On June 25 of this year, I was lured out of bed with news  that Russian helicopters were shooting at Russian armed columns on their way to Moscow. When I got out of bed it was even better: twenty-five thousand armed Wagner mercenaries had seized control of Rostov-on-the-Don and were on their way to Moscow. 

Then it was all over by lunch. Prigozhin changed his mind, and called the whole thing off. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, former hotdog salesman, now commander of Wagner private army

Blink - or sleep in - and you would have missed it. Never in my life has such a huge news story amounted to so little. 

For the briefest of moments - less than an afternoon in fact - it looked like the world world was entering into a new phase. One of the world's biggest and most problematic countries was about to implode in on itself. Who knows what it would look like afterwards, but at the very least, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was through. Putin couldn't possibly fight a civil war and a foreign war at the same time, especially if the rebels controlled the border areas. Russian forces would have to come home, or else wind up unsupplied and encircled. It was over.  

Until it wasn't. 

You ever been awoken from a deep sleep, in the middle of an amazing dream, because your fucking air conditioner chose that moment to "CLANG"?  That's what it felt like. For a couple hours, it really felt like Victory was around the corner. If you think we're disappointed, imagine how the Ukrainians must feel! 

Still, it's difficult to see how this could fail to benefit Ukraine somehow or other. At the very least it'll further demoralize Vatniks on the front line: bickering leadership is rarely condusive to morale. And a couple expensive Russian helicopters were shot down. . .

If I made too much of it, in my defense I wasn't the only one: I daresay most of the internet, experts and amateurs alike, assumed full-scale civil war was on. When twenty-five thousand armed mercenaries start marching to the capital, it's not an unreasonable assumption to make. Death and destruction seemed far more likely than *poof* - nothing. I'm in the middle of Antony Beevor's Russia: Revolution and Civil War, and this was more or less how the last Russian civil war started, so it was not exactly a ridiculous thing to think. 

What the hell was Prigozhin playing at? Who the hell knows. Commentators are all a tizzy because there really is no logical explanation (not that logic ever had a place in Russia) or rational justification for it. Was he bluffing? Did he realize he bit off more than he could chew? Did he think his support was not strong enough? Or some other end game we can't even imagine and won't know for years to come. That'd be my guess. 

The whole thing is weird. The only thing I'm certain of is you'd have to be a Grey Zone imbecile to think either Putin or Prigozhin has come out of this stronger. 

 

 The Nova Kakhovka Dam has been blown, flooding large parts of southern Ukraine. Thousands will need to evacuate. Thousands lack clean drinking water. Untold numbers will drown. Thousands are without power. Agriculture in the region has been ruined. Most of the animals in Nova Kakhovka Zoo have died. It is a humanitarian, ecological, and economic catastrophe.

Both sides are blaming the other. Since lying is Russia's national sport, (I wouldn't trust Dmitri Peskov to spell his own name), I am inclined to believe Ukraine. These are lands Ukraine considers its own, and hopes to liberate soon. It will be inheriting a massive mess, one they're hardly likely to be imposed upon themselves. Not to mention how much it complicates their plans for counter-offensive in the area. Sabotoging one's own counter-offensive seems one double bluff too far. True, Russia also claims the territory. And the Russian side of the river has gotten the worst of it. But Russia has historically never given a shit about its own people, and never shied away from causing ecological catastrophes (Kara-Bogaz anyone?), so I have no problem believing they'd do this to their own side. Scorched earth is their way, or in this case, soaked earth.

Roger Waters off a Pig's Back.

 Are there no surprises left in life? Now for my third returning special guest. 

Having written here: 

https://stevedylan.blogspot.com/2022/08/being-roger-waters.html

that Roger Waters seemed to enjoy the trappings of authoritarianism much too much to fully condemn them, he's come out in full support of Putin. He's also under investigation in Berlin for anti-semitic imagery, and a uniform just a bit too naziesque for local liking: 

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2023-06-06/religious-leaders-criticise-pink-floyd-bassist-after-nazi-style-costume-stunt

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-denounces-roger-waters-performance-in-berlin-as-antisemitic/

I think he was allowed to wear it in the end, but still, that floating pig emblazoned with the Star of David is a bad look. 

With Boot Firmly on the Same Foot: Grey Zone at it Again

Now for some returning guest stars!

Up first, Putin fan club newsletter Grey Zone, they of the "we caught some chick in a crowd wearing death's head cufflinks, proving Ukraine is the Fourth Reich!" brand of wisdom. They struck again with another piece of irrefutable evidence, this time proving beyond all reasonable doubt Ukraine was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. What is this Quod Erat Demonstratum smoking gun? 

They found a boot at the bottom of the North Sea. 

That's right, a boot. 

Hardly OJ Simpson's glove, is it? 

