Did the West Fall into a Russian Trap?

28 Comments
Russian President Vladimir Putin

From The Greanville Post, 7/11/22

This is a Russian commentary facilitated by Jeff J. Brown

COMMENT by Greanville Post: New York Times citing US officials on 24/7/2022 [sic] reported that US & European allies will not be able to maintain current level of support for Kiev for a prolonged period of time. Despite the fact that President Biden has vowed to stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes”, no one expects more billions of support for Ukraine when the currently authorised aid package of $54 billion in military & other assistance runs out by second quarter of 2023.

The tactics of unhurried military operations in Ukraine are still bewildering the best Pentagon analysts, and only a few have begun to guess that the main goal of the operation is not at all the surrender of Kyiv.

The fall of the Kyiv regime is undoubtedly spelled out in the plans for a special military operation, but not at all as the culmination of Russia’s actions, but only as an intermediate stage. The war is actually being waged at a much higher level.

American politicians and generals firmly believe that the United States is using Ukraine as a weapon to deplete Russia. In fact, everything is exactly the opposite — the Anglo-Saxons were lured to this battlefield in order to put an end to their dubious and extremely dirty hegemony.

Some in Washington began to suspect something, but it was already too late, as the deadly trap for the United States was slammed, and the Americans themselves did the most to achieve this.

The main trick of the special operation of the Russian Federation was revealed by the Ukrainian politician and journalist Dmitry Vasilets, noting that with their unhurried advancement, the (Russian) allied forces most effectively implement the process of demilitarisation not only of Ukraine, but of the entire collective West. He said:

“The Russian army took some tactical pause to regroup before the attack on Slavyansk. Even in the West, many have already concluded that this is far from a traditional war. In fact, the Russian army could long ago destroy all the bridges across the Dnieper and stop the transfer of equipment and personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the Donbass.

“We see a slow advance in the Donbass and near Kharkov, which is due to the fact that the army saves its forces as much as possible, giving the enemy even time and the opportunity to bring up reserves and thus destroying the entire military potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“It is already clear that Russia is planning a long-term war with the West in Ukraine. Most of the territory of Ukraine is becoming a financial yoke for Europe and the United States. As they say, politics is a concentrated economy, and war is an even more concentrated economy. The West has fallen into a deadly trap.

“For many years, Kyiv’s “partners” exported all its resources out of the country, but now they are only forced to inject huge amounts of money without receiving anything in return. This is a death trap for the US and its satellites.”

“Most likely, this is why Russia operates in Ukraine with a limited contingent and does not rush things at all, ”Vasilets explained.

The journalist noted that one should not believe in fairy tales about the unlimited resources of the United States, which, they say, can cover any costs by running the printing press at full capacity.

The sanctions war is hurting the American economy. At the same time, the United States needs to fully support Ukraine, even paying the salaries of the entire state apparatus, and soon it will also need to support the declining economy of the European Union in order to keep the already shaky anti-Russian coalition under control.

The Americans simply will not pull out a long war in such conditions, but, in theory, they also cannot retreat, at least without serious geopolitical losses. The trap has really slammed shut and in Ukraine they (Russians) are now grinding not only the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but the entire collective West.

28 thoughts on “Did the West Fall into a Russian Trap?”

  1. Well written. Amerikas generals are business/political animals as are the neo-conns. They think they are fighting the USSR and not today’s very different Russia.

    Thanks NB

      1. I presume you read Russian & read Pravada?

        Your comment is beyond infantile…obvious still mneeds diapers

    2. Excellent point. Some (few) of us stated at the outset that Putin’s declaration
      “Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.
      We are ready for all outcomes. All decisions have been made.”
      wasn’t a threat of nuclear war (France boasted of nuclear weapons first), and the West came unglued, pushing a narrative of nuclear war.
      It was a threat that has played out. We’ll see the West in economical and social near collapse, since it blundered into Russia’s trap(s)
      Who needs nuclear weapons when one’s enemies ignorantly stick their heads into waiting guillotines?

  2. Not only that, but Putin left $300 billion laying around where Biden could easily take it. Is it possible that Putin did that on purpose in order to kill the central bank reserve status and preferred trade status (petrodollar) of the US dollar? $300 billion seems like a low price to achieve those goals, and Putin will make the money back in higher export prices anyway.

    1. WOW – what a great concept. IF the $300 was indeed a trap, and I have to agree with your assessment, then the big brains in the US administration do not stand a chance in this conflict. The US is playing “marbles” while the Russia is playing a master game of chess.

