Popular billboard of Putin in Crimea that reads:  Crimea.Russia.Forever

Putin held telephone talks with numerous leaders in the Middle East last Tuesday, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

According to the Kremlin press service report of the talks between Putin and Israeli PM Netanyahu, topics discussed included the sharing of mutually beneficial security information and progress in the fight against terrorism in Syria.  Due to the wording, I’d say that there was no new agreement reached on the situation in Syria, in which Israel has given assistance to jihadist rebels in the past.  Israel does not see the maintenance of the Assad government as in its interest.  The current right-wing Israeli government wants to see any governments that support the Palestinian cause cast aside in order to pursue a program of forcing the Palestinians to accept whatever terms the Israelis want to offer for “peace” – which means Israel not allowing any viable Palestinian state or independence.

Next, Putin had a conversation with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Sisi.  The two leaders discussed the final phase of routing terrorists from Syria and a joint nuclear energy project.  From the Kremlin press service:

“Vladimir Putin informed the Egyptian leader in detail about the Russian assessments of the latest developments in the situation in Syria in the context of the final stages of the military operation to destroy terrorists in that country and discussed the results of the recent talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad,” press service of the Russian president said.

Moreover, Russian President and Egyptian Leader have discussed in phone talks on Tuesday major joint projects, including in the nuclear energy sector, press service said.

“The topical issues of the bilateral agenda were touched upon, with focus on the implementation of major joint projects, including in the nuclear energy sector. The sides reaffirmed mutual satisfaction with the overall development of friendly Russian-Egyptian relations,” the statement said.

Putin then got on the horn with the Saudi king.  Syria, again, was a major topic of conversation.

“The leaders continued the exchange of views on the situation in the Middle East region and discussed issues related to the prospects for a long-term settlement of the Syrian conflict in light of recent successes in the fight against terrorist groups there,” the press service said in a statement.

According to the statement, the Russian president noted that the Syrian National Dialogue Congress, to be held in Sochi, will give impetus to the intra-Syrian contacts and to the settlement of the Syrian conflict in general, as well as stimulate work under the UN aegis in Geneva.

The Kremlin press service also said in a statment that Putin has informed all of his counterparts about the Monday meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as about the main issues on the agenda of the upcoming summit of the countries-guarantors of the Astana process  — Russia, Iran and Turkey — in Sochi on November 22.

On the following day, Putin had a 1-hour phone conversation with President Trump in which Syria and Ukraine apparently comprised the majority of the discussion.   ZeroHedge reported the following:

According to ABC, president Donald Trump spoke for more than an hour Tuesday by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Syria, Iran, North Korea and Ukraine were on the agenda, the White House said.

The Kremlin echoed the White House, and said that the two leaders discussed “a number of topics”, including the Syrian crisis, the North Korean nuclear problem and the situation in Afghanistan as well as the Ukrainian crisis. Putin briefed Trump in the phone call about his talks with the Syrian leader and plans for a political settlement in Syria.

Putin stressed that there were no alternatives for full implementation of the Minsk agreements on peaceful settlement of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

“Considering the crisis situation in southeastern Ukraine, the Russian president pointed out the absence of a real alternative for the unconditional implementation of the Minsk accords signed on February 12, 2015,” the statement said.

Speaking of Ukraine, as winter approaches the UN and other aid organizations are highlighting the plight still experienced by many in the Donbass, due to the “frozen” conflict there.  Euronews provided the following details:

Various aid organizations and volunteers help the population affected by the protracted conflict. Food, medicine, clothes are often collected and delivered here by Ukrainians from every corner of the country.

There are still inaccessible areas. In the cold winter months the need for aid only increases.

A Christian mission from Dnipropetrovs’k oblast’ brings bread and spiritual literature to Krasnogorovka, located around 1 km from the frontline. Aid is aimed at the most vulnerable sections of the population. Euronews previously reported the example of a social bakery project, based in Marinka, where the situation remains tense. Locals are regularly subjected to the sound of explosions and gunfire and forced to hide in underground cellars for safety.

