Three flags of continuity or the West’s failure in subduing Russian spirit

On June 17, 2023, in the park of the tercentenary of St. Petersburg there was a ceremony of raising three huge flags of the Russian statehood. They were the black-yellow-white flag of Imperial Russia, the red flag of the Soviet Union and the white-blue-red flag of the Russian Federation. They fly on 180 meter high masts anchored on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland. Each flag measures 40 x 60 meters (two such flags would cover a soccer field) and weighs half a ton. The ceremony was attended by a number of high-ranking officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, who watched the festivities from a yacht, accompanied by a Gazprom CEO who explained the details to him. An orchestra played celebratory music – including the national anthem of the Russian Federation – while actors recited patriotic poems during intermissions. So much for the event.

The flying of three historically successive flags is an important indication of the continuity of Russian statehood. Only a few years ago, no one would have dared to dream that the flag of the Soviet Union would fly on an official mast. Today, after the orchestrated attack on Russia – its leadership, elites and ordinary people have returned to a fervent patriotism. Polls show that the popularity of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union is on the rise. And why? Because of the work of the psychologists of the West. They knew no moderation when it came to propagandizing Russian citizens and dragging the Russian past through the mud. Everything Soviet and everything Russian – that was the message inculcated in the citizens of the Federation – was supposed to be absolutely bad, evil, vile and repugnant. This worked up to a certain point. Then the realization dawned on even the dumbest minds: damn it, when we (Russians) were under the brutal tyrant, the West feared us; now that we are Westernized and want to comply with Western demands, the West began to trample Russia underfoot on a regular basis.

The Western managers of the world are supposedly advised by experienced sociologists, psychologists and masters of propaganda, at least that is what we are told. Strange. Like King Midas, everything these specialists touch turns sour. A frontal attack on a country – any country – usually causes the people to rally around their leader, whether he is a dictator, a satrap or a tyrant. Not for nothing do some historians say that the civil war in the Soviet Union that broke out after the Bolshevik coup d’état, commonly referred to as the Bolshevik or Russian Revolution, actually ended in 1941 and not – as officially stated – in 1923. While fratricide may have ended around 1923, the deep rift that ran through all segments of society did not. Then came June 22, 1941, the German attack that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and all walks of life and ethnic minorities rallied around Joseph Stalin, even though many had hated him just a day before the outbreak of hostilities.

Certainly, Vladimir Putin does not remotely resemble Joseph Stalin, even if Western propaganda would have people believe so. How much more must the citizens of Russia rally around him now that they are all under relentless attack – economic and psychological? In this context, think of the Germans during World War II and their unwavering loyalty to Adolf Hitler. The Western Allies thought they could break that loyalty when they began carpet bombing German cities. With what result? There was not a single uprising. Even the incineration of Dresden three months before the end of hostilities did not help the Allies in this regard. The civilian survivors remained defiant against the enemy and even more loyal to the authorities. Why do policymakers in the West believe that this time will be different?

Just think of it. If you had listened to President Putin’s speeches over the last twenty years – and I dare say you haven’t – you would have noticed [1] how often he proposed cooperation between the collective West and Russia (including Russia’s membership in NATO), and [2] how often he warned the collective West not to expand its military presence in Ukraine. All of this fell on deaf ears. At the time, Russian elites were willing to do almost anything the West wanted to impose on them, but they expected a certain degree of reciprocity: equal treatment and respect. By 2000, Russia was down and out, displaying a fawning attitude toward everything Western. As so often happens – no less a person than Aesop, the Greek author of moral fables, described this phenomenon more than two millennia ago – the West seeing a weak partner and decided to make a killing. And yes, the West would have succeeded if Russia had been ruled by another Boris Yeltsin. Tough luck, though: Boris Yeltsin was replaced by Vladimir Putin.

