Russia's Leaders Confidently Attack the Western Globalist Elite
Putin and Shoigu Speeches (Mercouris 08.17.2022)
A major military exposition has been taking place in Moscow, where there is also an annual international military celebration.
During this event, important speeches were delivered by President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister, General Sergei Shoigu - to an international audience (not from the west, but from everywhere else). The exposition, by the way, paraded large numbers of captured Ukrainian weapons. But there was no evidence of HIMARS systems or French Cesar Howitzers that Russia is supposed to have bought from corrupt Ukrainian officers (Mercouris makes no mention of those that Russia claims to have destroyed, but the fragments of those, presumably, might still lie on Ukrainian held territory).
Notably, Shoigu delivered a speech that was as long, complex, and consequential as Putin’s, as if the two men were equals. Shoigu discussed matters well beyond his professional brief. It was almost as though Shoigu was being prepared for a much more enhanced political role, perhaps someone who might eventually be Putin’s successor. The two are roughly of the same age.
Putin’s speech covered geopolitical and philosophical aspects. In it he says that he can decipher the outlines of a multipolar world order, in which different peoples choose their own paths on the basis of their own traditions, values etc., and whose routes western globalist elites are opposing.
This is the first time Putin actually talks about “western globalist elites.” These are people who ideologically pursue a globalist project. These elites provoke chaos - deliberately induced - to achieve their objective of globalism. They fan long standing and new conflicts, and do all they can to hold on to the hegemony and power which are slipping from their hands. They try to keep peoples trapped in a neocolonial order.
Their hegemony means stagflation and neoliberal totalitarianism for the rest of the world. Modern “liberals” (who of course bear no relation to the original “liberals” like John Stuart Mill) are all too eager to shut down expression of ideas with which they disagree. They grossly interfere in other states, trying to force independent states to submit to alien (western) cultures and ways of doing things. Using force, they sponge on the world. This is why the collective West is attempting to dismantle the global security system in its own interests.
The West needs conflict to maintain its hegemony, using Ukrainian people as cannon fodder in support a Western-protected ideology of fascism. This is why Russia had to launch its special military operation. The USA tries to behave similarly in Taiwan. Its escapade is part of the purpose-oriented US strategy designed to destabilize the region and the world, wrecking relationships in favor of its own alliances.
The western globalist elites are attempting to divert the attention of their own citizens away from tjheir growing poverty, deindustrialization and the like. They are not engaged in improving the living standards of their own people, but only in spreading their globalist model.
The era of the unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. It is doomed. The multipolar order is based on international law and opens up new opportunities for higher living standards, peace etc. China and Russia together are the force that is standing in the way of the western globalist model.
Shoigu’s speech, a bit longer, covers much of the same ground but also covers the situation in Ukraine. He notes a radical change in the system of global security. US hegemony is a thing of the past.
The launch of the Feb 24 special military operation marked the end of the unipolar world.
The growth of Europe’s military alliances and resources and their spread eastwards had started well before Russia’s special military operation. NATO’s projects are representative of an agenda of global dominance, on behalf of its own invented rules-based order. The supply of western weapons and financial resources to Ukraine are being stepped up. However Russia knows that NATO leaders now understand that their efforts are failing (leaving the question: why do they bother?).
The special military operation has dispelled the myth of miracle weapons like Javelin anti tank missiles, drones, HIMARS multiple rocket launch systems and long-range Howitzers, and the benefits of foreign military advisers, reconnaissance data, supervision of weapons use, training, etc. all of which will prove futile in defense of the Kiev regime.
Plans to weaken Russia are failing. Thus suggesting the West is present on the ground in Ukraine, and some of these specialists have likely been killed. They have not made any significant change to the battlefield. Ukrainian force operations are planned in London and Washington, including input to data systems. Russia is examining western weapons very closely so as to improve its own fighting and armaments. He talks of Ukraine combat losses, its manpower seen as expendable. Real figures of deaths have been concealed. In time, this information will become public, from testimonies of POWs. The reckless disregard for life is reminiscent of British imperial experience. Shoigu summarizes the Western inspired battlegrounds between EurAsian forces and the Western globalists.
Mercouris notes that it is unusual for a subordinate to the Russian president to be given an opportunity to speak in this way about region after region.