Marina, a resident of the village of Kamyanka, in the Volnovakha district in Donetsk oblast’, said she was afraid to return home the day she spoke to Euronews as she could hear heavy explosions in the fields nearby. Earlier, when her village was shelled, she had lost her hearing, only partially recovering since. A house in neighbouring Hranitne was damaged at the end of September.

Freedom of movement in the region continues to be restricted. The waiting time at roadblocks installed by the Ukrainian army and the separatists stretches to many hours, causing enormous human suffering as the roadblocks lack even basic facilities. Searches, interrogations, long lists of banned products provoke frustration and anger among the local population. With the winter season approaching, the roadblocks’ working hours have been shortened by both sides furthermore.

“Thousands of people are without electricity, gas and water, as the ongoing conflict continues to take a heavy toll on critical civilian infrastructure crisscrossing the contact line”, says Ertugrul Apakan, the Chief Monitor from OSCE, whose Special Monitoring Mission has worked in Ukraine since 2014.

In the midst of this, Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) for the past couple of years, has apparently been forced to resign and temporarily fled to Russia as former minister of state security Leonid Pasechnik has now taken over the leadership of the republic.  Russia expert Paul Robinson reported the following on his blog:

Plotnitsky, meanwhile, has been appointed the LPR’s representative in negotiations over implementation of the Minsk Agreements, which he signed, and which are meant to provide a blueprint for an eventual peace settlement in Ukraine. What does this all mean?

The Russian online newspaper Vzgliad has a few ideas. According to an article by Pyotr Akopov, stories of treason in high places are false, and the LPR is secure. Akopov adds that, ‘merger with the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] is currently impossible’ and could happen only in the event of a renewal of large-scale military operations. Plotnitsky’s involvement with the Minsk negotiations doesn’t mean very much, as the negotiations are not going anywhere. And finally, recent events won’t change the relationship between the Russian Federation and the LPR. In short, after a brief flurry of excitement, everything will return to the way it was a week ago. It was all much ado about nothing.

Akopov comments also that the events in the LPR show that ‘Russia supports and helps the republics [LPR and DPR] in all sorts of ways, but in no way leads them.’ To make his point, Akopov quotes a response Vladimir Putin gave to a questioner who suggested that Moscow is in total charge of the rebel Ukrainian republics: ‘You’ve got it wrong … these guys are really stubborn … they’re difficult.’ The Vzgliad article concludes that ‘If Moscow was in charge of Lugansk, it wouldn’t have let the conflict among the republic’s leaders develop into open confrontation.’ Having said as much myself in a recent post, I concur.

Robinson provides more context and discussion on the complicated client-patron relationship between Russia and the Donbass here.

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Upon discovery that he was named on an “enemy chart” during a recent NATO drill in mid-November, Turkish president Erdogan pulled Turkish troops out of the exercise in Norway.  According to ZeroHedge:

The president said he was informed about the issue by Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik.

 “They told me that they are withdrawing our 40 soldiers from there [Norway],” Erdogan said.

“I told them to do that immediately. There can be no alliance like that.”

While the NATO powers increasingly tick off the Turkish leadership, Russia has been deftly filling the void with a pending sale of the S400 anti-missile shield, cooperation on Turkstream, etc.  According to Al-Monitor‘s sources, Russia’s wooing is paying off:

Nihat Ali Ozcan, a consultant with the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, believes Russia is indeed laying the groundwork to recast the Turkish public’s perception of the United States, the European Union and NATO. “No wonder we are overwhelmed with Russian-origin news, some factual and some manufactured according to the need of the day,” he told Al-Monitor.

“Putin’s team is competent — not a bunch of pompous imbeciles — and under the management of a former intelligence man and [with] a wisely designed strategy,” he added. Ozcan, an academic and retired major with the Turkish armed forces, underlines that the West’s contradictory policies and populist narratives against Turkey are also driving the Turkish public toward Russia.

