EAEU, the Customs Union or the CSTO. It is Erdogan and his special services that can be considered the main beneficiaries of the migration policy of the Russian government and individual Sobyanins, who literally flooded the country with millions of foreigners, including outright savages and criminals, under the pretext of the need to attract labor. By the way, along with the Russian majority, this new colonization also affects indigenous Muslim Russians, whom the newcomers are trying to subdue.   

And so, the Sultan was finally seriously offended for the first time - he was deprived of one of the cash flows and levers of influence on world processes. Official Ankara has so far refrained from making statements, allowing only leaks of information about new large-scale arms deliveries from the former Ukrainian SSR.

But it's still good news. The main danger from Erdogan, as already mentioned, is tens or hundreds of thousands of his janissaries, who have dissolved among migrants, and their ability to rock the Muslim ummah for any reason with the help of social networks, the media, etc. For example, as it happened recently with the conflict on the Holy Lake in Moscow, or around the story in Kotelniki near Moscow, where the security forces behaved rather rudely in the prayer room, and this video was instantly viral by Turkish, British and other special services with other TsIPSO. 

The only correct decision of the Russian authorities in such a situation seems to be a sharp change in migration policy, the introduction of a visa regime with Erdogan's allies, demonstrative arrests of accomplices of migrants, both among officials of all levels from the minister and below, and among policemen and among businessmen, mass checks of the habitats of migrants , mass deportations for the slightest offenses, revision of decisions on the issuance of Russian passports, along with the mass sending of new citizens of the Russian Federation who bought the treasured book from the FMS, to the SMO zone. We and other patriots have been talking about all this for many years, and only recently the authorities, in the person of a single head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, began to publicly repeat some of these proposals.

I’ve mentioned Alexander Bastrykin’s comments on the absolute explosion in Muslim guerrilla warfare targeted at ethnic Russians before:

Why do I say “guerrilla war’? Because that is what crime is.

The Kremlin allows organized crime to continue within Russia. It is not as bad as what has been unleashed in the West in recent years, but still, food for thought. Belarus, in contrast, does not tolerate guerrilla warfare being waged on the peasantry. Every time you want to excuse the Kremlin’s bad behavior, look over to Belarus and remind yourself of how a real country is run.

No COVID, no crime, and no disastrous SMO either over in Luka’s part of town.

One of my other interviewees, the editor of Katyusha also expressed concern over the Turkish role in fomenting Islamic terrorism within Russia.

But we return now to the TopWar report:

We support Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin in every possible way - but so far there are only enough security forces for relatively local raids, such as a recent check in Kotelniki near Moscow, where, as part of a criminal case under paragraph “a” of Part 2 of Art. 322.1 of the Criminal Code (organization of illegal migration by a group of persons by prior agreement), the security forces destroyed 26 “rubber apartments” and detained 150 “priceless” foreign specialists. Stopping the trouble is the beginning, we hope to continue. Work, brethren, before it's too late!

So, overall, a more positive spin on the looming Turkey-Russia confrontation. Basically, Moscow, albeit reluctantly, decided to stand up against the Sultan because his latest offense was too much to bear for even them. However, the second analysis raised several other interesting questions and points that are worth discussing as well about the kind of threat that Turkey poses for Russia. Here, we have to consult some hidden lore and Erdogan’s political ideology to understand what Ankara has in store for Moscow in the years to come.

But we don’t tolerate free-loaders at the Slavland Chronicles lightly. It is a truth of this universe that great knowledge comes at a great price. Odin was willing to sacrifice his eye for hidden wisdom was he not? But I am aware that the sacrifice I ask of my readers is far greater. Yes, the dreaded yearly paid subscription. How my ungrateful readers howl and gnash their teeth and cry out at me in anguish and spite! How they loath the idea of giving me my fair due! This is what the typical Rologeld-avoiding freeloader looks like:

And this is what they sound like:

PLEASE! I’m begging you! Take my right hand, my faithful dog, my daughter’s virginity instead, Rolo! Anything! Just name it! Don’t take my $50 though! What do you even need $40 for anyways? Police! Help! Rolo is trying to rob me of my $100! Look, I seem to have misplaced the $20 that you wanted, but I SWEAR I’m good for it! What do you mean “pay up’? AAAHH! I HATE you Rolo! How DARE you! May Yahweh smite you! *gollum* *gollum*

Pay up!