Tag Archives: Europe

Europe: Destined for Conflict? – George Friedman, 2015

Posted on by
Reply
Reading time: < 1 minute

On February 4, 2015, George Friedman held a talk at the Chicago Council for Global Affairs. The complete recording of this revealing presentation is available on YouTube.

We created a 14 minute long extract from the Q&A section of the talk with what we feel are highlights of the American plan for the Ukraine in particular and Europe in general, adding a few of our comments and illustrations.


Backup at Rumble.

Now, 10 years later we can all safely say that the American plans were playing out before our eyes as outlined in the talk.

From our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”

The crimes of the Kiev Nazi regime and its Western accomplices in numbers

Posted on by
Reply
Reading time: 3 minutes

From the Telegram channel of the Russian Foreign Ministry. See also OCSE observers were spies and artillery fire corrector for the Ukrainian side.

🎙 Interview by Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin, to TASS News Agency (March 3, 2025)

Key talking points:

• Since 2014, the Investigative Committee has initiated 6’500 criminal cases related to crimes against peace and security of humanity, as well offensives against individuals and property. Most of the criminal cases under investigation involve shelling of civilians and civilian infrastructure by the Kiev regime, though evidence of other crimes of varying severity have been established as well.

• A total of 918 individuals are being held criminally liable in these cases, including members of the high command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and commanders of military units that have been targeting civilians.

• The investigation of 423 criminal cases against 566 Ukrainian servicemen and mercenaries has been completed. Evidence has been gathered of their involvement in using prohibited warfare methods, cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians, and murder and damage to property. Sentences have been handed down to 519 individuals, among them 145 members of the banned Azov regiment (designated as a terrorist organisation in Russia). Life sentences have been imposed on 62 individuals.

• Since February 2022, the investigative bodies have opened 5’031 criminal cases against servicemen of Ukraine’s armed formations which represent 80% of all ongoing cases.

• The evidence indicates that, beyond following orders from higher-ranking officials, motives for these crimes include political and ethnic hatred towards the Russian-speaking population.
Continue reading →

The project of a unified European army is impossible for several reasons.

Posted on by
Reply
Reading time: 3 minutes

This is an article, written by Andrey Medvedev, which we translated at our channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, and illustrated with a fitting caricature from the past. The description of the illustration follows after the article in question.

Most European armies are simply not combat ready. Some don’t have enough equipment. Some have problems with manning.

There are not many warring armies in Europe. The French, Poles (in Ukraine), British PMCs, Portuguese mercenaries (yes, they are considered very cool in Africa). Well, that’s about it.

To one degree or another, European armies participated in operations in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Europeans still gained combat experience, the British and the French first of all. The French paratroopers have their own “sixth company” – the story of the heroic battle near the village of Uzbin.

But, in all joint operations, the Europeans were commanded by the Americans. Even if the group was formally headed by an English general. Everything was supervised from Washington. And when creating a European army, the problem of combat control and the question of “who’s in charge here” will come to the fore. How do you imagine that Poles will obey the Germans? Or the French obeying the Poles? Everyone’s got sky-high ambitions there. “Every gopher in the field is an agronomist.”

Therefore, it is more likely to assume that some kind of joint military structures will appear in Europe. For example, Poland implements the format of the Polish-Baltic unified military leadership. And that’s not a fact, considering that Poles see Vilnius as their own. Here, even the common Russophobia will not help to create a unified army. It is impossible to imagine that the Poles would create a single military structure with the Czechs and Slovaks, and the Hungarians with the Croats. The historical case is very complicated everywhere, full of grievances and unrealised ambitions.

The united European armed forces can only be created by someone else, an outside force. The Warsaw Pact, or NATO, is an example of this.

♦️♦️♦️

The caricature demonstrates just what Andrey Medvedev wrote!

It appeared in the 1952 issue № 09 of the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil”, drawn by Yuri Ganf. The grumpy American is sitting at a desk with the American flag holding the text “The Command of the European Army”, which makes it absolutely clear who is in charge.

The American is ticking off the “Applications” list, scrutinising the German and the French armies.

The French sheep sternly requests of the USA, while pointing at the Bundeswehr swastika-bearing wolf:

To the question of guarantees

— I will not object against our common service in the European army, as long as you give me a certificate that he became a vegetarian.

