Dear Mr. Gilbert Doctorow

Hoping this letter finds you well.

Sir,

For the last four years, Z-media has been in ideological lockstep. As a result, we have been treated to increasingly outlandish explanations for why the two-week special military operation in fellow socialist brotherly Ukraine continues to escalate and drag on and on. Not once in all of this time has any major blogger or vlogger or self-styled intel dropper entertained even the slightest doubt in the Kremlin’s narrative about the state of the war.

I couldn’t help but notice that you might have been the first to break ranks the other day.

From your blog, you recapped what you said on Judge Napolitano’s show, where you cast doubt on Z-media and the Kremlin’s outlandish claims:

I am grateful to Judge Andrew Napolitano for posting my recently arrived at contrarian views on how the war in Ukraine is going and what Russians are thinking about the way it is being prosecuted.

In today’s chat I was given ample opportunity to take issue with the ‘Putin is the only adult in the room,’ ‘all Russians support Putin,’ ‘the war will end soon after the capture of Pokrovsk’ narrative that is being disseminated by today’s heroes of the U.S. podcasts Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson and several others.

None of these chaps speaks Russian and the ‘insider perspective’ that they present is nothing more than what they are told by the Russia Today officials, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials and retired Russian generals who are their hosts in Russia and use these naïve colleagues to broadcast Russian propaganda.

Yes, but have you considered the possibility that Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, Col. Macgregor and Martyanov are all active intelligence assets working for Washington?

I mean, all of them have a known spook background. And they all cut their teeth working against the USSR during the Cold War. And now they are covering up the extent of the catastrophe that is this SMO? Don’t you see how this could be the continuation of that same Cold War operation?

Surely, the thought might have occurred to you that these Z-figures are working with intelligence agencies, no?

I note that two hours after the release of this video, the typically vicious comments by the usual cohort of trolls numbers ten times less than the number of thumbs up.

I’ve noticed this phenomenon as well.

Fist-pumping triumphalism sells, while sober realism is met with moral outrage.

As I say at the outset, the 150 million citizens of the Russian Federation are well-educated and it is nonsensical to think that any of us can capture their thinking on the issues at the center of today’s Judging Freedom interview with full confidence.

For my part, I do my best. In part I rely on anonymous sources like taxi drivers or barber shop employees, folks who deal with the broad public and may never see the same customer twice, which makes it all the more likely that the customers speak openly to them. In part, I rely on close friends whom I have known for many years: and I take note when I see clear signs of change in views on the war and on Putin’s leadership as I did over table talk at a party celebrating the new Russian state holiday of National Unity on 4 November.

Taxi drivers are a wealth of information, sure, especially when it comes to procuring semi-legal goods and services.

But they are not well-known for their careful study of political history.

Luckily, there are bloggers such as myself and a handful of others who have done their best to explain the rise of Putinism in Russia and what the agenda of the Kremlin really. I’m not a taxi driver, but I think that my opinion on the matter might be of interest to you or to anyone else interested in studying the issue in greater depth.

None of my interlocutors is going to demonstrate against the war or even speak openly about it. But that there is discontent, lost patience of this never-ending war at the popular level that I see is clear. I can well imagine that some of the Moscow elites are also impatient and they do have means to pressure Putin to change course.

Yes, they already tried to do it once with Prigozhin, but changed their minds at the last moment. I noticed that in the past, you said that the Prigozhin mutiny was just a trap for NATO, but I’m glad that you’ve rethought your position on the issue. Now that Putin has been rejected publicly and repeatedly by Trump, these elites in Moscow no longer have faith that Putin can deliver on a ceasefire and sanctions relief.

It stands to reason that they might try something dastardly again.

My Russian friends are impatient for the war to end because of the large numbers of casualties among the Russian forces. Perhaps there are 150,000 killed in action, but the numbers of those seriously maimed is surely several times higher. Russian state television has even started presenting advertisements from the manufacturers of prostheses for those who have lost arms and legs to drone strikes and mines.

