patrick.net

Andrey Morozov, a prominent pro-war Russian blogger, has reportedly died by suicide following outrage over a post in which he claimed that the Russian army lost 16,000 soldiers during the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka.
Morozov, who went by the pseudonym Murz on Telegram, was an ultra-nationalist commentator who fought alongside Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and participated in Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
On Sunday, Morozov wrote to his 120,000 followers on Telegram that Russia lost 16,000 personnel and 300 pieces of armour during its months-long capture of Avdiivka. The post drew heavy criticism from senior Russian propagandists, who accused the blogger of “slandering the Russian defence ministry”.
In Morozov’s final messages on Tuesday morning, he announced his suicide and said he was pressured by his superiors to delete the post detailing the number of casualties in Avdiivka. Several people close to Morozov on Tuesday confirmed his death, with some saying that he had shot himself.
Triggered in part by the rebellion by then-Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin last year largely cracked down on voices such as Morozov, who once was part of a loud group of ultra-nationalist hawks who criticised Moscow over shortages of weapons and accused the Russian military leadership of hiding the true death toll among its forces.
Russia hides its war losses and the true casualty toll from its invasion of Ukraine remains a secret, though western officials believe the war has cost the country more than 315,000 dead and injured troops.

4 months, 16K dead and 300 tanks lost is a cost of capturing a small town with pre-war population of 32K. Second army in the world, ladies and gentlemen, applause! And the previos victory of this "magnitude" was another town
of similar size - Bahmut - almost a year ago (May '23). At this kind of tempo the dream of capturing the whole "annexed" Dumb Ass could take decades...

Is Russia starting its 'cake walk' faze after immolating the equipment and personnel of the Azovs? The Ukies are abandoning the wounded, won't even make an effort to pick them up any more. That's gotta be good for morale.

RWSGFY says

4 months, 16K dead and 300 tanks lost is a cost of capturing a small town with pre-war population of 32K

Where are you getting this information from? The same people that told you there was a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq, that they were mobile weapons laps, that Hussein mailed out anthrax letters, that Hussein worked with binLaden, and that we couldn't wait for the final proof to come in the form a mushroom cloud, perhaps?

What retard would believing them at this point? You?

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/vital-signs-wednesday-february-21

New information emerging from relatives of dead and injured Ukrainian soldiers, plus reports from Russia’s ministry of defense, painted an even worse picture of the fall of Avdiivka than originally thought. For one thing, it looks like Ukraine waited to order its dying soldiers to withdraw until after most units lost cohesion and began to flee anyway. The withdrawal order was just political cover.

And when the withdrawal order did come through, the remaining soldiers were ordered to abandon their injured fellows, creating a chance for the media to attempt to frame a narrative around Russian maltreatment of captured Ukrainians rather than the catastrophic failure of Ukrainian command.

Zelensky, for his part, blamed the loss of the key fortress city on Republicans, for delaying his sweet, sweet American payola. In more bad news for Ukraine, its champion of democracy also issued a new declaration of martial law, which canceled next month’s presidential elections, and keeps the former comedian in undemocratic power through executive fiat until he says different.

Apparently, just now is an inconvenient time for Zelensky to run for re-election. But he’s not a dictator like Putin. No, never. Criticizing Zelensky is like criticizing Democracy™ itself.

richwicks says

Where are you getting this information from? The same people that told you there was a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq, that they were mobile weapons laps, that Hussein mailed out anthrax letters, that Hussein worked with binLaden, and that we couldn't wait for the final proof to come in the form a mushroom cloud, perhaps?

Dude, you've beaten the horse dead on this topic. No one cares. Water under the bridge. You bring it up in every comment and you sound like an idiot. Honestly you sound like a baby crying. Get the fuck over it. You're doing nothing to fix it. No one wants to hear your bitching anymore. I know there's an ignore feature, but I think you need to fucking hear it. Get over Iraq. Sorry if you lost a loved one or something. But bitching here is accomplishing nothing.

richwicks says

Nobody has ever threatened this nation, except the federal government.

Fixed it.

Apparently the new mantra coming from Western media is that Ukrainians dying is a good thing. Fucking death cult sociopaths..

Ukraine will lose the Donbas and won't get Crimea back.

The Russian military is no threat to Europe and won't be for at least a decade or so, especially if the Europeans give just a small rat's ass about improving their militaries by a small degree. As evidenced by it's inability to sieze all of East Bank Ukraine in a few months and it's retreat back from the initial gains due to lack of follow on forces to hold it. The front line battalions are up to snuff but have no staying power and not enough support to stay fighting for long periods of time.

Unless somebody escalates this thing to prevent the inevitable annexation/frozen conflict, this book is closed.

AmericanKulak says

The Russian military is no threat to Europe and won't be for at least a decade or so, especially if the Europeans give just a small rat's ass about improving their militaries by a small degree

True. Because in 10 years Russia won't be able to field a large enough military because of demographic collapse.

WookieMan says

Dude, you've beaten the horse dead on this topic

@WookieMan apparently not fucking enough when morons keep using these fucking pathological sociopathic asshole liars as sources of definitive information.

Who gives a fuck what those assholes say? STUPID PEOPLE do.

WookieMan says

You bring it up in every comment and you sound like an idiot.

At least I'm not such a fucking drooling retard I'm getting my information from people that have lied consistent for 20 fucking years.

Who are these stupid people?