But Vladimir Putin, as mentioned above, was also ready to cooperate instead of compete, to reciprocate good deeds instead of retaliating against bad ones, to benefit from each other instead of harming each other. In vain. Early on, he was labeled a dictator and treated as such. For a long time, the world’s Western managers tried to turn some of Russia’s elites against the country’s leader. This could have succeeded: After all, if Russian billionaires and millionaires had their accounts in Western banks, if they bought real estate in the West, if they had their children educated in Western universities, if – last but not least – Russian elites driven by inferiority complexes (so typical of Central and Eastern European nations) desperately tried to shake off their – as they thought – Russian backwardness and adopt the Western way of life, then these Russian elites were easy prey for the Western powers. Unfortunately for the Western elites, their overconfidence, vanity, coupled with utter contempt for their great Eastern partner, led them to overplay their hand. As a result, they must now watch in horror the resurgence of Russian patriotism, the strengthening of Russian consciousness of historical continuity, the reconciliation of Russia with its past, and the rallying of Russian citizens around the Russian leader. Moderation would have led to the West’s gentle domination of Russia; high-handedness has led to a clash. Moderation would have further weakened Russia’s patriotic and compliant spirit; hostility has aroused self-respect and self-esteem.

The three flags flying on the three poles symbolize not only historical continuity, but also unity between Russians of different political persuasions: Monarchists, Post-Communists, Republicans, you name it. Looking at the three symbols, everyone finds something for himself, for his beliefs and feelings. Would an American president dare to fly the Confederate flag opposite the national flag of the United States to please Southerners? Would a French president raise a white flag along with the French national flag to please French royalists? Would a German chancellor fly the German imperial flag – let alone the flag of the Third Reich! – in front of the Bundestag to show the continuity of German statehood? Would a German chancellor allow the flag of the short-lived German Democratic Republic to be displayed in a public place on an equal footing with today’s flag? No, European leaders prefer the flag of the European Union to their national symbols, while some of them – Angela Merkel in particular – are known to regard the national flag with disgust.

France in flames

The dams are broken. The migrants show their true colors. Their rage is excessive and unbridled. The French police are on edge. This will not end well. Naked King Emmanuel Macron blames social media and video games for the riots. Such impudence will not be forgotten. Maybe in the next step he will block social media like once Erdoğan and Trudeau? In Moscow, Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, on the other hand, the streets are quiet. It is not reported that under Erdoğan’s terrible dictatorship hordes of discontented migrants want to set Istanbul on fire. And Brussels is just now enforcing its migration pact with coercion. Who are these technocrats who are plunging once proud nations and admired countries into the abyss? What is their real goal? Certainly not the rule of law.

“You will know them by their fruits” – this quote fits both EU politicians and migrants. But I like to use it in reference to parents and their children, that is, I know what parents are like by watching their children.

The Muslim percentage in many secondary schools in France is not infrequently 60%. Prayers are forbidden in school, yet they are organized by the students. These students also massively bully girls who do not wear appropriate clothing. Their parents don’t seem to mind. Are they able to educate their children to be law-abiding citizens?

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) have long since infiltrated Western Europe. The decision makers play into their hands by not allowing the special services to stop this process, by censoring critical statements about migrants, by turning a blind eye to what is happening in schools, by not encouraging police in the fight against silent/loud jihad, by making migration pacts, by pressuring Eastern European counterparts in this regard, by giving NGOs on the Mediterranean a free hand when it comes to migrant smuggling, by … Decision makers in France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Austria, in the Netherlands, in … .

Why do people trust central bankers?

I can’t understand that. I would rather say: There should be a movement here and there under the prevailing circumstances, a kind of yellow vest against the bankers. But lo and behold, the anti-globalists protest against the “rulers” during the G7 summits, as if they don’t know who pulls the strings in G7. The bankers were, are and will be spared. Look at the history of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, how it was mercilessly swept away by the rulers. You could say: like an oppositional movement in Russia, but in the middle of freedom-loving America. What does the dictatorship of the bankers look like at the moment? And what threats does it pose to us?