    2. No, that’s nonsense. Putin just didn’t notify Nabiullina (CBR governor) and many others of the invasion plans. Maybe they also just didn’t expect that blatant act of thievery and rule breaking. Remember, Putin is very much a rules guy and for years played by Western rules and trusted his “partners” to do the same , only to learn repeatedly the hard way not to trust them.
      If they indeed wanted to lay a trap here, they could have achieved the same result with only leaving, say, 100 bn on the table instead of 300bn+.
      Btw, it’s not that easy to convert hundreds of billions of mostly $$ into yuan, gold and …(yeah what?) . It took the CBR years to do it with ~50% of its reserves. A good chunk ended up in Euros in the mistaken belief in EU sovereignity. And again, if there was a plan behind this, you don’t want to diversify into Euros when you are about to unleash a Europe-shattering war.

  3. There’s no mystery in the big picture, this could be seen from years out.

    As far as the physical conflict, Russia is ‘demilitarizing’ Ukraine. As it turns out, they are simultaneously emptying the armories of half a dozen Eastern European NATO members, plus Georgia.

    It’s an outrageously bloody event, horrifying to watch.

    But that’s what you get when you take the US foreign relations methods, perfected over half a century, of fomenting ethno-religious or ethno-nationalist terror. Mix that into the place that inherited the biggest pile of Soviet military stuff outside Russia proper, and combine it with an opponent that can fight back for real.

    Now in military terms, the trap isn’t quite for the US – it is for the European wing of NATO. (If they survive this without escalation, it may be beneficial, who knows).

    The trap for the US is on the economic side. The aura of inevitability for the US Dollar is punctured in spectacular fashion. Also, the Euro as a financial center of gravity lies in the dust. Knocked out cold. It’ll get up, but it’s hard to see how it will ever be the same.

    And into the void, the Asian alternative steps in effortlessly. By necessity, Ruble seems to have led the way, but it will quickly morph into a Chinese Yuan zone of finance. A telling example is that after all the acrimony between the two, Australia just started shipping a line of Yuan denominated coal contracts to the People’s Republic.

    Anyway, the group roughly centered around the BRIC’s now has everything it needs to free itself from Western hegemony. They lack still the institutional levers of power enjoyed by the West, the group roughly centered around BRIC’s have already enough participants signed on to represent the majority of the world’s workers, heavy industry, trade, manufactured goods, materials, and educated human beings.

    Is it a cunning trap? No, just a dumb sequence of events that came about because the US refused compromise every step of the way, and insisted that it still is and will always remain the year 1992.

    3. More “dumb” luck than a cunning trap. Putin’s an expert at judo and chess, but even he was, I think, surprised at the stupidity of NATO’s continuing support of Ukraine, like sacrificing knights and rooks for pawns.
      The SMO has been “slow” so as to protect ethnic Russians and their stolen lands. Will the “gloves come off” once the SMO is in Ukraine proper? Medvedev’s strongly hinting at it. We wait…

    4. No, it is indeed a cunning trap. Russia has experience with the Neocons. Russia can predict because it is the same worn out strategy detailed for a 12 year old child by Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Russia would much prefer killing the same Neocons and Israel in Ukraine than in Syria. The logistics are simplified.

    5. War is a dumb sequence of events, but the fact that Russia is fighting for it’s very survival places the wind directly at their back. Ukrainians are being fed into the slaughter machine, at the behest of neo-cons. Soon, Ukrainians will start to see the light, which is cold, calculating and demonic, in nature.

  5. For the fist time, I am skeptical about a post on this website. Who is the author and what are his credentials for making such sweeping assertions? I’m sjure many of your readers could offer comparatively well-grounded analyses! Better to shut down and take a real vacation.

    1. An argument should be discarded or accepted based on the merits and logic of the argument, not on the university credentials. You should know that by now.

    2. Most of this analysis comes from a Ukrainian politician and journalist who is named in the article. At the top of the article, it names Jeff Brown as the facilitator of the information at Greanville Post. He’s had a lot of stuff published at OpEd News where you used to be the foreign affairs editor.

    3. Find it disturbing?
      Wait until whole house of western cards come crushing down. Not long now, it will be worth the wait.????

  6. “The sanctions war is hurting the American economy. At the same time, the United States needs to fully support Ukraine, even paying the salaries of the entire state apparatus, and soon it will also need to support the declining economy of the European Union in order to keep the already shaky anti-Russian coalition under control.”
    The above quote is interesting, taking into account a statement by Bernanke, in which he admitted the Federal Reserve has the power to buy European bonds if needed.

    Soon, the Fed will be buying European bonds, German, French, Italian en masse.

  7. Good article.

    I am not sure this is was all planned out in quite such a Machiavellian way though: after all, Russia has sought to negotiate at lots of points. Even in March. It was the US / UK that scuppered that. Decisions by the collective west have taken us down this path.

    I do agree that this is now playing out as you describe. I also suspect that this was one of the potential extreme scenarios that the Russians war gamed and they cannot believe that the west chose this path! Any rational western leaders would have negotiated by now. I cannot believe that Russia predicated an entire strategy on such total craziness and irrationality by the collective west.

    The western “leadership” class increasingly resonates of the 1914 belligerents who went to war.; destroying their civilisation in the process.