Two takes from Mercouris:
First, both Putin and Shoigu came across as supremely confident. They are clearly feeling they are winning the economic war, the battle for Ukraine, and the battle for ideas around the world. They were both looking extremely relaxed.
Second, it is clear Russian leadership has clearly accepted the globalization thesis as an explanation for the West’s actions or, rather, the actions of a globalist elite that is willing to spread chaos as it tries to maintain its grip and expand its control in order to achieve its globalist project.
This Russian perspective, its elevation of these ideas, is extraordinary. Other governments are likely to follow Russia’s lead. China already explicitly rejects the idea of a rules-based order in favor of a law-based order, so is already edging towards the Russian position. Shoigu talks of the “masks having fallen’ in relation to NATO, and perhaps the same is now true of Russia. Russia believes most of the rest of the world agrees with it. Russia might make it “sovereignists against globalists” in opposition to Western talk about “autocracies against democracies”, and make the claim that it is they, Russia, who best represent democracy. not the western countries.
Once the war ends, and the west has lost, this struggle of ideas on top of the geopolitical struggle will begin in earnest.
The War
Russia is exerting pressure on nearly every major point of the 1000 mile Ukrainian defense line from Seversk to Bakhmut. But the most important and novel advances are now being made toward Kharkiv and Zaporizhizhia.
The regular army has successfully captured the small town of Udi, north west of Kharviv, and is pushing south from there towards an area west of Kharkiv, perhaps in preparation of an encirclement of that city prior to capture. A number of other settlements have been taken.
Most of the Russian fighting taking place in the Donbass is being undertaken by the regular Russian army, the militia of the two Donbass people’s republics, Chechen units, and the Wagner group (all members of whom are ex Russian military). But in the Kharkiv region it is the Russian regular army (including an elite marine brigade with advanced Russian military equipment).
In the southern area of Donetsk, there is significant Russian advance on roads linking Ugledar with Marinka opposite Donetsk, thus disrupting an important supply line for Ukrainian forces which may further precipitate the departure of Ukraine forces from Marinka. In Donbass itself there has been very intense fighting, with peak firings of around 70,000 rounds of ammunition a day, the same peak levels that we saw in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, with very heavy losses to the Ukrainian military.
At that time Ukrainians claimed it was experiencing 1,000 losses of men per day and the current losses are at least as heavy and perhaps significantly worse. The fact that these losses are so high is consistent with news of increasing refusals by Ukrainian units to obey orders, with several instances of entire formations refusing to go into attack or to sustain indefensible positions, an escalating trend.
In the suburb, Solidar, of Bakhmut, which is a focal area of the battle, senior officers have been withdrawn, it is believed, so that troops are committed by officers of relatively low rank. This is likely to be very demoralizing. This is completely different to Russian practice where high-ranking commanders are expected to lead their troops into battle.
As they advance, the Russians stop for the purposes of removing mines, consolidating positions, bringing artillery forward, and then they storm ahead. The Russians are now piling on the pressure on the fortified coal-mining village of Marinka, whose commanding slag heap has possibly now been captured by the Russians. There are more signs of powerful Russian TO-S (1&2) multiple rocket launch systems and flame-thrower warheads which are very effective against troops in bunkers. Stories of HIMARS forcing Russian retreats seem to be very inaccurate. Russians are advancing through the forests close to Sloviansk. Upcoming colder weather will lead to reduction in forest cover, thus making it more difficult for Ukrainians to hide their positions.
Crimea
The recent attacks have been relatively small, perpetrated by sabotage groups (one reports assigns them to a fundamentalist Islamic group working with Ukraine). They look less like military initiatives more like PR, perhaps inspired by Britain.
Economy
In Ukraine itself the Ukraine Central Bank has joined those economists who have been pleading for a cessation of money printing, in order to avoid hyper-inflation, and for Ukraine to cut its budget deficit and reduce its spending.
How does Ukraine do that in the middle of the war? The implication is that if it does not, inflation will explode.
Disharmony in Kiev while Russia prepares a September offensive
Ukrainian media report that Zelenskiy is considering replacing his overall force commander, who may be “promoted” to defense minister and be replaced by the current commander of the ground forces. Does this mean that the military is tightening its control of Kiev hierarchy? More likely, it is the result of continuing tensions between Zelenskiy and his current top commander. All assuming the story itself is true.
Hundreds of Russian air force planes and helicopters are being assembled in preparation, possibly, for an early September offensive.