‘The Great Game’:  Alexander Dugin in a new light

As readers of my essays know very well, I have been using two talk shows on Russian state television as my markers for what the chattering classes are saying:  Sixty Minutes, with hosts Olga Skabeyeva and Yevgeny Popov,  and Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. In general, I consider such shows valuable because policy decisions taken in the Kremlin are fenced in by the thinking of members of the elite who are given the microphone on these shows. I also make extensive use of them because I live in Belgium, where these two shows are easily accessible ‘live’ on the internet via smotrim.ru 

Now that I am spending three weeks in Petersburg, I have had the opportunity in the comfort of my apartment to turn on another leading Russian news analysis and talk show that is broadcast on the Pervy Kanal of state television but is not available ‘live’ on the internet:  The Great Game (Bol’shaya Igra), which is hosted by Vyacheslav Nikonov and Dmitry Simes. By good luck, on the evening of 2 May I came upon an interview with the philosopher Alexander Dugin conducted by Simes that was fascinating for reasons I will explain in a minute. However, Simes regularly interviews important people on the show, as last night’s edition with Jeffrey Sachs on a video link from the States proved. This compels me to make a greater effort to watch this program in future within the constraints of next-day availability on the ‘Rutube.’

First, a word about the hosts.  Vyacheslav Nikonov is a member of the hereditary elite: he is the grandson of Communist leader Molotov. He is also a very clever and well educated fellow who projects moderation and tolerance for his interlocutors, in sharp contrast to the generally boorish Vladimir Solovyov. He has served in the Russian parliament for decades and was long the head of the state sponsored Russky Mir organization which aims to give cultural and moral support to the Russian diaspora in the ‘near’ and ‘far’ abroad.

Dmitry Simes had an extraordinary career in the United States before he peremptorily pulled up stakes and moved to Moscow in the days following the launch of the Special Military Operation. Towards the end of his interview with Dugin last night, Simes said that his repatriation was driven by emotion. Whereas a good many Russians left for the West, acting on their emotions, he headed East. In fact, his presence at the head of a U.S. think tank had become untenable and he moved to his original homeland where his sympathies now clearly lay.

Simes made his career in the States when he became a close advisor to Richard Nixon after Nixon left the presidency. He traveled with Nixon to Russia and other destinations. Following Nixon’s death, Simes became the director of what was originally called The Nixon Center and later was renamed the Center for the National Interest.  If that last title does not say much to you, it is because you have not considered that the fundamental lever in foreign policy as practiced by Nixon was ‘interests’ as opposed to ‘values,’ the supposed North Star of today’s Neo-Liberals and Neocons.

When The Great Game was launched in 2018, it was usually presented in the form of a ‘tele-bridge,’ with Nikonov holding down the Moscow studio and Simes holding down a studio in Washington. D.C. That came to an end with Simes’ repatriation to Russia.

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Alexander Dugin came to the attention of Western media in August 2022 when his daughter Darya Dugina, an activist journalist, was brutally murdered by a car bomb set by Ukrainian terrorists.  The more likely intended target had been Dugin himself.

Going back well before the Ukraine conflict, Dugin had made a name for himself as the philopher-adviser to President Putin and promoter of a modern day version of the Eurasianist world view that was first developed in Russia before the First World War and later promoted into the 1930s. He put forward a Eurasianist identity for Russia to distinguish it on the world stage. This Eurasianism may be kindly described as eccentric, less kindly as quackery. It was that Dugin who was thrown out of Moscow State University where he had been teaching philosophy. Given that the deans and professorate were and surely remain substantially pro-Western, they must have found the presence of Dugin in their midst to be objectionable.  Today Dugin carries the title of Director of the Ivan Il’in Higher School of Politics within the Russian State Humanities University in Moscow.

Without any basis in fact, our Western journalists spoke of Dugin père as being close to Putin when the tragedy of his daughter’s death unfolded, and this made him newsworthy to the celebrated American journalist Tucker Carlson when he was visiting Moscow. This interview was released on youtube on 30 April and immediately was attacked by anti-Carlson mainstream U.S. media.

You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIULmTprQ6o and I advise you to take a look. It is in English, which will make it accessible to all readers of these pages while Simes’ interview with him is only available in Russian. 

In fact the two interviews are complementary. For unclear reasons, though abstract issues are not his strength, Carlson probed Dugin’s political philosophy for 18 of the 21 minutes that he interviewed him and got around to the question of why American Liberals so hate Russia in the last 3 minutes.

 Dugin explains where Western Civilization has taken a wrong turn that arises from excesses of Liberalism which follow directly from its underlying stress on the individual and liberation from all outside collectivist constraints, beginning with religion, state and ending with sex and humanity.

For those who would like to better understand how and why the evolution of Liberalism has led Western Civilization to its present madness, I direct you to a philosopher in our own midst, that is to say in France, Alain de Benoist, who set all of this out in a collection of essays entitled Contre Liberalisme. La société n’est pas un marché. For those who do not have a command of French, I provide a brief summary of the essential points in the book review I published in A Belgian Perspective in International Affairs (2019), pp. 564-571.

 Dugin does not mention de Benoist, but it is hard to imagine that he is unaware of the latter’s writings.  In fairness, for his part, Benoist does not mention Russia: his vision of European politics goes no further east than to Hungary. Several essays in this collection are devoted to Viktor Orban and the underpinnings of what Orban promotes as the illiberal state.

The interview with Alexander Dugin conducted by Dmitry Simes on The Great Game can be viewed here:  https://rutube.ru/video/f440a210a7de27fc026b74f5b667b964/

By contrast with Carlson, Simes took the question of Western Liberals’ hatred for Russia as the featured issue in his interview and moved on to when and how Russian government and society responded to that unwelcome reality.

 Dugin’s explains the West’s hatred for Russia in relation to the West’s total intolerance of other countries’ values and interests which collides with Russia’s determined defense of its sovereignty. The more Russia successfully resists the economic, informational and military attack of the Collective West, the greater the encouragement to China, to the Islamic world, even to Africa and Latin America to resist diktats from Washington. In this way, by acting defensively Russia threatens the US led world order.

The next most important point addressed in the interview is why Russian elites for so long in the 1990s and beyond thought that the false idea of brotherhood with the West was realizable. The answer lies in the way that they moved the riches which they made in Russia to the West and then became hostages to that offshore wealth. Even today, those who have not physically moved themselves out of the country to where their money is persist in what Dugin calls the hallucinatory belief that after the war is over, life will return to the pre-war normal of globalism.

According to Dugin, the stresses and price that Russia is now paying in gold and blood while prosecuting the Special Military Operation  are creating a new society, a new country, a new ‘sovereign’ elite .

The final minutes of the interview are particularly interesting. Simes and Dugin are entirely on the same wave length. They are saying that this is no time for blaming anyone for the unpatriotic views of some since in the years following the break-up of the Soviet Union we all looked to the West.   The context for these remarks is the behavior of some leading Russian personalities whom we see on television, like Vladimir Solovyov, who is regularly cursing this or that Russian entertainer or other public figure for their treachery and betrayal of the Motherland. The same may be said of the cinema director Nikita Mikhalkov and his program Besogon, which he uses to expose the self-hating words of many Russian celebrities and political figures inside and outside of Russia.

What Dugin and Simes are calling for is instead a constructive program of helping to form the new pro-                                 sovereignty Russian elite that will eventually fully replace today’s compromised elites. 

Note the use of the key word “sovereignty.”  It replaces the word “patriotic.”  If Dugin may be said to be influencing the thinking of Vladimir Putin today, then surely it is in this very concept of “sovereignty,” meaning self-sufficiency and self-pride in a unique culture and society as opposed to the usual tribal nationalism that the European Union, for example, blames for war-making.   

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Having walked you through my intellectual discoveries during this visit to Petersburg, I return to the realities of daily life. My shopping expeditions have taken in a lot more than just comestibles.

I mentioned in passing when writing about the audience in the Aleksandriisky Academic Drama Theater that the young ladies were ‘well turned out.’  By that I meant, dressed in new chic clothing of this season and fashionably coiffed, with both goods and services procured locally.  Russia may well be in a ‘war economy,’ as Western media keep telling us, but that does not mean that the female half of the population is dressed in coal miners’ uniforms with head lamps as the Wendy’s television advertisements suggested in the 1990s to general amusement when describing ‘Moscow evening wear’ for its ‘At Wendy’s you have a choice’ message.  Apparently no one had ever tipped off the ad writers at the hamburger vendor that, as we used to say: “Russian girls are born in high heels.”

Whatever cutbacks in supplies of important medications Western pharmaceutical companies have made over the past two years to cause pain to the civilian population here, their confreres in France, Germany and elsewhere in the EU producing beauty aids have not followed suit. In pharmacies and specialized stores, ladies in Petersburg can buy most any products they are seeking to beautify themselves, including some skin creams from South Korea that actually do what they promise and wipe away the years…for at least half a day.

To those who will accuse me of gender bias for directing attention to ‘well turned out young ladies,’ I answer the following:  there is not much complimentary to say about the male representatives of the species, because they clearly do not like to ‘dress up,’ however much their girl friends and wives may urge them. At best, they come to opera dressed for a football match. Fortunately outdoor temperatures are still wintry here and none yet shows up in the Mariinsky wearing a singlet.  They will.

None of the indifferently dressed fellows is a poor boy. Indeed, my impression from taking a drink in the opera café during one of the half-hour intermissions was that some of my neighbors were here only because they are no longer able to fly to France and take seats in the Bastille Opera. They make do with the Mariinsky Theater and practice here the way of life they learned there. During the break, one pair at the next table ordered a couple of big red caviar sandwiches each together with a full bottle of Balaklava brut sparkling wine from the Crimea. That is quite a challenge to down in 30 minutes, but they succeeded with time to spare. Folks at other tables downed bottles of red wine in the same 30 minutes. These high-life Russians have over the course of two years substantially replaced the big spending lawyers and accountants from New York or London who used to keep the elite restaurants in the Mariinsky neighborhood busy before and after shows.

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Finally,I return to shopping basket issues with which I led my first installment of these Travel Notes, because of the geopolitical dimension to changes in product assortment that are worthy of mention.

In Europe, off season, we get yellow seedless grapes from Chile or from South Africa. Here, what  I now find in the Petersburg supermarkets is the same grapes from India. Perfect grapes, by the way and at acceptable prices.  Why is India frozen out of the European Union for such produce?  That is a question for Frau von der Leyen.

More to the point, I see a broadening of foods being imported from Iran. Time was, just a few years ago, the only item one could name was pistachio nuts, of which Iran is the world’s biggest supplier. Then a year ago I saw Iranian celery on the vegetable counters here.  Now there is excellent quality Iranian iceberg lettuce on sale in the Petersburg supermarkets, considerably better presented than what we get in Belgium from Spain, not to mention at a substantially lower price.   Meanwhile the city market and the retail stores are all featuring Iranian early cabbage, which is a great favorite with Russians.

 My first impression is that Iran is now elbowing aside Turkey as a prime supplier of fresh produce.  The point of relevance to students of geopolitics is that the ever closer Russian-Iranian state to state relations go much further than certain joint infrastructure  structures serving the North-South Eurasian trade corridors, much further afield than supply of Iranian drones and drone technology to Moscow in return for jets or air defense units. The economies are becoming more interdependent.

The still bigger point is that what you will find on the shelves of even the little green grocer down the block from our apartment complex is foodstuff from the whole world, often with multiple choices made available to the consumer. Oranges from Egypt, giant blueberries from Morocco, mangoes from Brazil. That chap is now offering perfectly ripe and aromatic strawberries from both the South of Russia (Kuban) and from Serbia at comparable prices. I ask my Belgian readers when is the last time they tried Serbian strawberries, which are fully competitive in flavor with the prized Hoogstraat brand strawberries grown in Flanders. The reality is that to a large extent the EU is a set of captive markets, not the grand Open Market it professes to be. Perforce Russia is more open to the world, in the same way that Dubai is open to the world, as I discovered on a stopover there a year ago.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Reisenotizen, St. Petersburg, April-Mai 2024: Teil 3

„The Great Game“ („Das große Spiel“): Alexander Dugin in einem neuen Licht

Wie die Leser meiner Aufsätze wissen, habe ich jeweils zwei Talkshows des russischen Staatsfernsehens als Anhaltspunkte für die Meinung der „chattering classes“ genutzt: Sechzig Minuten mit den Moderatoren Olga Skabeyeva und Yevgeny Popov und Abend mit Vladimir Solovyov. Im Allgemeinen halte ich solche Sendungen für wertvoll, weil die politischen Entscheidungen im Kreml durch das Denken der Mitglieder der Elite, die in diesen Sendungen zu Wort kommen, dargestellt werden. Ich nutze sie auch deshalb ausgiebig, weil ich in Belgien lebe, wo diese beiden Sendungen über smotrim.ru leicht ‘live’ im Internet zu sehen sind.

Jetzt, da ich drei Wochen in Petersburg verbringe, hatte ich die Gelegenheit, in meiner Wohnung eine andere führende russische Nachrichtenanalyse- und Talkshow einzuschalten, die im Pervy Kanal des staatlichen Fernsehens ausgestrahlt wird, aber nicht live im Internet zu sehen ist: The Great Game (Das große Spiel – Bol’shaya Igra), moderiert von Vyacheslav Nikonov und Dmitry Simes. Durch einen glücklichen Zufall stieß ich am Abend des 2. Mai auf ein von Simes geführtes Interview mit dem Philosophen Alexander Dugin, das aus Gründen, die ich gleich erläutern werde, faszinierend war. Allerdings interviewt Simes regelmäßig wichtige Persönlichkeiten in der Sendung, wie die gestrige Ausgabe mit Jeffrey Sachs über eine Videoverbindung aus den USA bewies. Das zwingt mich dazu, mich in Zukunft mehr darum zu bemühen, diese Sendung im Rahmen der Verfügbarkeit am nächsten Tag auf der ‘Rutube’ zu sehen.