Mario Draghi. Remember his assurance that he would do everything to preserve the euro and its stability? Whatever the cost? This is what he said and did in fact, but at the expense of taxpayers. A more recent example: Jerome Powell, the head of the FED assured on June 21 of this year, in relation to the problems of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. market, made by rigorous actions of the FED and SEC against the platforms and banks dealing in this digital money, that he would do everything to preserve the dollar as the main reserve currency in the world. How much will this cost the American taxpayers? Hello, Mr. Powell! Have you lost touch with reality? The Saudis are renouncing U.S. guarantees and reconciling with Iran; China is trading with the yuan with its partners; The BRICS countries are banding together, looking to add new members, including perhaps France – who knows? And you, Mister Powell, together with your colleagues, want to introduce the digital dollar, called “FED-NOW”, sometime in July 2023 at any cost to show every country in the world who rules here? Pride always comes before a fall.

As always, the next crisis is carefully prepared. One day an article appears, for example in “Financial Times”, the other “qualitative” media follow the topic. Then comes the “crisis,” always like a bolt from the blue. What is the “Financial Times” writing now? That the Bundesbank is broke. And that’s true. But then they publish a counter-statement. After all, the “crisis” has to be baptized in the media at the right time. They have to wait until the bankers themselves (the owners of the leading media) will give a sign to the editors; Yes, you may write that now because all the rats have long since fled the sinking ship and the captain never existed.

Why would the Bundesbank need a bailout right now? Because it is, of course, too big to simply let it fall? Yes, of course. But the reason is too boring for the average citizen, so he ignores the facts, but as always only until the headlines sound the alarm or until the next “unexpected” tax increase comes along. It is about bonds, the world of the bankers, which hardly everyone understands and therefore fails as a small investor mostly because he invests against the current, by the way.

Super Mario, otherwise called “Cost what it may”, bought for years from the member banks of the ECB their government bonds so that they (especially his Italian home central bank) could service their debts. Thus, the over-indebted PISA countries did not become insolvent. But, wait, wasn’t that forbidden by the Maastricht Treaty? Yes, of course, but only if the bank in Frankfurt am Main had bought the debt directly from the states. The states, however, wisely sold their debts to the biggest bigwigs in the financial world, including the infamous funds like Black Rock. Thus, the ECB financed and continues to finance the private US money industry, which has done nothing to any EU citizen. These piles of the securities were hoarded in the bunker in Frankfurt and the great Italian banker had hoped that they would not lose value. But then inflation came, and his successor (remember: he himself did not) had to raise interest rates significantly. Since while prime rates were rising, fixed-income securities were losing value, it turned out that the bunker was full of toilet paper. Independent journalists (not those from the leading media) have calculated that the total loss of the EU monetary guardians could be as high as 500 billion euros. If the Bundesbank takes a stake in the ECB of about 10%, that’s already a small problem. But as a well-known German politician once said: Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank. The euro will last forever. Maybe for 1000 years.

BRICS on the march

More and more countries have aspired to belong to BRICS since 2009, but none from the West. The BRICS countries represent 40% of the world population and 25% of the global GDP. Thanks to BRICS, China can impose its vision of international cooperation and Russia can show that it will not be isolated on the stage of global players. The group is a thorn in the side of the Americans all the more so that a dozen other developing countries (marked in orange on the map below) want to join the current five countries of the alliance (red).

What America certainly doesn’t like is the fact that French President Macron communicated the other day his interest in attending meetings of the alliance. France in BRICS would be a trigger for profound changes in the geopolitical landscape. We bet that Turkey can also join soon, which, like the case of France, will weaken the importance of the UN as a purely Anglo-Saxon project and that of NATO. Indeed, the BRICS countries are against the UN’s attempts to link the issues of climate with the issues of security, and France in BRICS can return to the de Gaullean concepts of foreign policy outside NATO.

Source: Silkroadbriefing

A challenge to cohesion in BRICS is the large disparity in countries’ capacities (in favor of China) and the members’ focus on cooperation with the PRC, which results in a smaller number of relationships among the other partners. However, the main factor that has weakened the BRICS in recent years is the deterioration of relations between the largest member states, China and India, since 2017. Border and trade disputes culminated in the clashes on the Ladakh border in June 2020, which almost led to the cancellation of the BRICS summit in the same year and prompted India to deepen cooperation with the United States and the EU.