The illustration followed the news item, quoted in fine print:

“During the negotiating about the inclusion of the army of Western Germany into the so-called “European army”, the representatives of France demanded guarantees for the security of the Franco-German border.”

All European countries signed pacts with Hitler!

Posted on by
Reading time: 2 minutes

All European countries signed pacts with Hitler! Putin presented documents
– Published in Regnum, 20.12.2019
– Translation by Russian Baza

The treaty between the USSR and Germany was the last of all those signed by other European countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on December 20.

The head of the Russian state presented historical documents attesting to the treaties of various European countries with Hitler at a meeting of the heads of the CIS countries in Saint Petersburg.

Vladimir Putin emphasized that the so-called “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” was not the only document signed by any European country with Nazi Germany.

“It turns out that this is not true at all. I will simply list them, with your permission,” the Russian president said.

  • Declaration on the Non-Use of Force between Germany and Poland, signed in 1934;
  • The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, which gave Hitler the opportunity to have a navy, which was prohibited as a result of the First World War;
  • The Anglo-German Declaration of Chamberlain and Hitler, signed on September 30, 1938;
  • The Franco-German Declaration of December 6, 1938, signed in Paris by the French and German Foreign Ministers Bonn and Ribbentrop;
  • The Treaty between the Republic of Lithuania and the German Reich of March 22, 1939, signed in Berlin, which dealt with the reunification of the Klaipeda Region with the German Reich;
  • The Non-Aggression Pact between the German Reich and Latvia of June 7, 1939;

    These are only a part of the treaties concluded in pre-war Europe with Nazi Germany.

    “Thus, the treaty between the USSR and Germany was the last in a series of those signed by other European countries, supposedly interested in maintaining peace in Europe,” Vladimir Putin noted.

    “At the same time, I would like to note that the USSR agreed to sign this document only after all options had been exhausted, all proposals by the USSR to create a unified security system… in Europe had been rejected,” the Russian president added.

    As REGNUM reported, a deliberate policy of equating communism with Nazism, and the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany, is being pursued in European countries. One of the reasons for this is the so-called “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,” which in Europe is already being called proof of an alliance between Stalin and Hitler.

    The Finnish poster “Road to Freedom” from the 22nd of June 1941, depicting the whole future EU baring its teeth on the USSR.

    • Happy New Year of the 80th Anniversary of the Great Victory!

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 7 minutes

    We present a selection of posts with drawings and caricatures from a very special edition of the Soviet satirical magazine, “Krokodil”. More can be found at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”!

    Greetings on the coming Year of the 80th Anniversary of the Victory!

    No doubt was left: the New Year of 1945 would finally bring Victory! As attested by the painting by L.Brodat on the cover of the combined issue №47-48 of “Krokodil” from December 1944.

    🎄🎄🎄

    — Who is coming?
    — New Year!
    — Password?
    — Victory!
    — Advance! *

    🎄🎄🎄

    * The final command — Advance! — is a play on the double meaning of the phrase “Coming New Year”, which translates literally as “Advancing New Year”, when at the same time, in the military context, the first word would also carry the meaning of “to attack” or “to charge”.

    In the posts leading up to the New Year, we bring some of the drawings and caricatures from that issue of “Krokodil”. Some of them, as you will see, are surprisingly relevant now, in December of 2024!

    At the Fascist Flee(ce) Market

    The caricature by Yu.Ganf from the combined issue №47-48 of “Krokodil” from December 1944. It sums up the departing year in humorous detail, accompanied by a longer text with a month-by-month blow, which are translated below!

    Let us admire the caricature in all its Bruegelesque detail, starting with the upper left corner.
    Continue reading →

    The gas pipeline in the American side, anno 1982

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 6 minutes

    The Gas Wars, of which we translated a documentary “The Great Gas Game” – An Excellent Documentary from Vesti and published a number of articles, like The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine, the saga with Navalny, and the ultimate blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline by the USA in order to freeze Germany out of competition, are just the recent manifistations. Lets us look at the events of 1982, and see how USA was opposing the gas pipeline from the USSR to the Western Europe.

