The Kremlin has an amazing inability to confront reality. Peter Koenig explains that NATO has now invaded Russia by entering Kursk, and the Kremlin still pretends it is involved in a limited border conflict with Ukraine in Donbas. Indeed, the Kremlin is so far removed from reality that Russia’s leaders were incapable of imagining a NATO-led and equipped force would cross into Russia herself that the Kursk region was left entirely unprotected.
This humiliation Russia is suffering is the direct consequence of the mindless way the Kremlin has conducted the conflict with Ukraine.
The West has made it clear from the beginning in 2014–a decade ago–when Washington overthrew the elected Ukrainian government and installed a neo-nazi puppet that the West was at war with Russia.
One might have thought that the Kremlin would have recognized it was confronted by an aggressive Western enemy.
Instead the Kremlin wasted eight years pleading for the Minsk Agreement and for a mutual security agreement with the West, while the West built and equipped an army for Ukraine.
The Kremlin was finally forced into action, for which it was not prepared militarily, when the Ukrainian army was about to attack the two breakaway republics in Donbas and massacre the Russian population.
The Russian belated intervention was so weak and so limited that it surprised everyone.
The Kremlin stressed that its intent was limited to Donbas and was not an invasion of Ukraine. Consequently, Kiev was left unhampered to conduct war against Russia.
The Kremlin has done nothing to destroy Ukraine’s ability to conduct war, as the Ukrainian/NATO invasion of Russia herself demonstrates.
It has been clear to me from the beginning that Putin’s inability to accept reality would result in a progressively widening war and that Putin was not making sufficient conventional efforts to keep the conflict conventional.
A large Russian army seems not to be on the table, as Putin’s numerous reassurances that there will be no conscription indicates. Consequently, the Kremlin has set in place tactical nuclear forces to destroy NATO’s ability to conduct war. It seems that my long ago prediction that Putin’s everlasting patience was leading directly to nuclear war is correct.
I wonder if the non-Western world is capable of understanding the evil that the West and Israel represent. (Ilana Mercer, herself a Jew and former Israeli resident, describes the Israeli legalization of war crimes here) Putin still seems to think that the conflict with NATO in Ukraine can be negotiated to a reasonable settlement. If he thinks this, he has no idea what he and Russia are confronted with.
The Kremlin has miscalculated every step along the road to Armageddon.
Putin did nothing to stop Washington’s overthrow of the Ukrainian government.
Putin refused the requests in 2014 of the Donbas republics to be reincorporated into Russia like Crimea.
Had Putin accepted the request, there would have been no war.
Putin watched for eight years the West’s creation of a Ukrainian army and undertook no comparable buildup of Russian forces.
He had to rely on the semi-private Wagner Group during the initial stages of the conflict. Putin has done nothing to enforce any of his declared red lines, thus always encouraging more provocations that widen the conflict.
He has not built a conventional army. What NATO should be confronting is a four or five million army of highly trained troops armed to the teeth with the superior Russian weapons systems. Instead, there are Russian war games practicing the launch of a disarming tactical nuclear strike on NATO capability.
In the Kremlin’s defense one can say that the Kremlin believed in good will, in the sanity of the West, and in the West’s ability to live and let live. But believing this despite all the hard evidence to the contrary is inexplicable.
So, Peter Koenig tells us, war is upon us:
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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