Tag Archives: geopolitics

The referendum on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991: how Kravchuk deceived Sevastopol and Crimea

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This in-depth research and chronology article by Lyubov Ulyanova was published in the Sevastopol publication “ForPost” on November 30, 2022.

Without understanding the events and manipulations happening in the Ukrainian SSR in 1991, it is impossible to understand the mechanics behind the collapse of the USSR.

On March 17, 1991 the majority of the Soviet citizens voted for the preservation of the Union. But this vote was disregarded. Moreover, Ukraine held a referendum on independence, first denouncing the Union treaty of 1922, while Crimea was falsely assured that Ukrainian SSR has no intention of leaving the Union. This largely made the referendum on the secession of Crimea from Ukraine inevitable at some point in time, and that finally happened on March 16, 2014, after USA, dissatisfied with their already significant control of Ukraine, decided to push the country even further away from Russia though a Nazi-powered coup d’etat.

The article, while being long, is very much worth every minute that you will spend reading it, as it clears up many questions. One can summarise the key takeaways:

  • The “granite” colour revolution of October 1990, when protesters were taken with busses from Western Ukraine to Kiev.
  • Ukraine denounced the 1922 treaty, which means that Ukraine reverts to it’s pre-USSR state of not existing at all.
  • Ukraine expected to keep the borders as they were within the Union (i.e., following the 1922 Treaty and its amendments)
  • Ukraine used the “right to self-determination” to hold a referendum on independence
  • Ukraine denied Crime to have the UN-enshrined right to self-determination to hold its own referendum on independence
  • Ukraine promised that it will not leave the Union
  • Ukraine left the Union
  • Ukraine regarded USSR as “former”, non-existent
  • Ukraine deferred Crimea to the head of the USSR (Gorbachev) to repeal the 1954 decree of transfer of Crimea, thus recognising USSR as existing.
  • The process was closely guided from Canada and the USA
  • Crimea could appeal to the leadership of the USSR to repeal the 1954 decree, with a logical legal implication that as Russia is the legal heir of the USSR, Russia can repeal that decree on behalf of the USSR.

Watch also the following video, where Kravchuk speaks about the break-up of the USSR:

The referendum on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991: how Kravchuk deceived Sevastopol and Crimea

Ukraine ratified a completely different text of the Belovezha Agreements compared to Russia and Belarus, and this calls into question the legal force of the Agreement as a whole.

Kravchuk distracted and deceived Sevastopol and Crimea in 1991.
The caption reads: “One must decide today that what can be decided today”. Date: 26.10.1991

Lapshin M.I. (Stupinsky territorial electoral district, Moscow region)… I have a question about the denunciation of the 1922 Union Treaty… Just look at the map of the USSR in 1922, and we will see that the states that have denounced the treaty today were located within completely different borders. Does the denunciation mean a return to the old days, when Russia was without the Far Eastern Republic, Kazahstan and Central Asia were part of the RSFSR, the border of Belarus was just west of the Minsk region, and Ukraine, to put it mildly, could show for itself quite different territory from what it currently has (most likely, it was, first of all, a hint at Crimea and Sevastopol – author note). Are we not creating the basis for huge territorial claims against each other by denouncing the Union Treaty?”

USSR 1922

This question, asked on December 12, 1991 by one of the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR during the discussion in the Russian Supreme Council of the Agreement on the creation of the CIS, a few days after the “Belovezha”, was basically ignored by other participants in that discussion.

However, today, more than 30 years later, it cannot be said that this question was completely meaningless.
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Europe: Destined for Conflict? – George Friedman, 2015

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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”

CIA Against Detente

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The article appears in the “Historian” magazine, written by Alexander Kolpakidi. We added an illustration to better drive home the point about MSM collusion.

US President Dwight Eisenhower was quite far-sighted, but America in his time was not yet mature enough to understand the changed balance of power in the world.

The first timid steps of this president towards “détente” were resolutely opposed by the majority of the American elite, and the CIA twice became an insurmountable obstacle to the president’s path, thwarting his plans.
The first time this happened was due to the myth that America was lagging behind in the number of bombers.