    We illustrate it through a series of caricatures and posts, which we originally published on out Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

    Piped Piper of a Pipeline

    Bill Mauldin’s caricature, published in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1982, shoes an issue that remains relevant for decades. It was drawn when the United States and Europe were at odds over the construction of the world’s first transcontinental gas pipeline Urengoy – Pomary – Uzhgorod.

    The construction was colossal, the whole of the USSR contributing to it, with other interested countries taking part in it – Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR. At first, it was planned to pull the gas pipeline from Yamburg, but later the Urengoyskoye field was chosen.

    The United States, as always, tried to prevent the implementation of a project beneficial to Europe. But back then Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy still had a voice and teeth. And the sanctions imposed by the United States were quickly lifted.

    Yuzhniigiprogaz Design Institute from Donetsk became the general designer of the gas pipeline. It had previously performed brilliantly in similar, albeit more modest projects.

    The construction was completed ahead of schedule. On July 9, 1983, labour collectives reported on the commissioning of the integrated gas treatment plant No. 9.

    👉 4,451 kilometers of steel pipe had been stretched to solve the ambitious task of supplying natural gas from Siberian fields to consumers in the USSR and European countries.

    👉 2.7 million tons of pipes were laid during the construction of the gas pipeline.

    👉 120 kilometers were laid through permafrost, 360 kilometers through swamps.

    Gas went to Europe on January 13, 1984, making the USSR the leader in its production and sale.

    A lot of cartoons appeared on the topic, no less biting on the Soviet side.

    The facility built by the whole country later became the basis of political speculation of the state education called “Ukraine”.

    Source: Our Donbass – edited

    «The unfeasible dream of the overseas pirate»

    This is the title of the caricature by Yuri Cherepanov, published in the November issue №31 of the Soviet satirical magazine «Krokodil» in 1982.

    The pirate in question, sailing under the US flag, has «Threats» and «Sanctions» written on his sails.

    40 years ago, Western Europe managed to stand up for its own intetrests. Now… the USA simply blew up the completed Nord Stream.
    Continue reading →

    “Racially pure” technologies. There is an ongoing fit of Russophobia in science and IT

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 6 minutes

    If one wonders how fascism took hold of Germany in 1930s, look no further, than at Europe of 2020s! Here we present an article published in “Argumeny i Fakty” from October 24, 2024 that shows just one of the many exhibits on this path.

    “Racially pure” technologies. There is an ongoing fit of Russophobia in science and IT

    The wave of extreme Russophobia, deliberately launched by the West in 2022 and covering literally all spheres of life, from sports to dog shows, has not gone away. Rather, we have developed a habit for such things, because of which we sometimes do not notice new manifestations of the frenzy of hatred.

    Linux without Russians

    Linux, which develops operating systems based on the original kernel, announced the suspension of 11 people associated with Russia.

    The main developer of the Linux operating system kernel, Greg Kroa-Hartman, announced that this was done “due to various compliance requirements”.

    This story might not have caused a lot of noise, because everyone has long been accustomed to the sanctions pressure that arises everywhere. However, 54-year-old Linus Torvalds, a legend in the world of digital technologies, the founding father of Linux, and a member of the Internet Hall of Fame, decided to intervene in the case.

    Since there was an active discussion on the Internet about what happened, Torvalds decided to clarify his position:

    Continue reading →

    The Portal of the Ukranazistan

    Posted on by
    Reading time: < 1 minute

    The Portal

    Ukraine has become one big portal, opening back into their Banderite, Nazi-collaborating past.

    Slogans like “Ukraine above all” recall the Nazi German “Deutschland uber alles”.

    The sign of the past above the archway: “Glory to Hitler! Glory to Petljura! Glory to Bandera! Long live Ukrainian Independent State! Long live our leader S. Bandera” is precisely what today’s Nazis in Ukraine recite.

    In the middle of The Portal we show the observation from the Russian Mission to Geneva:

    “Watch members of the “collective West” hivemind do a WWII Nazi salute of the Ukrainian Waffen SS at the UN Office in Geneva, minutes before the High Level Segment of the Conference on Disarmament. Profound cynicism or sheer incompetence? Probably both…”

    The boundaries become blurred… where do 1941 – 1945 end and 2022 – 2024 begin?