Zunächst ein Wort zu den Gastgebern. Wjatscheslaw Nikonow ist ein Mitglied der erblichen Elite: Er ist der Enkel des kommunistischen Führers Molotow. Außerdem ist er ein sehr kluger und gebildeter Mann, der seinen Gesprächspartnern gegenüber Mäßigung und Toleranz an den Tag legt, ganz im Gegensatz zu dem meist rüpelhaften Wladimir Solowjow. Er war jahrzehntelang Mitglied des russischen Parlaments und leitete lange Zeit die staatlich geförderte Organisation Russkij Mir, die die russische Diaspora im nahen und fernen Ausland kulturell und moralisch unterstützen soll.

Dmitry Simes hatte eine außergewöhnliche Karriere in den Vereinigten Staaten hinter sich, bevor er in den Tagen nach dem Beginn der militärischen Sonderoperation seine Zelte endgültig abgebrochen hat und nach Moskau gezogen ist. Gegen Ende seines Interviews mit Dugin sagte Simes gestern Abend, dass seine Rückkehr von Emotionen geleitet war. Während viele Russen aufgrund ihrer Emotionen in den Westen gingen, ging er nach Osten. In der Tat war seine Präsenz an der Spitze einer amerikanischen Denkfabrik unhaltbar geworden, und er zog in seine ursprüngliche Heimat, wo seine Sympathien nun eindeutig lagen.

Simes machte in den USA Karriere, als er nach dem Ausscheiden von Richard Nixon aus dem Amt des Präsidenten ein enger Berater von Nixon wurde. Er reiste mit Nixon nach Russland und an andere Orte. Nach Nixons Tod wurde Simes Direktor des ursprünglich als „Nixon Center“ bezeichneten Zentrums, das später in „Center for the National Interest“ umbenannt wurde. Wenn Ihnen der letzte Titel nicht viel sagt, liegt das daran, dass Sie nicht bedacht haben, dass der grundlegende Hebel in der Außenpolitik, wie sie von Nixon praktiziert wurde, „Interessen“ waren, im Gegensatz zu „Werten“, dem angeblichen Nordstern der heutigen Neoliberalen und Neocons.

Als The Great Game 2018 ins Leben gerufen wurde, wurde es in der Regel in Form einer „Telebrücke“ präsentiert, mit Nikonov im Moskauer Studio und Simes in einem Studio in Washington. Mit der Rückkehr von Simes nach Russland war damit Schluss.

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Alexander Dugin wurde im August 2022 in den westlichen Medien bekannt, als seine Tochter Darya Dugina, eine aktivistische Journalistin, durch eine von ukrainischen Terroristen gelegte Autobombe brutal ermordet wurde. Das wahrscheinlichere Ziel war Dugin selbst gewesen.

Schon lange vor dem Ukraine-Konflikt hatte sich Dugin einen Namen als philosophischer Berater von Präsident Putin und Verfechter einer modernen Version des eurasischen Weltbildes gemacht, das in Russland vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg entwickelt und später bis in die 1930er Jahre hinein propagiert wurde. Er schlug eine eurasische Identität für Russland vor, um es auf der Weltbühne zu profilieren. Dieser Eurasianismus kann freundlich als exzentrisch, weniger freundlich als Quacksalberei bezeichnet werden. Es war dieser Dugin, der von der Moskauer Staatsuniversität, an der er Philosophie gelehrt hatte, hinausgeworfen wurde. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass die Dekane und die Professorenschaft im Wesentlichen pro-westlich eingestellt waren und sind, muss ihnen die Anwesenheit von Dugin in ihrer Mitte unangenehm gewesen sein. Heute trägt Dugin den Titel eines Direktors der Ivan Il’in Higher School of Politics an der Staatlichen Russischen Universität für Geisteswissenschaften in Moskau.

Ohne jede Grundlage sprachen unsere westlichen Journalisten über Dugin père als Putin nahestehend, als sich die Tragödie des Todes seiner Tochter ereignete, und dies machte ihn für den berühmten amerikanischen Journalisten Tucker Carlson, als er Moskau besuchte, berichtenswert. Dieses Interview wurde am 30. April auf Youtube veröffentlicht und sofort von den Anti-Carlson-Mainstream-Medien in den USA angegriffen.

Sie können es hier finden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIULmTprQ6o und ich empfehle Ihnen, einen Blick darauf zu werfen. Es ist auf Englisch, was es allen Lesern dieser Seiten zugänglich macht, während das Interview von Simes mit ihm nur auf Russisch verfügbar ist.

In der Tat ergänzen sich die beiden Interviews. Aus unklaren Gründen, obwohl abstrakte Themen nicht seine Stärke sind, untersuchte Carlson Dugins politische Philosophie während 18 der 21 Minuten, in denen er ihn interviewte, und kam in den letzten drei Minuten zu der Frage, warum amerikanische Liberale Russland so hassen.

Dugin erklärt, wo die westliche Zivilisation eine falsche Richtung eingeschlagen hat, die sich aus den Exzessen des Liberalismus ergibt, die direkt aus der ihm zugrunde liegenden Betonung des Individuums und der Befreiung von allen äußeren kollektivistischen Beschränkungen resultieren, angefangen bei der Religion, dem Staat und endend bei Geschlecht und Menschlichkeit.

Wer besser verstehen möchte, wie und warum die Entwicklung des Liberalismus die westliche Zivilisation in den gegenwärtigen Wahnsinn geführt hat, den verweise ich auf einen Philosophen aus unserer Mitte, d.h. aus Frankreich, Alain de Benoist, der all dies in einer Aufsatzsammlung mit dem Titel Contre Liberalisme dargelegt hat. La société n’est pas un marché. Für diejenigen, die des Französischen nicht mächtig sind, gebe ich eine kurze Zusammenfassung der wesentlichen Punkte in der Buchbesprechung, die ich in A Belgian Perspective in International Affairs (2019), S. 564-571, veröffentlicht habe.

Dugin erwähnt de Benoist nicht, aber es ist schwer vorstellbar, dass er die Schriften von de Benoist nicht kennt. Fairerweise muss man sagen, dass Benoist seinerseits Russland nicht erwähnt: Seine Vision der europäischen Politik geht nicht weiter nach Osten als bis nach Ungarn. Mehrere Aufsätze in dieser Sammlung sind Viktor Orban und den Grundlagen dessen gewidmet, was Orban als illiberalen Staat propagiert.

Das von Dmitry Simes geführte Interview mit Alexander Dugin auf The Great Game kann hier eingesehen werden: https://rutube.ru/video/f440a210a7de27fc026b74f5b667b964/

Im Gegensatz zu Carlson stellte Simes die Frage des Hasses westlicher Liberaler auf Russland in den Mittelpunkt seines Interviews und ging dann der Frage nach, wann und wie die russische Regierung und Gesellschaft auf diese unwillkommene Realität reagiert hat.

Dugin erklärt den Hass des Westens auf Russland mit der totalen Intoleranz des Westens gegenüber den Werten und Interessen anderer Länder, die mit Russlands entschlossener Verteidigung seiner Souveränität kollidiert. Je mehr sich Russland erfolgreich gegen die wirtschaftlichen, informationellen und militärischen Angriffe des kollektiven Westens wehrt, desto mehr werden China, die islamische Welt und sogar Afrika und Lateinamerika ermutigt, sich dem Diktat aus Washington zu widersetzen. Auf diese Weise bedroht Russland durch sein defensives Verhalten die von den USA geführte Weltordnung.

Der nächste wichtige Punkt, der in dem Interview angesprochen wird, ist die Frage, warum die russischen Eliten in den 1990er Jahren und darüber hinaus so lange glaubten, dass die falsche Idee einer Verbrüderung mit dem Westen realisierbar sei. Die Antwort liegt in der Art und Weise, wie sie den Reichtum, den sie in Russland erwirtschaftet haben, in den Westen verschoben haben und dann zu Geiseln dieses Offshore-Reichtums wurden. Selbst heute noch leben diejenigen, die ihr Land nicht physisch verlassen haben, um ihr Geld dorthin zu bringen, in dem, wie Dugin es nennt, halluzinatorischen Glauben, dass nach dem Ende des Krieges das Leben zur Vorkriegsnormalität des Globalismus zurückkehren wird.

Dugin zufolge schaffen die Belastungen und der Preis, den Russland jetzt bei der Durchführung der militärischen Sonderoperation mit Gold und Blut bezahlt, eine neue Gesellschaft, ein neues Land, eine neue „souveräne“ Elite.

Die letzten Minuten des Interviews sind besonders interessant. Simes und Dugin sind völlig auf der gleichen Wellenlänge. Sie sagen, dass es nicht an der Zeit ist, irgendjemandem die Schuld für die unpatriotischen Ansichten einiger zu geben, da wir in den Jahren nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion alle auf den Westen geschaut haben. Der Kontext für diese Äußerungen ist das Verhalten einiger führender russischer Persönlichkeiten, die wir im Fernsehen sehen, wie z.B. Wladimir Solowjow, der regelmäßig diesen oder jenen russischen Entertainer oder eine andere Persönlichkeit des öffentlichen Lebens für ihren Verrat am Vaterland verflucht. Das Gleiche gilt für den Filmregisseur Nikita Michalkow und seine Sendung Besogon, in der er die selbsthassenden Worte vieler russischer Prominenter und politischer Persönlichkeiten innerhalb und außerhalb Russlands entlarvt.

Was Dugin und Simes fordern, ist stattdessen ein konstruktives Programm, das dabei hilft, die neue souveränitätsfreundliche russische Elite zu formen, die schließlich die heutigen kompromittierten Eliten vollständig ersetzen wird.

Man beachte die Verwendung des Schlüsselworts „Souveränität“. Es ersetzt das Wort „patriotisch“. Wenn man sagen kann, dass Dugin das Denken von Wladimir Putin heute beeinflusst, dann ist es sicherlich genau dieses Konzept der „Souveränität“, das Selbstgenügsamkeit und Selbstbewusstsein in einer einzigartigen Kultur und Gesellschaft bedeutet, im Gegensatz zu dem üblichen Stammesnationalismus, den zum Beispiel die Europäische Union für die Kriegsführung verantwortlich macht.

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Nachdem ich Sie über meine intellektuellen Entdeckungen während dieses Besuchs in Petersburg informiert habe, kehre ich nun zu den Realitäten des täglichen Lebens zurück. Bei meinen Einkaufstouren habe ich viel mehr als nur Lebensmittel eingekauft.

Als ich über das Publikum im Akademischen Aleksandriisky-Dramatheater geschrieben habe, erwähnte ich beiläufig, dass die jungen Damen „gut gekleidet“ waren. Damit meinte ich, dass sie die neue schicke Kleidung der Saison trugen und modisch frisiert waren, wobei sowohl die Sachen als auch die Dienstleistungen vor Ort beschafft wurden. Russland mag sich zwar in einer „Kriegswirtschaft“ befinden, wie uns die westlichen Medien immer wieder weismachen wollen, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass die weibliche Hälfte der Bevölkerung in Bergarbeiteruniformen mit Stirnlampen gekleidet ist, wie die Wendy’s-Fernsehwerbung in den 1990er Jahren zur allgemeinen Belustigung suggerierte, als sie die „Moskauer Abendgarderobe“ für ihre Botschaft „Bei Wendy’s haben Sie die Wahl“ beschrieb. Offenbar hatte niemand die Werbetexter des Hamburger-Anbieters darauf hingewiesen, dass, wie wir zu sagen pflegten: „Russische Mädchen in Stöckelschuhen geboren werden.“

So sehr westliche Pharmaunternehmen in den letzten zwei Jahren die Versorgung mit wichtigen Medikamenten gekürzt haben, um der Zivilbevölkerung in Russland zu schaden, so wenig haben ihre Kollegen in Frankreich, Deutschland und anderen EU-Ländern, die Schönheitsmittel herstellen, nachgezogen. In Apotheken und Fachgeschäften können die Petersburgerinnen fast alle Produkte kaufen, die sie zur Verschönerung ihrer Haut benötigen, darunter auch einige Hautcremes aus Südkorea, die tatsächlich halten, was sie versprechen, und die Jahre verschwinden lassen … zumindest für einen halben Tag.

Denjenigen, die mich der geschlechtsspezifischen Voreingenommenheit beschuldigen, weil ich die Aufmerksamkeit auf „gut herausgeputzte junge Damen“ richte, antworte ich Folgendes: Über die männlichen Vertreter der Spezies gibt es nicht viel Komplimentales zu sagen, denn sie mögen es eindeutig nicht, sich „herauszuputzen“, wie sehr ihre Freundinnen und Ehefrauen sie auch drängen mögen. Bestenfalls kommen sie wie für ein Fußballspiel gekleidet in die Oper. Zum Glück sind die Außentemperaturen hier noch winterlich, und noch ist keiner im Unterhemd ins Mariinsky gekommen. Das kommt noch.

Keiner der gleichgültig gekleideten Burschen ist ein armer Junge. Bei einem Drink im Operncafé während einer der halbstündigen Pausen hatte ich den Eindruck, dass einige meiner Nachbarn nur deshalb hier sind, weil sie nicht mehr nach Frankreich fliegen und in der Bastille-Oper Platz nehmen können. Sie begnügen sich mit dem Mariinsky-Theater und praktizieren hier die Lebensweise, die sie dort gelernt haben. In der Pause bestellte ein Paar am Nebentisch je ein großes rotes Kaviar-Sandwich und dazu eine volle Flasche Balaklava brut Sekt von der Krim. Es ist eine ziemliche Herausforderung, die in 30 Minuten zu bewältigen, aber sie schafften es noch rechtzeitig. Die Leute an den anderen Tischen haben in denselben 30 Minuten eine Flasche Rotwein getrunken. Diese lebensfrohen Russen haben im Laufe von zwei Jahren die ausgabefreudigen Anwälte und Buchhalter aus New York oder London, die früher die Elite-Restaurants im Mariinsky-Viertel vor und nach den Vorstellungen belebten, weitgehend ersetzt.

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Abschließend möchte ich noch einmal auf das Thema des Warenkorbs zurückkommen, mit dem ich meinen ersten Teil dieser Reisenotizen eingeleitet habe, da die geopolitische Dimension der Veränderungen im Produktsortiment erwähnenswert ist.

