THEY KEPT POKING THE RUSSIAN BEAR THINKING THEY COULD TEAR OUT ITS CLAWS

Looking at it from the ivory towers of Washington and London it all looked pretty straightforward. It had worked in Afghanistan in the Seventies so why not now? But things had changed...

Of course they knew what they were doing. They were dumb, but they were not stupid… if you know what I mean. They surely did know what they were doing. They knew precisely and in great detail the trap they were laying. All it would take to bring Russia down was to just keep on poking the Russian bear and lure it into the trap they had prepared for it.

The goal they set for themselves was clear. Eliminate Russia as a nation that could seriously oppose their desire for global hegemony, to weaken it and to unbalance it to the point where the present leadership and government would be so undermined they could be easily ousted and replaced. Once done they could set about carving Russia up into manageable pieces.

All the elements with which to do the above they believed were in place. There was no way, they thought, that Russia could withstand what they had poised ready for it. All they needed in order to bring most of the rest of the world along with them was ‘just cause’. Was the 2014 coup in Ukraine part of that plan? Was it meant to neatly dovetail into all that was to come as a consequence? I suspect it was and that the resistance to that coup in the Russian-speaking east of the country would rise up as a consequence.

Whether the Maidan coup in 2014 and its inevitable consequences were all part of the plan or whether it was merely a launch point that was spotted eagerly by the neoconservatives who needed such a moment is unknown as yet. If it was all part of the plan to ‘get Russia’ the first hiccup came with the success of the self-defence forces of eastern Ukraine against the Kiev regime’s rather lackluster army. By 2015 it was clear that things were going very wrong for the West on that front.

The Minsk process, initiated by Angela Merkel through a plaintive plea to Vladimir Putin asking for diplomacy to take centre stage, began and continued until it finally foundered in 2021. Upon its demise Ms Merkel, along with Petro Poroshenko confessed that they had never had any intention of seeking peace but had simply used Minsk as a means to building up the Ukrainian army to NATO standards. The plan was back on track.

This was when the poking of the Russian bear began in earnest. Up to this point there had been the (unreported in the West) shelling of the civilian populations of the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. This continues right up to the present day but by 2021 had been occurring daily and nightly since 2014. Though Petroshenko, Ukrainian president through most of this period continually said Russia had invaded Ukraine it was in fact predominantly the male and female populations of Donetsk and Lugansk who were defending these regions with the help of a few hundred Russian volunteers. The plan required that the ‘Russian Invasion’ meme stick and the evidence for such an invasion simply was not there. 

So, start poking the Russian bear harder and if possible get it into a corner from which it would have to break out sooner or later. Russia’s efforts over the best part of a decade through Minsk to reach peace and reconciliation in Ukraine had been fruitless by design. Now, with no pathway to peace available and both Merkel and Poroshenko basically laughing at how Russia had been tricked, Russia turned to another possibility, inviting both NATO and the U.S. state to negotiate on a new security architecture for Europe that would ensure peace and also include Russia within it. This was rejected more or less out of hand by both western powers. Russia was being remorselessly placed in the corner designed for it and inevitably it exploded out from the place it had been pushed into.

Zelensky was talking of regaining Ukraine’s nuclear status. The shelling of Donetsk and Lugansk during the first two months of 2022 reached a new peak of intensity. It became clear that unless Russia acted now the Kiev regime intended to launch an all-out attack on them. Indeed documents were apparently found to this effect. 

Finally, all the pressure, all the relentless poking paid off for the western planners, a cornered Russia, looking at NATO soon to be squatting on its borders and a nation upping its hate campaign against Russia into the distant future, with the knowledge that every means would be used to destabilise the Russian nation, the bear burst from the corner long prepared for her.

The western planners must have been cock-a-hoop on February 24th 2022 when the first Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine. They had done it, they had tormented the bear into doing exactly what they had long planned for. Now would come the barrage of financial and economic weapons that would bring Russia down in combination with the uprising, the Moscow Maidan that would come as a result.  

The heinous, unprovoked attack upon poor, innocent, democratic Ukraine by the dictator-led Russia would bring every nation large or small together in condemnation and unify them as one against this unconscionable Russian aggression.

Putin would fall. The Russian government would fall. The collapse of the Russian economy would bring with it a banking collapse, anarchy and rioting in the streets and a retreat of the nation back to the terrible Nineties. All ripe for regime change, the elimination and replacement of all those the West had long targeted.

Only none of the above rosy scenarios envisaged by the western planners came to be. Their ‘Afghanistan Solution’ of enticing Russia into Ukraine and then laying it low by expenditure of massive amounts of blood and treasure failed. Russia obstinately refused to collapse. The Russian economy began to grow. The Ruble wavered then strengthened. The nations expected to join with the West in condemning Russia failed to do so and instead expanded their trade with it. Public opinion, even in the West was split. As time went on and more people became informed of the entire timeline of events Russia began to receive much more support among them than condemnation. 

The plan had gone horribly wrong. Russia was not weakened, but strengthened. Russia’s reputation in the world had improved, not been destroyed. The collective west was being abandoned by more and more nations it had previously considered its compliant proxies. The reputation for probity the western leaders still retained to some degree even in spite of their disastrous regime change wars approached its nadir. Humiliation awaited for the debacle of Ukraine that they had foisted on the world. Half a million Ukrainians were dead as a result of their convincing Zelensky not to seek peace but to fight on. The plan was as good as dead. But still they kept poking the Russian bear… and we now know what to expect next, don’t we?