SPECIAL POST!!! -"Why the SMO?": Russian Spook Insider Explains Why The FSB's Spies Were Arrested in Ukraine!

Part III: Moscow actually wanted to put Yanukovich back into power. Jesus H. Christ. These people are pure evil.

If you haven’t taken the time to sit down and read Parts I and II, I highly recommend that you do so now. Dr. Livsci put in a lot of effort into these write-ups and they are pure gold, actually.

All the key claims of this blog are corroborated and embellished even in macabre detail. The siloviks that run Russia come off looking absolutely deranged and even Evil, although I usually hesitate to use such emotionally loaded language. If the people living in Ukraine knew what the Kremlin’s intentions for them were, they probably would have fought even harder and the pro-Russians among them might have switched sides. The revelations in this part are explained in a matter-of-fact way, but their implications are profound. The disconnect between the lofty rhetoric of Putin and the policies that his FSB tried to implement are jarring. I keep telling myself that Zelensky and his people are worse than even Moscow, but that gap of “evil” continues to narrow with each new revelation. Judge for yourself. The text is long, so it might take several trips to the can to really “digest” it though.

Also, thank you for the reader support in the last couple of days.

Between the newcomers joining the blog after the G&E interview, and just the usual uptick of paid subs that I get when I stop writing, I am in the black again. The previous month I had lost support because I was writing too much I think. This spoils the casual readers and makes them uppity for some reason.

Only the verbal lash and inconsistent, periodic, mercurial posting seems to encourage financial support.

**

As promised at the end of part II, we are skipping ahead to chapter 9 which discusses in more detail the "special" part of the SMO. Unfortunately, we don't get any big smoking guns as the spook angle would of course be the most secret part of the whole operation. Given that it failed, the elites in Russia would be doubly loath to confirm or release details on it. Nonetheless, Golovlev gives us enough to chew on and sketches the outlines of what was supposed to happen and why it failed.

Zelensky Purges the SBU

He starts off the chapter by pointing out that according to open source info, the FSB had formed a decent network of assets in Ukraine prior to the SMO:

"We have to admit that according to open source data Russian special services had formed a fairly solid operational network in Ukraine".

The "in Ukraine" part is important because this means that the Kremlin wasn’t only relying on exiled disgruntled former Ukrainian politicians hiding out in Russia. At least not entirely. For example:

"On 11 September of 2022 former SBU director for Kharkov Oblast Roman Dudin was detained"

The Ukrainian Prosecutor stated that on February 24th (a day after the SMO began) that Dudins actions were:

"Damaging to the defensive capabilities and national security of Ukraine"

It is reasonable enough to assume that Dudin was an FSB asset. Reminder: it was on the 27th of February that the Spetznaz made their doomed incursion into Kharkov. It is not far fetched to speculate that he was supposed help hand over the city, SBU headquarters was after all one of the Spetznaz objectives. We don't have the documents giving us the precise details but we have the broad outline. Dudin was accused of:

"Interfering with the Kharkov Military Administration and evasion of fulfilling duties".

And:

"In June of 2022 Assistant SBU Chairman Oleg Kulinich who starting in 2020 was director of SBU operations in Crimea was detained".

And:

"Kulinich was accused of cooperating with former assistant secretary of the Counsel of National Security of Ukraine Vladimir Sivkovich, and through him working with Russian Special Services".

Now these two, Kulinich and Sivkovich are the exceptions to the rule of chronic failure that the FSB follows.

"Both worked with Russian Special Services from June of 2019. They created the basis for the quick occupation of the Southern Regions of Ukraine (just North of Crimea)

(…)

"Kulinich, with Sivkovich as coordinator provisioned the rapid occupation of South East Ukraine. Withholding information of the planned Russian offensive from the National Leadership and SBU and passing state secrets to Russian special services. Hours before the start of the impending invasion Kulinich received warnings from SBU assets in Crimea".