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  9. Buying European bonds with yet more fake dollars. No doubt that will fix things.

  11. I need to think about this as I am a little suspicious of writers who gives so much credit to the gang in Moscow. I am equally curious about giving credit to American FP and the usual gang down there in DC . However there is a bigger machine which, all three world powers bow to, and that is Capitalism. The big bad ass machine which no ‘side’ driving all three sides to the brink of elimination and war, nuclear and otherwise. I ‘d also imagine the folks in China and numerous other Asian countries are not exactly kissing cousins. The US has been not exactly idle and should never been underestimated. There is a kind of pragmatic capitalism in America which might be willing to go a long way, to let the shit keep hitting the fan, till the Russians money machine finds itself, thanks to the treachery and self interests of their ‘new’ found allies further East and elsewhere. Let’s not harbour illusions about the benign motives of the Kremlin or Putin’s despotic goals, his wish for a larger Russian Empire. Russia is squeezed as much by its own repressive society as by NATO encroachments. As for traps? which one is referred? they lost their totalitarian USSR after their miserable sojourn in Afghanistan, and following the Global Capital overpowering of Soviet so called military might. They went belly up– this is common knowledge. They very nearly lost it all after Gorbachev was foolish enough to believe what they told him about Nato. He ought to have known better. That is not the fault of Nato that is on the Russian’s astonishing gullibility. All of these empires are bad and terrible things and all of them are the collusive monsters of the terrible capital world wide machine of war and captivity holding human race hostage for centuries now. It won’t be Putin and his flunkies who rescue humanity form the toils of capitalism. In the old Soviet day they at least had the idea of freeing people to live a better life under communism or socialism whichever you prefer. Look what they did in Belarus? In any of the other countries it’s all despots, police states and so on. Free press? Freedom to think? Off to the modern gulag! Yes the ‘West’ is guilt of much and more and ought to be accountable and will be. And maybe even more so than the Russians and others, after all the West has the documentation and the idea of democracy however perilously imperfect. It’s all here for anyone to see, its millions are willing to risk their lives to go to America or Europe. But Russia? China? lovers of freedom, peace and justice for all? Go ask Gary Kasparov about that and the thousands of others getting beaten up and thrown in prison etc, in effect the new Gulag ___cause they dared to voice and show their disagreement with this undeclared hypocritical war. Waged by no less than a former head of the KGB, a spy who’s quite willing to sacrifice thousand s to achieve his goals. They are not right, they are not to be lauded, no more than the Western society which manufactures consent (Chomsky) ought to be. Both sides ought to be condemned and seen for what the are __ the US is smart not too go directly toe to toe with them but they too, ought not to underestimate the capacity of American capitalism (the American war machine) to rebound and gather itself and its people in another ‘Great generation.’ This is not suggest that anyone possesses the moral high ground that is not the issue. Am I being absurd?Gullible naive? O hope not! always willing to learn@!

    1. You seem to have given all this a lot of thought. Why not take it just a little further – the automatic lauding of ‘democracy’ as a ‘good’ thing generally needs a bit of analysis.

      In the USA democracy does not exist – there are two very pro-capialist parties with in many areas not a shred of difference between them. If there is little choice, there is little real democracy. Furthermore, the vast majority of the representatives and senators have already been bought and paid for well before being elected. In fact, that is almost a condition.

      The situation is similar in most western countries. Even at best, democracy is invariably co-opted by the rich, powerful etc. in regard to any subject they have a vital interest in. So using ‘democracy’ as a compliment or as a characteristic of a benevolent or good state, is not appropriate.

      A true democracy can only be created under a system of sortition, and as long as the powerful are in control, this will never happen.

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  13. “The trap has really slammed shut and in Ukraine they (Russians) are now grinding not only the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but the entire collective West”.

    You are right.
    On the failed US-NATO-UK Ukrainian Proxy War on Russia, designed (badly, immorally) to collapse the Russia State while sacrificing an unlimited number of Ukrainian lives – the “morality” of The West on display.

    “Taking results as the only legitimate measure of this campaign or any and ignoring the always attendant Western derived high minded prose, the Russian Armed Forces have emerged as the most battle experienced armed forces anywhere, with a weapons industrial base tested end to end and so the most fearsome and effective armed forces in the world”.

    Examined here in much depth . . .

    https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-war

    and . . .

    https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-proxy-war

    and . . .

    https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-proxy-war-b15

  14. Excellent point. Some (few) of us stated at the outset that Putin’s declaration
    “Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.
    We are ready for all outcomes. All decisions have been made.”
    wasn’t a threat of nuclear war (France boasted of nuclear weapons first), and the West came unglued, pushing a narrative of nuclear war.
    It was a threat that has played out. We’ll see the West in economical and social near collapse, since it blundered into Russia’s trap(s)
    Who needs nuclear weapons when one’s enemies ignorantly stick their heads into waiting guillotines?

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