It's Looking Like an Istanbul II to be Quite Honest

Will Putin cut his own arm off to buy time?

First things first, I do realize that I’ve been doing a bad job writing these last three weeks. The thing is that I’ve been really tired and stressed from traveling. I’d decided to come see Southern Europe, which was on my travel list, and I’ve really regretted this decision so far.

You see, when you travel on your own without any guides, you get to experience the worst side of things that a country has to offer. So, you experience the train stations, bus stations, public squares, and so on. Yes, there are civilized countries in the world where such places are actually a pleasant experience — many of them in the so-called Third World actually. And then there’s the post-First world, which is like a waking nightmare that you can only escape from by throwing copious amounts of money at the problem.

I always feel sick and sad when I visit Europe, for many reasons.

But there are no actual uniformly bad countries in the world though, in my experience. All countries have an upper middle-class that has carved out a little oasis for itself amidst the chaos. And upper-middle class locals know what parts of town to avoid, where to buy decent food, and all sorts of useful things that make life pleasant and liveable. If you have an “in” with them, you end up seeing the nicer side of life in their country. If you don’t, well, you see the realer side of things, which is also educational and sobering. Sometimes this poorer, rawer side of life is quite nice actually, because the caliber or the average person in the given nation is decent. Even poor people are polite, well-behaved, and pleasant in many parts of the world. Socio-economic factors don’t make them act like savages for some reason like they tend to do in the post-First world.

Anyway, I was/am sick and tired from the bad food, lack of heating, poisoned medicine and just general poverty-stricken conditions of Europe these past weeks and that’s why I wasn’t writing.

The only real news was the endless speculation over these peace negotiations. To people who have just joined the blog, let me just tell you right now, this isn’t our first rodeo here at Chronicles. There has been speculation about talks and peace deals for many years now. I chose a good time to get sick and to take a break from writing is my point.

This time around, there are admittedly some signs that both sides are getting serious about talks.

From the Kremlin side, Putin has made major concessions by offering to hold the talks without any pre-conditions. He’s also brought in Medinsky and Abramovich, two learned Abrahamic wisemen who have successfully negotiated very generous deals for the West before. Medinsky was responsible for the Istanbul Accords and Putin ending the partial encirclement of Kiev after conceding Donbass to Zelensky in exchange for capping the future UAF military capabilities.

Two weeks after that agreement and we had a full-blown war raging in Ukraine.

And Abramovich famously arranged the release and triumphant return of the Azov battalion from Russian captivity, to Turkey and then onwards back to the battlefield in Ukraine.

In other words, this is an all-star team of capitulation professionals that Putin has assembled for these talks. It means that he is preparing to really bend over backwards to his esteemed Western partners this time. As for who else Putin plans to send to Istanbul, well, why not also send Kadyrov’s son for good measure? After all, if we simply tally his official state honors and medals, he is literally the most decorated politician/soldier/theologian in Russia’s entire history, and he’s not even even 24? 25? yet.

Satirical headline: Adam Kadyrov to head up delegation of Russian heroes sent to Istanbul.

Here is what I believe is really happening behind the scenes of all this posturing and “negotiating”. There are people in the West who want Putin out, simple as. They want someone else or several other people put into power in his place. Colloquially, we refer to this favored faction that is set to replace Putin as “the oligarchs” even though many of them have spook-state ties and backgrounds themselves and they are joined at the hip with the Kremlin spy agencies as things stand anyway.

One of Putin’s top spooks warned about an oligarch coup recently, which is why I bring it all up.

There is clearly a group of people that the West would prefer being in power in the Kremlin that would be even more pliant to Washington’s interests, and who would even go so far as to formally begin dismembering and disbanding the Russian Federation.

This, to Putin’s credit, has never been an official policy.

In contrast, we saw with Navalny that he had a program that was nigh identical to Vlasov’s. You know, the Bolshevik torturer turned SS leader of the ROA from 80 years ago who was used as a puppet to do the Germans’ dirty work in Eastern Europe. Both puppet figures called for “self-determination of the national republics” within Russia, which effectively means secession and civil war as the central Russian state is slated to be dissolved by granting more and more autonomy to other governments. This is nothing new though. All groups that want Russia dismembered like the Prussians, Poles, Anglos, Hebrews, Catholics, Chinese, Iranians, Turks, and so on have proposed similar political reforms be inflicted onto Russia at some point in history. They came up with various ideological justifications for it, but the power politics form the true logical reason for such a strategy.

