Putin And What Really Matters On The Chessboard

Putin And What Really Matters On The Chessboard

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

President Putin’s meeting with a group of Russian war correspondents and Telegram bloggers – including Filatov, Poddubny, Pegov from War Gonzo, Podolyaka, Gazdiev from RT – was an extraordinary exercise in freedom of the press.

There were among them seriously independent journalists who can be very critical of the way the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) are conducting what can be alternatively defined as a Special Military Operation (SMO); a counter-terror operation (CTO); or an “almost war” (according to some influential business circles in Moscow).

It’s fascinating to see how these patriotic/independent journalists are now playing a role similar to the former political commissars in the USSR, all of them, in their own way, deeply committed to guiding Russian society towards draining the swamp, slowly but surely.

It’s clear Putin not only understands their role but sometimes, “shock to the system-style”, the system he presides actually implements the journalists’ suggestions. As a foreign correspondent working all over the world for nearly 40 yearsnow, I have been quite impressed by the way Russian journalists may enjoy a degree of freedom unimaginable in most latitudes of the collective West.

The Kremlin transcript of the meeting shows Putin definitely not inclined to beat around the bush.

He admitted there are “operetta Generals” in the Army; that there was a shortage of drones, precision munitions and communication equipment, now being addressed.

He discussed the legality of mercenary outfits; the necessity of sooner or later installing a “buffer zone” to protect Russian citizens from systematic Kiev regime shelling; and he stressed that Russia will not answer Bandera-inspired terrorism with terrorism.

After examining the exchanges, a conclusion is imperative: Russian war media is not staging an offensive even as the collective West attacks Russia 24/7 with its massive NGO/soft power media apparatus. Moscow is not – yet? – fully engaged in the trenches of information warfare; as it stands Russian media is only playing defense.

Arguably the money quote of the whole encounter is Putin’s concise, chilling evaluation of where we now stand in the chessboard:

“We were forced to try to end the war that the West started in 2014 by force of arms. And Russia will end this war by force of arms, freeing the entire territory of the former Ukraine from the United States and Ukrainian Nazis. There are no other options. The Ukrainian army of the US and NATO will be defeated, no matter what new types of weapons it receives from the West. The more weapons there are, the fewer Ukrainians and what used to be Ukraine will remain. Direct intervention by NATO’s European armies will not change the outcome. But in this case, the fire of war will engulf the whole of Europe. It looks like the US is ready for that too.”

In a nutshell: this will only end on Russia’s terms, and only when Moscow evaluates all its objectives have been met. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Back on the frontlines, as pointed out by the indispensable Andrei Martyanov, first-class war correspondent Marat Kalinin has conclusively laid out how the current Ukrainian metal coffin counter-offensive has not been able to reach even the first Russian line of defense (they are a long – highway to hell – 10 km away). Everything NATO’s top proxy army ever assembled was able to accomplish so far was to get mercilessly slaughtered on an industrial scale.

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