Sir, the official Z-statistic has been 15K Russian dead and it has not budged in two years since it was proclaimed. By pointing out that the number of dead is probably 10 times what the Kremlin and its Z-media puppets is saying is to cast grave moral doubt on the whole Putinist system. If they’re lying so brazenly about that, well, what else are they lying about?

Considering these losses which are at least double the scale of those suffered by the USA in the Vietnam war, one viewer submitted a comment several weeks ago asking why there are no demonstrations in Russia by mothers and others bereaved as there were over Vietnam.

Not quite.

Many are coerced into signing up based on minor legal infractions. Like improper documentation related to one of the many bureaucratic slips that Russians are forced to have filled out for one reason or another. Caught drunk driving? Off to the front with you. Behind on your credit card debts? Well, here’s how you get some debt forgiveness, just sign this mobilization contract, you’ll be fine.

And so on.

The simple answer is that all Russian armed forces in Ukraine are volunteers. While Russia does have a draft, none of the conscripts can be sent outside the borders of the Russian Federation. In a word, the Russians learned the lesson of Nixon and Vietnam very well. After that war the USA turned to a professional army. Its merits were explained in terms of fighting efficiency, but surely the key reason was to depoliticize war making. The Russians have done the same.

Well, there is no alternative to Putin, so yeah I guess you could say that it was “depoliticized” if you want to be euphemistic. But then you could say that about every issue of importance. Putin just announced that tens of thousands more Indians would be flooding Russia to demographically replace the Slavs that he culled.

From RT the other day:

And the money quote:

“According to Andrey Besedin, head of the Ural Chamber of Commerce and Industry, “By the end of the year, 1 million specialists from India will come to Russia, including to the Sverdlovsk region. A new Consulate General is opening in Ekaterinburg to handle these matters.””

Isn’t that a bit anti-Russian?

And yes, there is no political resistance to this in Russia either.

But is that a good thing?

Me, I wouldn’t mind a little bit more politicization over some issues, personally.

One of the questions which Judge Napolitano pitched to me was whether Vladimir Putin is drawing out this war of attrition in order to kill of a generation of young Ukrainians and thereby prevent any recurrence of armed conflict in the foreseeable future.

I object to this hypothesis on the grounds that those fighting in the Ukrainian army seem to be at least as numerous in the 50s and 60s age category as in the 20s. You see that even today in the television interviews with Ukrainian POWs who surrendered in Pokrovsk. The same was true in earlier Russian reporting going back more than a year ago.

Secondly, I do not believe that Putin is such a cynic. On the contrary he exhibits deep commitment to the values of Orthodoxy and this creates a separate threat for us: his turn the other cheek Christianity, very Orthodox in nature, is completely misunderstood by our secular Western leaders and political establishments.

It is taken for weakness and encourages them to take ever more provocative and risky actions against Russia which one day will result in Russian counter attacks sparking WWIII. What we have here is the making of a Clash of Civilizations as described by Sam Huntington, though Sam never expected the separate Orthodox civilization to be in armed conflict with the West.

Ah yes, Putin’s Moral Multipolar Orthodoxy Values.

I’ve … God, I’ve written a lot about the standard Z-thesis that Putin and his government are too moral and good and Christian to defend Russia’s interests effectively. I admit that I find it quite strange, Mr. Doctorow, that in the 20-some years that you have been commenting on geopolitics, that you haven’t picked up on how little higher moral values seem to govern foreign relations between countries.

I sincerely hope that you were being facetious with that remark.

Furthermore, is it moral to constantly sell Russia’s interests down the river, or treacherous? There is a very fine line between the two concepts, I think. Perhaps you might consider the other side of the argument:

As for the response to Doctorow’s rather tame criticism of Putin’s very popular and successful two-week SMO, well, it came down immediately and mercilessly.

Peter Hansler took to his blog to declare Doctorow a Z-traitor:

Martyanov took to his blog to immediately denounce Doctorow as a hack and a CIA asset:

But why did I mention these Russian “talk-BS-shows”? Well, our good friend Peter Hanseler from Switzerland explains, again, why Mr. Gilbert Doctorow is NOT Russia “expert” and never was and why he gets his “opinions” primarily from such “sources” as Solovyov, Skabeeva with Popov and other similar latent pro-Western “liberal” Russian talk-show media. You can access the piece by following the link to Larry’s blog.