In Europa bekommen wir außerhalb der Saison gelbe kernlose Trauben aus Chile oder aus Südafrika. Hier, in den Petersburger Supermärkten, finde ich jetzt die gleichen Trauben aus Indien. Perfekte Trauben übrigens und zu akzeptablen Preisen. Warum wird Indien bei solchen Produkten von der Europäischen Union ausgesperrt? Das ist eine Frage an Frau von der Leyen.

Außerdem sehe ich eine Ausweitung der Lebensmittel, die aus dem Iran importiert werden. Noch vor ein paar Jahren konnte man nur Pistazien nennen, für die der Iran der größte Lieferant der Welt ist. Dann sah ich hier vor einem Jahr iranischen Sellerie in den Gemüsetheken. Jetzt gibt es in den Petersburger Supermärkten iranischen Eisbergsalat von hervorragender Qualität zu kaufen, der wesentlich besser präsentiert wird als das, was wir in Belgien aus Spanien bekommen, und das auch noch zu einem wesentlich niedrigeren Preis. Auf dem städtischen Markt und in den Einzelhandelsgeschäften wird inzwischen auch iranischer Frühkohl angeboten, der bei den Russen sehr beliebt ist.

Mein erster Eindruck ist, dass der Iran jetzt die Türkei als Hauptlieferant von Frischwaren verdrängt. Für Geopolitikstudenten ist von Bedeutung, dass die immer engeren russisch-iranischen Beziehungen zwischen den Staaten viel weiter reichen als bestimmte gemeinsame Infrastrukturen für die eurasischen Nord-Süd-Handelskorridore, viel weiter als die Lieferung iranischer Drohnen und Drohnentechnologie an Moskau im Gegenzug für Kampfjets oder Luftabwehrsysteme. Die Volkswirtschaften werden immer stärker voneinander abhängig.

Der noch wichtigere Punkt ist, dass selbst in den Regalen des kleinen Lebensmittelhändlers um die Ecke unseres Wohnkomplexes Lebensmittel aus der ganzen Welt zu finden sind, wobei dem Verbraucher oft mehrere Wahlmöglichkeiten geboten werden. Orangen aus Ägypten, riesige Heidelbeeren aus Marokko, Mangos aus Brasilien. Dieser Mensch bietet jetzt perfekt reife und aromatische Erdbeeren sowohl aus dem Süden Russlands (Kuban) als auch aus Serbien zu vergleichbaren Preisen an. Ich frage meine belgischen Leser, wann sie das letzte Mal serbische Erdbeeren probiert haben, die geschmacklich mit den geschätzten Erdbeeren der Marke Hoogstraat aus Flandern durchaus konkurrenzfähig sind. Die Realität sieht so aus, dass die EU zu einem großen Teil eine Ansammlung von gefangenen Märkten ist und nicht der große offene Markt, den sie vorgibt zu sein. Russland ist offener für die Welt, so wie Dubai offen für die Welt ist, wie ich bei einem Aufenthalt dort vor einem Jahr feststellen konnte.

Today’s issue of Sputnik Globe pulls no punches, telling us that Russia’s announcement of exercises for use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine apparently achieved its objective. NATO is likely to affirm that there will be ‘no boots on the ground’ during its July gathering.

See https://sputnikglobe.com/20240508/nato-no-boots-on-the-ground-ukraine-strategy-meant-to-silence-wests-loudmouths–1118336759.html

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Tödliche Drohungen wirken: Sputnik Globe über das Einlenken der NATO als Reaktion auf Russlands kommende Atomwaffenübungen

Die heutige Ausgabe von Sputnik Globe nimmt kein Blatt vor den Mund und berichtet, dass Russlands Ankündigung von Übungen für den Einsatz taktischer Atomwaffen in der Ukraine offenbar ihr Ziel erreicht hat. Die NATO wird auf ihrer Juli-Tagung wahrscheinlich bekräftigen, dass es „keinen Einsatz von Bodentruppen“ geben wird.

Siehe https://sputnikglobe.com/20240508/nato-no-boots-on-the-ground-ukraine-strategy-meant-to-silence-wests-loudmouths–1118336759.html

Events of global importance are rushing at us daily not only in the Russia-NATO confrontation over Ukraine. Developments in and over Gaza are also vying for our attention and are demanding commentary from ‘talking heads.’

I am not an expert on Israeli and West Asian affairs, though I am deeply immersed in what genuine experts in that field are saying hour by hour, day by day.  Moreover, the commonality of the destructive leading role of the USA in both Ukraine and Gaza encourages me to accept invitations from responsible and widely viewed broadcasters like WION as I did yesterday at midday.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv77wAv-WHA

I call attention to the way the Indian presenter conducted this interview. He, and presumably the production team standing behind him, know the facts of the case perfectly well and have reached their own conclusions. The interviewee, myself, is being questioned so as to showcase these conclusions through their confirmation by an outside expert.

By the way, the presenter’s introduction places me in Brussels, whereas in fact, I remain in St Petersburg, Russia until 14 May.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus) followed by transcript in English

WION, Indiens wichtigster englischsprachiger Sender, bezieht Stellung zu Israels Angriff auf Rafah

Nicht nur in der Konfrontation zwischen Russland und der NATO über die Ukraine überschlagen sich täglich Ereignisse von globaler Bedeutung. Auch die Entwicklungen im und um den Gazastreifen wetteifern um unsere Aufmerksamkeit und verlangen nach Kommentaren von „Talking Heads“.

Ich bin kein Experte für israelische und westasiatische Angelegenheiten, obwohl ich mich intensiv mit dem beschäftige, was echte Experten auf diesem Gebiet Stunde für Stunde, Tag für Tag sagen. Darüber hinaus ermutigt mich die Gemeinsamkeit der zerstörerischen Führungsrolle der USA sowohl in der Ukraine als auch im Gazastreifen dazu, Einladungen von verantwortungsvollen und viel beachteten Sendern wie WION anzunehmen, wie ich es gestern Mittag getan habe.

Siehe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv77wAv-WHA

Ich weise auf die Art und Weise hin, wie der indische Moderator dieses Interview geführt hat. Er und vermutlich auch das Produktionsteam, das hinter ihm steht, kennen den Sachverhalt genau und sind zu ihren eigenen Schlussfolgerungen gelangt. Die befragte Person, also ich, wird befragt, um diese Schlussfolgerungen durch die Bestätigung eines externen Experten in Szene zu setzen.

In der Einleitung des Moderators werde ich übrigens in Brüssel verortet, während ich mich in Wirklichkeit bis zum 14. Mai in St. Petersburg, Russland, aufhalte.

Transcription below by a reader

Anchor: 0:02
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has gone on for more than 200 days, with the Palestinian enclave now having been reduced virtually to rubble. While the declared objectives of both sides have not been achieved, let’s in fact take a look as to what is known so far in this Israeli offensive.

So let’s start with a phase one of a truce proposal. The Egyptian-Qatari agreement demands for a temporary cessation of hostilities between Hamas and Israel. This of course has been the go-to phrase, “temporary cessation of hostilities”. Now the agreement also demands for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the east, away from the more densely populated areas of Gaza, and towards the border between Israel and the Palestinian enclave. Now the Israeli airplanes and drones would also stop flying over Gaza for at least about 10 hours every day, and for 12 hours on the days when the captives are released. Hamas would then gradually release about 33 Israeli captives; and for every civilian that Hamas lets go to walk, Israel will have to release about 30 Palestinian civilians who at this moment are detained in Israeli prisons. Now for every Israeli soldier, woman soldier, who was captured and who will now be released by Hamas, Israel will have to release about 50 Palestinian prisoners.

1:21
And then, in the second phase of the truce proposal, there would be a permanent end to Israel’s military operations and also for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. There would also be another prisoner swap, this time involving all the remaining Israeli men, including the soldiers held captive in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis would be released in return [for] a yet-unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners.

The third phase would see an exchange of the remains of captives and prisoners held by both sides. On the development side this phase would also involve a three- to five-year reconstruction period for Gaza and perhaps more significantly, an end to the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian enclave, that they’ve put in a blockade ever since 2006.

2:05
Now Israel has said that it does not agree to the proposal, but that it will engage in further talks to try and secure an agreement. And this all the while pushing on with its assault on the Gaza Strip. Let’s also take a look as to what is currently happening in Rafah. Rafah is Gaza’s southernmost city and governorate. It borders Egypt. And before the war, Rafah had a population of about 275,000 people. And now, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinian refugees, there are 1.4 million Palestinians who sought shelter there, and half of them are said to be children.

2:42
An Israeli army spokesperson has said that it is evacuating about a hundred thousand Palestinians from Rafah. While the Palestinians have been asked to evacuate, the big question of course is: where have they been told to go? Now according to the IDF forces, this of course is the area, the one that you’re seeing in the red, [that] is the place where Palestinians have been asked to flee. This is Al-Mawas, and this displacement, according to the Israelis, will be temporary. Now there were airdrop leaflets that stated that residents living in Rafah must immediately flee to Al Mawas. And this is what is happening at this moment, saying– where the Israelis have further said that if people stay on in Rafah, then they are putting their own lives at risk. About 40,000 tents, which can each accommodate about 12 people, have been built in the Khan Yunis area, for people who will have to flee from Rafah.

3:32
Israel will also withdraw the Nahal Brigade from the Netzaim corridor, which cuts across Gaza, dividing it into northern and southern sections, and is now redeploying about six brigades with about 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers each to a base near Rafah. And according to various reports, the operation will be conducted with artillery, air and naval support, plus electromagnetic and intelligence operations that likely last many months.

3:57
Now, to discuss this and much more, and also the consequences of what an offensive on Rafah would, of course, mean, we’re being joined by Dr Gilbert Doktorow, who’s an author, historian and a political commentator, and is joining us live from [Petersburg]. Now, Dr Doktorow, this is a crucial moment in this war. We’ve been talking about it for the last seven months. And now Israel has begun, we’re given to understand, sending in its tanks. It has also, at this moment, taken control of the crossing, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. You know, tell us what this military operation would actually mean. The United Nations has described it as going to be a catastrophic operation if it goes ahead.

Doctorow: 4:37
I think the emphasis has to be put on your last words, “if it goes ahead”. The Israelis are positioning themselves to apply maximum pressure on Hamas to accept a minimum of advantages coming from a ceasefire and exchange of hostages or prisoners. This is the obvious point. Israel, Mr Netanyahu, wishes to present itself as the victor, as the ones dictating the terms of any ceasefire and of any ultimate settlement of the Gaza war. At the same time, behind this facade, there is a different reality. And that reality is the position taken by the United States in the last few days. The United States military assistance and continuing supply of weaponry to Israel is a necessary precondition for Israel to prosecute the attack on Rafah that it is now talking about so loudly.

Anchor: 5:46
So the question that I want to ask you is obviously this: I mean, the Israelis have been taking part in these negotiations for a truce deal to try and get hostages back. There have been protests that have been going on, you know across the state of Israel, where family members of those who have been taken into custody by Hamas, they’re demanding that Netanyahu must strike a truce deal. Do you think Netanyahu has shown enough sincerity in actually going ahead with the negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli hostages who for seven months have been in the Gaza Strip?

Doctorow: 6:19
Sincerity and Mr Netanyahu are not compatible terms. This is true of politicians in general. It comes with the trade. But Mr Netanyahu is a special case. And by that I mean: his lies and his distortion of the realities for the sake of Israeli aggrandizement are unprecedented. Now, the real question is not the sincerity of Mr Netanyahu, nor is it the sincerity of Joe Biden. Joe Biden is not a Boy Scout either. But what we really are talking about is the ability of Mr Biden to tolerate any further atrocities by Israel in the Gaza Strip, considering the domestic political situation in the United States.

Anchor: 7:18
And it’s interesting that you have brought in the role that is played by the United States of America. Although we talk about it as being an Israeli offensive, the fact is, this is essentially an offensive that Israel is carrying out with American weapons. And the scale of the American involvement in this offensive is something that is not appreciated. The Israelis are using American weapons, the Israelis are using American intelligence, American satellites, and also American data on which targets to strike next.

With that being the scale of the American involvement, and also looking at the protests that have broken out, do you think this war will cause Joe Biden to pay a political price in the presidential elections?

Doctorow: 7:57
It is precisely to avoid paying that price that Biden is reportedly telling Netanyahu, “The game is up. And if you proceed with this offensive that you are talking about so loudly, you will not have American weapons, which means you will fail badly.” The reason for Mr Biden’s position has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns. The man is callous and is morally in the same camp as Mr Netanyahu. The issue is political survival, and the recent student university demonstrations have shown that Biden cannot win the election if this continues as it has, and if he is not showing some resistance to the atrocities of the Israelis.

Anchor: 8:47
All right. We’ll have to leave it there. Thank you very much indeed, Dr Doctorow, for joining us and giving us that perspective there.

Doctorow:
Thank you.

When our Moscow friends visited us in our Pushkin apartment several days ago, Lyudmila gazed out the balcony windows at the green field opposite us, but thinking more likely of the Catherine Park on the other side of our residential complex, commented that it was a pity we spend so little time here and that we miss the summers when it would be especially delightful.

I responded that it is precisely the summers that we prefer to miss, because Nature exists most everywhere but the concentration of High Culture that you have in Petersburg is available only in a very few cities in the world, and this High Culture, in its performing arts dimension, shuts down in summers and comes alive in mid-autumn, running to late spring. That is the time period during which we schedule our trips to Petersburg.

Two days ago we had our first tasting session of this Petersburg High Culture when we went to see a play in the Alexandrinsky National Drama Theater, an historic building just next to the city’s main boulevard, the Nevsky Prospekt in the very center of the city. But it was not the finely renovated building or the well turned out young ladies who constituted a substantial and very noticeable part of the audience that made the evening memorable. It was the remarkable play that we saw, The Birth of Stalin, written and stage managed by the theater’s director Valery Fokin. This play first premiered in 2019 but is still drawing a full house.

There are many academics and journalists in the West who tell us that there is a revival of Stalinism in Russia, for which they, naturally, blame the current ‘dictator’ Vladimir Putin. However, this is just ignorant blather. The Birth of Stalin puts the lie to their slander. The overarching view of Stalin and his fellow revolutionaries in Georgia is that expressed by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel The Demons: they were rats, despicable immoral rats.

