Putin Admits That Donbass Should Have Been Taken Earlier, Russia Messed Up

Honestly, good for him.

In the last week, I had an ATM machine eat my card, a gremlin chew through my charger cable leaving me computer-less, my housing situation got blown up and some other relatively minor, but hair-pullingly annoying stuff all occurred at once.

So that is why there haven't been any posts and podcasts in about a week. Sorry about that. But you didn't miss much. My last post pretty much summed up the situation - we're just waiting on reinforcements and further mobilization and just chit-chatting about details to pass the time otherwise. It also seems that further Ukrainian advances have yet to materialize and I don't know whether this is the calm before the storm or the Ukrainian army really is just taking a breather.

Also, while I was gone, I got an influx of paid subs. Hey, if you guys want to pay me to write less or to not write at all, that's a deal I’d be willing to take! I'd even offer the Kremlin the same terms! (No, but seriously, thank you for the support. It has been overwhelming. I've gotten 3x as much support as I thought I would.)

In the meantime, not commented or mentioned much by anyone, Putin came out and quietly admitted what anyone who hadn't dosed on 5D chess copium had realized years ago already.

RT:

The Donbass republics should probably have rejoined Russia sooner, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with the mothers of troops involved in the military operation in Ukraine on Friday. In such a case, fewer lives might have been lost, the president stressed.

“There might not have been so many casualties among civilians, there would not be so many children killed,” the Russian leader suggested. He maintained, however, that back in 2014, Russia did not have a full understanding of the situation in Donbass or of the true sentiments of the locals.

“[We] believed that we might still be able to reach an agreement and … reunify Donetsk and Lugansk with Ukraine within … the Minsk Agreements,” Putin noted, adding that Russia was “genuinely working towards that.” 

Commenting on the matter further, the president blamed the 2014 coup in Kiev for the subsequent crisis in Donbass and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. “If not for the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, none [of this] would have happened,” he said.

When will the scales finally fall from the eyes of the ignorant internet masses? Why do they love being lied to and lying to themselves so much? Is it because they are unable to cope with reality? Is it because they'd overdosed on fictional narratives in which the good guy always wins through some hail mary, deus ex machina, or a secret plan? Is it because they're Bible-thumpers who don't understand what Evil is? Oh, lawd ... What is that feeling coming up on ovah me? Yes, yes, lawdy LAWDY! I reckon I does be feeling da Holy Spirit pushing me to pump out another schizo screed, yessuh! So subscribe and stay tuned for an absolutely EPIC rant that I've got in the works.

Anyways, this admission of the awful truth from Putin really hit me in the feels. It had an almost cathartic-like quality for me and, I'm sure, for many others who knew the truth, but were castigated for speaking it openly. For me, it was around the time that all the militia commanders started dying in the Donbass and when Russia sent in the spooks to bully the Donbassians into forgoing any further counter-offensives that I turned away with disgust from the majority of the "pro-Russia" bloggers that I had been reading at the time. The Kremlin's hardline policy towards the Donbass rebellion was the first real "knife in the back" that had to be explained away by the 5D dunce bloggers. From there, the business model was set in stone and the people of the internet were then fed a steady drip diet of hoping and coping.

As the situation worsened, it became clearer and clearer to the sober-minded that Minsk I and II were farces and that Russia had failed to secure any of its objectives in Ukraine. Further elections did not lead to the overthrow of Poroshenko because Kiev simply refused to allow the pro-Russian rebel parts of the country vote. As a result, Russia's election overthrow gambit failed. This first strategic failure was glaringly obvious at the time with eyes to see, but the dunces just chuckled smugly and said, "just you wait .... karate-chop-judo-plumber."

Then, it became clear that Ukraine would not tolerate any special status for the territories either, and just kept shelling from time to time indiscriminately. Russia cried foul, but Lavrov just sat and sucked on his thumb some more while looking all gravely and serious for the cameras. During this time, Western officials were still being referred to without irony by people like Lavrov as Russia's "esteemed colleagues". Also, somewhere along the protracted timeline of this whole charade, the Armeno-Azeri conflict flared up again. Russia's right-wingers noted how quickly the rhetoric changed within the MFA, media outlets like RT and how swift action was suddenly demanded. This could have nothing to do with the simple fact that the Armenian mafia is quite powerful in Russia, of course.

I only bring up this little episode to highlight that what was unthinkable to suggest in relation to Donbass was suddenly OK to suggest in regards to protecting Nagorno-Karabakh. And the only people with the courage to call this out at the time were Russia's various right-winger bloggers, commentators and war vets.

I've already talked about how Russia ought to have supported the rebel offensive then and there in Donbass. But the standard refrain was that Russia needed more time to prepare. Seeing Russia's "preparations" in action now, we can only conclude that Russia only succeeded in giving their enemies more time to prepare while they did next-to-nothing themselves. Also, while they sat around sucking their thumbs, pro-Russians all over Ukraine were hounded out of society and, in some cases, imprisoned or murdered. I have spoken to pro-Russians in Kiev before and had them tell me point blank that the only one that they could turn to was God because Russia had abandoned them. When the Kiev offensive began, I figured that this would change things, and, to be fair, it truly might have. But, because the FSB botched the operation, only more repression and death awaited Ukraine's pro-Russian community at the hands of the gangs and SBU. The internal killings and disappearings haven't stopped or paused for even a moment during this war.

So yes, in summary, a lot of Ukrainian and Russian lives could have been saved if Russia was a serious country.

Instead, the literal worst of all worlds scenario has come to pass: brutal, prolonged, brother against brother bloodletting that will forever scar relations between the two peoples while weakening the Slavlands and strengthening the US.

Perfect. Much strategy. Masterpiece. Bravo.

But hey, maybe I'm just not seeing the 5D judo backflip that is being prepared in the wings. Perhaps I ought to be chortling smugly with the other big-brained, pot-bellied, Nostradamus-tier analysts who know that we are all simply pawns in giga-brained Peskov's master plan.

...

Good on Putin to admit the truth though. I think he's starting to realize that surrounding himself with underlings who are loyal, but who rode the short bus to school may have been a costly miscalculation.