Putin is in a complex position here. If his reaction is "muted," perhaps that's a sign that he is deeply engaged in calculating how Russia can play out its role. We're told that Putin seems to experience "frustration that Israel has not endorsed his rationale" for invading Ukraine and that "Netanyahu’s government has been cautious in its support for Ukraine."
October 10, 2023
"President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has long cast himself as a friend of Israel and the Jewish people."
"He helped establish visa-free travel between Russia and Israel in 2008, presided over the construction of a sprawling Moscow Jewish Museum in 2012 and, side by side with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in 2020, unveiled a memorial to the victims of Nazi Germany’s siege of Leningrad.... Instead, Mr. Putin’s spokesman on Monday struck a neutral stance.... On Russian state television and in the pro-Kremlin blogosphere, commentators reacted to the attack on Israel with thinly veiled glee, casting it as a revelation of Western weakness and as the start of a war that could sap Western support for Ukraine.... There are clear geopolitical reasons for Mr. Putin’s shift on Israel. In the Middle East, where Russia has long tried to play a kingmaker role and build relations with all major powers, Moscow now finds itself beholden to Iran — Israel’s bitter enemy — as one of its primary arms suppliers for the war in Ukraine.... Mr. Putin appears stung that Israel and Jewish leaders around the world are not backing his false narrative about Ukraine’s being run by 'Nazis.' In recent months, he has repeatedly lashed out at President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for heading a Nazi government despite being Jewish. In June, Mr. Putin claimed that his 'many Jewish friends' had told him that Mr. Zelensky was 'a disgrace to the Jewish people.'..."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
35 comments:
I’m sorry!
I never believe 27-year-old omniscient reporters that are convinced they have captured all the unspoken thoughts of a world leader!
Then there's the part about how Putin's Russia, just like Hamas, is raining missiles down on civilian targets, killing and kidnapping women and children, and trying to destroy an actual democracy which stands as a beacon in a region of authoritarianism. And not just any democracies; democracies marked by their friendliness to the United States.
So yeah, there's that.
WWI did not end the way anyone expected. Experts of various kinds, intellectuals who thought they could read History, all were mistaken or ignorant. Empires were destroyed, Communists took over Russia, and no one foresaw the future. There was less fear of great powers, and a lot of ethnic cleansing, German vs Slav and vice versa, Catholic-Protestant, Greek-Turk and so on. Woodrow Wilson lent at least some support to all this, thinking new more homogeneous countries would be more peaceful.
Germans nursed their grievances. Japan, allied against Germany in WWI, picked up some Pacific islands with little trouble. Many victorious countries put up huge memorials to the war to end all wars. A bigger war than ever started in about 20 years, with some of the memorials still unfinished. Many leaders were quite surprised.
hmmm..so,
Biden has forced Russian into China's arms, through his endless war in the Ukraine..
Biden has forced Israel into Russia's arms, through his Funding of Iranian Maniacs..
Biden has imported MILLIONS of terrorists into the USA, through his open borders....
Biden has used up ALL our oil in our strategic reserves..
Biden had used up ALL existing stocks of ammunition, not just in USA; but in All of the West..
We are sitting PRETTY! Thanx to Biden, WWIII will be bloodless, because we've ALREADY LOST
I was coming to make a comment, but after reading madAsHell at the top, not sure what else to say.
Wow the NYT really wants to wave away all the swastikas and Azov core evidence to further the Putin so bad narrative. Normal people are tired of propaganda. It looks like evil Soviets invaded and Ukraine embraced its Nazi history of fighting Russians and the more they sell their stupid narrative with weak shit like “but Zelenskyy is a Jew” the less I want to support this stupid war. Of course it’s complicated. That’s why we need a strong leader who can communicate our mission and articulate how we get there. What would be the win in Ukraine?
Biden has been silent too, calling early lids on the press to hide.
Keep in mind here, the NYT is tut-tutting Vladimir Putin's "muted" response, noting his silence since Saturday's assault.
The NYT is not tut-tutting Barack Obama and Bill Clinton's "muted" response, and is not noting their silence was only broken on Monday, when their "muted" response which called for a cease-fire, would have little audience in the United States ... their statements having been released within an hour of each other on a Monday evening. Obama only "tweeted" his 2-sentence "muted" response. Didn't release any video of himself condemning his fellow Muslims for their terrorist attacks that Joe Biden funded. Exactly one hour later, so did Clinton.
