by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The British Government’s narrative that Russian military agents, on orders from President Vladimir Putin, used Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018 continues to collapse. A secret chemical warfare agent revealed last week that two  tests for Novichok, using special machines provided by the Porton Down chemical warfare laboratory,  failed to confirm an organophosphate poison in either Dawn Sturgess or her boyfriend, Charles Rowley.

The agent described himself in his witness statement and in a guarded appearance at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry last week as a qualified medical doctor and pharmacology expert. “I currently work at Dstl [Defence Science and Technology Laboratory] Porton Down within the Chemical, Biological and Radiological (CBR) Division, and provide medical advice to the Ministry of Defence and other government Departments on CBR related threats… I was Chemical and Biological (CB) Medical Advisor to Dstl and the Operational teams in support of the investigations into the attack on the Skripals (Operation WEDANA) and the investigation into the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley (Operation READ).”  

The agent’s name was ordered to be kept secret by the Inquiry chairman and commercial consultant, Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley). This is despite Hughes’s ruling that he would not keep the names secret of “those who were already sufficiently identified publicly in connection with the events of 2018.”  

 FT49 is the cipher used for the Porton Down agent, although sources claim he has advertised his engagement in the Skripal, Sturgess and Rowley cases in several academic publications accessible on the internet.   

In his witness statement dated September 16, 2024, the Porton Down agent revealed that he had organized with doctors at the Salisbury District Hospital (SDH) to test the blood of Sturgess and Rowley, after their admission to the hospital on June 30, 2018, using special biochemical assay machines provided by Porton Down. One of the machines had been installed at SDH during the hospitalisation of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March of 2018. A second Porton Down machine was in operation at a Birmingham toxicology laboratory.  

Agent FT49 reported these machines had failed to detect evidence of the Novichok organophosphate in blood samples of Sturgess and Rowley.  Government officials then ordered Porton Down itself to take over the blood testing to confirm the presence of Novichok. This is the first leak from an official source that Porton Down may have rigged the blood testing in order to fabricate the existence of Novichok and of the Russian attack.

According to FT49, after “an unexpected failure to identify the organophosphate compounds by Birmingham’s analytical laboratory I suggested to Dr Jukes [Stephen Jukes, SDH doctor in charge of treating Sergei Skripal] that Dstl [Porton Down] should also receive a blood sample. Late morning of 2nd July 2018 I was made aware via a phone call from the ITU [Intensive Treatment Unit at SDH] that the Birmingham results were back; there was no  evidence of a pesticide, despite cholinesterase inhibition, and the two patients [Sturgess and Rowley] did not  have the same non-prescribed drugs in their blood other than a trace of cocaine.”  

What this reveals is that both Sturgess and Rowley had been taking cocaine before their collapse. FT49 is also revealing – without expressly saying so — that on the day of their hospitalisation, Rowley had taken the heroin substitute methadone on prescription; Sturgess had not.

Presiding judge Hughes and the lawyers assisting him in their questioning of FT49 failed to acknowledge the new evidence. Michael Mansfield KC, lawyer for the Sturgess family and Rowley, attempted to neutralize the disclosure by asking FT49:  “Were you ever  informed that the police in fact had no information  about the use of drugs by Dawn Sturgess?  Did you know that?”  FT49 replied non-committally.

The lawyer appointed by the British Government to represent Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Andrew Deakin (also spelled Deacon),    asked FT49 no questions. Deakin  has not opened his mouth at the hearings since making an 88-second announcement at the commencement. The Skripals, he claimed then, “look forward to better understanding the circumstances of the Salisbury attack, to considering the Inquiry’s conclusions as to who was responsible for that attack and to being able to move on with their lives.”  

The revelations in plain view remain invisible. No British mainstream media and none of the alternative media podcasters in the UK have noticed and reported the Porton Down disclosures.  

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by Editor - Tuesday, November 5th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

For more than two months now, President Vladimir Putin’s orders to the General Staff have been to shorten the range of the electric war campaign to the area east of Kiev and the Dnieper River,  and west of the advancing line of Russian forces. The General Staff have responded by limiting their strikes to electricity and other energy supplies for military repair and drone production plants, troop marshalling points, and logistic hubs supplying the Ukrainian forces in Kursk and along the front.

