Russia

The Trojan Horse of Sudzha

Almost 16 kilometers in darkness, four long days, with little oxygen, with little food or water, almost suffocating from the remnants of methane. Four long days of marching, half-bent, inside a disused gas pipeline with a diameter of merely 170 cm. Man after man after another man, five hundred of them, tenaciously pressing forward. High spirits, excitement of adventure, and the awareness of being part of something grand. Four long days, kilometer after kilometer, gasping for breath, sharing the little food that they have and the little water that they are supplied with. They reach the proverbial end of the tunnel but it is not the the end of their trail. What follows are Jonas-like two days of wait, two days of lying low in the whale’s maw. Their emergence from the maw must be coordinated with the efforts of the comrades in arms operating in the open. They can hear the pounding of the guns, they can hear the movement of the tanks and that of the armoured vehicles. A thought that their presence might be detected prematurely by the enemy sparks anxiety in their minds. These two days of inaction are perhaps the most difficult.

As is known, warfare is not merely a clash of arms. Nor is it merely a contest of strategical thinking. Warfare involves also subterfuge. The most famous is represented by the iconic Trojan Horse. The Achaeans did not conquer the city of Troy by arms, by the ten-year siege, betrayal of some of the Trojans. The Achaeans won the war by means of an ingenious stratagem, by means of cunning and deception, by means of surprise. Similar feats would be employed in the centuries to come by various contesting parties. Such military feats are also pulled off today.

It was in August 2024 that the Ukrainian military forces decided to break through the front line in the direction of Kursk. As the Russians were taken by surprise, Ukrainians managed to conquer over 400 square kilometers and pursued their goal of capturing the nuclear power station in Kurchatov. What was the intention of the Ukrainian general staff and the Ukrainian civilian leaders?

First, the Ukrainian authorities wanted to raise the morale of the society. Months of retreat, months of Russian advance had played havoc with the will to fight or to resist the enemy.

Second, the Ukrainians had hoped to distract the Russian forces from the other segments of the front line and thus make it easier for Ukrainian soldiers to withstand Russian assaults there.

Third, the Kursk region, if captured and permanently held by Ukrainians, might become a bargaining chip in future negotiations between Kiev and Moscow. Kursk could be exchanged for one or a few or all the provinces claimed by Russia.

So far, so good. It was to the Ukrainians’ disadvantage that Russians had numerical superiority in manpower and equipment, so they could quickly mobilize troops that had been held in reserve and launch a counteroffensive. Strictly speaking it was not a counteroffensive in the true meaning of the word. Rather, Kutuzov-like harrowing. The Russian troops limited themselves to pounding the enemy by means of their artillery and drones, and severing the enemy’s supply lines. It took a lot of time but it proved to be successful. That’s what General Kutuzov opted for when Napoleon invaded Russia. Rather than fighting a series of spectacular battles, he enticed the enemy deep inside the country and let the European troops overreach themselves, to exhaust themselves. Didn’t Ukrainians know about it?

One of the focal points during the fight over the Kursk region was the town of Sudzha. It is here where the Trojan Horse comes into play. It happens so that a disused gas pipeline runs by Sudzha and this pipeline was to be employed by some five hundred selected Russian soldiers. At first the engineers presented the blueprints of the pipeline. They were available because the pipeline was constructed during the times of the Soviet Union. Then some of the remnants of the gas was pumped out as much as it was feasible. Despite these efforts, a lot remained inside. Next, the selected fighters entered the dark chasm. It took four days for the 500 soldiers to move almost 16 kilometers along the pipeline whose diameter is 1.7 meter. They had difficulties breathing and they were running low on their food and water supplies. When they reached the outlet of the pipe, they they stayed put two more days, waiting for the opportune moment to emerge and attack the enemy. When they eventually carried out an assault, the Ukrainian troops were taken by surprise and went into panic. You can only imagine the feeling of suddenly discovering that the enemy is shooting not only from the front but also from the rear.

Though the place from which the Russian troops were emerging was soon localized by Ukrainian drones and consequently shelled by the artillery, the overwhelming majority of the Russian fighters (if not all of them) had already left the belly of the Trojan Horse – the chasm of the pipeline – and were engaging the enemy. The days or rather hours of the Kursk salient were counted. Before the month of March expired, Ukrainians lost the Kursk salient to Russians.

The Kursk salient! It resonates with Russian historical memory! It was in this Kursk region that the greatest battle of tanks was fought during World War Two between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. It was fought in 1943. Who would have thought that eighty-three years later Russians would fight in the same place… this time against Ukrainians? Who would have thought back then that those Russians and Ukrainians who were united within the ranks of the Red Army would in eighty-three years’ time be at each other’s throats? Who would have thought back then that in eighty-three years one Slavic tribe going by the name of Ukrainians would be equipped with German – German! – tanks and combat the other Slavic tribe known as Russians? The Führer must have made a terrible blunder back then. He sacrificed precious German blood in a war against Russians and Ukrainians making up the Red Army rather than pitting the latter against the former, rather than providing the latter with his Tiger and Panther tanks and idly watching the two ethnicities bleeding themselves dry! Who knows, maybe at present this blunder is being put right…?

