These are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full at Gefira Financial Bulletin #68.

[…]

Ukrainian and Belarusian path to prosperity

The Ukrainian elite hesitated about which path to take. They hesitated because some of them were clearly pro-Russian (because they are Russians! living in Ukraine) and some were pro-Western. Whenever pro-Western elites prevailed, Kiev flirted with the West and expressed aspirations to become not only a member of the European Union, but also a member of NATO. What has been the result of pro-Western inclinations and Western promises of support? Here you go:

① mass emigration from the country: Ukraine, which had a population of roughly fifty (50) million at the end of the Soviet Union, now has a population of forty (40) million. It looks as if a war has swept through the country!

② Ukraine lost Crimea, and more recently four eastern and southern provinces;

③ Ukraine has been dragged into a war that is killing its citizens, destroying its infrastructure, industry and other resources, while the country

④ is incurring huge debts to acquire weapons and to rebuild what has been destroyed.

And how are people living in Belarus? In this Belarus, which is despised and ruled by the “last dictator in Europe”? Let’s take a look:

[…]

The Ukrainian road to prosperity once again

Haven’t the Ukrainians done the same as Poles did two hundred years earlier? Consider: if they had not listened to the West, if they had followed the path of Alexander Lukashenko:

① they would have retained all the territory of their own state, including Crimea,

② their industry and infrastructure would not have been destroyed,

③ they would not have lost in killed and wounded tens of thousands of citizens,

④ they would not have lost millions of citizens as a result of emigration.

However, the Ukrainians – at least those who came to power – preferred to listen to the West, preferred to be a tool in the hands of Washington, and are now reaping the harvest. As you sow, so shall you reap.

[…]

If nations really could decide….

These are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full at Gefira Financial Bulletin #68.

…to determine their own fate, as they can’t! One of the noble slogans of the United Nations is that nations can determine their own existence: whether they want to be independent or perhaps confederated, whether they want to belong to this or that alliance. It seems that most people in the West are convinced that the self-determination of nations is not just a slogan, but a reality, a political everyday reality, and if no longer a reality, then probably somewhere in the Third World, while in the West this principle is not only accepted as right but also implemented everywhere and always.

Let’s start with the observation we have made many times before: the very name United Nations Organization is deceitful and misleading. For we are not dealing with united nations, but with united states. A nation is the Russians, Turks, Hungarians, French, Chinese, Koreans, Germans, Kurds, Zapotecs, Zulus, and Yakuts, to name just a few. A nation is communities united by blood ties, a common legendary and biological (which most likely means the same thing) ancestor, and therefore a common language. One can argue about the definition of a nation, about where one nation ends and another begins (the continuum Russians-Belarusians-Ukrainians, the continuum Serbs-Croatians-Bosnians), but no one in their right mind would argue that a nation becomes a conglomeration of various ethnic groups brought together ad hoc by a newly formed political or state body. In other words, if we separate a few million Poles, Czechs and Germans from neighboring territories and unite them into one political organism, into some new state, under one common government, having one law, we will not, after all, form a nation, although some will claim so. The English word “nation” here is an excellent example of how language can distort reality. Latin in origin, the word “nation”, which derives from the word “to give birth, to birth” (compare with Nativity, native, innate) shows what a nation really is, and what a nation is not. So, going back to the example given above, the ad hoc combination of Poles, Czechs and Germans in a single state body will not make them into a nation, and certainly not in an instant or even for many years.