It turns out that Kulinich read these warnings but didn’t pass on anything to Kiev. The Ukrainians blame him and Sivkovich for the AFU being taken by surprise in the South-East and the subsequent rapid Russian advance there. This seems to be the only case of the “Special” part of the operation going as planned.

Hopefully, Kulinich gets exchanged, the man deserves a standing ovation. If he doesn’t it paints a bleak picture of what happens to those who get caught helping Russia. Do Russia’s spooks take care of their own? We will see, I suppose:

"In Summer of 2022 Andrei Naumov, Chief of internal security SBU was arrested in Serbia trying to carry 20 million dollars and a small amount of precious diamonds across the borders".

Naumov was immediately fired. Prior to that, he was considered one of the most reliable and trusted members of the Ukrainian State Security Apparatus. He was also a good friend of Zelensky. This scandal prompted a purge of the Ukrainian security apparatus with Ukraines General Prosecutor stating that the State Security organs were filled with Russian assets.

And the thing is that there was some truth to that belief.

Recall, Respected Stalkers, that in the very early days of the SMO Ukrainians were going nuts looking for spies and then taping random people to polls. No doubt there was some paranoia and score-settling going on there, but there was also something tangible that set it off. Kind of like what happened with Stalin’s purges. This comes off in a very, very stark contrast to the Kremlin who apparently cant make a move to save themselves under any circumstances. Ukraine really is the more Soviet society is my point. They mobilize like the Soviets, they fight like the Soviets, they purge like the Soviets.

"In June of 2022 information appeared in the media of the appointment of Alexander Yakominko to head of state State Security in Kherson Oblast, an SBU representative from the days of Yanokovich".

I want to include a telegram post written by Anatoly Shari about this former SBU boss Yakominko. By the way, amongst Ukrainians and Russians, Shari is a very well known blogger. At first he was pro-Russian, then he became pro-Ukrainian, and after an apparent assassination attempt was made on him by the SBU, he is now sorta kinda pro-Russian again. [NOTE: I’ve written about this guy before, he is looking to be the face of pro-Russians in Ukraine. He has been in negotiations with Moscow to become this face.]

Here is what Shariy wrote:

"I received with trepidation and understanding the information that the Russians had appointed General Yakimenko as the head of the "Security Service" in the Kherson region.

Alexander Grigoryevich is definitely a worthy figure. It was he, being a pilot, who became the head of the security service of the Donetsk enterprise, who pulled him into the SBU and by January 9, 2013 he became the Head of the SBU of the country.

It was he who missed the Maidan. It was this wise leader who negotiated with the Right Sector, which, as reported, led to the shipment of several million dollars into the trunk of Yarosh and the subsequent cheating of the negotiators by this very Yarosh.

Yakimenko very skillfully led the SBU during the events on the Maidan, which led to the flight of the entire leadership from Ukraine and left the country immediately after everything collapsed – in February 2014.

I think the slogan for the "SBU" of the Kherson region should now be "We fucked up everything then, we'll fuck everything up now!"

This appointment once again confirms my guesses about the adequacy of the advisers to the head of the Russian Federation in the perception of events in Ukraine, which led to February 24, the "march on Kiev" and all subsequent events"

For whatever it's worth Oleg Tsarev [Crimean MP who used to critique Moscow until he was almost assassinated by … someone] vouched for Yakominko being good people after Shari’s post denouncing him, but he doesn't deny the accusations that were leveled at Yakominko. That he “fucks up” in very interesting ways, that is.

So, we have the FSB relying heavily on SBU assets in Ukraine to facilitate the "Special" part of the SMO and it actually worked in the South East which is frankly a miracle.

It didn't work anywhere else and Kiev quickly purged the Ukrainian State Security Apparatus of these FSB assets. Of course, relying on spooks (disloyal vermin by their very nature) in the government that you are trying to overthrow with a shock and awe psychological operation is reasonable, so we cant fault Moscow for leveraging this potential asset like they tried to do. It is just that should these assets not come through then the whole thing falls to pieces. As it did. And it often seems like Russia’s own spook apparatus is so infested from top to bottom with compromised and disloyal elements that we need to ask how capable of are they of pulling off a regime change against a NATO satellite when much of their own rank and file and higher-ups are more loyal to the West than Russia?