My personal opinions match those of Ozcan and are backed by the results of a poll, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy: Research on Public Perceptions,” released by Kadir Has University in July. The poll showed “combating terror” was seen by 44.2% of respondents as the biggest problem for Turkish foreign policy. The Syrian war was second, with 24.6%.

Moscow, which is aware of these two sensitivities, skillfully paints the United States as the leading threat in terror and on Syria issues, while managing to keep a low profile in the media regarding its own relations with the Kurdistan Workers Party and its supposed Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party — both of which Turkey considers terrorist groups. In this annual poll, one striking finding was that the percentage of the Turkish public that perceives Russia as a threat dropped from 34.9% in 2016 to 18.5% in 2017.

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The air force is now on track to triple the number of bombs being dropped in Afghanistan – the nation that officially began Washington’s War on Terror after 9/11/01.  As the longest U.S. war on record – and Afghanistan being no closer to a Taliban-free, terrorist-free oasis of liberal democracy, heroin-free flourishing economy and women’s rights – it will likely just represent flushing more money down the toilet that already has sucked up ~$8 trillion.  Democracy Now! reports:

This comes as a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that the U.S. wars since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 will cost up to $8 trillion in interest payments alone over the coming decades. Their report says the U.S. has already spent $4.3 trillion on the wars—and that the U.S. will be paying trillions of dollars in interest on the war debt for decades to come.

To get some perspective on just how much money we’re talking about here, go here to get an idea of what $1 trillion looks like.

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To conclude this week’s post, I wanted to share an excerpt from a thought-provoking article from Canadian Russia expert Patrick Armstrong entitled NATO:  A Dangerous Paper Tiger.  Considering the fact that NATO can’t even beat some goat herders in flip-flops in Afghanistan, the points made in this article sound plausible to me.

Some Russians are concerned that there are today more hostile troops at the Russian border than at any time since 1941. While this is true, it is not, at the moment, very significant. The Germans invaded the USSR with nearly 150 divisions in 1941. Which, as it turned out, were not enough.Today NATO has – or claims to have – a battle group in each of the three Baltic countries and one in Poland: pompously titled Enhanced Forward Presence. The USA has a brigade and talks of another. A certain amount of heavy weaponry has been moved to Europe. These constitute the bulk of the land forces at the border. They amount to, at the most optimistic assessment, assuming everything is there and ready to go, one division. Or, actually, one division equivalent (a very different thing) from 16 (!) countries with different languages, military practices and equipment sets and their soldiers ever rotating through. And, in a war, the three in the Baltics would be bypassed and become either a new Dunkirk or a new Cannae. All for the purpose, we are solemnly told, of sending “a clear message that an attack on one Ally would be met by troops from across the Alliance“. But who’s the “message” for? Moscow already has a copy of the NATO treaty and knows what Article V says.

In addition to the EFP are the national forces. But they are in a low state: “depleted armies” they’ve been called: under equipped and under manned; seldom exercised. The German parliamentary ombudsman charged with overseeing the Bundeswehr says “There are too many things missing“. In 2008 the French Army was described as “falling apart“. The British Army “can’t find enough soldiers“. The Italian army is ageing. Poland, one of the cheerleaders for the “Russian threat” meme, finds its army riven over accusations of politicisation. On paper, these five armies claim to have thirteen divisions and thirteen independent brigades. Call it, optimistically, a dozen divisions in all. The US Army (which has its own recruiting difficulties) adds another eleven or so to the list (although much of it is overseas entangled in the metastasising “war on terror”). Let’s pretend all the other NATO countries can bring another five divisions to the fight.

So, altogether, bringing everything home from the wars NATO is fighting around the world, under the most optimistic assumptions, assuming that everything is there and working (fewer than half of France’s tanks were operational, German painted broomsticks, British recruiting shortfalls), crossing your fingers and hoping, NATO could possibly cobble together two and a half dozen divisions: or one-fifth of the number Germany thought it would need. But, in truth, that number is fantasy: undermanned, under equipped, seldom exercised, no logistics tail, no munitions production backup, no time for a long logistics build up. NATO’s armies aren’t capable of a major war against a first class enemy. And no better is the principal member: “only five of the US Army’s 15 armoured brigade combat teams are maintained at full readiness levels“. A paper tiger.