Russian soldier mopping up conquered terrain in and around Sudzha. Notice the religious emblems on his outfit.

The EU under “Führer Ursula” is not a peaceful project, says Lavrov

A few days ago, this week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an interview to three Americans: Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson, and Mario Nawfal. Judge Napolitano runs a popular YouTube channel Judging Freedom, Larry Johnson is a former CIA operative, while Mario Nawfal runs his own channel on YouTube. A few days prior to the Lavrov interview, the last of the three mentioned interviewed Belarus’ President Alexandr Lukashenko. The interview with Minister Lavrov lasted an hour and a half and was conducted in English without an interpreter.

Go and have a listen before it is not taken down by YouTube. If you think you can form your own judgement, you need to know what the other side to the conflict has to say. Especially from the horse’s mouth, so much so that Minister Lavrov did 95% of the talking. Below a few take-aways from the interview.

① Russia is a Christian country, a Christian nation with Christian values. The United States and Western Europe have departed from Christianity and have been pursuing deviant ideas of the alphabet sexuality, unisex toilets and the like.

② The West promised Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastwards by an inch and broke its promise. Even if it were not formulated in written form (it was), a man of honour keeps his word.

③ Security cannot be divisible, i.e. one country cannot provide for its security at the expense of another country. Expanding NATO may increase the West’s security, but it certainly decreases the security of the Russian Federation.

④ Ukraine itself is to blame for the losses that it has sustained. Had there be no coup d’etat as a result of which legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych was made to flee the country, Ukraine would not have lost Crimea; had Kiev abided by the Minsk I and Minsk II Accords, Ukraine would not have lost the four eastern provinces.

⑤ Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president who was toppled by the coup in 2014, had every right to reconsider Ukraine’s association with the European Union. There was no malice on his part, nor was he a Russophile. The decision of associating Ukraine with the European Union had very serious economic consequences. At that time there were no tariffs between Ukraine and Russia, but there were tariffs between Ukraine and the European Union. An association with the European Union meant lifting the tariffs between the EU and Ukraine, which would have meant the necessity of imposing such tariffs between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as the Russian Federation needed to protect its market against European products. Since Ukraine’s trade with Russia was way larger than that with the EU, an association with the EU would have meant huge economic losses for the country.

⑥ The European Union is not a peaceful project. Minister Lavrov quoted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen who said that “peace in Ukraine could actually be more dangerous than the war that is currently taking place,” and quoted Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, who floated an idea of expanding the alliance or the alliance’s tentacles as far east as China, Korea and the Pacific Ocean. One of the most bellicose politicians of the European Union is its leader Führer Ursula, as Lavrov put it, and mentioned the 800 billion earmarked by her for the re-militarization of the continent.

⑦ All the anti-Russian campaigns like those centered around the downing of the Malaysian airliner, the Skripal and the Navalny cases, the Bucha massacre allegedly perpetrated by Russians were aimed at harming the international image of the Russian Federation. This is easy to prove because in each of the aforementioned cases Russia’s request to have access to the medical, chemical, legal and other documentation was denied.

⑧ Human rights have been weaponized by the West. Human rights only serve as a pretext to meddle with the internal affairs of other nations and as a justification for assaulting them militarily.

That’s Minister Lavrov’s understanding of the ongoing conflict between the West and the Russian Federation, that’s in a nutshell Russia’s view of the current political situation and its causes.

Military (mis)calculation

Recently, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk quoted the International Institute for Strategic Studies according to which Europe together with Ukraine has a strength of 2.6 million troops, the United States has 1.3 million troops, while China – 2 million and Russia barely 1.1 million. Then the Polish prime minister pathetically suggested that Russia should be crushed under such a force and should fear the West. Wow!

You know, Donald Tusk was a student of history. He must have been absent-minded during the lectures or he may have forgotten every bit of what he may have learnt. When throughout the history of humankind has it ever been a rule that sheer numbers always prevail in conflicts? An example from European history.