    Originally posted on our Telegram channel Beorn And The Shieldmaiden.

    Ukranazistan in the title is a term, coined by the author of the excellent comic strips Tales of the Ukranazistan (also on Telegram).

    Russian FM Sergej Lavrov’s Article “On dramatizations as a method of Western politics”

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 15 minutes

    I have written a few times previously on how the fake flags and false flags are constantly being staged by the West. Ad even now, former Ukraine is sending drones of both attack and kamikaze types at the Zaporozhije nuclear power plant (the largest in Europe, so a nuclear disaster there will make Chernbyl look like child’s play) in the hopes of blowing it up (never mind the fall-out – literally – in the former Ukraine itself and Europe) only in the hopes of blaming Russia for the disaster. The West has already laid the groundwork for this nuclear false flag through the publications in the MSM.

    Yesterday I came across an article written by the Russian Foreign Minister Segrej Lavrov for newspaper “Izvestija”, which really accentuates this particular Western mindset and it is finally said by the top Russian diplomat, taking the diplomatic gloves off.

    I first saw a shortened highlights-only version of it on Yandex Zen, and then found the article proper on the site of “Izvestija”. I decided to translate the complete and unabridged article, as no one cane say it better, than Mr. Lavrov himself.

    On dramatizations as a method of Western politics

    Today, the Russian Armed Forces and the DPR and LPR militias are confidently solving tasks within the framework of the special military operation (SMO), seeking to end blatant discrimination and genocide of Russians and eliminate direct threats to the security of the Russian Federation created by the United States and its satellites on the territory of Ukraine for years. Losing on the battlefield, the Ukrainian regime and its Western patrons do not disdain to stage dramatizations “with blood” in order to demonize our country in the international public opinion. There have already been Bucha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk, Kremenchuk. The Russian Ministry of Defence regularly warns about the preparations of new staged incidents with facts in hand.

    Provocative dramatizations performed by the West and its minions have a recognizable handwriting. And they did not start with Ukraine, but much earlier.

    Continue reading →

    “As a result of the joint war against Russia, the European Union has rallied as never before” (Adolf Hitler. June 30, 1941)

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 11 minutes

    Commemorating June the 22nd 1941, when Germany with its European allies – official and otherwise – invaded the USSR. Yesterday I reposted Lada Ray’s Open letter: Lada Ray Repost: IMAGINE… AND WAKE UP! An Open Letter by LADA RAY to all English-speaking people. That open letter, while powerful in itself, serves also as a foundation to understanding of the article that I am about to translate now, an article pointing out some very uncomfortable truths for Europe, so of which the USSR prefererd not to remind Europe about, letting it to start from clean slate. Whatch also the documentary, which I translated several years ago: The Great Unknown War. A must-see documentary about the WWII prelude. By Andrei Medvedev.

    The article was written by Sergey Vasiliev and published on Cont yesterday.

    “As a result of the joint war against Russia, the European Union has rallied as never before” (Adolf Hitler. June 30, 1941)

    Sergey Vasiliev
    22.06.2022 10:08

    The Finnish poster “Road to Freedom” from the 22nd of June 1941, depicting the whole future EU baring its teeth on the USSR.

    The title of the article is a quote. These are Hitler’s words, spoken on June 30, 1941. Recorded by Franz Halder. An amazing hit, isn’t it?

    Looking at the contented, well-fed, and most importantly – never repenting faces of the captured Nazis of Azov, shuddering at the sight of the Russian cities of Donbass being shot from NATO guns, turning away from the monitor screen when viewing the mockery of the “them-Europeans” (translator note: the reference to Ukrainians after the slogan “Ukraina ce Evropa” – “Ukraine is Europe”) over prisoners and civilians, you suddenly realize that you have already seen it all before.

    We, the generation born in the 60s, read in textbooks and books, watched in newsreels and Soviet feature films. We knew all this so well, as if the War ended just yesterday, in the early 80s, when we graduated from schools and universities. “No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten!” – we repeated it at school lessons of courage, at the meetings with living veterans and at the monuments to the fallen. “This must not happen again!” – sounded from TV screens and tribunes, starting from the most modest rural recreation center and to the presidium of the Party Congresses.