This is the Putin Pause. The General Staff have understood it to allow strikes against energy infrastructure in Kharkov, Odessa, and the Sumy region. In recent days Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad blog and the daily bulletins from the Ministry of Defense have also identified electric war raids at Kharkov and Odessa.

How much of a territorial concession on the military map which Putin has directed Vladimir Medinsky to discuss in secret with the Ukrainians and Americans isn’t known.  What is known is the map of the General Staff’s targets since August 26. That was the date of the last Russian drone and missile attack on electricity production and distribution in the west of the country.

Putin’s map, which he announced in his speech to the Foreign Ministry of June 14,   lacked coordinates. On the one hand, Putin reiterated the objectives of the Special Military Operation he had announced on February 24, 2022, as “the protection of people in Donbass, the restoration of peace, and the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine. We did that to avert the threat to our state and to restore balance in the sphere of security in Europe.” On the other hand, the president said, “these conditions are simple. The Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Let me note that they must be withdrawn from the entire territory of these regions within their administrative borders at the time of their being part of Ukraine.”

On the General Staff map, the difference between Putin’s second statement of terms and his first statement is the width of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) stretching westward to a depth calculated as the range of US and NATO-supplied artillery, drones and missiles for striking the new Russian regions and the Russian hinterland.

Because the range of drones in current use against Russia has been extended to 800 kilometres,  and applying this to the direct flight distance westward from Donetsk, the DMZ to assure Russian military security should stretch to a north-south line running through Rivne and Khmelnitsky (lead image). From Donetsk to Kiev, however, is a flight distance of 600 kms; from Donetsk to Odessa, 560 kms; to Kharkov, just 250 kms. This range of drone and missile lethality threatening Russian territory puts the future of Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov squarely in the General Staff’s sights.

How the General Staff is drawing the DMZ map to achieve demilitarization of the Ukraine in military terms is one thing. How the objective of demilitarization is being mapped in the Kremlin is quite another.

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by Editor - Tuesday, November 5th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

It’s a pity when a 760-page history of the Russian leadership’s thinking during the Cold War period, 1945 to 2022, earns consignment to the  waste bin within the first nineteen pages, and in just three sentences. This ratio of toxicity to prolixity – 1 to 40 — is exceptional, although the price asked for it by the publisher, Cambridge University Press — £30, $34.95 — isn’t so exorbitant as to exclude using the book as a doorstopper.

This is Sergey Radchenko’s To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power.   

Just weeks following the book’s launch date, Amazon is already trying to clear its stock by offering a discount of 25% to $26. That’s as competitive as the price of an elite brand of door sausage (aka draft stopper).  

According to Michael McFaul, once the Obama Administration’s Russia-hater in chief in Moscow and Washington, the “brilliant writing” is the “go-to source for understanding Soviet behaviour during the Cold War. Fiona Hill, McFaul’s Russia-hating successor during the Trump Administration, claims the book is “magisterial [and] help[s] explain why Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine and confront the West”.

If you want to slam your door on those two, and block the winter winds starting again in the Ukraine, place Radchenko’s blockbuster between your bottom door rail and the sill. In that position, it will also do double-duty as warning from that piece of ancient Russian wisdom – it’s bad luck to shake hands over a threshold.

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by Editor - Monday, November 4th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The British Government was exposed in the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry this week as keeping Sergei and Yulia Skripal (lead image) unconscious to silence them. That was six years ago, when they were in Salisbury District Hospital in March 2018. Now, prevented from testifying in public at the public inquiry under way in London, they are still incommunicado, either in prison or dead.

The evidence revealed in the published witness statements and transcript of testimony in four days of hearings at the Sturgess Inquiry October 28-31  shows that British Government officials have lied in public and lied on oath in the courts to conceal what they have been doing to accuse Russia of Novichok poisonings in the Salisbury area in 2018. The Inquiry records show that the chairman and judge, Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley),  and the lawyers working for him are actively working to protect the lies and prevent contradicting evidence from becoming public. .

Surprise testimony by Dr Stephen Cockroft, the doctor who cared for Sergei and Yulia Skripal on their admission to Salisbury District Hospital (SDH) on March 4, 2018, has revealed that the British Government kept them heavily sedated in order to tell the courts and media that they were unconscious and unresponsive when they had revived.  Government officials ordered the hospital to punish Cockroft from talking directly to Yulia Skripal when she came out of her coma on March 8, 2018.

