HALF-FULL REPORT 03/25/22
This uncannily prescient monologue was delivered a year ago – April 11, 2021 – by Russian journalist and former member of the Duma (Russia’s Parliament) Alexander Nevzorov for his 1.64 million subscribers to his YouTube channel.
Now that his astoundingly accurate predictions are coming true, Reuters reported ereyesterday (3/23) that the Kremlin wants him in jail: Top Russian Journalist Defiant in Face of Fake News Investigation.
But before a sitrep on how catastrophically bad the Russian military is doing in Ukraine, I need to tell you a story. And no worries, this HFR will be about lots of other stuff, not just Ukraine. Now let’s relax and settle in, it’s storytime.
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In the early 1980s, I developed what the press called the “Reagan Doctrine” as a strategy to get rid of the Soviet Union by getting it to implode, collapse in upon itself like a demolition team does with a building without causing destruction around it.
In many Reagan White House briefings, I described the structure of the Soviet Empire as composed of its Outer colonies beyond USSR borders – Mongolia, Cuba, Nicaragua, several in Africa, and those of Eastern Europe – and its Inner colonies inside the USSR – the Baltics, the Central Asia Stans, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine.
The Soviet Union doesn’t simply possess a colonial empire outside its borders, I explained, but is a colonial empire within its borders.
I said the collapse would come in three stages. First, support Anti-Soviet freedom fighters in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere with the weapons they needed to win. Once they achieved a victory – just one – showing that the Soviets could be defeated, the Anti-Soviet freedom fighter cause would rapidly propagate to Eastern Europe, needed support for which would not be weapons but fax machines and US dollars in cash.
When our Stinger missiles enabled the Afghan Mujahaddin to defeat the Red Army – the retreat completed on February 15, 1989 – the propagation in Eastern Europe was so fast the Berlin Wall fell less than nine months later, November 9, 1989.
So now that the second stage – liberation of the Soviet colonies of Eastern Europe – was quickly unfolding, it was time to effect the third stage of the Reagan Doctrine: the liberation of the USSR’s Inner Colonies. I had been arguing this for years now, and it still proved a bridge too far for almost everyone in the Reagan White House to believe possible.
There was one exception – a young lady in her mid-twenties working in the White House Public Liaison Office named Kathy Chumachenko. Both her parents were born and raised in Ukraine, emigrating to the US in the late ‘50s. We became friends as I was the only person in the White House who actually believed Ukraine would be free and sovereign before long.
I told her about these fervent Anti-Communist Russian exiles I met in Paris in 1983. They argued passionately for a free and democratic Russia. That’s what I want too, I told them. Then I asked the leader of the group, “What about freedom and democracy for Ukraine?” His eyes bulged and his face turned bright red. “Ukraine’s a part of Russia!!” he yelled at me angrily. “It will always be a part of Russia!!” All I could do was smile at him and say, “Sorry, if freedom’s good for you, it’s good for them.” He told me to get out of his office.
Kathy offered to arrange meetings for me with the leading pro-democracy leaders in Kiev and Lviv, so off I went. I met the father of modern Ukrainian independence, Viacheslav Chornovil, a sweet lovable guy who, for all his passion for the freedom of his people, deeply wanted that freedom to be achieved peacefully. That, even though he had been in the Gulag for 17 years.
I met the two other primary leaders of Ukrainian independence, Mykhailo Horyn and his brother Bohdan Horyn. All three were imbued with a simple and deep patriotism – they didn’t want enemies, they just wanted Ukraine to be a free sovereign country.
I met them all three times, in 1988, 1990, and 1991 – the last with my then 7 year-old son Brandon. The last time was really thrilling, with the streets of Kiev filled with people waving blue and yellow flags, overjoyed that their country was to be free at last after over 300 years (since 1686) of rule by Russia. The dream of Voltaire was coming true, who wrote in 1731, ”Ukraine has always aspired to be free.”
Kathy moved to Kiev in 1992 to set up the office of accountants KPMG. There she met the governor of the new National Bank of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko. They fell in love and were married in 1998. Ukraine remained bedeviled by the Kremlin and KGB installing via bribery and corruption their pro-Russian stooges as president, Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma. Viktor decided to run for president in 2004.
When the Kremlin tried installing a third Kremlin stooge, Viktor Yanukovych, with an overtly rigged election, Ukrainians rebelled in the Orange Revolution – during which Putin tried to assassinate Yushchenko with dioxin poisoning. He survived but his face was left disfigured. The election was annulled and reheld, Kathy’s husband won – and suddenly my White House pal Kathy Chumachenko was now First Lady of Ukraine Kateryna Yushchenko.