Dr. Doctorow from Brussels is not just anyone. He describes himself as an expert on Russia, having spent almost his entire professional life in the Soviet Union. Everyone has their own experiences and opinions based on them. But when he went so far as to compare President Putin to Gorbachev and claim that the “elites”—nota bene, without describing them—were preparing to remove Putin from office, we intervened to set the record straight. This is what happened in our article “When an ‘expert’ loses his footing.”

So, as I repeat ad nauseam--to pass judgements on issues of strategy one must have a background and a grasp of issues. This applies fully and even more so to Russia. As Sir Bernard Pares wrote about Russia 90 years ago:

“And knowledge alone is not enough without understanding, which is much more hardly won. To no country does this apply more than to Russia....This gap has to be filled, or will it cost us dear.”

So, Doctorow may pretend that he has the knowledge, but he doesn’t and he certainly doesn’t have it, let alone has understanding, when it comes to military-political proceedings in Moscow. For that, one must have a grasp of warfare fundamentals and Russia’s strategic culture, which he does not have. And Peter Hanseler makes an astute observation, when speaking about such people as Scott Ritter and Larry Johnson:

One gets the impression that Gilbert Doctorow simply envies his colleagues and attacks them—unsavory.

That is what in the foundation of Doctorow’s rage. But then again, trying to go toe to toe with heroic major of the USMC and intel officer or former CIA analyst and the US State Department anti-terrorism expert ... yeah, to do so you need a really serious pedigree in national security and defense fields, which Doctorow doesn’t have. And here we are ...

Basically, the accusation is that Doctorow isn’t educated enough in Tom Clancy novels to understand that he has been tricked by the CIA’s psychological warfare. He is now another casualty of the enemy. Oh well.

Then there was the Scott Ritter:

Ritter being independent is a laugh. He receives millions from the Kremlin, along with his buddies, to shill their talking points. But we both know that. The entire Z-media scene is a limited hangout run by spooks.

And it does not tolerate dissent.

All that you even did was say “some taxi drivers told me they weren’t too happy, personally, about the SMO” and that was enough for these free-speech warriors to turn their guns on you.

My condolences.

I hope now that you are under no more illusions about the character of the Z-crowd, that you feel freer to conduct slightly deeper investigations into the nature of the racket that Putin is running in Russia, and his close connections to Langley and Tel-Aviv. I’d be more than happy to help you out getting up to speed on that story, by the way. Unless you recant your previous comments and grovel for forgiveness, I think that you’re on the outs with the Z-crowd now, Mr. Doctorow. That means you will be the target for further abuse and denunciations and more trolls attacking you.

Still, I wish you the best in your new, independent reporting endeavors and I hope that you stay the course. I’ve had to endure my fair share of hate for expressing doubts about the SMO as well. Of course, I had my change of heart about 9 months into the thing, so the vitriol was more extreme then. Maybe your turning away from the Z-propaganda is a sign of the turning of the tide and others will follow suit.

Did you hear about Vanessa Bealey’s complete meltdown over Putin hosting Jolani in the Kremlin to offer him money and support? Hilarious! After years of carrying water for Putin and declaring him the savior of the Middle-East too! What a pie in the face moment? Hell, she had to flee for her life to Lebanon as Putin surrendered the whole country to Jolani’s ISIS and Al-Qaeda troops essentially overnight.

Which …

… kind of a funny story, you have to admit.

Sadly, she blocked me, so I can’t offer her my condolences and moral support in these trying times.

Anyway, stay strong and keep digging, sir! Maybe your example will inspire others to speak the truth about the Z-media scam operation. In time, maybe you will reconsider your views on Putin, his commitment to Orthodoxy Multipolar Values Morality, and what he has done for Russia in his time as satrap of the occupation government as well. I hope that we can start a dialogue about all of this, at least.

Your new friend and fellow traveller,

Rurik