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by Editor - Friday, November 1st, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Ragpicking is a serious women’s business, extracting value from rubbish. Cheerleading is the unserious business of girls waving pompoms at football games.

There are those who claim the Kazan Declaration is today’s equivalent of the Bretton Woods Final Act (1944) and Bandung Declaration (1955),  or “a huge manifesto”, or “victory for all decent freedom-loving people on Earth”.  

To help decide if these aren’t pompoms, here’s a pick through the 33 pages, 131 paragraphs of the terms the BRICS member states were able to agree and agree to disagree on, particularly the three most powerful states – China, India, Russia (alphabetical).

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by Editor - Saturday, October 26th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The British Government’s investigation of the alleged Novichok attacks against Sergei and Yulia Skripal, which they survived, and Dawn Sturgess, who died, has now run for six and half years. The public presentation of evidence and witnesses has completed its first week; the second week of hearings will begin next Monday, October 28. The hearings will end in the first week of December. A report of the conclusions will follow months later.

The judge presiding is a retired Court of Appeal judge named Anthony Hughes – titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley – is also a consultant lawyer. Hughes advertises that he is available for engagement on private cases at his London office, telephone +44 (0)20 7242 3555.   

His terms of engagement from the Home Office, his job now, is to manage the Government’s two imperatives. The first is to protect the British government narrative to ensure no one disbelieves the Russians did it, as then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced on the BBC on March 17, 2018.   

Judge Hughes’s website claims he is presiding in “an independent Inquiry into the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’ death in Salisbury on 8 July 2018.”  Independent of Russia is certain. Hughes opened the proceeding on March 25, 2022 by saying: “The issues raised by the terms of reference include those of the utmost gravity, including the allegation which has been publicly made of Russian state responsibility for the killing of Ms Sturgess indirectly.” In fact, the terms of reference make no such allegation.  

Hughes then announced he had appointed Emilie Pottle, a London lawyer, to represent three Russian military officers whom the British prosecutor has charged with attempted murder. Married to a “freelance writer” who has worked in the Iraqi and Libyan warzones with UK and US forces, Pottle is being paid by the Home Office to appear. Last week as a Crown prosecutor, she fed leading questions to medical and police witnesses.    

The judge’s assisting lawyer, Mark  O’Connor KC revealed last week that he has concluded  what has to be proved, and expects witnesses to do the same. “I want”, O’Connor asked Wayne Darch, deputy director of the regional ambulance service and supervisor of the medics who attended the Skripals and Sturgess, “to start, if I may, with the question of what understanding or training ambulance staff had of  or for nerve agent, organophosphate poisoning before the  Skripal poisoning in March 2018, and we will work then  forward in the chronology, okay?”  

Working forward in the chronology means, for the British government, that the Hughes proceeding will work backward to prove retrospectively that the Russian government ordered and carried out the Novichok assassination plot of 2018. So far, not a single British newspaper, television or social medium has reported differently.

The second imperative for Hughes is to protect the British Government from the case for negligence which the Sturgess family lawyer, Michael Mansfield KC, is making to support his claim for a multi-million pound payout for compensation of their loss to the Sturgess family, her boyfriend Charles Rowley, and to Mansfield himself and his associated lawyers. The first attempt at Mansfield’s legal strategy of “dosh for Dawn’s death” did not succeed in the High Court in mid-2020. The Hughes proceeding is Mansfield’s last, big chance to accuse the British secret services of culpable negligence in failing to anticipate the Russian strike against Sergei Skripal on March 4, 2018, and to protect the British public from the Novichok fallout the alleged Russian assassins  left behind.

The contradiction between the first and second imperatives grows obvious with every session. The quality of the evidence of Russian Novichok runs from weak to preposterous; the legal presentation from tendentious to inadmissible. But to earn his ransom Mansfield must accept as true what he cannot prove to be lies. He and his money-shot are motivated by the legal principle known as claim of right  – you can’t steal from a thief.