Now, the West’s involvement in the war in Ukraine is reviving anti-Western sentiments, not only in the BRICS countries. Indeed, it is clear to more and more countries that the war was provoked by NATO’s excessive expansion. The BRICS politicians also want to fight inflation whose cause they perceive not in the Russian attack but in the Western sanctions.

Whether you are pro-Western, pro-Russian, or in favor of the New Silk Road, it is better for all of us to live in a multi-polar world rather than to have all the strings pulled on the Potomac.

Ukraine’s national heroes

May, 1926, Paris. One Sholom Schwartzbard keeps shadowing Symon Petlura, a one-time commander in chief of the Ukrainian army and the leader of the ephemeral Ukrainian People’s Republic. Sholom Schwartzbard, who was Jewish, undaunted, having traced the whereabouts of Symon Petlura, confronts him now in a Paris street, draws out a gun, abuses his victim verbally and fires a few shots at point blank, killing the Ukrainian leader on the spot. Composed, he calmly lets himself be captured by the police, stands later due trial in France and… is fully absolved of guilt. Why? Because Symon Petlura in his capacity as a political leader of Ukraine encouraged or remained inactive while his subordinates decimated the Jewish population in Ukraine during the times of the civil war ensuing after the 1917 Bolshevik coup d’état.

October, 1959, Munich, West Germany. One Bohdan Stashynsky, a KGB agent, lurks in the staircase of a tenement house. Once he sees Stepan Bandera negotiating the flight of stairs, he comes up to him, pulls out a gun and fires or rather sprays cyanide gas, killing Stepan Bandera, who was one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalistic movement, morally if not legally responsible for ethnic cleansing, genocide and massacres of tens of thousands Poles, Jews and Russians in Volhynia, then Eastern Poland, today Western Ukraine.

July, 1768, Serby, southeastern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (today’s Western Ukraine). Ivan Gonta is mutilated, tortured and eventually executed for his leading role in the massacre of Uman (Human), where his Cossacks (=Ukrainians) murdered tens of thousands of Poles and Jews. Ivan Gonta had been surreptitiously captured by Russians, who then handed him over to the Polish authorities, since most of the atrocities that he had committed were committed on the territory of the Polish Crown.

March, 1950, a village near the town of Lvov. Surrounded by the NKVD (Soviet counterpart of American FBI), Roman Shukhevych, a leader of the Ukrainian nationalistic movement (in importance to be regarded on a par with the aforementioned Stepan Bandera) most probably commits suicide, unable to fend off the Russian troops or to break through the encirclement. His identified corpse is burnt and the ashes are scattered in a river. (The same was later done in the seventies in East Germany with the ashes of Adolf Hitler, which – though partially charred – had been kept by the NKVD there.)

July, 1657, in Subotiv, Ukraine, dies Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the leader of the largest Ukrainian uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He dies in his bed, so to say, but he, too, has made a name for himself through numerous acts of slaughter aimed against Poles and Jews, with the victims numbering tens of thousands.

All these individuals are among the greatest national heroes of today’s Ukraine, having many monuments, commemorative plaques and street names to their honour. The voice of Jewish or Polish organizations – representatives of Jews and Poles, two main ethnic targets of Ukrainian ethnic cleansing, massacres and genocide – raise weak objections to the procedure of conferring to these characters a status of Ukrainian national heroes, and turning them into paragons for the Ukrainian youth. Strange. All the more so that the atrocities committed under the official guidance or spiritual leadership of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are still within living memory! German nationals with a comparably reprehensible historical record – Adolf Eichmann, who notoriously sent tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps, or Hans Frank, who in his capacity as governor-general of occupied Poland was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of Poles – were duly tried (the former in Israel, the latter in Germany by the allies) and executed. The same fate met Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, who stood trial in Poland and was duly hanged in 1947.