Golovlev concedes that the anti-spy purge conducted by Kiev involved score settling, career climbing and just plain witch-hunt elements. But again, like I mentioned, there were in fact collaborators and they had to be rooted out. For all the excesses, Kiev was acting seriously from the start and Moscow still isn't. Golovlev doesn't pour out accusations of lukewarm to nonexistent loyalty to Russia on the FSBs doorstep in the same fashion that I do but he does hint at it.

"most likely this (the purge and energetic spy hunting in Ukraine) also indicates massive intelligence and counterintelligence assistance from the West to Ukraine for countering Russian special services including the use of agents in the Russian Security structure. If we judge by the current outcome of the SMO they succeeded."

What this indicates, Respected Stalkers, is that this spook writer confirms that Langley had people in Russia they could call up so they that knew who to round up in Ukraine before the show even got off the road. Hell, the list of FSB assets in Ukraine might have even been in Langley’s hands before the SMO even kicked off but recall that it was Kiev who was more taken by surprise by the SMO than the West. It was the West initially telling Kiev that the “Moskals” were coming and Kiev was dismissing this.

The likely reason for this is revealed later on.

"Thus the formal reporting of a large amount of undercover Russian assets didn't provide any guarantee of a successful conclusion of the SMO".

In other words, the fact that Russia had these spook assets on hand didn't mean that the SMO would work because the West already knew of these assets because the West has lots of Russian spook assets (moles) high up all over Russia.

[NOTE: Livsci is about to tell the story surrounding the Humpty Dumpty affair. I was planning on covering this in a large article about the FSB v GRU cold war. In short, Putin and the FSB have been destroying the GRU systematically since taking power. The FSB went so far as to leak the identities of the GRU’s assets abroad in 2017 to their partners in the Western press. On the Russian conspiracy net, the drama surrounding the conflict between the GRU and the FSB is explained in great detail. This thesis has great explanatory power for explaining what goes on in Russia. It posits that Putin and his FSB are a kind of private faction that is Western-aligned trying to strip-mine Russia and the FSU and to cut a power-sharing deal with the West. This article is long and detailed enough without bringing all of this up now, so I will simply let Livsci say his piece and then return to the topic in a separate, dedicated article, which WILL be paywalled.

So may as well sign up now.

Jus’ sayin’. ]

…

This really kills me, guys. The Kremlin is content to work with a fundamentally unserious security apparatus. Here is an example from another source of just how possible what I am claiming here is based on an FSB scandal from 8 years ago.

In addition to hacking the servers of the Ministry of Defense, hackers are credited with opening the Twitter account of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, publishing personal correspondence of his press secretary Natalia Timakova, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, deputy head of the internal policy department of the presidential administration Timur Prokopenko, "Putin's cook" Yevgeny Prigozhin and TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov.

The grushniki (GRU investigators) were surprised when they discovered that Anikeev-Lewis had been recruited by the FSB, and his direct supervisor was the head of one of the divisions of the FSB Central Security Service, Colonel Sergei Mikhailov, who fought with the sites that spread the list of GRU residency. In addition, military intelligence established that Mikhailov had secret contacts with the American special services. How exactly the grushniki managed to figure out the hackers and their supervisor, Chekist (FSB Colonel) Mikhailov, our source in the Ministry of Defense refused to tell. He only said that Shoigu reported everything to Putin and he summoned FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov to the carpet

Hackers recruited by FSB were publishing the personal correspondence of the Russian security state’s own people on the internet and the hackers’ own FSB handler ended up working for the CIA later on. This same FSB handler is also blamed by the GRU for unmasking GRU assets abroad and publishing the residential assets of GRU agents on the internet. This was a big scandal in Russia and led to GRU credibility tanking in the public’s eyes because the media portrayed it as a GRU failure. Subsequent popular media in Russia portrayed the GRU as psychos and incompetents and villains.

