I

 

told my buddy last week:

"I read this article the other day, and they interviewed seven different 'security experts (Ours, as in our US security experts) and they every last one got it wrong. They are all small balling this guys (Putin) intentions.

We spoke to 7 ex-CIA and Pentagon experts. Here's what they say Putin wants in Ukraine.

Published February 16, 2022

‘A KGB man’

Greg Sims, former CIA chief of station with Europe experience

"I can’t imagine Putin really wants to invade."

(Opps)

‘He wants to reassert Russia’

Ronald Marks, former CIA officer with experience on Russia issues

"He wants to be known as the guy who reconstituted and to some extent pushed Russia forward in the world."

(Runs a lil deeper than that yo)

Fear of the ‘Gadhafi scenario’

Michael van Landingham, former CIA Russia analyst

"that’s his goal: to not get shot in a ditch."

(What were the sins of your sister Sodom again? "...She and her daughters were arrogant..." (Ezekiel 16:49-50) as well as a lot of other things but the first thing was...she and her daughters (other cities around her, think offspring in a metaphorical sense) were arrogant.

Burn down their house’

Dan Hoffman, former CIA Moscow chief of station

"...that’s where we get to what he’s doing right now, which is extorting the United States and the West by putting out 130,000 troops, military exercises in Belarus, militarizing the Black Sea with 11 amphibious ships and submarines — all of that designed to drive up the tensions and induce us to make concessions.

(It was never about making concessions or he wouldn't have made demands he knew we were not going to accept to begin with.)

‘Just a damn bully’

Chris Miller, former acting (As in never confirmed by congress) secretary of defense, 2020-2021.

"Putin’s motivation: It’s the big unknown, but I don’t think it’s that difficult. Putin’s just a damn bully"

(It wasn't so unknown to some of us)

‘A desperate attempt to win back the empire’

Paul Zalucky, a former senior CIA official who served in Kyiv and Warsaw

"The one factor that argues for him going in full-scale like this is it’s a desperate attempt to win back the empire..."

(He got close but still missed the point that to "win back the empire" destroys the west and it's alliances (NATO, EU, etc...)

‘Putin has pushed twice with no real consequence’

Josh Manning, a former Russia military and foreign policy analyst with U.S. European Command

'Putin has pushed twice with no real consequence and he actually emerged stronger from both events. (Georgia, the country not the state :-) and 2014's small incursion into Ukraine"

(This particular response didn't really answer the question of what Putin wants in Ukraine) 

That, a former Russia military and foreign policy analyst with U.S. European Command, a former senior CIA official who served in Kyiv and Warsaw, a former acting secretary of defense, a former CIA Moscow chief of station, a former CIA Russia analyst, a former CIA officer with experience on Russia issues and a former CIA chief of station with Europe experience all missed the mark ought to be  alarming.

Putin's goal has always been to widen fissures in the NATO alliance to the point of it no longer being a viable entity and thereby altering Global security in the post WW2 era.

Our history over the last 20 years has been to "small ball" this guy and his intentions and we still seem oblivious to the fact that he has managed to outlive and out smart all his adversaries foreign and domestic for the last 20 years and continues to do so.

Others got it more right

The Reason Putin Would Risk War

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

I happened on the above article yesterday by chance (Why in the world would I lie with all the bona fides, i.e. documentary evidence showing a person's legitimacy; credentials etc) but it was pretty much what I was telling my friend on our trip to town last week.

"He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.

Misc comments:

"He wants America itself to fail."

These days? You could argue we've done a good enough job of that all on our own.

"to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric"

Again, we've done a good enough job of that all on our own, see the following excerpts from the article listed below:

"Talk of democracy and political change is dangerous. To keep them from spreading, Russia’s rulers must maintain careful control over the life of the nation. Markets cannot be genuinely open..."

(Game stop stock price ring a bell to anybody? That episode showed what a sham stock prices are and how easily they can be manipulated and it was done intentionally by institutionalized investors (after a brief grass roots start) to show the world just that point.)

"But although Putin missed the euphoria of the ’80s, he certainly took full part in the orgy of greed that gripped Russia in the ’90s. 

(We really gonna go around and talk about other countries "orgy of greed"? this day and age?)

"Putin’s control comes without legal limits. He and the people around him operate without checks and balances, without ethics rules, without transparency of any kind.

(Were the ones gonna go explain to the world how that's not the way it should be? Really? You could say the same thing about US and what we have become. Subpoenas don't matter, it's perfectly okay to circumvent congressional oversight, nothing happens to ethic violators etc )

"He doesn’t have to take into account the families of Russian soldiers who might die in a conflict that they don’t want. They have no choice, and no voice."

(Ours did or do?)

He (Putin) knows that the political system he helped create is profoundly unfair, that his regime not only runs the country but owns it, making economic and foreign-policy decisions that are designed to benefit the companies from which he and his inner circle personally profit. He knows that the institutions of the state exist not to serve the Russian people, but to steal from them. He knows that this system works very well for a few rich people, but very badly for everyone else. He knows, in other words, that one day, prodemocracy activists of the kind he saw in Dresden might come for him too.

(Wow...where to even start...the political system he helped create is profoundly unfair. 

It's fair here? When  a minority can elect a president in two out of the last five elections? And the Senate can be split 50/50 along party lines but one party represents 43 or so million less people? And we wonder why people don't wanna be like us anymore?

making economic and foreign-policy decisions that are designed to benefit the companies from which he and his inner circle personally profit.

Russia has oligarchs (a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence). We don't have that here? Plus we got the great American Multinational corporations that we do exactly the same thing for. 

this system works very well for a few rich people, but very badly for everyone else

It might as well have been written about here if you ask me. Here, you know, where the top.1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

He (Putin) certainly understood the power of democratic language, of the ideas that made Russians want a fair political system, not a kleptocracy controlled by Putin and his gang, and he knew where they came from. 

There the state and the oligarchs steal from you, here the corporations operate with impunity. So again what is the real difference? Everything is corrupt these days (Matthew 24:12) "Well you couldn't say and write what you do there." I know, but were talking about who is authorizing who to steal from whom not freedom of speech right now and besides, I'd be saying what I am saying regardless of any geographical location. I knew how this all ended long ago (Revelation 11).

The point is this: 

We've given other peoples/countries etc good enough reasons to turn from democracy all on our own without anybody's help. Putin's just trying to put the nail in the coffin of the west as the world slowly tilts toward authoritarianism. Or as the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said at the alliance’s Stronger Together conference happening today:

There is much at stake in today’s crisis; the risk of conflict is real. Russia is using force and ultimatums not only to redraw borders in Europe, but to try to rewrite the entire global security architecture.

I never thought I'd be living in a country where so-called experts in defense and intelligence would have missed such obvious intentions.

Godspeed.

I love you baby :-).

See ya soon honey :-).