    Continue reading →

    OCSE observers were spies and artillery fire corrector for the Ukrainian side

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 2 minutes

    UPDATED 03.03.2025!, additionally posting at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

    On March 2, 2025, Maria Zaharova posted the following remark:

    Former Greek Ambassador to Kiev Vasilios Bornovas: “Observers from the OSCE mission in Donbass covertly transmitted secret information to the Armed Forces of Ukraine about the location of the LPR and DPR formations, and these positions were immediately shelled from the Ukrainian side.”

    And this requires not just political statements, but a serious investigation! Howls about the fact that it was under the previous leadership of the OSCE Secretariat must not be taken into account. The OSCE is obliged to respond efficiently to the presented charges.

    Back in 2015, when the OCSE mission came to Donbass to “observe” how the sides adhere to the letter of the Minsk accord, there came multiple reports of a situation when a group of the OCSE observers would come to the positions of the DPR or LPR republican forces, take a look, leave and then 20-25 minutes later, that position would be hit by a Ukrainian artillery barrage. The feeling was that the OSCE were providing the Ukrainian side with military intel and coordinates, but no tangible proof could be presented.

    In the reportage we witness an abandoned OCSE trailer, a connected high-magnification camera which was pointing at the DPR position, the information retrieved from is flash memory and cross-referenced with the information from a trophy Ukrainian Army notebook and a mobile phone belonging to a Ukrainian officer.

    We can say that the alleged spying by the OCSE in favour of the Ukrainian military is turning into a proven fact.

    The source video of the reportage is at the site of the news program “Vesti” at VGTRK’s Smotrim.ru. We have now translated the complete news item.


    Backup at Rumble.

    The OCSE wanted to observe everything in Donbass, know about everything and be aware of it. What for? After all, no one knew the results of their work, their influence on pacification was zero. Well… it was like they were believed by everyone all over the world, and so we had to believe them too. It turns out, according to the information which popped up, these OCSE’ers may turn out to be just common spies.

    Their cameras of 200x magnification were stuck all along the front line, one could observe the Moon from those. They didn’t have time to remove one at the time when the special operation began. And the Ukrainian military were too lazy to help the OSCE, they only fired at the camera from machine guns and fled. And there are flash drives, and there are videos on those flash drives, videos with peculiar characteristics.

    Uncertain fate of the Ukrainian children evacuated to the West

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 5 minutes

    They say that the first victim of war is truth. That’s not true. The first victim are the most defenceless – the children.

    The children, who lose their parents; the children, who lose homes; the children, who lose lives (a testimony to that is the Alley of Angels in Donetsk); the children, who are taken alone abroad; the children, who are sold into adopted families; the children, who are sold as sex slaves; the children, who are killed for donor organs…

    Below is a translation of the second part of the article The Ukrainian Mafia Has Occupied Europe, published on the 5th of April 2022:

    …

    One can hear more and more often stories about the abduction of Ukrainian refugees right on the Ukrainian-Polish border, as reported by the Reuters news agency. Polish police are distributing leaflets warning about human traffickers who have become more active amid the crisis.

    Polish volunteers report that rumours about some men who kidnap children for sale to criminal gangs, and of women who are forced into slavery and prostitution, have been heard for a long time and suspicious people are periodically noticed near the border.

    They say that once the Polish military caught two men in a van, in which there were a lot of women. It is alleged that the military took the women out, and the men were handed over to the Polish police. However, those were bribed and the criminals left without charges. Poland has not yet commented on this episode, as well as other rumours about human trafficking.

    According to the press secretary of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Shabia Mantu, the organization is “seriously concerned” about the reports and is helping governments to strengthen preventive measures. These include the distribution of those leaflets and some encouragement to countries to create verification systems or procedures for those who offer support to refugees.

    Increasingly, there are reports of the abduction of Ukrainian children both on the borders with European countries and on the territory of Ukraine itself.

    Continue reading →

    On the brink of WWIII. Will NATO push for it 76 years after the NAZI defeat?

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 11 minutes

    One of my first posts on this blog was Is the West gearing up to invade Russia once again?, which looked at some historic parallels from the previous pre-invasion periods, and noticing some similarities. The article was written in June 2014, and the rhetoric question is still very much valid, even more so after the developments of these past 3 weeks.