The Kingdom of Prussia comprised basically two relatively small territories, one around Berlin and on both sides of the Oder estuary, and the other on the Baltic Sea (present-day north-eastern Poland plus the Kaliningrad province that since World War Two belongs to Russia). These two territories were even not connected by land: they were flat, with no resources, and scarcely populated This small Kingdom of Prussia threw down the gauntlet to a huge Habsburg Monarchy (yesterday’s European Union in the centre of the Old Continent, made up of present-day Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and a huge part of Romania) and won the wars of 1740-42 and 1744-45, tearing away from the Habsburg monarchy Silesia (today’s south-western Poland). In an attempt to regain the lost province, yesterday’s European Union, i.e. the Habsburg Empire, allied itself with Russia and France – two superpowers of that day – and again went to war against the little Kingdom of Prussia – the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63 – and… lost it a third time. The numerical advantage of the anti-Prussian coalition was enormous (the Habsburg Monarchy, France and Russia along with Saxony, not to mention many other German principalities) and yet it turned out the be of no use. Towards the end of that costly and protracted war Russia decided to withdraw its troops (just like today the United States is disengaging from the crusade in Ukraine), and since Russia left the battlefield, the alliance was soon dissolved.

Another example, an example from today, an example that everybody, not even one interested in politics, is aware of. The tiny state of Israel that is located in the sea of – nay – in the ocean of the hostile Arab, Islamic world. The state of Israel stands its ground, and has stood its ground since its inception. True, it has been supported by the United States, but even then: Israel is a tiny country surrounded by usually unfriendly, much more densely populated Arab states. Egypt alone has some 100 million inhabitants, while Israel merely 10 million of which 2 million are Arabs!

That’s the numerical part of the problem. The Polish prime minister did not take into consideration other factors, especially the factor of motivation. Why should the Portuguese or the Norwegians, the Greeks or the Swiss go to war with Russia over Ukraine? Why should they sacrifice anything for this war? Why should they compromise the quality of their life because of Ukraine of which they know next to nothing, of which the older generations did not even learn at school as a separate state because thirty years ago there was no Ukraine on the political map of Europe? Even if forced, Portuguese, Greek or Norwegian soldiers are not likely to really fight somewhere in the East, somewhere in Ukraine. Do you remember the Italian, Hungarian and Romanian soldiers that fought hand in hand with Germans on the eastern front during World War Two? They were usually more of a burden rather than real aid. Was it not the same with Napoleon’s incursion into Russia? The French emperor led troops from almost all of Europe. His numerical advantage was more than obvious. How did he fare?

What do numbers mean? Numbers only have their abstract value in abstract mathematical considerations. It is only in maths that every one and every other one is always the same two. In real life these two soldiers are by no means the same as those two soldiers, the military value of these two tanks and their crews is not comparable to the military value of those two tanks and their crews, and so on, and so forth. There are so many factors that matter that it is almost impossible to take them all into account. Numbers only win when other major factors are more or less comparable. Numbers in themselves are just stats, abstract metrics. Europe and the United States – to quote again Donald Tusk or the International Institute for Strategic Studies – have altogether 3.9 million of professional troops, Russia – 1.1: a proportion of roughly 4 to 1. What is reality? Reality demonstrates that Russia is holding a quarter of Ukrainian territory while Europe is flexing its flaccid muscles and issuing threatening statements – now from Paris, now from London – and becomes ever more livid with its helpless – childlike – hatred of Russia.

Freaking out in a meltdown

The news was a bombshell! President Donald Trump called President Vladimir Putin! Worse, President Donald Trump and the closest men in his administration have made overtures to negotiations with Russia in that Ukraine will not be a member of NATO nor of the European Union, nor regain its territories (US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech in Brussels, Feb 12, 2025). Still worse, it looks like the negotiations between the United States and the Russian Federation might take place without the European Union! That they will take place without Ukraine goes without saying. Three years of muscle flexing on the part of the European Union, three years of warmongering, three years of sanctions, three years of the rabidly anti-Russian agitprop, three years of lavishly honouring President Zelensky, three years of this and that have been thrown out the window, have gone into the gutter, have gone down the drain.

Take a look at the livid outraged infuriated hopping-mad wrinkled formal manageresses of the Union: Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas; take a look at that bellicose boss of NATO: Mark Rutte! They all somehow did not expect it, and yet they did, once Donald Trump had won the election. They know not what to do now. They are likely – as said above – to be left out of the equation, chased away from the negotiating table. As the saying goes, those who are not sitting at the negotiating table are lying on it. Ukraine certainly will be lying on the table and be operated on. An organ or two for Russia, an organ or two for the United States. An organ may be territory, natural resources, political control, whatever. Certainly, Ukrainians will have no say. And most likely Europeans won’t have a say either!

SecDef Pete Hegseth

Couldn’t it all have been foreseen right at the start, three years back? Does one need to be an experienced politician to figure out the military and economic disproportion of the players involved in the hostilities? One must have been fed on egregious glaring lies to have believed that Russia was about to collapse with the first wave of sanctions while confronting gallant Ukrainian soldiers! One must have been on a dope to have imagined that Ukrainians would cross the border and march into Russian territory! One really must have been out of his senses to have assumed such a scenario!