But odds are good that it was FSB knifing the GRU in the back the whole time.

This FSB Colonel Mikhailov was only arrested in Russia after becoming an annoyance to Shoigu’s business interests personally, way after the damage to Russias foreign intelligence capabilities had been done and for which he was not in trouble.

I think I am just including this story here to illustrate that Golovlev’s claims are not that far-fetched and have precedent in Russia, but the subject of FSB’s role in basically destroying GRUs ability to conduct active measures abroad is worth a separate article some day.

[Perhaps Livsci will beat me to writing it!]

Moving on, Golovlev paints us a nice and sad picture of how things played out going forward:

"Not a single alternative military or political centre suddenly appeared in Ukraine. Not a single Governor, Mayor of a big city or Military Commander publicly went over to the Russian side and officially headed opposition to Kiev. If they had they would have been an important part of information war".

Golovlev quotes a Washington Post article from August of 2022 which claims that the FSB spooks misled the Kremlin about the situation in Ukraine just prior to the SMO. Now, I know the gut reaction of many pro-Russians is to immediately dismiss the Washington Post and that is typically my go-to reaction as well. However, the articles claims make sense and can’t be easily refuted.

Here are the bullet points of what Golovlev finds credible in the article:

• Russias spooks convinced the Kremlin that the majority of the Ukrainian population would greet the Russian troops as liberators

• Russia planned on overthrowing Zelensky and replacing him with Yanokovich

• CIA director William Burns visited Zelensky personally in January of 2022 and warned him about the upcoming SMO

• Zelensky didn't believe him because his own spooks were accurately telling him that the Russian Army was in shambles and not fit for any serious conflict which explains why the Ukrainians werent convinced that the Russians would invade.

Here is where it gets bleak though.

We learn more about the occupation government that Moscow had planned for Ukraine. Remember the clown and anti-Russian buffoon who had lost Ukraine in the first place? Yeah, well, Putin’s grand plan was to give him a second chance.

Golovlev:

"On the 7th of March the airplane owned by the former President Yanukovich landed in Minsk. Further confirmation of this version is provided by the open letter Yankovich sent to Zelensky in which he claims it is his duty as president of Ukraine to stop the bloodshed at any price and reach a peace agreement"

There is circumstantial support for the Posts claims from the Russian side. Kadyrov wrote on his telegram channel in early March:

"I am not addressing Zelensky as the president. According to the law, Viktor Yanukovych remains such for Ukraine. Transfer power to him, the legitimate president, and trust in fate. Maybe then the chances of at least partially atoning for the guilt will remain."

The late Ilya Kiev, the ex Right Sector fighter and Ukrainian Rada Deputy who went to over to the Russians and was assassinated in Moscow last year said that the only way for Zelensky to avoid being killed was to hand power back over to Yanukovich.

[NOTE: I never covered the assassination of Ilya. But it follows the general pattern. Being in Moscow-controlled areas does not provide any security from SBU or CIA assassinations. The West and Kiev is able to strike with impunity in Russia and without recriminations. Alternatively, Moscow gets to kill whoever they want and blame Kiev.]

The Washington post article also claims that another pro-Russian government was to be set up in the South East part of Ukraine under the stewardship of Oleg Tsarev.

I’m personally not sure about that and don’t see the point per se.

[NOTE: I had heard rumors at the time that Tsarev was in the tank column sent down to Kiev and was supposed to be the new ruler of Ukraine. But this was clearly disinfo put out to Russian patriots, because Tsarev is well-liked and considered a pro-Russian.]

It is more likely that Tsarev was just going to have some important position in the hypothetical future pro-Russian Ukrainian Government. [Probably not even that.] According to the author, the success of the regime change operation depended on Medvedchuk and his network of assets feeding the FSB accurate information about the state of affairs in Ukraine.