It all started when the experts from the Rand Corporation began to study the vulnerability of the bases of the Strategic Aviation Command. Although the United States had superiority over the USSR in both nuclear weapons and bombers at that time, experts painted a terrifying picture of how a Soviet strike would destroy American strategic aviation on the ground and the United States would remain helpless before the “terrible Russians.”

The CIA was tasked with assessing the power of the Soviet air force. This task was performed in an absolutely amazing way. Intelligence agents had to… estimate the total production area of the aviation plant in Fili and, based on this estimate, calculate the production rate of strategic bombers. American military factories must be somewhat different from ours in terms of the rational use of the land allocated to them. Based on the CIA agents walking around the factory fence, which, in addition to the workshops, enclosed squares, garbage dumps and wastelands, it was concluded that the production of Soviet bombers was growing fantastically.

These “scientifically” based calculations were supported by even more “scientific” observations. On July 3, 1955, the Day of the Air Force, during the aviation parade in Moscow, the American intelligence officers diligently counted the bombers which took part in the celebration. The numbers turned out to be fantastic. The only thing the Americans didn’t realise was that they kept counting the same planes circling in the area of the air parade. This consideration was too primitive for the intelligence aces.

Based on these calculations and observations, the CIA estimated that the USSR would deploy 500 such aircraft by 1960. The terrible data got into the press, and the hysteria that broke out about the “bomber gap” significantly limited Eisenhower’s freedom of manoeuvrer for a while.

– The article continues after the illustration…

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The “Soviet threat” (which nowadays morphed into the “Russian threat”) remained with the USA, constantly whipped into the frenzy among the general public by the “free press”.

Andrey Krylov drew this caricature for the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil”, published in issue №2 in 1983.

— Remind our readers that the USSR has a superiority in armaments.
— But we do not have facts, sir…
— On the other hand, we have freedom of press.

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

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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.

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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.”

Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing on Ukraine, 17.02.2025 – Repost

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This is probably the strongest condemnation of the “civilised West” to date. Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing on Ukraine is available in English at the site of the “Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN”. Video in Russian is available at their Telegram channel.

Before reading on, do watch the following three short videos:


Backup at Rumble.


Backup at Rumble.


Backup at Rumble.

Main statement:

Mr. President,

We thank Roger Waters for his statement with an analysis of the history of the Ukrainian crisis and assessments of the significance of the Minsk agreements with regard to the relevant diplomatic efforts.

Today marks ten years since the adoption of UNSC resolution 2202, which endorsed the “Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements”. Having thus expressed its support for the solutions that had been found in Minsk a few days prior, the Council took the implementation of these agreements under its supervision. We all hoped then that a long-term and lasting peace would finally come, but all hopes of ours were fated to fail. Moreover, today the very word-combination “Minsk agreements” has become something of a diplomatic euphemism replacing the words “failure” or “lie”. We believe that our Security Council has every reason to analyze why this happened and why peace in the east of Ukraine never came after that.

First of all, let me briefly recall that the 13 points of the Package of Measures unambiguously defined the sequence of concrete steps to normalize the situation in Ukraine and bring Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LNR and DNR) back to Ukraine’s fold. The last of these steps was to restore Kiev’s control over the State border in the east of the country. For this to happen, the Ukrainian leadership needed to undertake a number of measures geared towards granting the LNR and the DNR broader autonomy and protecting the identity of the Russian-speaking population.
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Armenia Bought a Ticket to the Titanic

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A repost of an article by Putinger’s Cat:

On January 14, 2025, less than a week before the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken signed the Charter on the establishment of the US-Armenia Strategic Partnership Commission, in Washington, D.C. The document provided for a significant expansion of cooperation between the countries in various areas, ranging from economic matters to security and defense. The United States has already invested over $3.3 billion in Armenia “to support democratic reforms” and such.