Kicking off this post is a discussion of the many tragic and/or pathetic shenanigans of the Saudi royal leadership – namely Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) who has effectively been given free reign by King Salman.  Last week, several members of the Saudi royal family who were perceived to be rivals of MBS were arrested, with one reportedly killed.

Simultaneously, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri read what appeared to be a forced resignation of his post from inside Saudi Arabia – a country that he has dual citizenship with and has many close business ties to.

According to renowned international journalist Pepe Escobar, the arrests were part of a supposed “anti-corruption” program with a commission headed by MBS:

Right on cue, the commission detains 11 House of Saud princes, four current ministers and dozens of former princes/cabinet secretaries – all charged with corruption. Hefty bank accounts are frozen, private jets are grounded. The high-profile accused lot is “jailed” at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton…..A top Middle East business/investment source who has been doing deals for decades with the opaque House of Saud offers much-needed perspective: “This is more serious than it appears. The arrest of the two sons of previous King Abdullah, Princes Miteb and Turki, was a fatal mistake. This now endangers the King himself. It was only the regard for the King that protected MBS. There are many left in the army against MBS and they are enraged at the arrest of their commanders.”

To say the Saudi Arabian Army is in uproar is an understatement. “He’d have to arrest the whole army before he could feel secure.”

Of course, the Saudi army is nothing to brag about as shown by their horrible performance in the Yemen war (more about that later).  Escobar points out, among other things, that MBS is seeking total control of Saudi media:

Prince Miteb until recently was a serious contender to the Saudi throne. But the highest profile among the detainees belongs to billionaire Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal, owner of Kingdom Holdings, major shareholder in Twitter, CitiBank, Four Seasons, Lyft and, until recently, Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp.

Al-Waleed’s arrest ties up with a key angle; total information control. There’s no freedom of information in Saudi Arabia. MBS already controls all the internal media (as well as the appointment of governorships). But then there’s Saudi media at large. MBS aims to “hold the keys to all the large media empires and relocate them to Saudi Arabia.”

Escobar also discusses the economic problems that MBS is trying to address, how his approach is bound to fail, and why an internal conflict will likely continue on and possibly escalate:

As the regime’s popularity radically tumbled down, MBS came up with Vision 2030. Theoretically, it was shift away from oil; selling off part of Aramco; and an attempt to bring in new industries. Cooling off dissatisfaction was covered by royal payoffs to key princes to stay loyal and retroactive payments on back wages to the unruly masses.

Yet Vision 2030 cannot possibly work when the majority of productive jobs in Saudi Arabia are held by expats. Bringing in new jobs raises the question of where are the new (skilled) workers to come from.

Throughout these developments, aversion to MBS never ceased to grow; “There are three major royal family groups aligning against the present rulers: the family of former King Abdullah, the family of former King Fahd, and the family of former Crown Prince Nayef.”

Professor Amal Saad, in an interview with TRNN’s Aaron Mate, discussed the geopolitical motives of MBS’s actions with respect to the forced resignation of Hariri:

ISIS has been dislodged from the region, Nusra has lost a lot of territory in Lebanon and in Syria, and therefore, Saudi Arabia basically panicked, over and above its losses in Yemen, and it’s been failing miserably in Yemen, as everyone can testify to with this latest blockade and their total desperation to strangulate Yemen. The resistance of the Houthis there is a formidable obstacle for them in their quest for regional domination. They have failed in every single arena that they have thus far fought. And today, by the way, let me say this before I forget, Nasrallah pointed out something quite interesting. He said, and this is something we know now, we know obviously now that Saudi Arabia is pressuring Israel to invade Lebanon, and he said they’ve even been offering it millions of dollars to that effect, but he said that in 2006, Saudi did the exact same thing, that Saudi was in part, not responsible, because Israel has its own calculations and would have launched a war anyway, but Saudi was definitely persuading it back then to wage war on Hezbollah and was actively supporting that war.