The play is about how the seminary student in the Georgian city of Gori,  Iosif Dzhugashvili, “Soso” as he was called, a fellow with outstanding grades in the Old and New Testament, became the tyrant we know as Stalin. The time period for this transformation is from his leading a terror attack on banks to finance the Revolution that killed dozens of gendarmes up to the time of his arrest and domestic exile. The dialogues direct attention to his cruelty and to how he put himself in the place of God.  As Fokin explained in an interview: Stalin saw the Revolution as the highest form of justice. “I was captivated at how for this sake he overstepped all bounds and began to kill supposed enemies, then to kill friends, and then to kill everyone. That is what is so frightening.”

  Our evening of drama was exceptional for us, since we are devotees of opera, an art form for which Petersburg is one of the most important homes globally.  Quality is generally assured by the city’s celebrated conductors, singers and orchestras. What raises all this to a higher plateau is quantity.  Petersburg is one of the few cities in Europe which has repertory opera houses, meaning that a show is going on stage every evening. That contrasts with the stagione system that is commonplace in Western Europe, where a given theater presents a given number of operas each season and they are performed for several weeks straight followed by a fallow period before the next opera is put on.

Petersburg has a world famous company in the Mariinsky Theater, which itself has three venues – the original 19^th century building, the Mariinsky II, a theater built and put into operation early in this century, and a concert hall which is used to present operas without stage sets and costumes.  On any given day all three have shows, and on occasion there may be both an afternoon and an evening performance on offer.

Moreover, the Mariinsky is not the only major company in the city. There is also the Maly Opera Theater, which puts on some excellent productions and has its own audience, which may be described as wealthier and less tradition minded. The Mariinsky, by contrast, reaches out to all strata of Petersburg society with special concessionary prices for young people, for seniors, and so on.

It is not my intention to turn this edition of Travel Notes into a review of the operas and one operetta for which I procured tickets on this visit. However, I do intend to describe how leading institutions of High Culture are faring in this city under conditions of “cancel Russia” imposed by the West ever since the launch of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine.

In Western Europe, the most vicious forms of “cancel Russia” are waning. Some Russian performers like opera star Anna Netrebko are again being invited to leading stages. But foreign tours in the West by leading Russian companies remain unthinkable, and artists based in the West are very, very rare birds here now.

Nonetheless, my overriding impression is that Russian opera, at least, has reached the level of ‘sovereignty’ that Mr Putin is seeking for the country as a whole. It is self-sufficient and can offer the concert going public first quality performances from its own human resources without invited guests from abroad. Let me be more specific:  over the past thirty years, Russia’s trainers for the stage have brought local talent up to world standards. The young singers who now take the stage at the Mariinsky are in full command of the technique of Italian opera, for example.

The days of the “Slavic warblers” are gone. The days when shop-worn, over-aged Western stars that were brought here in the 1990s to entice snobs to buy opera seats are also gone. I think, for example, of how Montserrat Caballé was brought out of retirement to perform in Moscow and Petersburg back in the 1990s when her voice was in rather sad shape.

Big name Russian stars of retirement age are also no longer needed to sell seats. The performance of Aida which I saw the other night at the Mariinsky had singers for Aida and Amneris who were making their debut in these roles. Their names told us nothing. But they possessed outstanding technique and big voices that could fill The Met.

If I was drawn to that show, which used a 15 year old staging by a Petersburg stage manager whom you have never heard of but who happens to be a friend of ours, it was because the conductor of the evening was one of those brave and dedicated musicians, originally from America, but long based in Russia, Christian Knapp.  His direction is world class and we knew he would work only with a quality cast, which was the case. I urge readers to read Knapp’s biography in his Wikipedia entry. The man is extraordinary, and it is a credit to both him and to the Mariinsky management that he has chosen to remain here despite all the curses that must be directed against him by Western culture warriors.

Though the vintage staging may seem quaint, apart from the top rate singing of all the lead performers, there was one feature of the show that puts it head and shoulders above the Aida that you are likely to see anywhere in the West: the dancing.  Those of you who are familiar with Aida know that there are large interludes for dance in the score, especially in the scene of the victorious returning Egyptian army. In most opera theaters these sections are either cut back or accompanied by videos since they have no dancers on tap. The Mariinsky is one of the few opera houses in the world that is also home to one of the best ballet companies in the world and its talents are used extensively in this Aida to great advantage.  Moreover, the traditions of Russian dance steps going back to the early 20^th century are inserted, including a dance sequence that Ballets Russes impresario Diaghilev would be proud of, drawing as it does on his chief choreographer for a time, Mikhail Fokin.

In the performance of Rigoletto that I saw in Mariinsky-2, it was, on the contrary, the widely known and highly regarded Mongolian baritone Ariunbaator Ganbaatur in the lead role that persuaded me to buy a ticket, not the little known but effective local conductor, whose name was revealed only on the day of the performance.

 As for Ganbaatur, who bears the title ‘invited soloist’ in the Mariinsky, where he made his debut in 2016, he would  be known to Western music lovers as the winner of the BBC Singer of the World competition in Cardiff, Wales in 2017 and before that, in 2015 he took gold at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. With soloists like this in their midst, Russian opera houses will keep their luster for years to come whatever arbiters of taste may say or do in New York or Washington.

My point here is that over the thirty years up to the recent rupture of relations, the Russians drew from the West what was needed to update their performance skills so that they can go it alone for as long as necessary, until the West comes to its senses and restores ties.

Ahead of me before departure for Belgium, I will have the opportunity to sample Russian singing at one notch below full opera when I hear Kalman’s operetta Princess Csardas at the Theater of Musical Comedy.  That genre is another local tradition which goes back far in time and is doing fine today.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Reisenotizen, St. Petersburg, April-Mai 2024: zweite Tranche

Als unsere Moskauer Freunde uns vor einigen Tagen in unserer Puschkin-Wohnung besuchten, blickte Ljudmila aus dem Balkonfenster auf die grüne Wiese gegenüber, dachte aber eher an den Katharinenpark auf der anderen Seite unseres Wohnkomplexes und meinte, es sei schade, dass wir so wenig Zeit hier verbringen und dass wir die Sommer vermissen, in denen es besonders schön wäre.

Ich entgegnete, dass es gerade die Sommer sind, die wir lieber verpassen, weil es die Natur fast überall gibt, aber die Konzentration von Hochkultur, die Sie in Petersburg haben, gibt es nur in sehr wenigen Städten auf der Welt, und diese Hochkultur, in ihrer Dimension der darstellenden Künste, macht im Sommer zu und erwacht in der Mitte des Herbstes, der in den späten Frühling übergeht, zum Leben. Das ist der Zeitraum, in dem wir unsere Reisen nach Petersburg planen.

Vor zwei Tagen hatten wir unsere erste Kostprobe dieser Petersburger Hochkultur, als wir ein Stück im Nationalen Alexandrinsky Schauspielhaus gesehen haben, einem historischen Gebäude direkt neben dem Hauptboulevard der Stadt, dem Newski-Prospekt, im Zentrum der Stadt. Aber es waren nicht das schön renovierte Gebäude oder die gut gekleideten jungen Damen, die einen wesentlichen und sehr auffälligen Teil des Publikums ausgemacht haben, die den Abend unvergesslich machten. Es war das bemerkenswerte Stück, das wir sahen, The Birth of Stalin (Die Geburt von Stalin), geschrieben und inszeniert vom Theaterdirektor Valery Fokin. Das Stück wurde 2019 uraufgeführt, ist aber immer noch ausverkauft.

Es gibt viele Wissenschaftler und Journalisten im Westen, die uns erzählen, dass es in Russland ein Wiederaufleben des Stalinismus gebe, wofür sie natürlich den derzeitigen „Diktator“ Wladimir Putin verantwortlich machen. Das ist jedoch nur ignorantes Geschwätz. The Birth of Stalin widerlegt diese Verleumdungen. Die übergreifende Sichtweise auf Stalin und seine Mitrevolutionäre in Georgien ist diejenige, die Fjodor Dostojewski in seinem Roman Die Dämonen zum Ausdruck gebracht hat: Sie waren Ratten, verachtenswerte unmoralische Ratten.

Das Stück handelt davon, wie aus dem Seminarschüler in der georgischen Stadt Gori, Iosif Dzhugashvili, „Soso“, wie er genannt wurde, ein Bursche mit hervorragenden Noten im Alten und Neuen Testament, der Tyrann wurde, den wir als Stalin kennen. Die Zeitspanne für diese Verwandlung reicht von seinem Terroranschlag auf Banken zur Finanzierung der Revolution, bei dem Dutzende von Gendarmen getötet wurden, bis zu seiner Verhaftung und seinem heimischen Exil. Die Dialoge lenken die Aufmerksamkeit auf seine Grausamkeit und darauf, wie er sich selbst an die Stelle von Gott setzte. Wie Fokin in einem Interview erklärte: Stalin betrachtete die Revolution als die höchste Form der Gerechtigkeit. „Ich war fasziniert davon, wie er um dieser Sache willen alle Grenzen überschritt und begann, vermeintliche Feinde, dann Freunde und schließlich alle zu töten. Das ist es, was so erschreckend ist.“

Unser Theaterabend war für uns etwas Besonderes, denn wir sind Liebhaber der Oper, einer Kunstform, für die Petersburg weltweit eine der wichtigsten Heimstätten ist. Die Qualität wird im Allgemeinen durch die berühmten Dirigenten, Sänger und Orchester der Stadt gewährleistet. Was all dies auf ein höheres Niveau hebt, ist die Quantität. Petersburg ist eine der wenigen Städte in Europa, die über Repertoire-Opernhäuser verfügen, was bedeutet, dass jeden Abend eine Vorstellung auf der Bühne stattfindet. Dies steht im Gegensatz zu dem in Westeuropa üblichen Stagionesystem, bei dem ein bestimmtes Theater in jeder Saison eine bestimmte Anzahl von Opern aufführt, die dann mehrere Wochen am Stück gespielt werden, bevor die nächste Oper auf dem Programm steht.

Petersburg hat mit dem Mariinsky-Theater ein weltberühmtes Ensemble, das selbst über drei Spielstätten verfügt – das ursprüngliche Gebäude aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, das Mariinsky II, ein Anfang dieses Jahrhunderts erbautes und in Betrieb genommenes Theater, und einen Konzertsaal, der für die Aufführung von Opern ohne Bühnenbild und Kostüme genutzt wird. An jedem beliebigen Tag finden in allen drei Sälen Aufführungen statt, und gelegentlich werden sowohl eine Nachmittags- als auch eine Abendvorstellung angeboten.

Außerdem ist das Mariinsky-Theater nicht das einzige große Haus in der Stadt. Es gibt auch das Maly-Operntheater, das einige hervorragende Produktionen aufführt und sein eigenes Publikum hat, das man als wohlhabender und weniger traditionsbewusst bezeichnen könnte. Das Mariinsky-Theater hingegen spricht alle Schichten der Petersburger Gesellschaft an und bietet spezielle Ermäßigungen für Jugendliche, Senioren usw.

Es ist nicht meine Absicht, diese Ausgabe der Reisenotizen zu einer Rezension der Opern und einer Operette zu machen, für die ich bei diesem Besuch Karten besorgt habe. Ich möchte jedoch beschreiben, wie es den führenden Institutionen der Hochkultur in dieser Stadt unter den Bedingungen von „Russland ausschalten“ (cancel Russia) ergeht, die der Westen seit dem Beginn der militärischen Sonderoperation in der Ukraine verhängt hat.

In Westeuropa nehmen die bösartigsten Formen von „cancel Russia“ immer mehr ab. Einige russische Künstler, wie der Opernstar Anna Netrebko, werden wieder auf führende Bühnen eingeladen. Aber Auslandstourneen führender russischer Ensembles in den Westen sind nach wie vor undenkbar, und im Westen ansässige Künstler sind hier nur noch sehr, sehr selten anzutreffen.

Nichtsdestotrotz habe ich den Eindruck, dass zumindest die russische Oper den Grad an „Souveränität“ erreicht hat, den Herr Putin für das Land insgesamt anstrebt. Sie ist autark und kann dem Konzertpublikum erstklassige Aufführungen mit eigenem Personal bieten, ohne Gäste aus dem Ausland einzuladen. Lassen Sie mich konkreter werden: In den letzten dreißig Jahren haben Russlands Ausbilder für die Bühne einheimische Talente auf Weltniveau gebracht. Die jungen Sängerinnen und Sänger, die heute die Bühne des Mariinsky Theaters betreten, beherrschen zum Beispiel die Technik der italienischen Oper.

Die Tage der „slawischen Sänger“ sind vorbei. Vorbei sind auch die Zeiten der abgehalfterten, überalterten westlichen Stars, die in den 1990er Jahren hierher gebracht wurden, um Snobs zum Kauf von Opernsitzen zu verleiten. Ich denke zum Beispiel daran, wie Montserrat Caballé in den 1990er Jahren aus dem Ruhestand geholt wurde, um in Moskau und Petersburg aufzutreten, als ihre Stimme in einem eher traurigen Zustand war.

Auch die großen russischen Stars im Rentenalter werden nicht mehr gebraucht, um Plätze zu verkaufen. In der Aufführung von Aida, die ich neulich im Mariinsky gesehen habe, gab es Sänger für Aida und Amneris, die ihr Debüt in diesen Rollen gaben. Ihre Namen sagten uns nichts. Aber sie verfügten über eine hervorragende Technik und große Stimmen, die die Met (The Metropolitan Opera, New York) füllen könnten.

Wenn ich mich zu dieser Aufführung hingezogen fühlte, die auf einer 15 Jahre alten Inszenierung eines Petersburger Bühnenleiters basierte, von dem Sie noch nie etwas gehört haben, der aber zufällig ein Freund von uns ist, dann deshalb, weil der Dirigent des Abends einer dieser mutigen und engagierten Musiker war, der ursprünglich aus Amerika stammt, aber schon lange in Russland lebt, Christian Knapp. Seine Regie ist Weltklasse, und wir wussten, dass er nur mit einer erstklassigen Besetzung arbeiten würde, was auch der Fall war. Ich empfehle den Lesern dringend, Knapps Biografie in seinem Wikipedia-Eintrag zu lesen. Der Mann ist außergewöhnlich, und es spricht sowohl für ihn als auch für das Mariinsky-Management, dass er sich trotz aller Verfluchungen, die ihm von westlichen Kulturkriegern entgegengebracht werden müssen, entschieden hat, hier zu bleiben.