M.G quoting the times article:

"Medvedchuk convinced Moscow that Zelensky was weak and his government in ruins and Russian forces would receive the support of the population".

Before dismissing this thesis out of hand due to the source let us not forget that the Kremlin traded the leadership of Azov that surrendered at Mariupol in exchange for Medvedchuk who is rumored be the God Father of Putin’s daughters and a close friend of Putin himself. Medvedchuk is also accused of handing over the data of his supporters to the SBU, much like the FSB handed over the data of GRU agents to the Western media. Medvedchuk is a Kremlin patsan and it would actually be surprising if he didn't play a huge role in the catastrophe.

[NOTE: I claimed the same thing. Medvedchuk being a traitor selling out his supporters, being the main information source for the FSB, it’s all there from the early days of this blog. My source was pro-Russians living in Ukraine:]

He continues:

"In this regard Russian options were not based on the effective work of special services but on ex-highly placed Ukrainian chinovniks".

And:

"It can be assumed that a significant amount of representatives from the leadership of Ukraines special services and law enforcement agencies fled to Russia after the coup of 2014. Undoubtedly connections were maintained with their former colleagues and subordinates in Ukraine”.

And:

"Judging from open source material and statements from Ukrainian officials the likely scheme was that it was exactly these individuals who conducted active intelligence work and Russian intelligence operators were acting more like a technical back office".

So, basically, Medvedchuk was telling Putin that Zelensky is weak and that taking Kiev in three days would be no problem. Plus, a bunch of angry ex-bureaucrats were telling the FSB that their buddies still in Ukraine were saying strike now while the striking will be the hottest. Meanwhile, the FSB was doing nothing “hands-on” to check out if what the ex-parasites were telling them was actually true. I mean, why would ex-SBU and Ukrainian MoD spooks lie? The FSB wouldn't ever do anything like that, right? I mean Russian chinovniks never ever lie and Russians and Ukrainians are the same people so do the math on that one!!

G.M. list some of the problems with this approach:

"Nobody from Yanokovichs security organs had any successful experience with what is called "active measures at the strategic level" amongst special services. They had never organised a successful coup before, they actually they were the victims of one. If a person is robbed it doesn't mean he will be a successful thief".

Great line. Here is more:

"Thirst for revenge can of course be a strong motivation. But all the same it can be misleading, forcing you to distort reality in the pursuit of the object of your passions".

And:

"As experience has shown in regards to coups and power seizures the striking fist is never composed of respectable men in businesses suits or special agents operating in the shadows".

Sure the men in suits and spooks are indispensable, but they are puppeteers. Without puppets there is no show obviously.

G.M. also thinks that Russian officials heavily distorted their reports about circumstances in Ukraine to fit into the Russian spring mythology that they themselves concocted.

"It can be assumed that a certain amount of Russian officials including amongst the Special Services, willingly or unwillingly heavily distorted their reports and mythologized the real circumstances and events in Ukraine as successful operations which could be applied in the future. I’m speaking here of unification with Crimea and to a certain extent of Donbass".

The author means that the Kremlin assumed they could repeat the Crimea reunification over all of Ukraine, just send some quiet, unimposing troops in as muscle and that then the local chinovniks would take care of the rest.

"In the end such practice just assumes success but without the elements which actually brought success".

The FSB was expecting to do Crimea over all of Ukraine and they reported accordingly.

Chinovniks ready and able to take power and come over to our side? Check.

Totally pro Russian population that will welcome the troops? Check, check.

The West unwilling or unable to do anything to stop it? Check, check and check.

Interesting isn’t it?

The spooks and the Kremlin thought they could repeat the Crimean re-unification over all of Ukraine … which is sort of implying that the Kremlin knows damn well that the reason Donbass wasn't brought home much earlier is because Moscow didn't back the pro-Russian population there to nearly the same extent as they did in Crimea. It could have been done. It was almost a fete accompli. But Putin insisted that Donbass must remain Ukrainian.

Oops! Mistakes were made!! Oh well!!!