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by Editor - Friday, October 25th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

A two-month delay in Russian missile strikes against Ukrainian electricity infrastructure west of the Dnieper River and  secret talks on end-of-war terms by the Kremlin go-between Vladimir Medinsky (lead image, right) produced two signals from Kiev on Monday – one an offer by Vladimir Zelensky to reciprocate with a limit on Ukrainian missile and drone attacks on Russian territory. The second signal was a “consolation prize” from US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who was in Kiev to meet Zelensky, his defence minister Rustem Umerov, and Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Alexander Syrsky.

From Zelensky’s press conference in Kiev, a Financial Times reporter wrote: “Russia putting an end to aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy targets and cargo ships could pave the way for negotiations to end the war, the Ukrainian president has said.  Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists in Kyiv on Monday that ‘when it comes to energy and freedom of navigation, getting a result on these points would be a signal that Russia may be ready to end the war’…If Moscow and Kyiv agreed to end strikes on their respective energy infrastructures, it would be a significant step towards de-escalating the conflict, Zelenskyy said in reference to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries.  ‘We saw during the first [peace] summit that there could be a decision on energy security. In other words: we do not attack their energy infrastructures, they don’t attack ours. Could this lead to the end of the war’s hot phase? I think so,’ he said.”   

Unusually, there has been no Pentagon readout after Austin’s meetings in Kiev. Instead,  there was a “statement” in advance that “during his engagements, the Secretary will meet with Ukrainian leadership and underscore the U.S. commitment to providing Ukraine with the security assistance it needs to defend itself from Russian aggression on the battlefield.”  The geographic phrase, “on the battlefield”, is interpreted in Moscow to be the key. The Pentagon followed with a list of new military supplies tagged for “Ukraine’s urgently needed battlefield requirements.”  

CNN was briefed by Austin’s staff to emphasize the limited geography of the current US commitment. “A US defense official said that during their meeting, Austin emphasized to Zelensky the importance of Ukraine defending the territory it has taken inside Russia’s Kursk region and capitalizing on those gains, as well as fending off the Russians in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk… Much of Austin’s later meeting with Umerov and Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi was also focused on Kursk, the defense official said, and the officials drilled down on military planning there for the next several months.”  

The New York Times was told to report: “The United States has agreed to give Ukraine $800 million in military aid that will go toward manufacturing long-range drones to use against Russian troops, Ukraine’s leader said on Monday…A Pentagon official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed the move, which comes as the United States shifts its policy and moves toward shoring up Ukraine’s ability to fight the war with its own weapons and on its own terms…The decision to support long-range drone production in Ukraine may be a kind of consolation prize for Mr. Zelensky, who — despite repeated pleas — has so far failed to persuade Western partners to lift restrictions on using their long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia.”  

The US newspaper also quoted Umerov, standing beside Austin, as saying Ukraine would decide on its own what deep Russian territory targets to strike with the new drones the US is paying for it to produce on Ukrainian territory.  “Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, said on Monday that Ukraine had invested more than $4 billion in its defence industry. Appearing alongside the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, in Kyiv, he said that long-range drones could hit targets more than 1,000 miles away and that they had already destroyed more than 200 military facilities in Russia…The decision also shows a change in tactics for the West.”  

Sources in Moscow acknowledge the sequence of statements in time; they are uncertain of their meaning for the Russian General Staff and its chief, Valery Gerasimov (lead image, left). “It appears that they are husbanding the missiles”, said one. “I wonder if there is going to be a November surprise.” “It’s a fool’s bargain,” said another. “Noone except the Russian military can guarantee the Nazis won’t continue to attack. Zelensky’s word isn’t worth the gas it takes to utter it.”

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by Editor - Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was murdered on October 20, 2011, and to mark the thirteenth anniversary of his death, the Russian Foreign Ministry received Qaddafi’s daughter, Aisha Qaddafi, in Moscow on Friday. This is the first open meeting in Russia between high-ranking Russian officials and the Qaddafi family.

The political significance was buried in the communiqué. “On October 18, the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Mikhail Bogdanov received Libyan public figure and artist Aisha Gaddafi, who is in Moscow in connection with the opening of an exhibition of her paintings at the State Museum of the East. During the conversation, issues of further strengthening historically friendly Russian-Libyan ties in the scientific, cultural and educational spheres were discussed. At the same time, the Russian side confirmed its unchanged position in support of achieving Libyan national accord in the interests of ensuring the unity, territorial integrity and state sovereignty of Libya.”  