Somehow comparable atrocities inflicted by Ukrainian leaders on Poles and Jews go almost unnoticed. It is strange when we think about Israel, it is strange when we think about Poland, it is strange when we think about the collective West: after all, people in the West are oh so much sensitive to antisemitism even in trace amounts. All of a sudden Ukrainians get a pass: they are allowed to honour those who were flagrantly antisemitic, and they are allowed to elevate those who carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide on an industrial scale. Why? For decades you could think that in the collective West antisemitism was the gravest, unpardonable, unforgivable deadly sin of them all, graver than racism, white supremacism, homophobia, xenophobia and the rest of them. What has happened? Has the hatred towards Russia surpassed the West’s moral code? Khmelnytsky, Gonta, Petlura, Shukhevych and Bandera were antisemites par excellence, and yet they are honoured in today’s Ukraine while the West (and Israel) turn a blind eye to this cult; is it imaginable that the leaders of the NSDAP could be honoured in post-war Germany?

Worse, the chauvinistic salute or greeting “Glory to Ukraine!” with the response being “Glory the the heroes!”, both coined most likely by Roman Shukhevych, were modelled on the German “Sieg heil!” if not “Heil Hitler!” Who are these heroes who merit glory? You will have known by now: Khmelnytsky, Gonta, Petlura, Shukhevych and Bandera, with each name evoking memories of bloodbaths, slaughter, massacres, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Why do Western politicians wilfully and willingly use that salutation while greeting President Zelensky? If they don’t know what that salutation is associated with, then their advisors and counsellors ought to know; if even their advisors and counsellors do not know, then we are governed by ignoramuses.

One final note: even the battle-hardened, death-inflicting notorious SS-troopers were aghast at the atrocities committed by Ukrainians. The German occupation authorities allowed the Polish locals in Volhynia to possess small arms for the defence against the bloodthirstiness, bestiality and ruthlessness of Ukrainian henchmen inspired by the ideology of Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera. Despite all this the West weaponizes the likes of Bandera and Shukhevych to spite Russia. Who can the West field in the war against Putin? Their own citizens? No. So, Washington and London and Paris and Berlin and even Warsaw! resort to Ukrainian nationalists who venerate Ukrainian war criminals, antisemites and Polonophobes because Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw badly want to destroy Russia. It turns out that every deadly sin can be absolved by those who have the power to forgive or retain sins if the sinner can do a piece of dirty work in their interests.

Gefira 75: Morituri vos salutant

It is really a sorry sight to see young, manipulated people in their twenties who rant in the EU Parliament about putting an end to economic growth. It is a sorry sight to see their gray-haired supervisors who have groomed those youngsters and are now parading them for the whole world to see and having them deliver pseudo-lectures, pseudo-appeals to give up on development. That the likes of Philippe Lamberts or Ursula von der Leyen have had enough and cannot keep pace with the vibrant advance of technology and sound ideas is understandable; that there are young people who want to jump from childhood straight to senility is really sad. Two generations back their peers dreamt of conquering outer space, today young men and women are dreaming of going back to a leisurely existence in the countryside. Why do the young men and women do it?

They are – to put it politely – not quite in their rights senses. They have for the most part graduated from social “sciences” or gender studies; if some of them have dealt with economics, then a special type of economics, like the one socialist countries practised and ended up as they did. These young men and women, groomed to be future Baerboks and von der Leyens, genuinely believe in all that has been fed to their minds. They believe in the end of the world that is looming large unless we – the whole mankind – stop developing. They also benefit from this pro de-growth activism: how many people can have the floor at the EU parliament, stay at a Brussels hotel and play big? How many people can attend such conferences repeatedly every year and travel the world round at who knows whose expense? How many people can feel that important? Narcissism in full blossom!