But you're not supposed to notice that.
Hey. At least Putin isn't hanging out at NYC anti-Israel protests holding up Swastika images on his smart phone.
In NYC you'd think the NYTs would want to know what AOC and Taylor Swift think about all of this.
Pretty much everything that claims to see inside Putin's head is wrong--from all sides. He is neither "the next Hitler" nor the "leader of Christendom against Clownworld." He's a mafia don who inherited a nuclear arsenal.
Strip away all the hyperbole and wishful thinking (on all sides), and you'll recognize that Putin is acting precisely as a Mafia don with a nuclear arsenal would: his first, second, and third priorities are to keep himself from being knocked off by a rival. He doesn't fear the masses and has no need to pacify them because they see him as protecting them from the worse mafia don would would take over. What he fears is someone developing an independent power base. But that means he can't undertake grad strategy, because he can't trust anyone who is both smart and has organizational skills or charisma. That's why the vaunted Russian "superweapons" don't work, why Russia shot down it's own top-line fighter for lack of a working IFF system, why there never has been a big "reveal" of all the intelligence Russia supposedly gathered from Hilary Clinton's insecure server, why there haven't been scandalous revelations of bio-labs in Ukraine, why the "receipts" of the payoffs to the Biden family aren't coming from Moscow. Putin won't allow anyone who is too intelligent to rise high enough to become a rival, so that Russian military / industrial / intelligence system is absolutely riddled with corruption and incompetence--and that can't change, because fixing it would threaten Putin's control.
What Putin can and will do is the same things that the Czars did: win a brutal war of attrition because to the leader the sacrifice of so many Russian lives is a "win/win/win": grinding down the enemy and killing off domestic opposition, and reducing the population so that are few mouths to feed and bodies to house, producing the short-term illusion of increasing economic prosperity (this last is exactly what the Soviet Union did--combined with looting Germany--to produce the impression that living standards were increasing). In the long run this is all a disaster for Russia, but in the long run Putin will be dead, so he doesn't care.
Mr. Putin appears stung that Israel and Jewish leaders around the world are not backing his false narrative about Ukraine’s being run by 'Nazis
Let's see, banned opposition parties, closed churches, cancelled elections....but not a Nazi. Good Lord, which editor allowed that little bit of disinformation to get in this piece.
Lloyd W. Robertson said...
"Germans nursed their grievances."
As people do.
Sorry, I try to keep my news reading to the non-fiction category, which naturally excludes the tabloid rags like the NYT.
By the way, Ukraine is another conflict where I don't have a "side" that I'm on, but I know the dominant narrative is not selling many people.
Playboy today has fired Mia Khalifa and deleted her content on their channel.
I note in contrast that Joe Biden gave Iran $6 billion for 6 American hostages, which Iran used to fund Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel. Hamas kidnapped a bunch of new hostages (seeing as how they're worth $1 billion each) and not a single Jew in the Biden Administration has resigned in protest.
The lesson here is that Playboy Magazine has a conscience.
Regime spokesperson announces typecast Putin will play a scoundrel again in the new crisis du jour.
This latest attack on the concert in Israel was cut from the same cloth as that terror attack on the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. The preparation was more elaborate and the body count was higher, but same deal. I don't think anyone on God's green earth had any trouble condemning the Manchester slaughter. There were no muted responses or carefully nuanced expressions of outrage. That was evil then. This was evil now....I guess there haven't been any recent terror attacks in Russia, but there are lots of Muslims in the former Soviet lands who have more grievances against Russia than they do against Israel. Putin is dancing with the devil.
Israel is a U.S. client state- nothing complicated here except that certain writers don't understand what changed since 2008.
Putin is in a complex position here.
Yep. It’s not just that Netanyahu did not support his invasion of Ukraine, it’s also true that Russia has been building up economic ties with Iran, and it will be tough to criticize Hamas without at least implicitly criticizing Iran.