    The reports are worrying, with Ukrainian forces executing one provocation after. A few days ago a 5-year-old child was killed when Ukro-nazis dropped an explosive charge on a residential house from a drone.

    And now With tensions rising in Donbass, Ukraine pulls out of Minsk peace talks: Kiev refuses to meet Russia & OSCE in Belarusian capital

    Yesterday, Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa, in his article Reports of Russian troops ‘massing’ near Ukraine miss the mark: Russia-Ukraine war is possible, but only if Ukraine strikes first echoed the conclusions in Rostislav Ischenoko’s article “On the edge: Who will blink first?”, which I am translating in full below.

    On the edge: Who will blink first?
    Rostislav Ishchenko
    Columnist of MIA “Russia Today”
    4th of April 17:43 198 20447

    The situation in the long-suffering Ukraine (without any irony to the country and its people) is developing in such a way that it can be stated that the parties interested in the, possibly armed, conflict have completed the pre-war preparatory measures, at least in the diplomatic sphere. After that, either someone has to give in, or the next step forward means war.

    At the same time, Russia cannot have a “large—scale” war with Ukraine – they are in different weight categories. Ukraine is not even able to conquer Donbass. Kiev’s participation in a direct military clash with Moscow, even as part of a group of states, will mean for Ukraine an almost instantaneous destruction as a political entity.

    At the same time, Ukraine acts only as a provocateur of the first strike. Its task is to somehow signify to the world community Russia’s participation in the military conflict.

    Next, the United States intends to unleash a European war, with the participation of at least a few Eastern European countries, members of NATO and the EU. This will allow them to put pressure on their Western European allies, who do not want a conflict with Russia, demanding that they decide: if they are with Moscow or with NATO.

    Continue reading →

    The Post-Ukrainian World – The Final Warning to Ukraine’s Handlers to Stop the Looming War

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 7 minutes

    I’s been a while since I looked in the direction of Ukraine on these pages, and, more specifically, at the civil war that Ukraine wages on its citizens for 7 years, calling the whole population of the eastern republics for terrorists, including children, and treating with constant artillery shelling, terror bombings, denial of basic human rights, etc. This conflict was largely frozen with only occasional escalations and “only” a few civilians killed by the Ukrainian shells each day (the current death toll is close to 12000 people among the civilian population of Donbass). All this to a complete silence from the “humane, democratic, freedom-loving” media in the West.

    The situation is about to change. Kiev is amassing troops on the borders with both Donbass and Crimea (not reported in the West), and Russia responds in kind, increasing its military capacity there (trumped about in the Western press). Russia has asked Germany and France (and, indirectly, the US) to curb their Ukrainian puppets, but the pleas have fallen deaf ears. The final warning was the summit between Putin, Merkel and Macron.

    I am translating below an analytical article, highlighting the results (or lack thereof) from that summit. The article is written by Rostislav Ischenko on Cont platform: Мир без Украины

    The World without Ukraine

    Video conference in the format of Putin / Merkel / Macron took place anyway, and this is good news. Nothing else can be called as “good” about this.

    Continue reading →

    The Great Unknown War. A must-see documentary about the WWII prelude. By Andrei Medvedev

    Posted on by
    Reading time: 58 minutes

    UPDATE: Please read the very relevant to this documentary, poignant, and important insights in President Vladimir Putin’s article The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II, published in The National Interest on the 18th of June 2020.

    UPDATE 16.03.2022: After YouTube censored the Russian-language channel Rossia24, where the official untranslated video of the documentary was hosted, I am uploading the film with embedded subtitles to Odysee platform. The YT-related portion of the text is moved to the bottom of this article for historic reference.

    These days mark 71 year since the start of the Great Patriotic war of the USSR against the invading Nazi horde, and 75 years since this horde was defeated. And it is of utmost importance to understand how this horde came to be, who nurtured it. Andrei Medvedev’s documentary “The Great Unknown War” does just that.

    It is assumed in our historiography that the USSR and its allies – the United States, Britain and France – fought with Nazi Germany, which was supported by its allies – Hungary, Romania, Italy, and Japan. And the Soviet Union won this unbearably difficult war.