[…]

A nation is not a state, and a state is not a nation 
[…]

④ Serbia – Bosnia and Herzegovina – Montenegro. Consider the fact that Serbs, Bosnians, Montenegrins (and also Croats!) speak one and the same language, and the minor regional differences are smaller than those we have for the different varieties of German in German territory or English in the United Kingdom or the United States. What do we see in the Balkans? We see a Serbian nation within the Serbian state and that Serbian nation within the autonomous Republika Srpska that is part of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose other inhabitants, those living outside the autonomous Republika Srpska, are distinguished as a nation(?) solely on the basis of religion, on the basis that they are either Serbs or Croats whose ancestors opportunely – when these territories were under Turkish rule – converted to Islam! Oh, and we have a new nation! A Serb who professes Islam is no longer a Serb but a Bosniak! Interestingly, a German Catholic and a German Protestant or – increasingly nowadays – a German Muslim and a German atheist are not four – FOUR – nations! And a simple question: why can’t the Serbs of the autonomous Republika Srpska that constitutes a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina join Serbia proper? Could it be that they don’t want it? Where is that famous self-determination of peoples sanctified by the UN and all those human rights in general? Wouldn’t it be useful here to hold a referendum and ask the will of the Bosnian Serbs where they would like to live, whether in Bosnia and Herzegovina or perhaps in Serbia proper? Somehow in this case the referendum is not desired. Why?

[…]

⑥ Romania – Moldova. If one knew history or wanted to know history, one would know that (a) Moldavia (present-day Moldova) and Wallachia were the two state-forming principalities from which Romania was formed, and would know that (b) Romanian is spoken in Moldavia (Moldova). That should be enough. Between World War I and World War II, Moldova was part of Romania, then was seized by the Soviet Union and became one of the Soviet republics, and after the collapse of the USSR – an independent state. Don’t Moldovans want to belong back to Romania? Unfortunately, no one asks their opinion, yet the self-determination of nations is sanctified in all those international grandiose declarations…

[…]

⑪ Mongolia – China. How many of the readers of this article know that Mongols make up 95% of Mongolia’s population, and that this is in absolute numbers three million people, while that the vast majority of Mongols – as many as TWENTY-FOUR MILLION – live outside Mongolia, in neighboring China, where they have an autonomous province? What do we think, would the Mongols of China not want to belong to one independent state together with the Mongols of Mongolia? Is it normal that a tiny fraction of a nation has a state, while the vast majority of that nation – though living in a compact area – does not have a state? Is it just? Is this the principle of self-determination of nations at work? Is it possible that three million Mongolians wanted to have their own independent state, while twenty-four million preferred to be subject to the Chinese?

[…]

These are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full at Gefira Financial Bulletin #68.

[…]
Nowadays, the situation is different: In the Euro-Asian heartland, China is making progress as a rising world power (the New Silk Road), and the world islands continue to be controlled by the former maritime powers (France controls most of the countries in West Africa and Sub-Sahara politically, economically, and through a strong military presence), half of the inhabitants of the remotest countries and islands kneel before the late Queen (no one in Central Asia, mind you), and Germany was flattened into a buffer state by the U.S., England and France after the war (especially when it comes to national identity and strength) and disempowered (their “decision makers” cannot decide whether they want to continue to act as a buffer state, a major Western country, or Russia’s stooge). Despite the new circumstances, Mackinder’s thesis remains relevant and the new/old world powers are striving for the heartland.
The “colonies” of the tsars were given the status of autonomous republics in the USSR by the Bolsheviks, which Putin always considered a mistake and questioned their autonomy. One could risk the statement that the Bolsheviks to some extent used soft power towards the autonomous republics, while Putin’s policy is always aimed at collision course towards the 21 autonomous republics: Chechnya, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Moldova are the examples. Putin wanted and wants to fix the mistake of the Bolsheviks, which after the end of the Soviet Union led to the independence of many resource-rich autonomous republics such as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and to the fact that Russia can no longer be supplied with fresh blood (raw materials) from its former colonial veins. The West has failed to understand that by trying to lure Ukraine into its Anglo-Saxon, German, Polish zone of influence, it is threatening the domination of the Heartland. Hence the whole war. If Russians tried to install in Canada an autonomous, Russian republic with traditional, conservative values, a republic, let’s say, of Indians so closely related to Siberian peoples, and supplied them with tons of weapons as First Nations, what would be left of Canadian cities? Are we crazy? No! The enemy, the friends, the target can be chosen at will in today’s times. It may be paradoxical, unrealistic and unfounded, but that’s the way wars are. Once they appear, they are full of idealistic contradictions and their consequences are worse than anyone could have expected. And everyone always wonders: why such a thing in the XXI century? Well, because the human mind and geopolitical points of view do not develop as fast as, say, the electronics and entertainment industries.
[…]
Yakutia
Speaking of the “absurd” idea of Canada being occupied by Russians: Yakutia, an autonomous republic in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, may become the next target of the West. In an area the size of India, there lives on average one person per square kilometer. Actually, they all live in Yakutsk or in small towns, otherwise there are only deserted, frost-soaked, but resource-rich large areas. “One tells that when God created the earth, he sent an angel over Siberia with a sack full of riches. When this flew over Yakutia, his fingers became stiff with cold, and he dropped everything. All the riches, , silver and platinum fell to the earth. However, out of anger at his loss, he punished this region with eternal winter”. 1