The official reason for Aisha Qaddafi’s visit to Moscow to open the exhibition of her paintings omitted that the paintings are in memory of her father, brother and other members of her family assassinated by the US and its proxies in Libya. “I show these works for the first time to honour my father and my brother on the anniversary of their deaths,” Qaddafi said in Moscow. “I can tell you that these pictures are painted not with my hand but with my heart.”  

Assassination of Qaddafi had been a secret US Government policy during the Carter Administration and then an open policy of the Reagan Administration.  Assassination of  the Arabs of Palestine, including the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, is the open policy of the current US and Israeli governments.

In this context, the unofficial reason for Aisha Qaddafi’s visit to Moscow is that the Russian Foreign Ministry is signaling its opposition to this decades-old US and Israeli policy. The signal also hints through several years of rumour and disinformation  at fresh Russian support – that means armed protection – for Saif Qaddafi’s campaign to become the end-of-civil war president of Libya.  “If the Libyans choose a strong president,” Saif told the New York Times in 2021, “the only thing is a strong president. That’s it. The Libyans will choose a strong one. Everything will be solved automatically.”  

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by Editor - Sunday, October 20th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

“The winners of the war are the Russian General Staff. Everyone in Russia understands that the Russian Army is winning and will win this war…I believe Gilbert is wrong on the history of the negotiations that have gone on since before this war began… It’s [Russian] military protection that guarantees [Ukrainian] permanent neutrality… Second, I think that Gilbert is wrong on the foundation of policy…The US policy does not date when Gilbert has put it  from Madeleine Albright [US Secretary of State 1997-2001]…US policy since 1945 has been to destroy Russia and prevent Russia from ever forming a kind of partnership with Germany in Europe. If such a German-Russian partnership post-war were to develop, that would end US control of Europe… This is not a neocon invention. It goes back to non-Ukrainian, non-Jewish decision makers during World War II in the United States…Thirdly, Gilbert is wrong on method…What Gilbert is saying is that he watches Russian television talk shows… This is an absurd method for understanding either President Putin’s role in the command structure, or the General Staff’s role, or what the future security of Russia is required to be in a settlement…Who takes seriously the Rupert Murdoch approach to truth – you don’t read the London Times or Fox News to determine what is true. Therefore, the notion that we should watch Russian television with that group of talk show presenters as an example of what is the truth of Russian debate is inappropriate.”

“I’m sorry,  Gilbert is well-meaning but we are not talking about Doctorow — we are talking about Doctor Zero…If we don’t settle the outcome of the war according to Russia’s security needs now, by the time there is the next [Russian] presidential election, there will be more war.”

“The issue isn’t what [President Vladimir] Zelensky says publicly. The major security threat for Russia is in the secret annexes [of the Ukrainian ‘Victory Plan’]…What went into the US secret annex in Greece [1981-87]  was the deployment of US nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow…Secret annexes mean secret weapons, secret deployments, and dual-capable bombs, missiles and warheads…We know we are back in the world of nuclear targeting on Russia…That brings us back to the general problem – what’s US policy toward Russia? Can anything, anything a US administration ever offer Russia be trusted unless the Russian Army is in place?  And that brings us back to the Gorbachev treason, repeated as the Yeltsin treason. No Russian president — no Russian president can repeat those two things. The Russian Army won’t tolerate it, and neither will the Russian people…Without the Russian Army, the signature of the US on an agreement is worthless.”

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by Editor - Thursday, October 17th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

According to the Russian Constitution amendments adopted in 2020,  Vladimir Putin can run for re-election in 2030 and win another term until 2036, when he will be 84. The contest over the presidential succession may thus be postponed for another decade.

Or else it is under way already. That’s one of the stakes in the present argument in Moscow over how the Ukraine war should end between the General Staff and the Kremlin – between  unconditional capitulation of the regime west of the Dnieper River to the Polish border, and the east-of-Dnieper terms Putin proposed at Istanbul in March 2022, and repeated in a speech to the Foreign Ministry this past June.  

The debate in Moscow over the terms of Istanbul-I and of Putin’s proposed Istanbul-II involves much more than future control of the territories east of the Dnieper and of the territories to the west. The question is whether the military trust Putin to administer the outcome of the war which Russian voters believe has been won by the General Staff. In his June 14 speech Putin admitted to his audience of senior Foreign Ministry officials what they all knew – that he and the General Staff had disagreed over the “preservation of the Ukrainian sovereignty over these territories, provided Russia has a stable land bridge to Crimea.”  Putin’s “land bridge” and other territorial concessions were dismissed by the General Staff.  