So Saudi Arabia has been lobbying for this for quite some time now, and I think it became even more necessary when it saw that all its cards in the region have been played and are of no use to it anymore. This latest tactic, this is a last resort, I think. There’s nothing else that they can do to stand in the way of Hezbollah’s growing influence. They can’t do anything vis-a-vis Iran, and it’s purely an act of desperation, I believe, to, Imagine how desperate a state must be to this openly, and very crudely, kidnap the prime minister, their own ally, of another state. That’s pretty desperate in my mind.

Saad points out how the Saudi policy to try to limit Hezbollah’s increasing power and influence is backfiring as the image of the organization’s leader (Nasrallah) has only increased as a result of the Saudi-provoked incident:

As we saw today, Nasrallah in his speech was defending Lebanon’s constitution, Lebanon’s institutions, its procedural legitimacy. He was behaving like a statesman. He was calling. He was speaking in the language of a state. His discourse is identical to President Michel Aoun, who’s been calling for exactly the same. So Hezbollah has now been further legitimized inside Lebanon on the popular level. Politically, it’s emerged much stronger. At the same time, Nasrallah even actually defended Sunni rights in Lebanon. He said, “Why are you depriving Sunnis of their leader?” So it’s really ironic that what Saudi Arabia has done is marginalize Sunnis, when it’s been accusing Iran and Hezbollah of marginalizing them or disempowering them. It’s gone and done that itself by kidnapping their leader and denying him any future political role.

With regard to the war on Yemen, which has caused the biggest cholera epidemic seen in recent history, destroyed much civilian infrastructure, and has put the country on the brink of mass starvation, Saudi Arabia chose to implement a full blockade of the nation, preventing any aid from reaching the population.  The Saudi government has since partially lifted the blockade, according to some sources, but whether that will have any substantive effect on the suffering is open to question.

As regular readers are probably already aware, the U.S. government is enabling the Saudi war on Yemen, including help with in-flight refueling of warplanes and provision of weapons.   Col. Lawrence Wilkerson recently spoke to TRNN’s Sharmini Peries of his attempts to lobby Congress to support legislation ending U.S. support of the war in Yemen:

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Larry, give us a sense of what they’re telling you when you’re on the Hill about this unconditional support for Saudi Arabia’s war.

LARRY WILKERSON: You’d be amazed, Sharmini. I have gotten answers from staffers and members that range the gamut from, “Well, this is just a niche issue.” That’s a direct quote. “This is just a niche issue.” My response, of course, was, “500,000 people dying is a niche issue?” Well, not a lot, and get them a little off guard with that kind of response, to a response such as this, “Well, I always go with my committee chairman.” That is, the committee of jurisdiction. “So, if Ed Royce is going to go against this, I’ve got to go against it, too.” This is the war power. This is your nation using bombs, bullets and bayonets to kill the citizens of other nations and, oh, by the way, put its own men and women in harm’s way too.

This is the war power. This is the ultimate power, and you bow to your committee of jurisdiction? Come on, Mr. Congressman. You can do better than that. To an answer like this one that I got, “Well, Iran’s there.” My response, “Iran wasn’t there until the Saudi-UAE coalition attacked and we supported them.” “Well, Iran is there now, so we’ve got to fight them. The Saudis are doing our dirty business for us.” Why do we have to fight Iran in Yemen? What is it that Iran is doing in Yemen that’s destabilizing, and destabilizing in a way that threatens U.S. national security interest? “Well, Iran always does that.” Are you kidding me, Congressman? Can’t you think more critically than that? Can’t you think more analytically than that? Iran is not always going against U.S. interest. Iran, in this case, is going against U.S. interest, if they are, because we are supporting the Saudi coalition that’s waging this brutal war.