“This commission gives us a framework to expand our bilateral cooperation in a number of key areas: economic matters, security and defense, democracy, justice, inclusion and people-to-people exchanges,” Blinken stated. He also noted that, in the coming weeks, the United States will send a customs and border patrol group to Armenia.

“Next month, in the coming weeks, we will have a Customs and Border Patrol team travel to Armenia to work with their Armenian counterparts on border security capacity building, strengthening security cooperation, enhancing Armenia’s peacekeeping capabilities through exercises like Eagle Partner,” added the US Secretary of State, hinting at the possibility of expanding joint military exercises past the bilateral Eagle Partner exercises already held on 2023 and 2024.

Armenia’s new hobby of holding joint military exercises with the USA is quite the change of direction, considering that Armenia is the only one of the former Soviet republics whose borders have been protected by Russia’s border guards (https://crimea.ria.ru/20241008/pogranichniki-rossii-i-armenii-budut-okhranyat-granitsu-s-iranom-i-turtsiey-1140936965.html), for over thirty years, since the break-up of the Soviet Union. It’s noteworthy that Armenia’s border with Turkey has been been closed since 1993 (https://www.rbc.ru/politics/08/01/2025/677e68ab9a794749f7bcfa29), and the two countries have no diplomatic relations. In the present, Iran, already burdened by the everlasting tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has expressed concerns about the West’s outpost right outside its border. Just days prior to the signing of the charter, Armenia’s Islamic neighbor even offered a defense pact providing for bringing Iranian troops into Armenia “to stabilize the situation”.

Taking another step in the direction of the sunset, the Armenian government approved a draft law on initiating the process of joining the European Union, as a result of which the country will not send its representatives to the upcoming meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Armenia has also signed a defense cooperation program with France and the United States to achieve “lasting peace” in the South Caucasus.

Moscow called Armenia’s rapprochement with the Western and Yerevan’s burning desire to join the EU a “ticket to the Titanic” and a prerequisite for leaving the EAEU.

“Moscow considers the draft law on Armenia’s accession to the European Union as the beginning of its withdrawal from the EAEU. As such, the Russian Federation will design its economic policy towards Armenia taking this development into account,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk stated, clarifying that, in his opinion, the EU and the EAEU are incompatible.

The Deputy Prime Minister believes that Yerevan’s break-up with the EAEU will lead to a rise of energy and food prices in Armenia and a drop in Armenian goods exports. As such, regular people will suffer income and jobs losses and will have to deal with higher prices for basic necessities. In return, their only tangible reward will be visa-free travel to the EU, which would only speed up the inevitable depopulation of Armenia resulting from the drop in quality of life.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that EAEU membership is a privilege, while, given the economic and social problems facing the European Union, joining the EU could be compared to purchasing a ticket to the Titanic,” Overchuk underscored.

The irony of this statement is not lost on those aware of Armenia’s pride in the fact that Noah’s Arc landed on Mount Ararat – Armenia’s legendary mountain currently located in Turkey, right across the border with Armenia.

The Norwegian excuse for not taking Russian sailors on board is not good enough

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We are publishing a qualified opinion from reader @SlickPict on the Norwegian excuse for not taking the Russian sailors on board of the Norwegian ship “Oslo Carrier 3”, as presented at the end of the previous article The attack on Russian dry cargo ship “Ursa Major” in the Mediterranean. The text was first published on our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

The reader has been a participant of the events surrounding the disaster of a rig during the Montara oil spill.

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I’ve spent a long time at sea, on offshore installations and pipelay barges, plus the odd deep sea fishing trip…😁

I have witnessed and been directly involved in a sizable international incident where the crew of a drilling rig lost control of the well and abandoned the rig, right next to us on a pipelay barge.

We recovered the crew safely. The rig later burnt totally.

I can only think of one excuse for not taking a crew aboard from a life-raft or life-boat and that would be because it was unsafe to do so for some good and solid reason.

This excuse, (the only possible excuse) was not tabled by the Norwegians.