One candidate has already tossed a military style cap into the succession race: this is Dmitry Medvedev, the one-term president and currently deputy secretary of the Security Council; he is 59 now, 71 in 2036.

In his Telegram platform, Medvedev has been a consistent advocate of the General Staff line: “In my opinion, recently, even theoretically, there has been one danger – the negotiation trap, into which our country could fall under certain circumstances;  for example. Namely, the early unnecessary peace talks proposed by the international community and imposed on the Kiev regime with unclear prospects and consequences [Medvedev was referring to Istanbul-I]. After the neo-Nazis committed an act of terrorism in the Kursk region, everything has fallen into place. The idle chatter of unauthorized intermediaries on the topic of the beautiful world has been stopped. Now everyone understands everything, even if they don’t say it out loud. They understand that there will BE NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE COMPLETE DEFEAT OF THE ENEMY! [Medvedev’s caps]”   

Medvedev implies criticism of Putin but remains loyal in the hope of negotiating an amicable transfer of power between the two of them. At the same time Medvedev is signalling the General Staff that the military can trust him. But they don’t.

There is another succession candidate who is trusted by both the military and the voters, but who has not announced he is running. Putin is well aware of him; he has repeatedly tried to sideline him. This is Dmitry Rogozin, a presidential campaigner against Boris Yeltsin; Duma deputy and negotiator in Chechnya; ambassador to NATO; deputy prime minister in charge of the military industrial complex; head of Roskosmos, and now, after surviving a Ukrainian assassination attempt, senator for the Zaporozhye region in the Federation Council. Rogozin is 60; in 2036 he will be 72.

Rogozin is the son of a Russian Army general, grandson of a Russian Navy officer, great-grandson of a Red Army pilot, great-great-grandson of a general of the Russian Army in the war against Japan of 1904-05. Rogozin’s ancestors have been recorded in the Russian fight against the Teutonic Knights (13^th century) and with Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin in the war against the Poles (17^th century). “That is to say,” Rogozin has written, “there have been some rather decent people in my family tree”.

In a recently published book, On the Western Front,  Rogozin has said more explicitly: “The war against Ukrainian radical nationalism and Russophobia is not a confrontation between armies and military technologies, but our country’s response to an existential threat to our entire people, the entire Russian civilization. This is the restoration of historical justice. This is a common cause, in which the unity of the army, society and its political class must be manifested. This is the opportunity to kick out of the country (and not let back in!) the fifth column of traitors and globalisation-mongers. The war in Ukraine is a war for Ukraine and Russia, it is a holy war for the right of the Russian people to exist and reunite on their ancestral territory. This is a war against a much stronger and more resourceful enemy, a war to force the collective West, manipulated by the Anglo-Saxons and German revanchists, to recognize Russia’s right to a safe and independent future for our children. Therefore, there should be no ‘red lines’ for us in this war…I consider it fundamentally important to constantly show universal solidarity with our army. It is impossible to maintain the illusion that the army is ‘out there doing its job’, and we continue to live as before.”

A well-informed Moscow source explains: “I will agree that the General Staff have no friends in Kremlin. [Ex-Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu and Putin’s mismanagement is blamed on them. Once they win the war, they will hit back. Or if they are not allowed to win, they will hit back. Among politicians Rogozin will be the only one with their confidence. His presence in the war zone earned him the respect of officers and men. He distanced himself from [Wagner rebel Yevgeny] Prigozhin in time. So he is not damaged goods.”

“How and when he can leverage this  isn’t obvious,” the source adds a caution, warning that Putin understands the Army is a threat to his succession and is recruiting military officers to become his political protectors in the succession.  Putin announced this scheme in a Kremlin ceremony on October 2, calling it “The Time of Heroes”.  

The Moscow source comments:   “I will not exclude several officers of mid rank – those Putin calls the new elite – will come into politics through Rodina at local and regional levels. The potency and potential is in mid ranking officers. Generals will be given cushy retirements. They will not go against Putin or the successor. This all has bad omens for Rogozin.”

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by Editor - Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
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