You just wouldn’t believe it, Sharmini. The first reaction I have is that they don’t know what they’re talking about. The second reaction I have is that they’re venal, they’re cruel, they’re brutal. The third reaction I have is, they’re ignorant, they’re just not willing to look at the issues. And the fourth reaction I have is that they’re in obeisance to the military-industrial complex, which, if you’ll look at the contribution charts, does, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and so forth does contribute a heck of a lot of money to these people’s campaigns. And so with a little war like this, what’s a little war as long as it maintains me in power?

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After a brief meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN conference last week, Trump and Putin issued a joint statement on Syria, stating that the conflict has no military solution and that settlement must be reached through negotiation as part of the ongoing Geneva peace process pursuant to the UN Resolution 2254.  According to RT:

The joint agreement was worked out in advance by officials from both nations, and agreed upon by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian news agencies report, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

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Before the ASEAN conference, Russia reinforced its cordial relations with Iran.  First,  Putin met with French PM Macron and together they publicly reiterated their support for the Iran nuclear deal, which is under fire in Washington.

Russia also had a meeting with Iran and Azerbaijan in Tehran in which billions of dollars worth of deals were made, including a contract worth $30 billion between Russian oil company Rosneft and Iranian oil company NIOC.   The three countries also signed onto an “understanding” that they would jointly develop gas fields in the near future, which would provide gas to India, among others.

At this meeting, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini suggested that Russia and Iran work together to dump the U.S. dollar in all bilateral trade as a way to evade sanctions.  According to RT, Khameini said the following:

“By ignoring the negative propaganda of the enemies, that seek to weaken relations between countries, we can nullify US sanctions, using methods such as eliminating the dollar and replacing it with national currencies in transactions between two or more parties; thus, isolate the Americans,” he said on Wednesday at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran.

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More positive economic figures have been coming out of Russia.  It’s GDP has risen to 1.7%, amid a stabilized ruble,  and its year-on-year car sales have shown a 17% increase.

Furthermore, Russia’s Ease of Doing Business Score has gone up again.  Alexander Mercouris at The Duran reports:

In a further sign of Russia’s steadily improving business climate, Russia’s Economics Minister Maxim Oreshkin has announced that Russia has moved up the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings from 40th to 35th in the world.

That puts Russia behind only the advanced economies of the West and some (though not all) of the top economies of the Far East.  Russia now has by a substantial distance the best ranking economy for ease of doing business amongst the BRICS.

By way of comparison, Russia’s ranking for ease of doing business was 120th in the world in 2010.  The radical improvement in the business climate is therefore a relatively recent phenomenon and is the direct consequence of sustained and concerted action by the Russian government.

However, on the down side, The Moscow Times recently reported that outlying towns in Russia are having serious budget difficulties and are turning to the major central cities for help.

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In the wealthiest nation in history, our politicians tell us that we can’t afford universal health care and free college tuition – things that other industrialized nations that do not have as large an income as we do manage to provide their citizens.  So where is all that tax money that we fork over every April going?

Well, since 9/11, it’s gone into that budget sinkhole known as the “War on Terror.”   As reported by Common Dreams, the Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute (Brown University) has calculated that $5.6 trillion has been spent directly and indirectly:

A new analysis offers a damning assessment of the United States’ so-called global war on terror, and it includes a “staggering” estimated price tag for wars waged since 9/11—over $5.6 trillion.

The Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Center says the figure—which covers the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from 2001 through 2018—is the equivalent of more than $23,386 per taxpayer.

The “new report,” said Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action’s senior director for policy and political affairs, “once again shows that the true #costofwar represents a colossal burden to taxpayers on top of the tremendous human loss.”

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In the near future, I will be posting a book review on a compelling book I’m reading called Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership by Susan Butler.  It’s chock full of interesting historical tidbits and reads like a novel.  Those interested in Roosevelt, Stalin, WWII and the origins of the Cold War will find it a fascinating read.