“There’s another ship on the way” communicated properly or not, is not good enough.
“There were no injured aboard” is not good enough.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in a life-raft or lifeboat will tell you that it is more comfortable drinking tea or coffee in the warm accommodation of a ship, than tied up to it in a life-raft or lifeboat. Every minute you are in these life-rafts in the open sea is dangerous. Being tied to a large vessel even more so.

The simple test here is, what would the Norwegian Government & media have to say if the position was reversed? Say for arguments sake that a Norwegian crew were not aided by a Russian vessel?

I think we know the answer.

They would scream blue murder.

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The photographs from the rescue operation are by the author, with the following additional comment:

[The rig crew] were picked up by an anchor handling/supply vessel and transferred to our barge.

This point is of significance. No waiting for other vessels, transfer if needs be, but get them out of the sea asap.

Another reader came with a similar comment:
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In Syria, the party is only starting

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This is an analytical article by Alexandr Rodgers, translated by SRBZOV

I’ve already written about this briefly after Assad’s fall, but now there is more data, so I can describe it in more detail.
The morons who yapped that “this is a defeat and/or weakening of Russia” are just that – morons.

Because Russia can keep its bases in Syria (if it wants), and the change in the situation has not caused us any particular problems. No one is attacking our bases, and the pro-Turkish militants who control this part of Syria are not at all against the bases remaining (and are even ready to provide security guarantees).
But the destruction of the existing balance has created problems for all of Syria’s neighbors (unexpectedly, Russia is not one of them) and for the United States.

Israel’s unprovoked aggression and full-scale invasion of Syria with an attempt at illegal annexation of Syrian lands (and whatever else they usually write about Russia) is not really a victory for Israel and does not strengthen its position. On the contrary, in the context of ongoing confrontation with other neighbors, this only stretches the border and disperses the Israeli army.

But the most important thing is the growing conflict between Turkish proxies (HTS) and American proxies (Kurds from the SDF). Moreover, there are career military personnel on both sides – Turkish and American.

The Turkomans have recaptured two cities from the Kurds – Manbij and Deir ez-Zor. Moreover, despite the Biden administration’s attempts to resolve the situation, Erdogan directly says that he will not stop the fighting until the SDF is destroyed.

I have come across several publications where the authors write that the Trump administration will have completely different goals than the current one, and it will try to leave Syria. I would not be so sure of this. If anyone has forgotten, I will remind you that it was Trump who first deployed American troops there to strengthen and train the Kurds, and bragged “I took the oil.”

And the Turks are now driving the Kurds and the Americans who support them out of these very oil fields. And Trump has already made statements about the “hostile takeover” of Syrian territories by Turkey the other day (he somehow bashfully kept silent about Israel, which is doing the same).

The fighting there is serious, with tanks, artillery, drones. The Turkish army is helping with air support.

There was information that the other day the Americans unloaded ten military transport aircraft full of armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition for the Kurds. Plus, additional American troops have been deployed there.

And just a week ago, Michael Rubin, one of the leading American experts on the Middle East, who has taught US Army soldiers for many years and has been in contact with various groups, including the Taliban, wrote an article for the think tank “American Enterprise Institute” with the eloquent title “The United States Needs to Prepare to Kill Turks in Syria”. That is, “The United States must prepare to kill the Turks in Syria.”

It is especially amusing that the goals of this think tank are stated as “Building a free and secure world, protecting human dignity and expanding human potential.” For a safe and free world, kill the Turks!

As we see, in Syria, US and Turkish proxies are waging war against each other, the Pentagon is actively supplying the Kurds with weapons (this means, for example, that all these weapons are not going to Ukraine), and American influencers are openly calling for the killing of the Turks.

Two NATO countries are fighting each other through proxies, NATO is united as never before!

The hardest thing in this situation is to try to explain how this has weakened Russia.

I just can’t do it.

Yeltsin Centre as a magnet for the liberal dregs of society, with Nina Hrusheva as an example

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To get a feel of what legacy Yeltsin left behind, and what kind of people get attracted to it, we published several posts at out Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, using one specific case as an example, and commenting along the way.