This is the standard of evidence upheld by these jokers. Evidence that the flying saucer people would dismiss. But not the tankie/vatnik crowd, who will grasp at any straw. 

Now Ukraine may or may not have been behind the sabotage (to what end, who knows), but her involvement is ever revealed, it will not be on the pages of Greyzone News. 

Next up, the return of slimeball, sleezebach Sachs, Jeffery, he of the "Mediator's Guide to Peace in Ukraine", which absolved Russia of all blame, and put responsibility for the current bloodshed squarely on the shoulders of NATO, and those Eastern European countries who had the nerve to join it. Those countries are supposed to be Russia's playground you see, and their inhabitants, Russian property. 

Sachs recently signed a letter to the New York times, under the heading "The US Should be a Force for Peace in the World", which regurgitated all these claims. 

You will notice, (after guffawing at the wildly inaccurate map of Europe) how the signatories apparently reserve the right to invade Canada and Mexico.

As a Canadian, I can say that if the US were in the habit of invading us, stealing our grain, storming out capital with tanks and defenestrating our Prime Minister, you're DAMN RIGHT we'd seek protection from whomever might be able to provide it. We have not, because it has not been necessary. The US has not threatened our national sovereignty since 1814. We don't even guard the border anymore. Letting us do our thing has not hindered US power or prosperity or prestige in any way.  It has proven a highly successful, mutually beneficial arrangement. Russia could learn something from it. 

These assholes though don't see it that way. They have more in common with Russia's way of thinking. So of course, they support Russia's claims. They don't want to help Ukraine, and if they had their way, wouldn't help the rest of Eastern Europe either. The days when  Russian tanks could storm Warsaw, Budapest, or Prague with impunity were the good ol' days for them, a time of peace an stability. 

This is what it means to blame NATO expansion. It assumes only great powers have interests or rights or legitimate security concerns. 

Sachs is also behind a number of articles claiming "Russia was provoked", a standard refrain of the blame NATO crowd, which assumes Russia has no free will of its own. Russia didn't choose to send a hundred thousand troops across a national border, it can only respond to Western stimuli like so many Pavlov's dogs. Would he invoke this kind of blame-the-victim excuse in any other context? "My ex was flirting with another dude, so I had to kill them both!". 

Fuck off Sachs. 

The Grey Zone vs Grey Matter

 

There are a lot of useful idiots out there.

The latest zany bunch of pitiful Putinistas I had the mispleasure of running into have been the putrid pile of pinheads running The Grey Zone, an online tabloid so blatantly anti-Ukrainian, they’re either run by the Kremlin, or really love the Kremlin (and no, I’m not providing a link) .

The cover story involves some dude in the background of a Zelensky photo-op. There’s a dot on the dude’s backpack that you or I might have mistaken for a brand logo, but which the Eagle Eyed folks at Grey Zone assure is a Nazi death’s head. They magnify it for us, so it looks like a dollop of spilled oatmeal. Nazi death’s head they assure us, and computer enhance it later in the article.

I am reminded of those flying saucer people who saw spaceships every time someone waved a pen-torch.

Is this blob on a backpack really supposed to be a smoking gun? Irrefutable proof that Ukraine is irredeamably nazi and presumably must be destroyed? Or, at the very least, not assisted? Gimmie a break.

The question is not whether Ukraine has neo-nazis. Of course it does. It’s got a well-documented problem with neo-nazis and unhealthy far-right nationalism, as do a lot of countries, especially in Eastern Europe – you think Russia doesn’t? The question is whether this justifies the annihilation of the country! 

What makes for a nazi country? Depressingly popular arm patches? Problematic Black Metal lyrics? Popular misconceptions of history? Backpack pins you need an electron microscope to see? Or is it something more systemic – a government actively implementing race-laws, building concentration camps, and actively pursuing genocide with all the power of the state. This is what the tankies have to prove – not these little gotchya moments, which aren’t nearly as shocking as they think they are.

Is it not interesting that Russia’s chief Rabbi has condemned the invasion? You’d think he’d be all over that. How about Israel? How about Zelensky himself, a Jew whom Ukrainians elected as President???

Thing is, Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around. Russia is bombing Ukrainian apartment blocks, maternity wards, playgrounds, and powerplants, not the other way around. Russia is looting Ukrainian cities, not the other way around. Russia seeks to erase Ukraine’s existence, not the other way around.

None of this is balanced out by some dude wearing a pin.  

useful links: 

https://medium.com/muros-invisibles/grayzone-grifters-and-the-cult-of-tank-fbd9b8e0dbe2

https://www.rferl.org/a/zizek-interview-russia-denazification-ukraine-war/32204259.html?fbclid=IwAR1tZ8yDxFGjspCKcDyH9SdxfSUQ0pDHAm85y4191aH126ym3dGk3FBsrDY