Auch wenn die alte Inszenierung altmodisch erscheinen mag, gab es neben dem erstklassigen Gesang aller Hauptdarsteller ein Merkmal, das die Aufführung weit über die Aida hinaushebt, die man im Westen zu sehen bekommt: den Tanz. Diejenigen unter Ihnen, die mit Aida vertraut sind, wissen, dass es in der Partitur große Tanzeinlagen gibt, insbesondere in der Szene der siegreich zurückkehrenden ägyptischen Armee. In den meisten Operntheatern werden diese Abschnitte entweder gekürzt oder von Videos begleitet, da keine Tänzer zur Verfügung stehen. Das Mariinsky ist eines der wenigen Opernhäuser der Welt, das auch eines der besten Ballettensembles der Welt beherbergt, und seine Talente werden in dieser Aida ausgiebig und mit großem Erfolg eingesetzt. Darüber hinaus werden die Traditionen russischer Tanzschritte, die bis ins frühe 20. Jahrhundert zurückreichen, eingefügt, einschließlich einer Tanzsequenz, auf die Ballets Russes-Impresario Diaghilev stolz gewesen wäre, da sie auf seinen zeitweiligen Chefchoreografen Mikhail Fokin zurückgeht.

In der Aufführung von Rigoletto, die ich im Mariinsky-2 gesehen habe, war es im Gegensatz dazu der weithin bekannte und hoch angesehene mongolische Bariton Ariunbaator Ganbaatur in der Hauptrolle, der mich zum Kauf einer Eintrittskarte bewogen hat, und nicht der wenig bekannte, aber effektive lokale Dirigent, dessen Name erst am Tag der Aufführung bekannt gegeben wurde.

Was Ganbaatur betrifft, der den Titel „eingeladener Solist“ im Mariinsky trägt, wo er 2016 debütierte, so ist er westlichen Musikliebhabern als Gewinner des BBC-Wettbewerbs „Singer of the World“ in Cardiff, Wales, im Jahr 2017 bekannt, und davor, im Jahr 2015, gewann er Gold beim Tschaikowsky-Wettbewerb in Moskau. Mit Solisten wie ihm in ihrer Mitte werden die russischen Opernhäuser noch jahrelang ihren Glanz behalten, was auch immer die Geschmacksrichter in New York oder Washington sagen oder tun mögen.

Was ich damit sagen will, ist, dass die Russen in den dreißig Jahren bis zum jüngsten Abbruch der Beziehungen vom Westen das erhalten haben, was sie brauchten, um ihre Aufführungsfähigkeiten auf den neuesten Stand zu bringen, so dass sie so lange wie nötig allein zurechtkommen können, bis der Westen zur Vernunft kommt und die Beziehungen wieder aufnimmt.

Vor meiner Abreise nach Belgien werde ich Gelegenheit haben, russischen Gesang auf einer Stufe unterhalb der Oper zu erleben, wenn ich Kalmans Operette Prinzessin Csardas im Theater der Musikalischen Komödie höre. Dieses Genre ist eine weitere lokale Tradition, die weit in die Vergangenheit zurückreicht und sich auch heute noch bewährt.

My efforts to ready for publication two further installments of my Travel Notes have been interrupted by latest announcements and counter-announcements from Macron and other leaders in the West, on the one hand, and from Russian officials on the other hand.  These should deeply worry anyone hoping for a rational resolution of the conflict surrounding Ukraine. To the contrary, they point to major escalation and the possibility of things spinning out of control.

Yesterday France officially announced that it has sent Foreign Legion troops to Ukraine. Their numbers are expected to reach 1500 and they are said to be artillery and reconnaissance specialists.  The purpose of this announcement was to make legal the initial dispatch to Ukraine of several hundred of these troops over a month ago. The fact that the information is postdated matches the Russians’ claim today to have already ‘destroyed’ seven of the French Legionnaires on the Ukrainian battlefield not far back from the front lines.

The French and possibly other NATO troops are expected to be in support of the defense of the critically important city of Slavyansk which is the capital of the western part of Donetsk region and was at the center of the fighting during the “Russian Spring” of the summer of 2014. The entry of NATO troops directly and openly into the conflict is all by itself equivalent to admission that what the Russians have been saying about the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian defense lines is true.

However, this openly acknowledged entry of NATO troops into the conflict crosses all of Russia’s red lines.  And now today the Russian Ministry of Defense on its Telegram account has released the statement that you will find below announcing preparedness exercises for the units of the Southern Military District which are responsible for use of tactical nuclear weapons.

As I remarked on these pages yesterday, the Russians will not slog it out on the ground with NATO forces after having paid dearly in the blood of their own troops to wipe out three successive iterations of the Ukrainian army that they first destroyed in the spring of 2022.  They will annihilate these non-Ukrainian co-belligerents using tactical nuclear arms.

These developments take us back six months or more to the furore over an article published by the Russian political scientist Sergei Karaganov in which he urged the Kremlin to make a nuclear strike against one or another of the NATO countries to sober up the West, to bring home to the superficial and essentially stupid leaders of the EU and the USA, the real risk of a full-blown nuclear war if they persist in seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.  That call by Karaganov was denounced not only by the wise men in Washington but also by many of Karaganov’s compatriots as unnecessarily provocative and dangerous.

However, thinking in Russia’s elites is changing with the times and with the nature of the challenges put up by the West.  Last week, a far more restrained Russian expert on international relations than Karaganov, Dmitry Trenin, who for more than a decade led the Carnegie Moscow office, was also calling for the Kremlin to administer a wake-up call to Washington, Brussels, London and Berlin. Among the possibilities he named was for Moscow to announce resumption of nuclear arms testing.

Now we see that the Ministry of Defense has gotten the message from Russia’s elites and experts, and the tactical nuclear arms, of which Russia has a vast assortment, will be prepared for use.

                                                                      *****

The foregoing is not all the bad news that has been pouring down on us.  Another item, widely reported in Russia but apparently unnoticed in Western media, was the issuance yesterday by the Russian Ministry of Interior of arrest warrants against former Ukrainian president Poroshenko and current president Zelensky. Among other things, this means that if either of them appears close to the front lines for yet another photo opp, they may be snatched by Russian special forces and hauled off to Moscow.

The timing is surely related to the expiry of Zelensky’s constitutionally mandated term in office later this month given that the presidential elections that should have taken place in March were cancelled by him.  However, the bigger dimension of this move is the clear indication by Moscow that it considers the Kiev regime illegitimate and will not negotiate with them.  Nota bene, that the same logic will surely apply to any replacement president that Washington tries to slot into office in the coming weeks.  Further arrest warrants against other former as well as present high Kievan officials may be expected in the coming days.  Moscow is said to be preparing a tribunal to try the Ukrainian leaders in the near future, either in the courtroom or in absentia.

                                                                         *****

Meanwhile, instead of dealing with these developments in a holistic manner, given that they are all interrelated, our major media drip feed some of the details to their readership and video audience, or they do what The Financial Times did this morning: the FT featured in the lead position of their online edition “Finland boosts war readiness in face of Russian aggression.”  The given article, which is fairly long has only one sentence that is true – telling us that Finland has the longest border with Russia of any European Union or NATO country.  All the rest was a pack of lies.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

                                               Russian Ministry of Defense announcement today:

Russia: Exercises with missile formations

Military Summary Archive

On behalf of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, in order to increase the readiness of non-strategic nuclear forces to carry out combat missions, the General Staff has begun preparations for holding an exercise in the near future with missile formations of the Southern Military District with the involvement of aviation, as well as the forces of the Navy.

During the exercise, a set of activities will be carried out to practice the preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons.

The exercise is aimed at maintaining the readiness of personnel and equipment of units for the combat use of non-strategic nuclear weapons to respond and in order to unconditionally ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian state in response to provocative statements and threats of individual Western officials against the Russian Federation.

Source: https://t.me/mod_russia/38308

Yesterday evening’s brief interview on Iran’s Press TV alongside panelist Don Debar from the USA focused on one question: what risks to the peace are presented by the ongoing massive NATO military exercises at Russia’s borders in which more than 90,000 soldiers are participating and which Moscow considers a provocation.

I say here directly that if the exercises were to be turned into an actual attack on Russia to distract Moscow from the battleground in Donbas then I envision the Russian response to be a strike with tactical nuclear weapons that would decimate the NATO forces instantaneously.  Unlike my fellow panelist, I do not see such a Russian response, which is clearly laid out in Russian warnings over the past six months or more, as triggering a full scale nuclear war, because Washington knows full well that whatever damage it may do to Russia in such an exchange, there will be nothing but ashes left of the USA, with no one left to vote for Joe Biden in November.

It is regrettable that our interview was cut short for the sake of live coverage of an Iranian diplomatic mission in Africa, because I intended to move the discussion on to the question of why NATO is staging such a provocation now, just as why there were 4 ATACMS long range missiles launched a day ago by the Ukrainians for the Russians to shoot down over Crimea and why there is talk in Kiev of blowing up the Kerch (Crimea) bridge as an urgent mission.  The reason for all of these intended acts of aggression and terror is to distract world attention from the ongoing daily Russian advance and Ukrainian retreat along the line of contact in the Donetsk region.

Some in the West are characterizing the Russian moves on the battlefield as the prelude to a massive Russian offensive in the coming month or two. Others use these facts to shame U.S. legislators for holding back their approval of the 61 billion dollar aid package to Kiev for so long, leaving the Ukrainians short of artillery shells and air defense equipment.  However, a better explanation is that Kiev made a strategic blunder over the past year by placing so many resources in Avdeevka, which they and their NATO advisers believed was impregnable, and did not do what they should have done, namely build solid second and tertiary lines of defense to the west of Avdeevka. The Russians now are simply pressing their advantage and putting the Ukrainian forces on the run.  In my next installment of Travel Notes, I will explain who was the author of this interpretation.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

See

Ukraine war | Urmedium

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/129382

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus) followed by transcript

Werden die NATO-Kriegsspiele an Russlands Grenzen eine nukleare Reaktion auslösen? Diskussion auf Irans Press TV

In dem kurzen Interview, das ich gestern Abend im iranischen Press TV gemeinsam mit dem Gesprächsteilnehmer Don Debar aus den USA geführt habe, ging es vor allem um eine Frage: Welche Gefahren für den Frieden gehen von den laufenden massiven NATO-Militärübungen an den Grenzen Russlands aus, an denen mehr als 90.000 Soldaten teilnehmen und die Moskau als Provokation betrachtet.

Ich sage an dieser Stelle direkt, dass ich mir für den Fall, dass die Übungen in einen tatsächlichen Angriff auf Russland umgewandelt würden, um Moskau vom Schlachtfeld im Donbass abzulenken, als russische Antwort einen Schlag mit taktischen Atomwaffen vorstelle, der die NATO-Truppen sofort dezimieren würde. Im Gegensatz zu meinem Diskussionspartner sehe ich eine solche russische Reaktion, die in den russischen Warnungen der letzten sechs Monate oder mehr klar dargelegt wurde, nicht als Auslöser eines umfassenden Atomkriegs, denn Washington weiß genau, dass die USA, egal welchen Schaden es Russland in einem solchen Schlagabtausch zufügen mag, selbst nur noch in Schutt und Asche liegen würden und niemand mehr übrig wäre, der im November Joe Biden wählen könnte.

Es ist bedauerlich, dass unser Interview wegen einer Live-Berichterstattung über eine iranische diplomatische Mission in Afrika abgebrochen wurde, denn ich wollte das Gespräch noch auf die Frage lenken, warum die NATO jetzt eine solche Provokation inszeniert, und auch auf die Frage, warum die Ukrainer vor einem Tag vier ATACMS-Langstreckenraketen zum Abschuss für die Russen losgeschickt haben und warum in Kiew davon die Rede ist, die Brücke von Kertsch (Krim) als dringende Mission in die Luft zu sprengen. Der Grund für all diese beabsichtigten Aggressions- und Terrorakte ist, die Aufmerksamkeit der Weltöffentlichkeit von dem täglichen russischen Vormarsch und ukrainischen Rückzug entlang der Kontaktlinie in der Region Donezk abzulenken.

Einige im Westen bezeichnen die russischen Schritte auf dem Schlachtfeld als Auftakt zu einer massiven russischen Offensive in den kommenden ein oder zwei Monaten. Andere nutzen diese Fakten, um die US-Parlamentarier zu beschuldigen, die Genehmigung des 61-Milliarden-Dollar-Hilfspakets für Kiew so lange hinausgezögert zu haben, so dass es den Ukrainern an Artilleriegeschossen und Luftabwehrausrüstung fehlt. Eine bessere Erklärung ist jedoch, dass Kiew im vergangenen Jahr einen strategischen Fehler begangen hat, indem es so viele Ressourcen in Avdeevka investiert hat, das es und seine NATO-Berater für uneinnehmbar hielten, und nicht tat, was es hätte tun sollen, nämlich solide zweite und dritte Verteidigungslinien westlich von Avdeevka aufzubauen. Die Russen versuchen nun, ihren Vorteil zu nutzen und die ukrainischen Streitkräfte in die Flucht zu schlagen. In meiner nächsten Ausgabe der Reisenotizen werde ich erklären, wer der Autor dieser Interpretation war.

• Transcript below by a reader
  
  Anchor: 0:00
  Don DeBar is an activist and political commentator joining us from Ossining over in New York. Gilbert Doctorow is an independent international affairs analyst who joins us from Moscow. Welcome to you both. I’ll start with you, Don DeBar. So you’re having this large NATO military exercise take place, one of the largest. Are you seeing indications that there’s going to be some kind of military engagement between NATO and Russia?
  
  DeBar: 0:25
  What I see doesn’t matter so much. It’s a matter of what the Russian military planners see, because they’re in charge of meeting it if it ends up being an attack, and responding. We know what the placement of NATO resources is in … what’s left of Ukraine, in the Baltics, and Polish border, Romania, you know, all of that. And besides as well in South Korea a little. It’s a very, very, very short response time if from the perspective of the upper brass in the Russian military, this “exercise” quote unquote crosses the border [and becomes an invasion].
  