The country must know its antiheroes

Yeltsin Centre in Yekaterinburg invited a patented russophobe Nina Hrusheva — the great-granddaughter of Nikita Hrushev. Yes, the very same who got the top position in the USSR in exchange for the unconstitutional transfer of Crimea to UkSSR, the same who black-paintes Stalin and his legacy, the same who initiated the future dismemberment of the USSR.

Nina Hrusheva, a citizen of the USA, was to present her book «Nikita Hrushev. A Leader Outside of the System.»

Getting ahead, it was announced that Hrusheva’s visit was cancelled «for technical reasons». And good riddance!

We shall talk about Yeltsin Centre in a different post. Now, let’s take a closer look at Nina Hrusheva… UralLIVE reports:

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She wants to dismember Russia and judge Putin. Meet the new guest of the Yeltsin Center
Nikita Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter went crazy and betrayed her motherland

On November 26, a speech by Nina Hrushcheva, professor at the New School University in New York, was announced at the Yeltsin Center. She is the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, through whose fault Crimea became part of the Ukrainian SSR.
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National identity and political choice on the example of Russia and China – a re-blog of Dmitry Medvedev’s article

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The article you are about to read was translated and published by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on their Telegram channel. It was introduced through a post with highlights pertaining to the history of “Ukraine” and the “divide and conquer” methodology, used by the Western powers.

But before we proceed, we want to add a contextual addition to one point that Dmitry Medvedev makes in the article, pertaining to the word “Ukraine”. We wrote about it in a post at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”:

A quick linguistic excursion into the history of Ukraine

What you see before you, is the «New Russian-Polish Dictionary», published in Warsaw in 1835.

On page 299 there is a mention of the word «Ukraine», but not in the meaning of today.

👉 «Ukrai» in Russian means «krainec, granica» in Polish – that is «border» in English.

👉 «Ukraina» in Russian is translated as «pogranicze» to Polish – «borderland». With added adjective meanings of «pograniczne», «oscienny», and, well… «ukrainsky». That is, «of a border» (as in, for example, «a border crossing»)

That’s it!

📄 Excerpt from the article by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation (December 13, 2024)

Ukraine: the West’s new social vivisection exercises

  • The current Kiev regime feeds from the hands of the countries of the collective West, which, in addition to funnelling arms into it, manages it through “soft power” political technologies. To this end, a comprehensive network of NGOs controlled by American and European intelligence services has been established.
  • Western forces are acting against us according to the same hypocritical principle of “divide et impera.” Their establishments and Ukrainian ideologues are persistently attempting to apply the Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and other experiences (including Manchukuo) in Ukraine. Their aim is to demonstrate that Russians and Ukrainians are as disparate as possible, to sever Ukraine from Russia, to sow discord, and to create ethnic divisions.
  • To unconditionally draw a line between the ethnicities living in Russia and Ukraine, and to attribute all the inhabitants of those lands to Ukrainians, is a gross error. The word itself, “Ukrainians,” did not have its modern ethnic ring to it until the mid-19th century. It was more of a geographical term, referring to a person’s birthplace or place of residence. The explanation is quite simple: there were no independent state formations within the borders of modern-day Ukraine at the time when the modern system of nation states was emerging following the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, or in the 19th century.
  • Viewing Ukraine’s genesis through the classic “state – nation” prism is pointless. Ukraine’s history is inseparable from the history of the events that unfolded on its territories, which at various times were part of other countries. Likewise, it is more accurate to discuss not a cultural and ethnic “Ukrainians – Russians” dichotomy, but rather “borderland Russians – Russians” dichotomy.
  • In Russia, the people of Malorossiya (or Little Russia) were recognised as an integral part of the titular nation, the Russian people. Their integration into imperial society was considerable. Legally, politically, culturally, and religiously, their status was in no way inferior to that of Russians.
  • Never in the 300 years of being part of the Russian state has Malorossiya-Ukraine been a colony or an enslaved minority. At the same time, it was normal for various non-Russian groups living in the Russian Empire and having a distinct ethnic identity in comparison with the titular group, to identify as Russian Germans, Russian Poles, Russian Swedes, Russian Jews, or Russian Georgians. It was a common figure of speech. However, there was no such thing as “Russian Ukrainians.” The phrase even sounded absurd.