That lasted from 2005 through 2010, when Putin succeeded in rigging the election for his puppet Yanukovych – whose pro-Russian/anti-Europe policies and gargantuan corruption caused Ukrainians to rebel once again in 2013-14 in the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity.
Yanukovych was forced to resign along with his pro-Russian government, infuriating Putin so much he sent the Russian Army to invade and seize a sizable part of Ukrainian states of Luhansk and Donetsk bordering Russia, plus invading and outright annexing Crimea. He has never stopped bullying, intimidating, and threatening Ukraine since.
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Kathy now tweets updates on the war at https://twitter.com/KatyaYushchenko. There’s no need here for details on how badly the Russians are losing and retreating, on the defensive save for terror-bombing cities, while Ukrainian forces are on the offensive across the country.
Just one example out of scores. Yesterday Ukrainian forces obliterated a defensive Russian position at Lukyanivka outside Kiev, with hundreds of Russian soldiers dead or running away, tanks, APCs, trucks and all war equipment smoldering wreckage. Watch this short clip with this commentary:
“Face of war – and a face of a Ukrainian Woman. Probably a different life a month ago. Now in a volunteer unit she strides through the smoke of burning Russian vehicles in recaptured Lukyanivka. That young woman, just nonchalantly coming out of the smoke of a brutal battle, going about her deadly business. Fearless…looks like she could deal with anything. Don’t mess with Ukrainian women. Don’t mess with Ukrainians. Russians go home.”
Let’s instead cut to the denouement.
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What happened at Lukyanivka will go exponential. Thousands of Russian soldiers are trapped in places like the “Bucha Pocket” outside Kiev, no supplies, no food, freezing with frostbite, who are going to die or be POWs.
Putin can no more accept responsibility for his catastrophes than Biden can his. Instead, he’s eating his own: Angry Putin Places Russian FSB Spy Chiefs Under House Arrest. Putin Purges Heads of Russian FSB Security Service’s Foreign Intelligence Branch.
Realize that these are the guys he sent out to poison Yushchenko and Alexander Litvinenko. Karma’s a *****, Vlad. Everyone knows what’s coming next. Sunday NY Post (3/20): Russian Elites Planning To Overthrow Putin. Monday London Mirror (3/21): ‘Russian Elite’ Plan To POISON Putin And Have Chosen A Successor.
What’s more, neither Pootie’s Defense Minister Gen Sergei Shoigu, nor his Chief of the Russian Army General Staff Gen Valery Gerasimov, have been seen or heard of in the last two weeks.
So Pootie’s history, Russia is a military laughingstock and economic basket case – while the world rejoices in the Ukrainian Phoenix heroically rising from the ashes of Putler’s terror bombs.
Those half a trillion dollars of Russia’s frozen in Western banks will be given to Ukraine to rebuild their country more beautiful than before. It will be the coolest thing in the world to be Ukrainian. All the refugees will flock back in. What we are witnessing now is the birth of a nation, united, proud, and fully free to flourish finally and at last.
And who will get the Nobel Peace Prize? One guess:
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And out with the old, indeed. This old senile coot is by now way past his sell-by date. His ineptitude at the NATO summit this week in Brussels was on full global display. The Dem power boys don’t bother thinking about ’24 now – they’re panicking about ’22 – a little over seven months from now.
Thus the question of the moment: Are the Dem Elite planning to do to Biden what the Russian Elite are to Putin?
No, not the Hillary-suiciding-Vince-Foster route or any rough stuff, just political ruination hardball to get him out of office and back to his basement.
But, but, but… what about VP HeelsUp? She has to be included in the package, right?
Roger Kimball is one of the savviest, most plugged-in conservatives in Washington and has been that way for a long time. So long he’s developed a keen instinct for knowing which way political winds are blowing. Which is why this of Roger’s on Sunday (3/20) is a serious must-read: Biden’s Handlers Are Preparing to Eject Him (and Kamala).
“I suspect that news, like the revelation from the New York Times that, what do you know, all that stuff about Hunter’s laptop was on the level, like Joe Biden’s bizarre suggestion a couple of days ago that ‘everybody knows somebody’ who has taken nude pictures of some lover and then used them to ‘blackmail’ the person—all that has a different valence now that the Biden Administration is seriously underwater and there are no lifelines in evidence.