Yakutia (number 14 on the map) – the largest of the 22 autonomous republics within the Russian Federation.
[…]

These are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full at Gefira Financial Bulletin #68.

Historical precedent
Germany, 1918. The war has been going on for several years, a devastating war. The Germans occupy a sizable portion of French territory and also all of Belgium, not to mention the vast territories that German soldiers have managed to snatch from Russia. But the war is destroying all sides, and since there is no end in sight, the Germans decided to make concessions and, at least in the West, bring the hostilities to an end. The Entente promised to sit down at the negotiation table. An armistice was concluded. The famous armistice. The armistice or truce is not a surrender, right? A truce is a ceasefire, a truce is the creation of conditions for peaceful talks, a truce is a way to make peace. Aha, said the Western countries. Germany asked for a truce, that is, Germany does not have the strength to continue to fight, that is, we are the victors, that is, we should behave like victors, and treat the Germans as defeated! And to think of it: the Entente states thought so in a situation where a large part of France and all of Belgium were in the hands of… the German army!

[…]

The defeated and humiliated enemy morphed into an avenger. Amid the fierce battles that took place between the Communists, Social Democrats and National Socialists for the seizure of power in Germany, the last of the mentioned ultimately emerged victorious and implemented a program to rebuild the country, its economy, armed forces and international standing. It didn’t take long for the National Socialists to make Germany into a powerhouse, which began to dictate political solutions to the former victors. Finally, as is well known, there broke out a war, a world war. And yet, it might not have happened that way, and after all, neither the National Socialists nor the Communists had to have come to power. If Germany had not been psychologically humiliated, if hard peace terms had not been imposed on it, if it had not been debased, the political forces that demanded a rematch would not have come to power. They would not have gained so much support: consequently, the Second World War would not have erupted.

History likes to repeat itself

[…]

Didn’t the West act in the case of the Soviet Union of the late 1980s and in the case of Russia since the 1990s almost exactly the same way it once did with Germany? Let’s remind ourselves. Lo and behold, the Cold War has been going on for decades and the Soviet Union decides to end it, reaches out to the West and – wonder of wonders! – liquidates itself! Would such a course of events have dawned on anyone before 1991? Without a single gunshot, what was commonly referred to in the West as the SOVIET EMPIRE, crumbled, the states that emerged from its ruins rejected communist ideology and adopted capitalism as an economic system, the states – former satellites of Moscow – came out from under its influence and joined the Western camp. Russia and other post-Soviet republics looked up to the United States as if it were a deity, the disarmament and withdrawal of Soviet then Russian troops from bases outside Russia was taking place. It seemed that a miracle had occurred, that the world had entered an era of peace, international friendship and international cooperation, the “end of history” was even trumpeted. And what?

[…]

Not only did the West expand NATO to include more countries: it established missile launchers in Poland and Romania, and brazenly claimed in the process that they were not directed against Russia but against terrorists from…. Iran!, or that the missiles are purely defensive missiles. Arguably, the Russians should have taken this on faith. President Putin explained to Western journalists, among others, that a missile silo is a missile silo and can hold a defensive and an offensive missile. A child understands this, but not Western politicians.