In the meantime the powers that be have a problem with money. The rising debt, the debt ceiling that is not crossed only because it is constantly raised, the emergence of crypto currencies and the engineering of central bank digital currency are all on the agenda. Let the young care about climate change, immigration, sexual deviance, cancel culture and white supremacy while we – the managers of the world – are busy designing a system of total control. Gefira 75 sensitizes us to these problems. Sadly, while socio- and psychopaths at the top echelons of the world’s elite are hell-bent on preserving their power and subjugating humanity, their red guards – or rather – their green guards are doing their danse macarbe and calling to us with the gladiators words: Morituri vos salutant!

Gefira Financial Bulletin #75 is available now

Morituri vos salutant
Obsession with growth
Target: War on growth
JUSA against cryptocurrencies

Their nemesis

True, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki /ma-TEH-oosh maw-rahv-YETS-kee/ has studied history, but he is sort of oblivious to history’s lessons. What of the low quality of the educational services offered at the university where he was a student or of Mateusz Morawiecki’s lack of diligence, even the most recent events have been lost upon him. Why?

Well, he and the whole Polish establishment (of which some others have also studied history!) are, first, very much belligerent in their relations with Russia, and, second, they have put unlimited trust in the protective powers of the United States, NATO and the European Union. That is to say: Poland is flexing its muscles as if nothing bad whatsoever might happen to her. This is very strange both from the common sense point of view and – as mentioned above – from the lessons that history should have taught Poles (and apparently it hasn’t).

Consider the last one hundred years. Subsequent to World War One, central Europe saw the emergence of a number of more or less national states that sprung up on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, on the debris of the Russian Empire and slightly at the expense of the defeated German Empire. Central Europe was thus carved up between Poland, Czechoslovakia, (territorially reduced) Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. There also emerged the three Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The existence and independence of all those new political entities located roughly in between Germany and Soviet Russia was guaranteed by the Treaty of Versailles and the accompanying treaties, by the League of Nations and a couple of international agreements, especially between France and Czechoslovakia or France and Britain on the one side, and Poland on the other. (As an aside: the interbellum in Europe was full of treaties, pacts and alliances, all guaranteeing the signatories territorial integrity and political sovereignty.) How effective were these guarantees?

In 1938 Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the consent of the then European superpowers (the Sudetenland was annexed by Germany, Slovakia was torn away) and in 1939 the rump state of Czechia was incorporated into Germany; in 1939 Poland was attacked and devoured by Germany and the Soviet Union, despite the guarantees from Paris and London, which pledged solemnly to defend it. Before the war erupted, the Polish authorities would have posters placed in cities and towns that showed the might of Poland’s allies: both France and Great Britain were depicted against the background of the whole globe with all their colonial and dependent territories in Africa and Asia and America. The pictorial message left no doubt: not only the United Kingdom and France, but also almost all of Africa and almost all of southern Asia along with Australia, New Zealand and Canada that were formally parts of the British Empire presented an overwhelming power as compared to the speck of land occupied by Germany. In a word: a tiger and a mouse.

Soon it transpired that there was no force strong enough to stop the German steamroller, with France – a World War One victor from twenty years earlier – being crushed by the Teutons within the length of time comparable to that taken by Germany to conquer Poland. Did that teach the Polish elites a lesson? Not in any way!

During the Second World War the Polish government in exile operated first in France and then in the United Kingdom, again cherishing hopes that with the aid of the superpowers – this time Great Britain soon to be joined by the United States – Poland would regain its prewar territory and preserve its political system despite the advance of Soviet armies! Polish soldiers were sent to fight in Norway, in the skies over England, in North Africa, in Italy (Monte Casino), in France and the Netherlands. A large number of the Polish soldiers hailed from the eastern territories of prewar Poland that would soon be annexed to the Soviet Union, leaving them no place to return to. One might understand that common soldiers could not figure out how world politics operated, but how about higher officers, generals, the members of the government? Did they really believe that Great Britain and the United States were so powerful that Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s leader, would tuck his tail between his legs and withdraw his troops from prewar Poland, leaving its territory to the Polish government in exile? Did they really believe that the United Kingdom and the United States would declare war on Soviet Russia in case Joseph Stalin refused to comply with their demands regarding Poland? If they did, then they were not quite in their right senses. If they did not, then why did they enter into all those alliances? Why did they sacrifice the blood of Polish soldiers, why did they demand that the Polish soldiers be killed, injured, maimed somewhere in Africa or the Netherlands? If those soldiers could not go back to their homeland, and many did not, why fight and die in the first place? In the name of what?