The complete article is below.
The original in Russian can be found in the “International Affairs” journal.
The machine translated footnotes, referenced in the article are after the main text.

National identity and political choice on the example of Russia and China

Article by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russian Federation (December 13, 2024)December 14, 2024

If you are hoping to turn a Russian pharmacy into a Ukrainian one, it’s not enough just to clip the letter “я” off the end of the word “гомеопатическая” on its signboard.
— Mikhail Bulgakov [1]

The party and state visit to China on December 11-12, 2024, at the invitation of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party has reaffirmed the unprecedentedly high level of relations between Russia and China. There are no issues we cannot discuss. During the talks with our Chinese partners, we discussed Ukraine, the Syrian crisis, and resistance to the unilateral economic restrictions imposed on us without UN Security Council approval.
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“Norwegian Break-up With NATO Is Our Goal” – Jens Stoltenberg, 1985

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This material was previously postet under the title “The meandering steadfastness of Jens Stoltenberg” at out Telegram channel, “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”. There, we accompanied this material with a number of recent video-quotes of Jens Stoltenberg to emphasise the duplicity and to set the contrast to his 1985 self.

Some time ago, Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, answered the question of “Is NATO bracing for a full-scale war with Russia?” thus:

It’s important to draw a distinction between official NATO policies and what have increasingly become the independent statements of a NATO secretary general who is divorced from reality.

Incidentally, a version of that question was raised in an article on the pages of this blog on June 24 2014: Is the West gearing up to invade Russia once again?, but we digress.

Let us assume for a moment that Jens Stoltenberg was not “divorced from reality”, but was actually trying to fulfil the political goal of his youth: To free Norway from NATO!

– What better way to achieve that than to destroy NATO from within?

Facsimile of the article in Aftenposten from 23.02.1985, reprinted in Abcnyheter.no.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane with Jens. Below, is the English translation of the 1985 interview in one of Norway’s main newspapers.

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Ukrainian SSR of 1991 vs. Ukraine of 2016: Shocking statistics of the pogrom (with “Fainting Piglet”)

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Today is Ukraine “independence day”. It’s definitely a day of independence from common sense and brains for that forlorn territory…

The author of the “Fainting Piglet” satirical cartoons made an impromptu film for the occasion, citing as her inspiration an article with statistics from Free Press.

Here is what the author of the series said on her Telegram channel:

I made the video in one day, so there are bugs in it. And it was also very difficult to write a song in Ukrainian when you don’t speak it. But the goal was not so much a video as an advertisement for a very useful article that I would like you to read. An article about the degradation of Ukraine since its separation from the USSR. It specifically shows the degradation from the moment of the collapse of the USSR until 2016, so that they would not start shouting “we are degrading because you are bombing us.” No, Ukraine started rolling towards its grave much earlier.

I am grateful to the people who write such articles. This makes it much easier for me to search for information. Today, the lands of Ukraine are actively sold to foreign corporations not in order for the Ukrainians to live happily on them. The West does not give a damn about the population of Nezalezhnaya and its ecology. Almost every one of us has relatives, loved ones, friends or acquaintances living in Ukraine, so we DO care, but for the West we are all second-class people for whom there is not pity. It is a shame that Ukraine has not caught up on this yet. Therefore, when she celebrates independence day from Russian protection, it is like a patient in the last stage of cancer would happily celebrate oncology day.

As an aside, we would like to note that back in 2014 we published on the pages of this blog an article Two Ukraines – with a Statistical and Historical View at Novorossia, where there was a comparison of some of the statistics for the Ukrainian SSR anno 1990 and and Ukraine of 2013.