Russia – like Weimar Germany – was subjected to constant pressure, humiliation, constant swipes, taunts and accusations.

① Khodorkovsky was imprisoned – this was not because he broke the law, but because dictator Putin abhors independent business entities;
② the so-called dissident Nemtsov was killed near the Kremlin – aha! Putin shot him with a rifle aiming from a Kremlin window;
③ Navalny lost consciousness – it’s obvious: Putin, a former KGB officer (we all know what atrocities KGB officers are capable of, don’t we?), had him poisoned (ineffectively as it were, and then had him immediately sent to Germany to enable German doctors to discover the poison in Navalny’s blood!);

[…]

And couldn’t Russia have been treated humanely after 1991? Couldn’t one have had an ally in her? Couldn’t she have been offered substantial financial assistance in the 1990s? After all, this is what was done to Germany after 1945, as a result of which nothing along the lines of National Socialism in Germany has been revived since then! At least here the lessons of history were learned. Why was this not done after 1991 towards Russia? What took the upper hand in American politicians? Arrogance? Risk-taking? Stupidity? Disregard for Russia? Belief in America’s mission? Belief that Americans are the chosen nation to be served by others?

Russia’s war with NATO continues. Did it have to happen? Of course not. However, this war was wanted. If you review the media over the past 30 years, that is, since the collapse of the USSR, you will find that Russia (as well as Belarus) was constantly portrayed in the media in an unfavorable light. Russia was allegedly ruled by a dictator, there was no democracy or freedom and so on, we all know it by heart. Russia was subjected to constant sanctions, constantly accused of various bad things. Suffice it to recall the comedy that unfolded around Navalny, a Russian renegade (for the Western media: a Russian dissident), whom the Russian special services failed even to poison, whom the intransigent Russian government extradited to Germany only for German doctors to determine the presence of poison in Navalny’s body, who, as soon as his health improved, willingly returned to Russia, to a cruel dictator and an inhumane system.

One need only recall the case of the NordStream pipelines. These pipelines allegedly threatened Europe’s energy security, but the most important member of the European Union – Germany – nevertheless built them together with Russia (Europe’s enemy) and somehow did not care about the energy threat. Leaders of other EU member states protested and wailed that they felt betrayed by the European Union, although they had previously told their own citizens that only in the Union was their safe and prosperous future. After all, one NATO country (the United States? the United Kingdom?) blew up the pipeline, and the supposedly sovereign German state didn’t even squeal about it. After all, everyone knows that the pipeline was blown up by the Russians because they didn’t want to turn off the gas tap and decided that bursting the pipe would be faster, cheaper and easier.

Such absurdities can be enumerated in abundance. Gefira 68 takes up some of them. For example, it debunks the myth that nations can determine how they want to live. Gefira 68 also considers whether people are better off under the dictator Lukashenko or the liberal democrat Zelensky. Gefira 68 marvels at the repetition of historical events and the fact that, unfortunately, no one is able or even willing to learn from the past, even the most recent. Isn’t the defeat of Imperial Germany in 1918 similar to that of the Soviet Union in 1991? Don’t the economic problems and resulting social unrest of Weimar Germany resemble the same problems experienced by Russia in the 1990s? Finally, aren’t the resulting wars unleashed then by Germany and now by Russia somehow similar in their genesis?

It is also necessary to take into account that history can repeat itself and the West might “take over” Russia, like many other states around the world, and something “entirely” new, Western might emerge on the Russian ruins. We are trying to confront the concept of the “heartland”, the strategic, untouchable center, thanks to which one can control the world and which must be defended cost it what it may, with the fact that Moscow’s authority in the Russian regions, as in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, is not so secure at all. Note that just before the Ukrainian war there was unrest in Kazakhstan, to which Moscow reacted very strongly. We immediately drew attention to this in our bulletin. In this context, this time we turn our attention to Siberia, where Russia’s treasures rest.