MG says that instead of fanatics, idealist, romantics and such uncompromising types of which there were many in Ukraine and Donbass, the Kremlin went with what they knew best and felt comfortable with: chinovniks and spooks.

Readers of this fine blog and its devilishly handsome and cognitively dazzling host [OK OK, I added that part] all know by now exactly just how the Kremlin views uncompromising pro-Russian idealists and fanatics — with hatred and suspicion.

Where is Strelkov now?

Where are all the original Russian spring heroes now?

How many times a month do we read about the latest outrage committed against Russian nationalists by the state?

The most stunning admission of the state of affairs came from Margarita Simonyan of RT who famously said once that if uncompromising Russian patriots ever took power that people like her would be hung the next day in public, which is very true.

Note how the “Russian” media and ruling class smears the electoral majority of patriotic Russians as “Fascists” just like they do in the West.

Point being: there were plenty of uncompromising pro-Russians in Kiev controlled Ukraine after 2014. The Kremlin just wanted nothing to do with them, preferring to do business with criminals like themselves instead.

"Even if the initial plan for the SMO had worked street action and visible displays of public support should have been a mandatory follow on component"

Yes, if you drive out Zelensky, you need your chinovniks and spooks to get the masses out onto Maidan waving the tricolour to provide a justification for it. Maybe some patriotic mobs storming the SBU headquarters for good measure. You know, some street action from “spontaneous” mobs that puts pressure on fence-sitting mayors, police etc to come over to your side.

Alas, according to G.M., Russian spooks just don’t know how to organize street politics at all and it is basically impossible to disagree with him when you take into account all we know about how anti-Russian the ruling class in Russia is, which, as a result means that mobilized peasants in general scare the shit out of them.

The last thing the Kremlin would have wanted would be another Russian spring in 2022 after spending so many resources murdering, intimidating or buying off the organizers of the Donbass spring, so organising pro-Russian civilians to get out and visibly support the troops would never have been considered by the spooks. They didn't go though the trouble of murdering the original Donbass Spring heroes just to enable more charismatic, uncompromising populist Russians to rise up. The Kremlin would likely prefer nuclear war over unleashing Russian Populism/Nationalism even if it meant achieving their aims in Ukraine.

G.M. compares the SMO misadventure to the US's Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba to help give us a clearer picture of what went wrong with the special part of the SMO. Like the Americans with the coup attempt against Castro, the Kremlin had their replacement Government with Yankovich *shudder* *gag* *retch* ready and waiting.

And like the Americans in Cuba, Russia’s plans in Ukraine were already known by their enemies in advance.

"Soviet reconnaissance received timely information confirming the operation and warned the Cuban leadership"

Due to the warning when the US bombed Cuban airfields the results were underwhelming.

"… of 24 aircraft the Cubans had on hand only 2 were destroyed"

G.M. draws parallels:

"This by the way brings into question statements by Russian military leadership of the complete destruction of Ukrainian aviation which turned out to be greatly exaggerated".

While failing to damage the Cuban armed forces, the US bombing did wonders to unify the population against the US:

"The bombing caused an unwanted negative effect which led to Cuban society unifying. At the same time Cuban special services working in tandem with the Soviets were able to identify and suppress the activities of Cuban opposition and US agents. Attempts to destabilise Cuban society didn't succeed".

Sounds familiar no?

While Golovlev is FSB, it seems his colleagues didn't study the history of failed regime change attempts involving their own predecessors. Sad. Golovlev details how immediately upon landing in Cuba the opposition rebels supply personal were quickly engaged by local militias which is another sad parallel, but it doesn't end there by any means.

"Immediately after the landings Cuba declared full mobilization with inspirational framing targeted at the population".

Thus the invasion/coup flopped.

GM quoting Castro:

"The Bay of Pigs battle prevented Cuban history from being turned back to the old days, it saved the revolution".

Rurik has said before that the SMO has given Ukraine a new founding myth.