Right now I wish anybody other than the bumbling Biden administration was in charge. Iran may already be a nuclear power, and Israel enjoys fostering a belief that has been one for years. Could a Russia-US nuclear exchange follow from an Iran-Israel nuclear exchange. The risk seems low now but “low risk” is not zero risk.
The action of all parties now seem to revolve around pushing regime change in Israel. That Bibi guy has to go. He just won’t surrender when he is told to and only seems to want to make Israel great again.
But that’s not new. The US President Obama spent most of his time subverting and opposing Netanyahu from continuing as the elected head man in Israel’s government.
Then Trump came in and reversed all that. Our Embassy suddenly went into Jerusalem. Our cash cash transfers to Palestinians stopped until their cash rewards being paid for massacres of Jewish civilians was stopped.
“The best investment we ever made” in Ukraine suddenly doesn’t look so good, huh?
I imagine Russia is trying to figure out how this will play out in Syria. Israel entering into the Syria theater after addressing Lebanon would complicate what Russia (and the US) is trying to do there.
Seriously, isn't the NYTs just HOPING that Putin isn't wooing Israel?
We're ALREADY in bed with the Iranians, it's just a matter of time before Israel dumps US
I love the bizarre NYT's assumptions. For some reason Putin and Russia are supposed to stand by Israel even though Israel doesn't stand by Putin or Russia.
And its not like Putin is supporting the attack, he's just not being Pro-Israel enough. Perhaps the NYT's expects Putin to drop to his knees and kiss the hand of the Israeli President like Joe Biden, or wear an Israeli flag on his lapel like so many Repubublican Congressmen. Or burst into tears at the sight of an Israeli flag, like Mike Pence.
There's never been a weirder or more one sided relationship then the one between Israel and the USA. A martian coming down from outer space would think the USA was a client state of Israel and needing its help, instead of the other way round.
And again notice, the Iranian hate embeded in the NYT's article. We're being set up for another war in the middle east. This time with Iran. The link between the terorist attack and Iran is very vague, but the neo-cons like Erick Erickson, Bolten, or Kristol have been demanding war against Iran for years. And this is their chance to strike.
You actually had that clown Jordon Petersen saying we should attack Iran so Iranian girls could have gender studies and free abortions.
Unlike the USA, the Nazis are villians in Russia because they killed millions of Russians in WW II. Next to the Jews, no group hated Hitler more. So, its natural for Putin to call the Ukrainians Nazis.
But its just a meaningless insult label. Like American Pols calling Putin "Another Hitler".
I wish people would grow up and stop living in the past, but y'know...
Obama only "tweeted" his 2-sentence "muted" response. Didn't release any video of himself condemning his fellow Muslims for their terrorist attacks that Joe Biden funded.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain we control from behind a different curtain!!!
Putin offered a muted response.
Biden didn't bother getting out of bed.
Btw, where was Obama during Benghazi?
I will vote for the presidential candidate from any party that promises to answer that question.
Oh, look, a new commentator with a generic name repeating bald-faced lies about Ukraine that have already been refuted many time. 'Michael' at 7:50am thinks Ukraine is the Nazis:
1. "banned opposition parties"? Churchill banned the British Union of Fascists and jailed its leader, though he was son-in-law of an earl, because he was a Fascist and supported Britain's wartime enemies. Zelenskyy banned 11 pro-Russian parties, but only 2 of them had any members of parliament. Here's what Wikipedia says about just one of them, 'Nashi': "It supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022", and "During the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, a number of functionaries of the Nashi party cooperated with the Russian troops and headed the military-civilian administrations in the territories occupied by the Russians." In other words, traitors. And none of the leaders of the 11 parties have been arrested, just banned.
Of course, actual Nazis banned all opposition parties. The Ukrainian parliament still has 8 different parties represented (a lot more than in the US!), 3 pro-Zelenskyy with 270 seats of 450 (60%), 3 opposition parties with 71 seats, 2 other parties with 39 seats, and 24 independents. The 2 banned parties had 41 and 5 members, but 22 members of the larger one are still in parliament under a different name (one of the 2 'other' parties listed above) after getting rid of some of their more obviously traitorous members.