Simply put: you divide a formally united territory and then set it against itself in a civil war in which you fund both sides so that neither can triumph completely and consolidate power. This is what Ukraine has become for Russia. It is what Belarus will become or Tatarstan or the Caucasus (again) or Tuva (again) in time. Washington wants a new government in Moscow that will help fund and support such movements and future wars against itself. They like to fund their global dominance operations out of their satrapies’ own wallets, preferably.

Despite all of his shortcomings, Putin has, at the bare minimum, tried to keep the Federation intact.

Yes, he has presided over a complete demographic collapse, economic fire sale of key state assets, integration into all globalist structures related to trade, health, surveillance, dismemberment of the national army, deterioration of relationships with all former satellites/allies, and many other senseless crime against the interests of the Russian state. But even all of that was not enough, apparently — his esteemed allies want more!

So, the ultimate goal of the wars and the negotiation is to get rid of Putin and his inner circle. Short of that being allowed to occur, Putin is willing to concede almost everything. But, if he concedes the territories he partially controls in Donbass, he probably fears that it will set a dangerous precedent as UAF forces will simply roll into the southern republics of Russia, eventually, and start secessionist movements there. And this is indeed the stated plan of the UAF and vocalized by the more radical nationalist groups. I think this gives Putin pause. He wants to bend over backwards, but basic self-preservation instinct won’t let him go all the way or all at once just yet.

Because NATO will have no problems raising up the Russian southern territories that they roll into against Moscow down the line.

Do you remember how Prigozhin’s mutiny was applauded there when it occurred? People in Russia’s south hate Moscow. Well, pretty much everyone that isn’t in Moscow hates Moscow, actually. St. Petersburg hates Moscow, for example. Novosibirsk hates Moscow too, come to think about it. I’m not saying that some petty peasant sentiment will lead to civil war though, I’m just saying that Putin’s government is extremely unpopular and that it would be a trifle to simply take over the local governments with squads of goons and suitcases of greenbacks and to then turn these republics against Moscow. You could also easily find an ideological or historical grievance for your fig leaf casus belli as well.

If we are to believe the rhetoric of the UAF military command and the leadership of nationalist groups fighting for Ukraine, the goal is indeed to cleave off these southern territories like Kuban and others.

And a sizeable minority of the people living there would welcome the annexation, should it come to that, just FYI.

Anyway: Putin probably just wants guarantees that the Federation will not be dismembered and that his own body won’t be violated while he’s alive either, for that matter.

His FSB goons control and extract wealth out of these federation territories and they don’t want to compete with foreign agencies over the right to parasite off the people. This is their turf, and they’re willing to put up at least token resistance to defend it, as this whole “Not-War in Donbass and Now Southern Russia” kerfuffle has demonstrated.

Allow me to summarize.

Putin is loath to surrender the territories of Donbass though because he knows that the war will simply move deeper into southern Russia once he does, eventually. Istanbul I surrendered Donbass in exchange for military caps on the UAF. This was extremely generous and even so, it was not generous enough for Kiev and NATO, apparently, who decided to punish Putin for his SMO. This time around, there are no such caps on the negotiating table anymore. NATO + Kiev have openly demanded total surrender of Donbass and Crimea from Moscow for three (3) years now. Despite this precondition, Putin gave his assent to begin negotiations and says that he wants them done in the style of Istanbul I. Since Istanbul I though, his position has only worsened.

Consider:

• Kiev now has a modernized NATO-armed and supported military

• Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been sunk

• All Soviet ammo and weapons reserves have been exhausted

• The supply of volunteers for the mercenary army fighting for Putin has almost dried up

• Ukraine enjoys total drone (7:1) and tech superiority in all other fields

• Russia has already lost huge swaths of territory in Ukraine and doesn’t mention them anymore

• The war is now actively being waged INSIDE 1991 borders southern Russia

Thus, they are obviously set to begin discussing the capitulation of Donbass in one form or the other.

That’s what these talks are about.

Putin just wants some sort of guarantees that they won’t invade further, which won’t be worth the paper that they are written on and which he won’t get regardless. If he gives them Donbass, yes, OK, they might take a few years off to modernize and re-mobilize a true NATO army to roll into southern Russia and to finish the job. Either way, the war against Russia is not ending, but intensifying. There is blood in the water and NATO is circling in for the kill. Will Putin cut his own arm off and throw it to the sharks to buy some time? Sure, it is very possible and a tried and true Putin stratagem at this point.

That’s what we’re reduced to discussing here, folks.

Don’t hold your breath for anything better.