  So– and that’s the thing. People don’t understand, generally, that when you’re looking at a military exercise, so-called, near your borders, you really– it’s indistinguishable from an actual invasion, you know. You get to the border and they stop, it was an exercise. If they come in, you need to be ready to meet them. So we’re already looking at, I’m certain, the machinery of a war between Russia and NATO, you know, the fire on and powered up.
  
  Anchor: 1:42
  So do you think that there’s going to be a military engagement there, Don DeBar? If there is, who do you think is going to come out the winner?
  
  DeBar:
  No one. NATO–
  
  Anchor:
  I’m sorry. This was for Gilbert Doctorow. I’ll get to you. Hold on to your thoughts, Don DeBar. Gilbert Doctorow, go ahead.
  
  Doctorow: 1:59
  Well, I think there would be a winner. The winner would be Russia. The Russians have prepared for this kind of eventuality, and let’s be quite open about it. If NATO were to use any of these 90,000 troops that it has presently preparing at the Russian borders in these exercises, if it were to make that type of a move, the Russian response is written on the wall in big letters. That would be a nuclear strike. The Russians are not going to play pussyfoot with NATO if there are massive concentrations of troops crossing or threatening to cross the border. It will be a total destruction of that army, an instantaneous destruction with a nuclear strike. The warnings have been issued.
  
  Anchor: 2:51
  Why do you disagree with the fact that there would be a winner, Don DeBar?
  
  DeBar:
  Well, in a thermonuclear war, I mean, it depends on how you characterize it. If the goal, strategic objectives of NATO were thwarted by Russia, Russia went in that fear. [sound glitches] However, Russia suffers whatever damage it suffers. Poland and what’s left of, you know, all of the country’s troops were gathered, suffer what they suffer. The rest of us suffer whatever we breathe in from that for the next 240,000 years or whatever. You know, it’s hard– Russia–
  
  DeBar: 3:39
  Dr. Doctorow is right, the strategic, you know, their doctrine for use of nuclear weapons, the Russian Federation I’m talking about, they use them only in two cases. One, in retaliation for a nuclear strike on Russia; or two, when the, you know, existence, the integrity of the Russian state is threatened. Certainly, 90,000 troops and whatever blowing up of things is done in advance to soften the ground for that, while an attack is made on Crimea by Ukrainians or whatever, would constitute for them a replay of Barbarossa on steroids and will get whatever kind of maximum response they have [planted that off]. So, I agree that we will probably be looking at a nuclear response, certainly a massive response. And then everyone steps back for a second. What does Joe Biden do? He’s running for re-election. What does Xxxxx do?
  
  Anchor: 4:37
  Okay, I’m going to, unfortunately, have to jump in. We have to cut this short. Thank you to both of you. We’re going to have to go on over live now.
  
  
  .

The actor Dieter Hallervorden is a name known to everyone in Germany. For decades he was THE ACTOR whom you saw on television. He also played in prize winning movies. At age 88, he is the Intendant of three drama theaters and is on the stage nearly every evening.

Now in his video poem Gaza Gaza Hallervorden unexpectedly has taken a position on the side of the Palestinian people.

 The leading German media initially reacted with disbelief, then aggressively, because Germany’s most popular theater man is a swing voter from the center: In the last election campaign, he campaigned for the CDU, previously also once for the Liberals and earlier for Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik.
> In a very short time, his Gaza video had over 8 million hits. UN Special Envoy Professor Dr. Jean Ziegler has just sent him “solidarity greetings” on behalf of Antonio Guterres and defended the artist from the media accusation of making “anti-Semitic” arguments: “Your text is based entirely on UN resolutions!”

English subtitled Link  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMcrNzOfFAE

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Nicht jede deutsche Persönlichkeit des öffentlichen Lebens unterstützt den israelischen Völkermord!

Der Schauspieler Dieter Hallervorden ist ein Name, den in Deutschland jeder kennt. Jahrzehntelang war er DER SCHAUSPIELER, den man im Fernsehen gesehen hat. Er spielte auch in preisgekrönten Filmen mit. Mit 88 Jahren ist er Intendant von drei Theatern und steht fast jeden Abend auf der Bühne.

Jetzt hat sich Hallervorden in seinem Videogedicht Gaza Gaza unerwartet auf die Seite des palästinensischen Volkes gestellt.

Die deutschen Leitmedien reagierten zunächst ungläubig, dann aggressiv, denn Deutschlands beliebtester Theatermann ist ein Wechselwähler der Mitte: Im letzten Wahlkampf warb er für die CDU, zuvor auch einmal für die Liberalen und früher für Willy Brandts Ostpolitik.

> In kürzester Zeit hatte sein Gaza-Video über 8 Millionen Aufrufe. Der UN-Sonderbeauftragte Professor Dr. Jean Ziegler schickte ihm soeben „Solidaritätsgrüße“ im Namen von Antonio Guterres und verteidigte den Künstler gegen den Medienvorwurf, „antisemitisch“ zu argumentieren: „Ihr Text basiert ausschließlich auf UN-Resolutionen!“

English subtitled Link  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMcrNzOfFAE

The latest State Department accusations against Russia for supposedly using chemical weapons on the battlefield against Ukrainian forces were the starting point for my interview this morning with India’s premier English language global broadcaster WION. These charges are said to have been the basis for the latest round of sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States, with the Russian military units under accusation being the prime targets.  The conversation went on from there to consideration of the likely effectiveness of the latest 61 billion financial and arms package from the United States.

Nothing is perfect in life.  WION has identified me as speaking from Brussels, though in fact I am in St Petersburg and will remain here till 14 May.  I misspoke when identifying the glider bombs being used by the Russians, which weigh in at 0.5, 1.5 and 3 tons.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCfpfob1dpk

Transcript below by a reader

Shivan Chanana: 0:00
The U.S. Department of State alleged that Russia had used chemical weapons against the Ukrainian army, and this was the reason to impose additional sanctions against Russia. Interestingly, last week Russia leveled similar charges against Ukraine at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, OPCW. Now, there was a conference which was held and now the question arises, who’s using chemical weapons against the other? To discuss matters, we’re joined by Dr Gilbert Doctorow, who is an author, historian, and political commentator joining us from Brussels. Dr Doctorow, always a pleasure speaking with you. Is this a tit-for-tat move, as Russia levels similar charges against Ukraine?

Gilbert Doctorow: 0:41
Entirely possible that is the case. The first victim of war is the truth. And what we have seen over the past couple of years has borne that truth out all the way. The Russians may very well have used chemical weapons, but I would suggest it was in response to what they reported and complained about for the Ukrainian side a week ago. Generally speaking, everything that comes out of Ukraine and a lot that comes out of Washington is attributing to the Russians what the Ukrainians are doing. So I would take this latest accusation by the State Department with great caution.

Shivan Chanana: 1:26
If chemical weapons are indeed being used on the battlefield by either side, where is this war inching towards? And we have been, you know … the idea of a nuclear war, it’s been way too romanticized at the moment. There have been too many threats around it. Are we really now moving towards it? Is this the first step that we’re going to see?

Gilbert Doctorow: 1:48
No, I wouldn’t consider these latest accusations or charges and counter charges as signifying any particular escalation. I think that the incidents that are at question here are of a very small nature and they are testing the water to see what can be done and how far you can go. I don’t think that this is leading us into a new direction. The weapons already being used in this war are of great destructive power — most recently, the Russians’ use over the past few months of so-called dumb bombs, which have been smartened up and turned into glider bombs. These are [0.5-ton, 1.5-ton], even three-ton bombs with devastating impact, that can tear up large parts of a battlefield and kill most anyone within 20, 30, 40 meters range. So these weapons are weapons of great destructive power, have already been used, and the introduction of some chemical weapons here or there does not change the situation greatly.

Shivan Chanana: 2:59
Dr Doctorow, given your experience and your study of the region spanning over decades, I wanted to understand what consequence do American sanctions have, especially on a nation like Russia? We have seen the U.S. impose several rounds of sanctions in the past. Anything happens and they impose further sanctions. Are these sanctions of any consequence?

Gilbert Doctorow: 3:23
The most significant sanctions, which are of consequence, have been the financial sanctions. Removing Russia from the SWIFT system has had considerable impact on Russia’s commercial relations with the world. It hasn’t– for a few months, there were setbacks in the trade. They were overcome, the workarounds were arrived at and Russia more or less is doing quite well in its commercial relations, particularly with the global south.

Otherwise the sanctions have either been counterproductive– in the sense that they have caused much greater harm to the United States and particularly to Western Europe than they have to Russia– or they have had nil effect. The latest sanctions that are discussed now in connection with the supposed use of chemical weapons will have nil effect. To sanction a country’s military units for one or another abuse is an absurd proposition. You are at war with them or you’re not at war with them. And what difference does it make if individuals are named and are unable to visit the United States or own property there? This is just pro forma. It is checking the box.

Shivan Chanana: 4:38
Doctor, the last time we spoke, you had mentioned very categorically that yes, the bill has been signed into law for the aid, the military aid towards Ukraine, but it’s not going to happen immediately. Would you want to put some kind of a timeline to it? By when can American weapons finally make it to the Ukrainian front lines, because Ukraine is desperately waiting for them?

Gilbert Doctorow: 4:59
Well, some weapons will. Other weapons won’t. They won’t for months, if not for years. The United States and its European allies are simply unable to produce in quantity the artillery shells and the air defense systems that Ukraine desperately needs now if it is going to withstand the coming pummeling of a Russian offensive in full force. The Russians have been softening up the lines. They have been taking additional territory. They have been improving their positions, as they say, in a very understated way. And Ukraine, in the coming month or two, is really unable to resist the Russian moves that we see every day. How long it will take for Patriots to arrive? They don’t have Patriots in the warehouse ready to ship out to Ukraine. They don’t have artillery shells in the millions to assist Ukraine.

But the biggest issue has nothing to do with Western supply. It has to do with Ukraine’s own manpower, which is in a shabby state, and they are unable to raise their battlefield numbers. Their various military units are depleted and therefore ineffective. That is nothing that shipment of further tanks or artillery pieces or ATACMS can rectify. So the Ukrainians are in a very difficult position. The United States is, and the British, the Germans are boasting that they’re providing assistance, but it’s of very limited military value in a situation that is dire.

Shivan Chanana: 6:52
So when it comes to the sanctions, at least the current ones will have no significance, at least not on Russia. And as far as the weapons are concerned, it’s going to take a while for it to, for them to reach the Ukrainian front lines. And even if they do, as you mentioned, the manpower still continues to be a problem, as Ukraine is severely outmanned at the moment.

There are hints, or there are allegations of NATO forces and soldiers from other nations making their way to the Ukrainian, to Ukrainian soil, fighting for Ukraine. But, of course, none of that is in the open. So as far as what makes its way to the public eye is Ukrainian soldiers who are outmanned. Ukraine is outmanned at the moment, even if they get the weapons.

We are going to be tracking the Russia-Ukraine developments as they come in, as we have been doing all this while, right here on WION World is One. A big thank you to Dr Gilbert Doctorow, who is an author, historian, political commentator, joining us from Brussels with all your insights

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

.

Hat Russland „chemische Waffen“ in der Ukraine eingesetzt: WION Indian global news

Die jüngsten Anschuldigungen des US-Außenministeriums gegen Russland wegen des angeblichen Einsatzes chemischer Waffen auf dem Schlachtfeld gegen ukrainische Streitkräfte waren der Ausgangspunkt für mein Interview heute Morgen mit Indiens führendem englischsprachigen globalen Fernsehsender WION. Diese Vorwürfe sollen die Grundlage für die jüngste Runde der von den Vereinigten Staaten gegen Russland verhängten Sanktionen gewesen sein, wobei die beschuldigten russischen Militäreinheiten die Hauptziele sind. Das Gespräch ging weiter zu Überlegungen über die wahrscheinliche Wirksamkeit des jüngsten 61-Milliarden-Finanz- und Rüstungspakets der Vereinigten Staaten.

Nichts im Leben ist perfekt. WION hat mich als Sprecher aus Brüssel identifiziert, obwohl ich mich in Wirklichkeit in St. Petersburg befinde und dort bis zum 14. Mai bleiben werde. Ich habe mich versprochen, als ich die von den Russen verwendeten Gleitbomben mit einem Gewicht von 0,5, 1,5 und 3 Tonnen bezeichnet habe.

Siehe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCfpfob1dpk

Yesterday’s NYPD storming of Hamilton Hall on the Columbia University campus which had been occupied by student demonstrators protesting Israeli genocide in Gaza has brought the clash between America’s non-academic, pro-Washington narrative university administrators and its more idealistic students to the attention of global media. After taking the building, the police arrested the demonstrators and, before television cameras, paraded them off, wrists bound, to waiting buses for dispatch to jail.

As an alumnus of Columbia who entered graduate school there in the months following similar, shall we say, revolutionary developments in the student body in the spring of 1968, I take special interest in this development. Back then, the hotbed of political action across the nation was on the Berkeley campus in California. Columbia was not in the vanguard, though the campus reeled from internal divisions.

At that time, much of the Columbia faculty sided with the retrograde administration, as I saw in my own department, Russian history. My academic advisor, Leopold Haimson, a leading scholar on the Menshevik movement and closet Marxist himself, was aghast at being in the midst of a real bottom-up revolution and sided with the administrators. It took a long time to heal the wounds to the institution once order was restored.

 As a political analyst today, I also follow these developments at Columbia closely for more serious reasons than nostalgia for the past. They hold the promise of a resurrection of student activism and antiwar sentiment among the young that was snuffed out, very cynically but effectively by Richard Nixon and his immediate followers when they put an end to the draft and introduced an all-volunteer professional army.

That Republicans and other political conservatives with their all-in support for Israel whatever it does would uniformly condemn the students as ‘anti-Semites’ is obvious. For their part, Liberals are split on the issue, though many loathe what Israel has been doing in Gaza and the Left Bank, and are sympathetic to the student demonstrators. Liberals are also more concerned with the suppression of free speech, on campus of all places, that the police crackdown at Hamilton Hall signifies. Many are saying out loud that attempts to instill uniformity of thought on the Israeli question destroy the underlying principles of higher education grounded in diversity of views and civilized public debate.