Ukraine vs. the Ukrainian SSR: Shocking statistics of the pogrom

by Svyatoslav Knyazev

After the collapse of the Union, Nezalezhnaya [translator note: a by name for “independent [Ukriane]” in Ukrainian] had every chance to become one of the most successful countries in Europe

The escape of European Ukraine from the “totalitarian Soviet hell” is going according to plan. As of late, it is difficult to surprise anyone with an analysis of the collapse of the Ukrainian economy compared to the “pre-Maidan” year 2013. But the topic of socio-economic changes that have occurred in Ukraine in comparison to the Soviet period has been undeservedly forgotten. So more the pity! After all, the main “scapegoat” enemy of Kiev today, along with Russia, is its – Ukraine’s – communist past. A separate law is dedicated to the fight against the spiritual heritage of the USSR (even the Russian Federation is not awarded such an “honour”). All Soviet symbols are officially banned. As of August 2017, a total of 2,389 monuments objectionable to the Kiev regime were demolished in Ukraine, most of which glorified the achievements of the Soviet era.

It is very curious that they decided to start an active war with the “spirit” of the USSR almost 25 years after its collapse and more than 30 years after Mihail Gorbachev began dismantling the classical Soviet system, when only those who were either just under or well over 50 remembered the real manifestation of domestic socialism. Until a new “desovietized” generation grew up, the authorities of the “Nezalezhnaya” did not dare to conduct such experiments…

I was prompted to write this material by a small note about the statements of the Ukrainian economist Sergei Korablin. This Doctor of Economics, professor and former director of the Monetary Market Analysis and Forecasting Department of the Ukrainian National Bank estimated back in 2015 that Ukraine had set an absolute global anti-record, showing the worst n planet earth GDP dynamics, managing to bypass even Zimbabwe and the Central African Republic. Having become curious about what I had read, I decided to find out what Ukraine had actually lost by seceding from the USSR and abandoning everything Soviet. This was helped by open data from the State Statistics Service of “Nezalezhnaya” and Ukrainian experts.

Given the complete uselessness of nominal GDP dynamics in the context of what we are investigating, I decided to look for data on changes in the level of gross domestic product of Ukraine at purchasing power parity. It is clear that this indicator is speculative to a certain extent, but it allows one to at least start from something.

Wikipedia, with reference to IMF data and taking into account extrapolated values, claims that by 1991 the GDP (PPP) of the Ukrainian SSR reached about 505.5 billion dollars. The indicator of independent Ukraine in 2016 is approximately 353 billion. The drop is over 30%. This is indeed an absolute world record. Zimbabwe’s similar figures for comparison over the same period are only 2-3%…

However, given the fact that the very methodology of calculating GDP (PPP) leaves some room for manipulation, I decided to look at how specific socio-economic indicators, which can be, figuratively speaking, “touched with one’s hands”, changed in Ukraine compared to the Soviet times: from sausage production and pig population to the number of schools and hospitals.

So, only dry figures, some of which I directly borrowed from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, and some from tables collected by VOX UKRAINE on the basis of data from the same State Statistics Service.

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Italy jumps on the bandwagon of the Golodomor myth. Maria Zaharova’s comment.

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The «Golodomor» myth (intentionally misspelled in the West as «Holodomor», more on that in a later post that dispels the myth) has gripped Europe, engulfed in the fervent russophobia. Italy is the latest to jump on the bandwagon of this hoax.

As it is asked in the expanded comment by Maria Zaharova of the Russian Foreign Ministry, what about those who were starving in those lean years in the Volga basin area. The term «golodajushie Povolzhja» – «the starting of the Volga basin» has become an idiomic part of the Russian language to describe someone in dire need for help.

And the famine of those years engulfed all of the Southern and Eastern Russia. In my own family, my grandmother’s grandmother died of hunger at that time. The catch: that branch of my family lived in the Altai Krai of Russia, that is, in Sibera.