    But it is very important to understand whether our allies were really sincere, on whose side were the so-called neutral countries, and why the war on the Eastern front was so violent with mass destruction of the population.

    Without understanding who brought Hitler to power, who financed him, who earned money from the war, we will never realize the greatness of the feat of the Soviet people.

    Without a deep understanding of the causes of the war and an analysis of diplomatic agreements, we will not see that the attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 was the result of a serious geopolitical process.

    An important question is: who was behind Hitler, who in Europe needed such a Germany and why? Aggressive, militarized, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Russian.

    What would Germany be without American loans? Without investment from American companies? Germany could not have fought in the East without receiving for free the top-notch factories of Czechoslovakia, which it gained by the Munich Conspiracy of 1938, when England and France gave up the whole country to Hitler. What for? What were the Western politicians planning?

    Why did the allies take so long to open a Second front and what is the Bank for International Settlements? Why did its participants meet every month throughout the Second World War?

    How many foreigners fought in the SS, and who defended the Reich Chancellery in May 1945? For whom in Europe were Hitler’s ideas so dear: nationalism, anti-Semitism and living space in the East.

    The film “The Great Unknown War” is a story about what the Soviet Union actually faced. And the terrible cost at which we won a war that we were not supposed to win.

    As promised a month ago, I have now translated the entire documentary to English. White writing this translation, a lot of background checks were done, and every date and name were verified. Most quotes of the Western politicians are re-translations from Russian, except for a few, where open original sources were available. The links to the sources are added both to the transcript further down the page and the downloadable subtitles (as comments).

    The Great Unknown War. A documentary by Andrei Medvedev, 2020 (English subtitiles)

    While watching the documentary, I could not shake off the feeling of the stark parallel of how the Nazi Germany was propped up, and how, in much the same way, the Nazi Ukraine is being propped up now. One example: just replace the name of Henri Deterding of the British-Dutch “Shell” with that of Biden Jr. to see the present-day play of interests. Or replace “Bank for International Settlements” (BIS) with the International Monetary Fund. But there are big differences, too. While Germany was heavily invested into, to make it into a battering ram against Russia, Ukraine is being turned into an ideological battering ram, while at the same time being plundered of its last Soviet industrial legacy.

    However, the target was always Russia, and WWII was just a fifth act in a war that lasted for several hundred years, dotted by a few armistices. Here is a list of those wars (with some documentaries in Russian):

    1. The Napoleonic Wars of 1812
    2. World War 0 of 1853-1856, mis-nomered as “The Crimean War”, when that was but one of many battles. Just think of one simple fact: if Russia lost the Crimean War, why did Russia retain Crimea?
    3. The war with Japan and the first attempt to conduct a coup d’etat in Russia in 1905
    4. World War I, which was a suicide for Europe, started in 1914, and culminated in the capitalistic coup d’etat in Russia in February of 1917.
    5. World War II and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945…
    6. …immediately followed by the Cold War, which was planned to not be that cold. Even before it started Winston Churchill ordered development of the “Plan Unthinkable”, the goal of which was to strike the USSR in July of 1945. I am not quoting The Guardian often, if ever, but this article from 2002 is worth the read: The Soviet threat was a myth
    7. This “Cold War” lead to another coup d’etat in Russia and a forced instalment of the bloody Yeltsin regime in November of 1993, the Wild 90’s that took the lives of over 30 million Russian and Soviet people over the course of 7 years of oligarchic rule; and the destruction of the Yugoslavia by NATO in the process.

    It is all intertwined. But now, let as zoom in on the developments between WWI and WWII.

    One other parallel that sprung to mind is how the German Weimar Republic and its achievements were appropriated and privatised by the Anglo-Saxon (or, rather, “Naglo-Saxon” West), while the Republic itself became demonised once West-sponsored Hitler took power. The same happened to the great legacy of the Soviet Union now, after the West-sponsored Yeltsin took power in Russia. For example, IG Farben Industries, which gave to humanity fertilisers, magnetic tape and magnetophones and many other things during the Weimar Republic, but once it got taken over by the Nazi state and developed the murderous gas “Zyklon B”, that’s all that remained, while origins of the prior works were earased and ascribed to the “victors” after WWII. More about it in the article “IG Farben – the main weapon of the XX-th century“.

    Continue reading →