In this regard, I call for a time out to reflect on the destruction of the social sciences and humanities on American campuses that did not start yesterday but goes back in time at least 15 years. This passes unnoticed by our Liberals because it clashes with their own political correctness that acknowledges no other views than their own on the given subject.  I have in mind the anti-Putin, anti-Russian doctrine that totally captured university policies on free speech when Washington launched its Information War on Russia.

In the 2010-11 academic year, I was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia and attended a goodly number of Russia-themed public events hosted by its Harriman Institute. The overriding impression was that anti-Russian speakers and the audiences, consisting of students, faculty and outside visitors, were all totally aligned, singing from the same hymn books. If you dared to pose a question in the time allotted for “discussion” that showed some variance from this consensus, you were immediately denounced as a ‘stooge of Putin.’ In effect, this institution of higher learning had descended to the level of a kindergarten.

From following developments on campus ever since from the weekly program announcements of the Harriman, it is crystal clear that the situation with respect to freedom of speech and thought on the subject of Russia has only gotten worse. Moreover, in the past two years of the Moscow’s Special Military Operation the whole discipline of Russian studies at Columbia has been pulled up by the roots and been replaced by Ukrainian studies and studies of the supposedly colonized nationalities of the former Russian Empire. The process is being called ‘de-colonization.’

Until and unless I see a sobering up of our universities from their intoxication with Russophobia, I will not believe that freedom of speech on campus has been restored, whatever the outcome of the present confrontations over Israeli genocide.

But who knows? Perhaps someone among the present day rebels will move beyond outrage over 34,000 murdered Palestinians and consider the possibility of hundreds of millions of dead civilians globally including in the good old U.S. of A. should the present clash in Ukraine be allowed to escalate to WWIII.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Die Schatten von 1968:  Der Angriff der New Yorker Polizei auf die Demonstranten der Columbia University

Die gestrige Erstürmung der Hamilton Hall auf dem Campus der Columbia University durch die New Yorker Polizei, die von studentischen Demonstranten besetzt worden war, die gegen den israelischen Völkermord in Gaza protestiert haben, hat die Aufmerksamkeit der weltweiten Medien auf den Zusammenstoß zwischen Amerikas nicht-akademischen, Washington-freundlichen Universitätsverwaltern und ihren idealistischeren Studenten gelenkt. Nachdem die Polizei das Gebäude eingenommen hatte, verhaftete sie die Demonstranten und führte sie vor laufenden Fernsehkameras mit gefesselten Handgelenken zu wartenden Bussen, die sie ins Gefängnis brachten.

Als ehemaliger Columbia-Absolvent, der dort in den Monaten nach ähnlichen, sagen wir, revolutionären Entwicklungen in der Studentenschaft im Frühjahr 1968 sein Studium aufnahm, habe ich ein besonderes Interesse an dieser Entwicklung. Damals war der Campus von Berkeley in Kalifornien die Brutstätte politischer Aktionen im ganzen Land. Columbia gehörte nicht zu den Vorreitern, obwohl der Campus von internen Spaltungen heimgesucht wurde.

Damals stand ein Großteil der Columbia-Fakultät auf der Seite der rückschrittlichen Verwaltung, wie ich in meinem eigenen Fachbereich, der russischen Geschichte, feststellen konnte. Mein akademischer Berater, Leopold Haimson, ein führender Gelehrter der menschewistischen Bewegung und selbst bekennender Marxist, war entsetzt darüber, dass er sich inmitten einer echten Revolution von unten nach oben befand, und stellte sich auf die Seite der Verwaltung. Es dauerte lange, bis die Wunden in der Institution verheilt waren, nachdem die Ordnung wiederhergestellt war.

Als heutiger politischer Analytiker verfolge ich diese Entwicklungen an der Columbia aus ernsthafteren Gründen als der Nostalgie für die Vergangenheit. Sie versprechen eine Wiederbelebung des studentischen Aktivismus und der Antikriegsstimmung unter der Jugend, die von Richard Nixon und seinen unmittelbaren Nachfolgern sehr zynisch, aber effektiv ausgelöscht wurde, als sie die Wehrpflicht abschafften und eine rein freiwillige Berufsarmee einführten.

Es liegt auf der Hand, dass die Republikaner und andere politisch Konservative mit ihrer uneingeschränkten Unterstützung für Israel, was auch immer es tut, die Studenten einheitlich als “Antisemiten” verurteilen würden. Die Liberalen ihrerseits sind in dieser Frage gespalten, obwohl viele verabscheuen, was Israel im Gazastreifen und in der Westbank tut, und mit den demonstrierenden Studenten sympathisieren. Die Liberalen sind auch besorgter über die Unterdrückung der freien Meinungsäußerung, ausgerechnet auf dem Campus, was die Polizeirazzia in der Hamilton Hall bedeutet. Viele sagen laut, dass der Versuch, ein einheitliches Denken in der Israel-Frage durchzusetzen, die grundlegenden Prinzipien der Hochschulbildung, die auf Meinungsvielfalt und zivilisierter öffentlicher Debatte beruhen, zerstört.

In diesem Zusammenhang rufe ich zu einer Auszeit auf, um über die Zerstörung der Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften an amerikanischen Universitäten nachzudenken, die nicht erst gestern begonnen hat, sondern mindestens 15 Jahre zurückreicht. Dies bleibt von unseren Liberalen unbemerkt, weil es mit ihrer eigenen politischen Korrektheit kollidiert, die keine anderen Ansichten als die eigenen zu einem bestimmten Thema anerkennt. Ich denke dabei an die Anti-Putin- und Anti-Russland-Doktrin, die die Politik der Universitäten in Bezug auf die freie Meinungsäußerung völlig vereinnahmt hat, als Washington seinen Informationskrieg gegen Russland begann.

Im akademischen Jahr 2010/11 war ich Gastwissenschaftler an der Columbia University und besuchte eine ganze Reihe öffentlicher Veranstaltungen des Harriman-Instituts zum Thema Russland. Der vorherrschende Eindruck war, dass die antirussischen Redner und das Publikum, bestehend aus Studenten, Lehrkräften und externen Besuchern, völlig gleichgeschaltet waren und aus denselben Gesangbüchern sangen. Wenn man es wagte, in der für die “Diskussion” vorgesehenen Zeit eine Frage zu stellen, die von diesem Konsens abwich, wurde man sofort als “Handlanger Putins” denunziert. In der Tat war diese Hochschule auf das Niveau eines kindergarten (sic!) herabgesunken.

Wenn man die Entwicklungen auf dem Campus seither anhand der wöchentlichen Programmankündigungen des Harriman verfolgt, ist es glasklar, dass sich die Situation in Bezug auf die Rede- und Gedankenfreiheit zum Thema Russland nur verschlechtert hat. Darüber hinaus wurde in den letzten zwei Jahren der Moskauer Sonder-Militäroperation die gesamte Disziplin der Russischstudien an der Columbia bei den Wurzeln ausgerissen und durch Ukrainistik und Studien über die angeblich kolonisierten Nationalitäten des ehemaligen Russischen Reiches ersetzt. Dieser Prozess wird als “Entkolonisierung” bezeichnet.

Bis ich sehe, dass sich unsere Universitäten von ihrem Rausch der Russophobie erholen, werde ich nicht glauben, dass die Meinungsfreiheit auf dem Campus wiederhergestellt ist, unabhängig vom Ausgang der derzeitigen Auseinandersetzungen über den israelischen Völkermord.

Aber wer weiß? Vielleicht wird jemand unter den heutigen Rebellen über die Empörung über 34.000 ermordete Palästinenser hinausgehen und die Möglichkeit von Hunderten von Millionen toten Zivilisten weltweit, einschließlich innerhalb der guten alten U.S. von A, in Betracht ziehen, sollte der gegenwärtige Konflikt in der Ukraine zu einem Dritten Weltkrieg eskalieren.

In today’s edition of Cross Talk, I was pleased to join host Peter Lavelle and Sputnik International political analyst Dmitry Babich for a discussion of likely consequences of the newly signed law appropriating $61 billion in aid to Kiev.

Put in simplest terms, this aid package will prolong the war, continue the decimation of Ukraine’s male population and the destruction of its economic viability. It may also hasten our descent into WWIII.

RT programs are subject to intense censorship in the USA and Europe. The links below may or may not work depending on your jurisdiction:

https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/CT2904-:c

https://rumble.com/v4s796n-crosstalk-bullhorns-ensuring-defeat.html

https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/596708-us-foreign-aid-bill-ukraine/

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus) followed by full transcript in English

RT’s Cross Talk: Diskussion über das 61 Milliarden Dollar schwere Militär- und Finanzhilfepaket für die Ukraine, das jetzt in Kraft getreten ist

In der heutigen Ausgabe von Cross Talk habe ich mich gefreut, mit Gastgeber Peter Lavelle und dem politischen Analysten von Sputnik International, Dmitry Babich, über die wahrscheinlichen Folgen des neu unterzeichneten Gesetzes zu sprechen, das Kiew 61 Milliarden Dollar an Hilfsgeldern zuweist.

Vereinfacht ausgedrückt wird dieses Hilfspaket den Krieg verlängern, die Dezimierung der männlichen Bevölkerung der Ukraine fortsetzen und die wirtschaftliche Lebensfähigkeit des Landes zerstören. Es könnte auch unseren Abstieg in den Dritten Weltkrieg beschleunigen.

Die RT-Programme unterliegen in den USA und Europa einer strengen Zensur. Die nachstehenden Links können je nach Herrschaftsbereich funktionieren oder nicht:

https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/CT2904-:c

https://rumble.com/v4s796n-crosstalk-bullhorns-ensuring-defeat.html

https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/596708-us-foreign-aid-bill-ukraine/

Transcription below by a reader

Peter Lavelle 00:15
Hello and welcome to Crosstalk Bullhorns. I’m Peter Lavelle. Here we discuss some real news. With the passage of Biden’s huge foreign aid bill, it is important to ask, what is next? What is really the purpose of this aid? To help Ukraine win or only just starve off defeat? For now. To discuss these issues and more, I’m joined by Gilbert Doctorow in St. Petersburg. He’s an independent political analyst and author of memoirs of an expat manager in Moscow during the 1990s. And here in Moscow we have Dmitry Bobich. He is a political analyst at Sputnik International. All right, gentlemen, Crosstalk rules in effect. That means you can jump any time you want, and I always appreciate it.

00:51
All right, let’s start out with Dima here in Moscow. Well, we’ve had a week now to kind of digest the passage of Biden’s huge foreign aid bill, in an election year, of all things. And, of course, we have the bipartisan consensus of foreign wars and intervention. You saw the results after the vote was taken on the House floor with the waving of the flags and everything. For a lot of people in Congress it was a feel-good thing, but at the end of the day, even in mainstream media that is hardly fair or unbiased towards Russia, they’re even asking the same questions that all of us have been asking all along. I mean, fine, you can dedicate money and weapons, but is it going to make any difference? After a week of this here, Dima, what do you think?

Dmitry Babich 01:45
Well, first, some people just don’t understand that a huge part of this 61 billion that is going to be spent on Ukraine, a huge part of it is going to be spent for previous deliveries. I mean, the budget is going to compensate Pentagon for the deliveries that it already made, for the expenses that it already made. About 11 billion are actually going to be spent on NATO troops, American troops next to Ukraine, right?

And the other thing is that even though– I think it was Trump who insisted on that via Mike Johnson– even though formally it is a loan, I like the phrase from Senator Thomas Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama. He said, “Don’t let yourself be fooled. Not a dollar of this is going to be paid back. It’s not a loan.” We know the regime that exists in Ukraine since 2014. Once they get the money, forget it, you know, they never pay back. So basically, I think everyone is worse off. The war will continue longer. More people are going to die, probably in areas far removed from the frontline, because Zelensky will buy himself or just get for free long-range missiles. The American taxpayer will never get his or her money back.

03:16
And, again, Tuberville said, “Don’t let yourself be fooled; none of this is going to be paid. We’re going to print these dollars or we’re going to borrow it from China.” If Americans are concerned about their dependence on China, it’s going to increase.

Peter Lavelle:
Yeah, well, Dima, and I’ll throw it over to Gilbert, I mean, if you read the fine print of the bill, it’s a sweetheart loan. You don’t have to pay it back. It’s in the bill itself, it was marketed in a very different way. But if you look at the black and white, it is an absolute giveaway. Gilbert, I mean, it seems to me, and all of us have been watching this very closely, not since 2022, but since 2014, at the very least; much longer, actually, in many ways. This is just to starve off defeat. They don’t have a plan to win. They just want to avoid losing, I guess because it’s an election year. Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow: 04:09
No, I agree completely with this. And it is a substantial consensus among experts. But I wouldn’t necessarily say just opposition people, opposition to the Washington narrative. But even in mainstream, there is a consensus that this is not going to save, give Ukraine the possibility of recovering its territory. That is a lost cause. I think the consensus of experts, even moving into mainstream, is coming close to what Jacques Baud was saying about four months ago, that this war has nothing to do with Ukraine. It has everything to do with the West and Russia.

04:47
And Ukraine is being used and abused by the West callously, viciously actually, to the maximum extent to cause harm to Russia. I think what is more troublesome, more worrisome for us all, is not the 61 billion that’s been appropriated for military and budgetary assistance to Ukraine. It is what is going on just under the radar and not very far below it, because it is being picked up by some astute people. And by that I mean the dispatch to Ukraine of advisers, advisers to assist with the most advanced equipment is now scheduled to be delivered to Ukraine. This takes us back to where we were in the 1960s with the American advisers in Vietnam. And that was a time when there was still an understanding of red lines to prevent a direct military clash between the superpowers. That has gone away. There is no recognition of red lines, as Mr. Macron said in a very prevocative way, but in an accurate way, and the possibility of this escalating further, incrementally, is really there.

06:06
We have more and more NATO advisers coming in. We have more and more targeting of those NATO advisers by the Russian Ministry of Defense. And sooner or later, this becomes explosive.