2. "closed churches"? The Russian Orthodox Church is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the KGB, its partriarch a member since the '70s and a close associate of Putin. There is an entirely separate orthodox church in Ukraine which has not been molested in any way. (By the way, the 'Ukrainian Orthodox Church' and the 'Orthodox Church in Ukraine' are separate, and one of them is a wholly-owned fake subsidiary of the Russian church created to confuse people, the other an actual national Ukrainian church, like the Greek, Bulgarian, and other national churches.) Russian Orthodox clergy in Ukraine have done things like refusing to allow a funeral for a dead Ukrainian soldier, or beating up a Ukrainian soldier who stopped by the church to pray on his way to the train station to go to the front. They are in fact Russian-owned traitors, and Ukraine is quite right to expel them.
3. "cancelled elections"? The Ukrainian constitution does not permit elections in wartime, for obvious reasons: a free and fair election is impossible. It would be possible, though difficult, to arrange for the millions of Ukrainian refugees in Europe to vote absentee, but the millions stuck in occupied Ukraine, and millions more taken to Russia against their will cannot. In any case, elections are not "cancelled", they're postponed. If Biden had only provided the F-16s, M-1 tanks, and ATACMs promised a year and a half ago, the war would over, and elections going on as scheduled. Anyone who opposes that aid and complains about postponed elections is a disgusting hypocrite.
And yes, we've all seen, over and over, pictures of the same few low-ranking Ukrainian soldiers who wave Nazi symbols. Somehow that makes all of Ukraine Nazis, but the fact that Putin willingly shakes hands with the likes of Utkin (Nazi-tattooed founder of Wagner) and Dugin (ideologue), and the Nazi tactics used by his troops in Ukraine (rape, torture, kidnapping, beheading or castrating capture soldiers) doesn't make Russia Nazis.
In short, 'Michael' is a liar, a fool, and a toady, all in one. And quite likely a new name for an old troll.
This--from the New York Times--is simply tiresome. And largely irrelevant. The dogs in the New York Times newsroom bark (or more likely whine) and the caravan moves on.
Israel is fighting a war, and Republicans are unlikely to have a Speaker this week. Unbelievable.
rcocean (9:58am):
"Unlike the USA, the Nazis are villians [sic] in Russia because they killed millions of Russians in WW II. Next to the Jews, no group hated Hitler more. So, its natural for Putin to call the Ukrainians Nazis."
"Unlike the USA"? What the fuck? Are you saying Nazis are not villains in the US?
And are you really unaware that Ukraine was part of the USSR and fought alongside the Russians - first allied with Hitler, of course, but then against him after he betrayed Stalin? That the percentage of Ukrainians killed in the war was higher than the percentage of Russians, though not as high as the percentage of Belarusians? That one of the colonels in the 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division was Semyon Zelenskyy, grandfather of Volodymyr?
And yes, we all know that some Ukrainians, like that 98-year-old Canadian, fought for the Nazis, and not just when ordered to do so by Stalin (1939-41). But the number of Russians who did so was much higher, both absolutely and as a percentage of population. (By the way, someone pointed out that there were as many Dutch as Ukrainians in the Waffen SS, from a much smaller country, but somehow that doesn't make today's Dutch at all Nazi.)
There are hordes of lunatics conducting pro-Palestinian/anti-Jewish rallies in all major Western cities, but the story in NYT is Putin's "muted response"!
NYT scribes con step out on the street in New York, interview those lunatics and give us a report. No language barrier to overcome and no mind-reading required.
Putin is a war criminal and will remain a war criminal as long as he lives, may we not wait long.
Israel is in the process of unleashing extremely harsh reprisals against Gaza. There will be many reports of Israeli atrocities in the days to come.
One political advantage of giving "muted response" to atrocities perpetrated by Palestinians is that it allows for an equally "muted response" to atrocities to be perpetrated by Israelis. All the while taking a strong stance for Peace and Anti-Violence.
"Israel is fighting a war, and Biden is unlikely to have a coherent statement this week. Unbelievable."
See I can non-sequitur too, Rich. How about: "Israel is fighting a war, and Biden is unlikely to have a bowel movement today. Unbelievable."
By the way, our acting Speaker is more competent than your acting president, whoever it is that is actually telling Joe what to do. All I know is their pronoun is "they." He says it all the time. "They'll get mad if I say anymore" etc.
Post a Comment