Comment by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, M.V.Zaharova, in connection with the recognition by the Italian Senate of the “Holodomor” as a genocide of the Ukrainian people

On July 26, the Senate of the Italian Republic adopted a resolution recognizing the so-called Holodomor as a “genocide of the Ukrainian people.” Earlier, a similar document was approved by the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the start of a special military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

We regard this anti-Russian step as another evidence of the short-sighted policy of official Rome aimed at encouraging the most unbridled Russophobic manifestations actively promoted by the Kiev authorities and their patrons.

At the same time, Rome does not take into account the millions of people who became victims of the famine of 1932-1933 in the Russian Volga region. We invite Italian citizens to ask their government: is such disregard of facts caused by ignorance of world history or is there an undisguised segregation of people on a national basis?

It is quite obvious that the continuation of the line on the “Ukrainization” of the Italian political class and society, expressed, among other things, in the thoughtless execution of the increasingly brazen and unceremonious demands of the Nazi Kiev regime, may lead in the not so distant future to the adoption by the Italian Parliament of resolutions on perpetuating the memory of the anti-Semite S. Petliura or the Nazi collaborator S. Bandera.

Such decisions of the Italian legislators, who in this case did not show any depth of analysis of historical events, nor political foresight and wisdom, certainly make the prospects for normalization of Russian-Italian relations more distant.

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Rostislav Ischenko on the Anti-Russian Racism: Operation “Derusification” or a global attempt to abolish the Russians

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It has been a while since I last translated an article by Rostislav Ischenko. In the past I translated such articles as The Great Patriotic War in Ukraine. A historical retrospective by Rostislav Ischenko and Ukraine celebrated its independence – from what?. His political and historical analysis largely centres around Ukraine and the parallels of the present-day historical process to those of the past. Recently he published a number of articles that were mostly of interest to the domestic reader. The one you are about to read now, however, touches upon the wider theme of the anti-Russian racism that has engulfed and consumed the Western world.

Cemetery near Paris: Operation “Derusification” or a global attempt to abolish the Russians

Rostislav Ishchenko, Columnist of MIA “Russia Today”
January 16, 2023

The French authorities are hypocritically sad to announce that they will be forced to close the Russian cemetery in Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois, since Russia has stopped paying for its maintenance. However, Russia stopped paying because the French authorities stopped accepting payments as part of the imposed sanctions.

Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois is a monument to Russian emigration. Emigrants of the Civil War era of the early twentieth century, and then the emigrants of all the subsequent waves are buried there. In addition to Drozdovsky and Drozdov’s followers, Alekseev and Alekseev’s followers, Rodzianko, Yusupov, Grand Duke Gabriel Konstantinovich, Bunin and Gippius, Galich and Nuriev, Taffy and Tarkovsky, Lifar and Merezhkovsky lie there.

This cemetery is a monument to the Russian history of the twentieth century, with all its problems and contradictions. But at the same time it is a monument to the Russians who did not get along in Russia. Some being the losers of the Civil War, some – of the political struggle, whether they left Russia in search of a better life or professional self-realization. But it is also a monument to the Russian culture in its highest manifestations, in which sense it constitutes the integral part of the world culture.

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A short history of Russian America – the gain and loss of California and Alaska

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With all the talks of various reparations, territorial claims and such, I is both interesting and educational to remember the history the the Russian America, and remind certain actors that if the legality of other past documents can be brought into question, so can the sale of Alaska and California.

Below are several articles from “Argumenty i Fakty” that take a look at that history and mull over what could have been done differently. The last article in the series is illustrative of the battle with the monuments in the “Woke-Woke West” as a manifestation of a brainless demolition of history.

Table of contents:

Kindness, “kushka” and “luzhka”. What kind of memory did the Russians leave in California

11.09.2022

An Orthodox chapel in Fort Ross.Orthodox chapel in Fort Ross. / Frank Schulenburg / Commons.wikimedia.org

200 years ago, on the 11th of September 1812, the official opening of the Russian colony in California, founded back in March, was marked with cannon and rifle salute. It remained nameless all the preceding months and received the name only six months later. The Russian fortress “by drawing of a lot before the icon of the Saviour” was named Fort Ross.

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