Three years, allegedly half a million killed in action, hundreds of thousands maimed, tens of thousands missing, a country experiencing wide-spread damage, devastated families, decimated generations of young men… What has been achieved? How can the Western leaders soothe their conscience? You know how: they have no troubled conscience. They are like Madeleine Albright (just look at her kind face) who justified the death of half a million of raqi children; they are like Zbigniew Brzezinski, for whom the world was a chess board and nations – consequently – chess pieces; they are like Henry Kissinger, who left a legacy of bombs and chaos in Cambodia.

Chancellor Scholz says Germany is in danger because of the talks between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin! In danger? What does he mean? Is Russia going to march across Poland and assault Germany? Why? Because Russia is desperate to take care of the millions of the Third Worlders and thousands of sexual perverts between the Oder and the Rhine? My oh my!

Russia doesn’t care about sanctions

Having conducted an interview with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson has done recently the same with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. In this eighty-minute talk the interlocutors covered all the current political problems, focusing on Ukraine. Minister Sergei Lavrov enumerated major events leading up to the current war, facts that the Western man in the street is either ignorant of because the Western media choose not to present them, or facts that the Western man in the street is familiar with, but has been provided with an entirely different interpretation. We are not going to repeat all the points that were mentioned during the Carlson-Lavrov talk. What we are going to do is to call the reader’s attention to the following passage from the interview.

Tucker Carlson asked Sergei Lavrov about conditions the fulfilment of which would induce Russia to discontinue the military operation. The Russian foreign minister repeated the three principal demands:

[1] Ukraine must not be a member of NATO or indeed of any alliance nor even be allowed to conduct military exercises on its territory with the participation of foreign troops;

[2] the territorial changes must be accepted: that is, not only the incorporation of Crimea into Russia, but also the fact that the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson have now constitutionally become parts of Russia by the will of the people living there;

[3] the basic human rights as they are stipulated in the UN Charter about freedom of religious belief, preservation of the native language (in this case Russian) and the like must be abided by in Ukraine.

As Minister Lavrov finished the enumeration of Russia’s demands, Tucker Carlson – probably thinking that Sergei Lavrov forgot about one more point – asked whether Russia wouldn’t like to have the sanctions lifted. To this, Sergei Lavrov replied that sanctions were of little or no importance to Russia because

[1] Russia has learnt to live with them;

[2] Russia has become stronger because of them; and because

[3] Russia has learnt that autarky (economic self-sufficiency) is the best guarantor of independence.

This really should not come as a surprise to anyone. Iran, which is a much smaller country than Russia, has lived under sanctions for over forty years now; Cuba, a very small country, has coped with sanctions for a much longer period. Both these countries continue to survive and to challenge the United States. Russia has all the natural resources that an economy needs, and Russia has really learnt to rely on itself, or – to be more precise – Russia has learnt not to rely on the West, and not to trust the West, which was also what Minister Lavrov said.

Which of the Western Christian religious leaders would even dare to think?

On November 28 this year, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church (roughly an equivalent of the head of the Church of England), gave a speech at the 26th World Russian People’s Council. Here are the points that he addressed:

War in Ukraine. Patriarch Kirill views the conflict as the hostilities between two fraternal nations, hostilities that are fuelled by the managers of the world who pursue the policy of divide and rule. One of the goals of the war is to instil fear in people so as to make them obedient and compliant. Christians, said Patriarch Kirill, are, however, not afraid of the end of the world because Christians are awaiting the end of the world and the final judgment, the victory of good over evil.
Neo-paganism. A phenomenon that is taking root in Russia and although it is as yet a marginal trend, it nonetheless poses a threat to the existence of the nation. It is not merely Russia but also Ukraine, which are fraught with neo-pagans who – in the case of Ukraine – are so strong as to form their own military units. Their ideology or set of beliefs is very similar to Nazism.
Russophobia, a phenomenon that is produced in many universities. Patriarch Kirill posed a question why universities paid by the whole Russian nation produce so many individuals who dislike, despise or hate Russia. Similarly, he posed a question why there are so many books for children and adolescents that disseminate ideas that target the family, morality and all traditional values.
Abortion. Patriarch Kirill repeated as many times before that pregnancy termination was evil and that it ought to be forbidden by law. He praised the many local initiatives acting against abortion.
Excessive alcohol consumption. A problem that Russia has been beset with and continues to be so. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church called on taking up measures to curb this pernicious phenomenon.
Immigration. Patriarch Kirill said that too large a number of non-Russian, non-Orthodox immigrants with a different cultural code was a threat to the very existence of the Russian nation and Russian or orthodox civilization. He also exposed proponents of immigration as individuals who do not care about people from outside Russia but want to enrich themselves employing cheap labour.

Which of the Western Christian religious leaders would as much as think about saying anything against immigration? Against abortion? Against schools and universities that produce people who dislike, despise or hate their own national heritage?