Peter Lavelle:
Well, Dima, of course, I mean, many will say that this is going up the escalation ladder for the very reason that Gilbert just mentioned, is that you’re going to see more and more NATO troops going into Ukraine. But it belies the fact that no matter what the West does vis-a-vis Ukraine, the Russians know it’s directed against them, and it’s not changing the, moving the needle, as it were, on the battlefield. I mean, there are a number of experts that you and I and Gilbert and our audience follow Is that the Ukrainian lines are becoming weaker and weaker and there could be some kind of breakdown. What does NATO do then?

Dmitry Babich: 07:00
Well, NATO will say that just, you know, “‘The dictator’ cracked up to be stronger than we expected. Democracy is on the wane around the world. Autocrats are on the rise.” We’re going to hear a lot of that. The problem is that the United States and the European Union have become ideological states, ideological entities, and their control over the media is absolute. You know, look, one of the main characteristics of a totalitarian regime is that you mix common morals and politics. So during the last three months, the message that we had from the American media in Ukraine, from the European correspondents, it was “Ukrainians are dying, Russia is advancing, and you, Mike Johnson, is to blame for that. You didn’t give the money. So you are a bad man, you know, you’re personally responsible for something, for everything that happens in Ukraine, everything bad that happens in Ukraine.”

08:02
So there is that mixup of morals and politics, you know. In the same way, in the Soviet Union, if you were against Stalin, if you said something bad about Stalin, you just not, you didn’t just make a mistake. You were a very bad person. You had to be ashamed of yourself. So we see this used here and it’s just astounding how the media in the West changes its tunes. All of these few months before it was, you know, “Ukrainian army is starving, there are no munitions, all this because of Mike Johnson.” In fact, it was not true because the munitions delivered in 2022, in 2023, you know, most of this money is going to be just compensating, you know, Pentagon and the American military-industrial complex for that.

08:51
But they wanted to create that atmosphere. And suddenly after the money was given, actually physically, it’s not yet there and the munitions are not there, but suddenly the tone changed, you know. Suddenly we don’t have all of these sentimental articles about soldiers and suffering officers and weeping Zelensky. And the story that was just astounding for me was how Zelensky said, “How come we’re not Israel? I’m in shock, you know. When Israel was attacked by Iranian drones, everyone rushed to the help of Israel. Why are we not Israel?” And the answer is very simple.

Peter Lavelle: 09:32
But Dima, for the very reasons that Gilbert just said, It’s not about Ukraine. That’s what’s really tragic about it. You know, you know, Gilbert, this, you know, as we are on this program, counterintuitive here, the 61 billion– and it doesn’t really matter the amount. you know, people make the amount the center of the story. It doesn’t really matter– because all this does is that it speeds up the demise of what we know of Ukraine. This is going to speed it up, not slow it down, for the very reason that there’s no strategic plan that this money is going to forward. And that’s the tragedy of it all. We’re going to see massive casualties. And this equipment, as Dima has pointed out, is that a lot of it probably hasn’t even been made yet. So, I mean, this is really kind of unicorn stuff. Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow: 10:31
Well, on both sides, both on the Russian side and on the American side and allied side, there is a feeling that the coming months will be decisive. This act, if Congress, which Biden successfully, remarkably got through over the opposition of Trump, that is–

Peter Lavelle:
Well, that’s that’s a little unclear, Gilbert. I mean, he, you know, Mike Johnson went to Mar-a-Lago, they did the photo op. I mean, I think Trump totally, totally fumbled this one. And for a public relations point of view. Go ahead.

Gilbert Doctorow: 11:06
Yeah. Well, I think that the coming months are decisive for Biden in his re-election campaign, and this is a holding action. Whether it will hold or not remains to be seen. It is understood the same way by the Russians, that they have a period before them of several months to conclusively knock out Ukraine before this thing really goes off in a wild direction. So, I think we have to sit back, watch this closely, and see where it’s going. It could go into World War III very easily. It could also end in a capitulation by Ukraine very easily, for all the reasons that have been discussed.

They’re out of men, it’s not just out of munitions. And to speak about a Russian advantage of 5 to 1 or 7 to 1 in artillery shells, they’re speaking about that as if it were a new development coming from the failure of the allies to deliver munitions to Ukraine. That’s rubbish. It’s been 7 to 10 to 1 since February of 2022. So for the reading public who has been asleep for the last two years, this is news. For the rest of us, it’s not news at all. And you have to look for what spells the difference. The difference is they’re out of men, not out of munitions. And the men that they’re throwing in are unprepared.

12:36
Everything, virtually everything that the Ukrainians say about the Russian army is simply a reversal of facts. They’re describing themselves. And they’re putting up untrained men and the rest, and mobilization, all these lies are a description of their own situation.

Peter Lavelle:
All right. Gilbert, I have to jump in here. We’re going to go to a short break, gentlemen, and after that short break, we’ll continue our discussion on some real news. Stay with RT.

13:11
Welcome back to Crosstalk Bullhorns. I’m Peter Lavelle. To remind you, we’re discussing some real news. Dima, on the theme, going back about the appropriation of the $61 billion, which of course, depending on how you count it, I mean, some people pointed out 8 billion of it will be in cash, which I guess we all know what will happen to that very quickly, okay? Corruption in Ukraine has only gotten worse, it’s not gotten better, unfortunately. For the people of Ukraine, for the people that actually want their pension and all that, I don’t see why the United States taxpayer should pay another country’s pensions, maybe a topic of another program.

But one could be much more cynical. This is one big wet kiss goodbye. They’re washing their hands of it, because that’s going to need– that 61 billion will go up in smoke, quite literally, depending on how you want to interpret it. It’s not going to make a difference on the battlefield, as we’ve already discussed on this program. So this was just kind of a feel-good vote, remarkably– and maybe one of you or both of you want to address this– why give Biden a win in an election year like this? I’m simply mystified by it. Dima?

Dmitry Babich: 14:24
Well, let’s look at the figures. 46 billion of that amount, 61, is going to be spent on arms. The remaining, I guess, 15 billion is going to be spent on Ukraine. And as you rightly said, part of it will be in cash, and it is supposed to compensate the pensioners. Well, it’s very easy for the Ukrainian government to steal that money. And during the debate in the Senate, a few senators like J.D. Vance and others, they raised it. They said, “Look, you said it was one of the most corrupt countries in the world. How come we’re sending them our money?” you know. As for the battleground, the goals, the aims that Zelensky and his masters are setting themselves are just not realistic, you know.

15:12
To take back Crimea, there are 2.7 million people living in Crimea, you know? It has been a part of Russian Empire since 1783. The huge majority of the people there do not want, under any circumstances, to go back to Ukraine, you know. When American media was a little bit more honest in the 90s, look at the articles by Celestine Bohlen in the New York Times, by Steve Erlanger. They all wrote that Russians make up a huge majority in Crimea; they’re not happy with the Ukrainian government. Then they were not happy. Now they’re even more unhappy, because they get bombarded every day.

15:52
So when you have unrealistic goals, you can’t win, you know. And what’s going on smacks of a “meat for arms” deal, you know. The Congress, you know, the Congress passed this bill when? After Zelensky announced a new mobilization, 250,000 men will have to go to the army, that means to the front. And, you know, this terrible thing, the Ukrainian government is now requiring Ukrainians living abroad to come to the consular offices and sign up, you know, clear out their situation, their relationship with the army. Otherwise, they will not renew their passports. And all these millions of men will become illegals in Poland, in Germany.

Peter Lavelle: 16:39
Maybe Gilbert knows this, but that’s in contravention to EU laws, okay? I mean, these people are conscientiously opposing this conflict, but that’s neither here nor there. Gilbert, what bothers me and is what we’ve seen over the last few months, particularly if we want to consider the implications of the attack on the concert hall in St. Petersburg, it seems the U.S., because they’re the ones that are calling the shots here, they want to rely more and more on terrorism, which of course is something that the Russians will react to very, very strongly, obviously. So the asymmetricalness of it is becoming more and more obvious. Are you worried about that escalating?

Gilbert Doctorow: 17:24
I think it’s difficult to contain entirely state-sponsored terrorism. So the possibility of some sort of tragedy ahead cannot be excluded entirely. Nonetheless, the result of this appropriation and the continuation of the work, and particularly the result of Ukrainian anticipated use of the longer-range missiles to attack civilian targets in Russia, will be a further aggravation and a further intensification of what we have seen for the last two months, when Russia finally has been staging attacks on the generating plants, not on substations, to destroy the infrastructure of electricity in Ukraine and to target particularly the areas from which the most vicious attacks on civilians in the Belgorod region of Russia have been staged, and that is to take over, essentially, Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv.

18:42
And that, the exodus from Kharkiv, that has been shown on television, is going to continue and is going to become still greater. So I can see as one of the unexpected results of what is going on is a further extension of Russkiy Mir in Western Europe. I live in Brussels and I can tell you right now sometimes I wonder if I’m in Moscow. Because all I hear around me is Russian speech, and this is from the so-called Ukrainians who are now among us. That is a fact of life that I see and I don’t believe that there will be any return to Ukraine of those whom I now see around me in Brussels, but I’m sure you also see in Paris and Berlin and other cities.

Peter Lavelle: 19:29
Well, Gilbert, I mean, if you’re a young Ukrainian woman and you have a child and that child is already speaking or learning German or learning Polish or, you know, French, the likelihood of returning home to a devastated country is close to zero. Dima, very shortly, President Volodymyr Zelensky will no longer be the legal president of Ukraine. I thought it was quite interesting listening to the floor speeches about democracy versus authoritarianism, but Zelensky will be an unelected, I don’t know, whatever term you want– viceroy, dictator, strongman– there will be no legal legitimacy behind him maintaining power.

Dmitry Babich: 20:18
Well, I think that brings us back to this desperate question from Zelensky. “Why am I not Israel, why is Ukraine not a big Israel?” Because you are an unelected military dictator, and you have a dreadful security service, you know. Tucker Carlson just visited Ukraine, and when he came back to the United States, he said he heard the word SBU around himself all the time. SBU is the Ukrainian security s ervice, which people really fear. I mean, they fear it a lot more than Soviet KGB, you know, and certainly more than FSB here. So, the fact that he is not elected is just the smallest of his sins. In reality, of course, people did not support his actions, which led to this tragedy in the first place. It could be avoided 100 times before it started on February 24th, 2022.

Peter Lavelle: 21:21
You know, Gilbert, looking at some of the Western media coverage, most of it’s quite laughable and obviously tragic, because so many young men, particularly Ukrainian men, continue to die. But there’s the new mantra, I mean it’s being introduced, is that “Putin wants results by Victory Day”, by May 9th, you know. And I just kind of just roll my eyes. I mean, if there’s been any– if this military campaign, the “Special Military Operation”, as it was initially called, has no timelines at all. Haven’t they learned that by now. that– and maybe the tail end of that is that the big Russian offensive that’s coming, I don’t see that either. I think that they see what they’re doing is working, maybe not as fast as any of us would like, but it is working. That’s why they needed the $61 billion. Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow: 22:17
All of our whiz kids who are in Washington, and in Berlin, and in London, have the same failure to think outside the box. They project onto Russia what their own military campaign would look like, and then they draw conclusions that Russia fails here and there, because it hasn’t done what they expect.

Peter Lavelle:
Like the shock and awe, shock and awe. Why isn’t Russia using shock and awe?

Gilbert Doctorow:
So that’s where we began in February 2022, and that’s where we are today. They simply refuse to learn that there are other ways to wage a war, and there are other concepts of war-making than their own. And the Russian concept goes back, it wasn’t invented here, it goes back to Clausewitz, where military action is a projection, it’s a continuation and a handmaiden of diplomacy. So this is not appreciated. Diplomacy has gone by the boards in the United States and Western Europe, and they just cannot see. It’s really an intellectual, conceptual failure, to understand, that people can do things differently and have a different set of objectives. And that’s where we are today.

Peter Lavelle: 23:27
You know, Dima, eventually all conflicts come to an end, and in all conflicts there’s an element of diplomacy at the very end. What initiative has the West given Russia to engage in diplomacy, since the West has rejected it completely?

Dmitry Babich:
Well, I would look at it in a wider frame. What conflict have the United States and the EU ended since the EU in its present form sprang up in 1992? Not a single one. They tried in Cuba. It didn’t work. All the other wars were made by them, you know. They widened smaller conflict into big ones, like the protests in Syria, thanks to them, grew into a civil war. And we have many examples. But I would like to quote Senator Thomas Tuberville here. Speaking against this bill at the Senate, he said, “We need to work with Ukraine and Russia to end all this.” And then he added, “But that is called diplomacy. That’s not going to come from us.”

24:34
Unfortunately, I’m afraid he was right. Because working with Ukraine and Russia’s policy. Tell me, when it was the last time when the United States and the EU would work with both sides of the book. They always just supported one side. In Syria, in Libya, everywhere.

Peter Lavelle: 24:56
Well, you know, Gilbert, we’re rapidly running out of time, but Secretary Blinken went to China and scolded them for backing Russia in whatever form that he claims; there’s not a lot of evidence. But what I find really interesting when you see the Secretary saying, lecturing another country about helping another country in a conflict, well, what is the West doing with Ukraine? I mean, they don’t see the symmetry. These people have no sense of self– they can’t see how the other side would see the same problem, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow:
Well, the other side simply cannot be right. There’s one way to do it, and that’s our way.

Peter Lavelle:
That’s right.

Gilbert Doctorow:
We have allies, but you don’t have any allies. You cannot have allies, by definition. You’re an axis of evil or whatever. And so there is this mental failure to put things together.

Peter Lavelle: 25:51
Yeah, well, I mean, the great Stephen Cohen, probably one of the greatest Russianists there ever was, he said during the Cold War “We needed to be in the other guy’s shoes to be able to see what’s going on.” That there’s an inability of doing that. And I think Dima is ultimately right. It’s very ideological. We have in all around the world, it’s the West that is ideological. Most the world wants practical results, and that usually happens in history when you’re practical.

All right gentlemen, that’s all the time we have. I want to thank my guests in St. Petersburg and here in Moscow. And of course I want to thank our viewers for watching us here on RT.

26:29
See you next time; and remember, Crosstalk rules.