Today’s Polish elites resemble their prewar predecessors. They face a formidable neighbour – this time Russia rather than Germany – and they recklessly provoke him, they recklessly poke the bear in his backyard. Why? Because they feel safe because, first, Poland is allied with the United States, second, Poland is a member of NATO, and third, Poland is a member of the European Union. Today’s Polish elites might as well have posters placed in towns and cities – resembling those from prewar Poland – showing the powerfulness of the Western world. People in their vast majority would fall for the trick just as they believe in all the talk about the righteousness of our side and the wickedness of the Russians.

The question arises: why are the Polish elites operating the way they are? Do they not know recent history? Most of them certainly do not, but some of them – as mentioned in the opening of this text – have studied it, so it would be impolite to suggest that they don’t. If they are aware of the past, then why are they taking the risk of having Poland overrun by the formidable neighbour? Why do they believe that the collective West will stand up for Poland when push comes to shove? Even those who do not know history (the majority of the ruling class) can still hark back to events within their living memory: the withdrawal of Americans from Afghanistan, the incapability of Americans to effectively oppose Russians in Syria and MOST IMPORTANTLY the current, unfolding fate of Ukraine! For years Kiev has been offered guarantees of support, security, aid – you name it – and look what has happened to the country! Ukraine’s 1991 population of 50 million has dwindled to at least 25 million, its economy is in shatters, its population keeps living in duress caused by the hostilities and the country lost huge chunks of territory. If the missiles with depleted uranium are eventually applied there, Ukraine will have had vast swaths of territory contaminated by radiation. Can’t the authorities in Warsaw – and in Prague, Bratislava, Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn – see this destruction, this annihilation, this obliteration that are visited upon Ukraine DESPITE the West’s help? Do they really think that Ukraine will win this war? Do they really think Americans or the French or the British will send their soldiers to stand up for Ukraine or Estonia, or Latvia, or Lithuania, or Poland if the formidable enemy advances West? Are they not aware of the fact that Americans only get militarily involved when they oppose a very weak and politically isolated enemy – Iraq, Yugoslavia – when victory is served them on a silver platter?

Why do they pursue a policy of confrontation with the formidable neighbour? Do they not care what will happen as a result? Is it so hard to imagine the outcome of a possible confrontation? Perhaps they already have their families far away in a western country and so they don’t care…?

It is not the first time that the Polish elites act as though they were in the pay of Poland’s enemies i.e. as though they were acting to the detriment of their own nation. The same goes for Ukrainian elites and the elites of the Baltic States (all these elites without an exception tormented by a deep-seated inferiority complex towards the West and everything western to the effect that they are willing to forfeit the interests of their nations for… a stay in Paris or a trip to Venice or a Western grant or award). They can easily visualize the fate of their countries if Russia invades: they will be provided with weapons by the West while Russia will suffer a hundredth wave of sanctions and they will have their countries turned into a battleground. If the elites have no power of imagination, then let them look at Ukraine, for goodness’ sake!

What has Ukraine gained from relying heavily on the West? Was it all worth the price that the country and the nation is paying now? Could Ukrainian elites really not foresee what had been looming large at least since 2014? How irresponsible must one be to act like that? To think of it: they all – in Poland, Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States – shoot their mouths off about how they want to make the world a better place to live, a place where each individual can develop his potential to the full. What world have they created for the tens of millions of Ukrainians? They should all – the managers of the United States and the European Union – have a very troubled conscience i.e. if they had a conscience in the first place. Chances are they have none, for if they had, they would long have worn sackcloth and sprinkled ashes over their heads. As it is, they rescue INDIVIDUAL Afghans or Somalis and do not give two hoots about the lives of MILLIONS of Ukrainians which they have purposefully ruined only to spite their nemesis: Putin’s Russia.