The issue is never the issue. I suspect that Joe Biden is being prepped for ejection. Exactly how it will happen I do not yet know. But he is on the threshold, or possibly has even passed the threshold, where he could appear to govern. His minders understand this. They must be the ones to replace him, otherwise they themselves risk being replaced, which would be intolerable.
As I say, it’s not entirely clear yet how the defenestration will take place. Obviously, Kamala will have to be dealt with first, and she will be. Look for some ground softening stories such as the Times just served up about the laptop. They won’t be long in coming.”
Note that another savvy guy concurs (his nickname for the NY Times is Pravda):
Wow… Dem honchos are really in Panic City, aren’t they? Dumping Biden/Harris before the election, when these wankers stole a presidential election to put him where he is – they think that is what will keep Dem majorities in the House & Senate seven months from now? As the saying goes, whatever planet they’re living on, it ain’t this one…..
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And how about their foisting some scatterbrained woketard affirmative action baby who doesn’t even know what a woman is on the Supreme Court for life? They’ve even talked He-man Joe Manchin into voting for her.
News flash for Dems: All this won’t work. Fuggedaboutit — you’re going down in flames. Victor Davis Hanson calls it The Real Reset, and it’s worth absorbing entire:
“Joe Biden believes the Ukraine war will mark the start of a ‘new world order.’ In the middle of the COVID global pandemic, Klaus Schwab and global elites likewise announced a ‘great reset.’
Accordingly, the nations of the world would have to surrender their sovereignty to an international body of experts. They would enlighten us on taxes, diversity, and green policies.
When former President Donald Trump got elected in 2016, marquee journalists announced partisan reporting would have to displace the old, supposedly disinterested approach to the news.
There is a common theme here.
In normal times progressives worry that they do not have public support for their policies. Only in crises do they feel that the political Left and media can merge to use apocalyptic times to ram through usually unpopular approaches to foreign and domestic problems.
We saw that last year: fleeing from Afghanistan, the embrace of critical race theory, trying to end the filibuster, pack the court, junk the Electoral College, and nationalize voting laws.
These ‘new orders’ and ‘resets’ always entail far bigger government and more unelected, powerful bureaucracies. Elites assume that their radical changes in energy use, media reporting, voting, sovereignty, and racial and ethnic quotas will never quite apply to themselves, the architects of such top-down changes.
So we common folk must quit fossil fuels, but not those who need to use corporate jets. Walls will not mar our borders but will protect the homes of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.
Middle class lifestyles will be curbed as we are instructed to strive for sustainability and transition to apartment living and mass transit. But the Obamas will still keep their three mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts.
In truth, we are about to see a radical reset – of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear.
The world and the United States are furious over hyperinflation that will soon exceed 10% per year. We will be lucky if it ends only in recession or stagflation, rather than a global depression.
The mess was created by the same apparat who bought into ‘modern monetary theory.’ That silly university idea claimed prosperity would follow vastly expanding the money supply, keeping interest rates at de facto zero levels, running huge annual deficits, piling up unsustainable national debt, and subsidizing workers to stay home.
Natural gas and oil costs are now soaring to unsustainable levels – and to the point where the middle class simply will not be able to travel, keep warm in winter, or cool in summer.
Both in Europe and the United States left-wing governments deliberately curbed drilling and non-Russian pipelines. They shut down nuclear power plants and subsidized costly, inefficient solar and wind projects. They ended up not with utopia, but with fuel shortages, high prices, and energy dependency on the world’s most repressive regimes.
The woke revolution in the West was supposed to teach us that the ‘white male’-dominated Western world is toxic. Its origins, ascendence, and current leisure and affluence were supposedly due only to systemic exploitation, racism, and sexism.
Elites introduced cancel culture, doxxing, deplatforming, and social ostracism to shame these supposed exploiters and to destroy their lives and careers.
Few asked how a supposedly noxious West of some 2,500 years duration became the number one destination of millions of global non-Western migrants and offered the greatest degree of global prosperity and freedom for its citizens.
So a reset reckoning is coming – in reaction to the ‘new orders’ championed by Biden and the Davos set.
In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic ‘No!’ to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility – as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies.
What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.
Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the ‘color our skin.’
The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre ‘mainstream’ media. We will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.
The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.”
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VDH is spot on. There will be a Real Reset in America this November. And it will be energized by the Reset of Western Civilization by Ukraine’s victory over barbarism and savagery. Europe will be whole once more, Russia’s shadow over it will be gone. Western Civilization will regain its pride in itself, and that is what it will take to sweep wokeness away.
The future is ours.