One can perhaps argue that the Ukrainian Government is still hated by the citizenry, but this should by no means be mistaken as a big W for Russia. The new founding mythology guarantees that despite the Kiev government being hated that Russia will be hated even more so. The mythology will be that outnumbered (lie) Ukrainians beat back a full-fledged (lie) Russian invasion that was meant to genocide the Ukrainian population (lie) and conquer all of Europe (lie). Ukrainian kids will be reared in a system that teaches them that their fathers were like Leonidas and his Spartans defending White Europe from the Moskal Asiatic hordes. Like Dumbledore’s Army defeating the Death Eaters! A nation of rebels blowing up the death star!

This is exactly why unless Ukraine capitulates unconditionally, this war ends up an L for Russia.

Strelkov was right, of course, and “Ukrainianism” is a memetic virus tailor made for dividing and destroying the East Slavs. If you validate it, or just ignore it, then one day it will have spread everywhere. It can and will spread still. It will mutate and rear its head amongst the Belarusians soon unless it is stamped out completely. Hell, it will rear its head in Russia itself and we will have new artificial identities emerging among Russians Siberia, Komi, etc etc. There are “Ukraines” all over the Russian Federation!

Thus, the stakes are higher than just Ukraine per se.

Commander Milchakov from Battalion Rusich is right, Ukraine needs to be thoroughly “de-Ukrainianized” ideologically-speaking and the identity-stealing virus utterly rooted out. While the USSR would probably have done better than the RF in dealing with this crisis, it was the nurturing and creation of these artificial identities amongst the East Slavs that was once an official Bolshevik policy and it has born fruit finally.

…

This brings us to the end of chapter 9 and I hope that the few readers who made it through to the end didn’t find it too underwhelming.

I wish we had been given more names and details about spook ops, but I think the broad outline provided by Golovlev gives us a very accurate general template for what the “Special” part of the SMO was supposed to accomplish anyway. All the pieces more or less fit and should sound familiar to blog readers. The Kremlin’s fear of mobilizing Russian Patriots and unleashing another Russian Spring by accident led them to just do what they always do: cut deals with parasites like spooks, oligarchs, chinovniks, and assume everything will go to plan because hey, it worked in Crimea didn’t it? [NOTE: Prigozhin paints a very different picture of what really happened in Crimea.] Any naysaying reports were discarded by an arrogant and rotten Kremlin elite. After all, doubting the plan would indicate that maybe the system built by Putin and his friends was rotten, comprised and simply incompetent.

Golovlev, like many flabbergasted and disgusted members of Russia’s patriotic scene, recommends reviving SHERSH to root out the cancer rotting Russias State Security/Defense apparatus.

"Its enough to remember the legendary example of SMERSH which during the Great Patriotic War worked separately from NKVD and was subordinated directly to Stalin. In general they found timely solutions in fast changing war time circumstances"

And:

"Absolutely no commanders of mauled units have been shot on the orders of Special Services. Nowhere have Special Services taken faltering units under their command. It is not their job. But it is their job. It is not good to interfere with the military leadership for the sake of maintaining a unified chain of command? Let the chain of command be violated in extreme cases".

It probably would have been better if the old Black Sea Fleet commander had been shot instead of just relieved of duty. Better too if Muradov, who led his men to slaughter at Ulgedar, had been shot instead of being rewarded with media praise and a promotion.

"It is entirely reasonable to take the example of SMERSH and apply them to modern conditions"

I’m not big on spooks, but I read that and think about how Russian air defences massacre the Russian airforce and aircraft to this day on Shoigu’s orders. Planes being sitting ducks for cruise missiles and drones without hangars on the tarmacs. Formations of Russian troops forced to stand out in the open on parade for non-Russian generals in a fucking war zone being massacred by HIMARs. I feel like these issues could be resolved without literally reviving SMERSH but SMERSH practice is called for nonetheless.

Thanks again to everyone who stayed with me for another chapter and, as always, stay frosty out there, fellow Multipolar Antifa Jesus Shadow Army Warriors ;) !