"Duh! I heard it on TV" "Duh! The government and the intelligence agencies said.."

You cattle can't learn. Fucking TWENTY YEARS, and I still have to here DUMMIES refer to them as if they have any credibility AT ALL.

They'll lie us into another fucking war, or pandemic, or bailout for criminals in the financial sectors, or whatever, and you will STILL BELIEVE THEM. It's never ending. Never ending. In ANOTHER year it will be some other outrageous lie promoted by CNN, MSNBC, Google, and Facebook. Anybody questioning it will be censored, and the stupid dumbshit public will dumbly ask "well, how were we to know the truth", 5 years later, when they will fall for ANOTHER obvious scam.

WookieMan says

Get over Iraq

And Afghanistan.

And Libya.

And Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, what's next?

It will be something and you dirty stupid cows won't see MAYBE this is ANOTHER trick. Imagine that, they only CONSISTENTLY lie. What could POSSIBLY give you a fucking hint? 20 years and you can't learn, what's 20 more?

Our criminal sociopathic government will let the disaster of Flint Michigan, Palestine Ohio, Maui, whatever continue and you'll, like braying sheep, will demand we have to something about whatever bullshit they MAKE UP, 10,000 miles away.

I am done with propaganda at this point, and I'm fed up with the stupid shitheads repeating it and disseminating it. These people, are either subhuman, or they embrace dishonesty.

NuttBoxer says

richwicks says

Nobody has ever threatened this nation, except the federal government.

Fixed it.

Federal government, domestic enemies, I see them as one in the same. Federal government is a subset. Plenty of traitors that work with them, the people that run Google, and Facebook for example. No big deal, we'll destroy them.

richwicks says

Our criminal sociopathic government will

Let you spout off day, after day, after day about this shit. You do nothing but cry like a little baby here on Patnet. You don't do a thing. You ever meet with your House Rep? They're easily accessible. You are actually part of the problem. You don't do anything.

You don't even know the people I'll see in the next 2 weeks. Between local, state and federal I'll have conversations with a dozen elected officials. I speak my mind. I give no shits. Barking on Patnet living in a Democrat hell hole does zilch. Nothing. Maybe rethink your strategy. Stop thinking federally. That ain't gonna change shit. Work your way up.

Wake me up when you talk to your House Rep. Until then I'll be blunt and you should probably shut the fuck up.

https://swentr.site/russia/592904-medvedev-kiev-threat-russia/

Russia lost another of their precious A-50 radar planes as well as another SU-34 today. Believe that is 7 Russian air force losses in less than a week.

Is Ukraine softening the airspace before the F16's arrive in a few weeks? The F-16's will be able to push back Russian tanks and artillery far back from the current front lines.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/23/incredibly-the-russian-air-force-has-lost-another-one-of-its-rare-a-50-radar-planes/?sh=3ea451812ac4

https://swentr.site/news/592935-orban-ukraine-win-eu/

WookieMan says

Let you spout off day, after day, after day about this shit. You do nothing but cry like a little baby here on Patnet. You don't do a thing. You ever meet with your House Rep? They're easily accessible.

House representatives have no power. They are puppets. They don't even read the bills they sign or create. The Patriot Act was signed into law 2 hours after it was introduced. It's 600 pages long. Nobody read it, nobody could have read it. In the late 1990's it was common for people to take the posted bills, dissect them, and find out who actually wrote them, it was corporations. You'd know this if you weren't oblivious. They are careful to remove metadata today.

You're naive. Government is just a facade. You don't recognize that yet. You are intellectually incapable of recognizing the obvious unless you hear it from a television or some asshole politician.

To me, you're simply retarded in your (claimed) inability to comprehend what is blatantly obvious to me. We have powers controlling our government above, and they don't give a fuck who you elect, as long as they control them, and they controlled Bush 100%, Obama 100%, Trump 95% and that was not acceptable at all, and they control Biden 100%.

That's why it only mattered that our president was senile, or old, or mentally unfit, or accepting bribes, whatever, when Trump was president, and doesn't matter a bit now the Biden is president. You are programmed, and successfully so, to believe that it's a battle between "conservatives" and "liberals". That division doesn't exist, the division is between the people who take orders 100% and those that don't.

This is in front of your face. It's blatant, and you think talking to "a representative" is the way to fix it.

The way to fix it, is to end censorship, and make absolutely impossible. Now there are moral drawbacks to this. Having a completely secured network which has NO ability to be tapped into without permission, can create some horrible shit. You could have child pornography rings, drug rings, distributed mafias, you name it. It will be abused, but since Facebook, Google, and Twitter have protected people exploiting children (Backdoor was one on Google, Twitter wouldn't remove images of CHILDREN that were blackmailed into showing nude photographs and had for their Trust and Safety Commission being run by Yoel Roth who got his "PhD" for writing a "research" paper on why children should have access to Grindr, etc) I don't think I have to worry about the shit that will come out of it. It's already here, and people will do nothing, they will continue to use their services and desperately few know that these corporations engage in this, or think it's a minor thing.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-refusing-to-remove-child-porn/

You don't know what is going on, how anything works, of if you do, you pretend not to. I'm fed up with this shit. We are opening Pandora's box. We have allowed communication to be centralized in the expectation that doing so would be used to protect the public. What's being made now, are entirely uncontrollable systems, that impervious to backdoors or hacking. They can be made public, a combination of public and private, or entirely private. The only way to get into it, is to get to a person within the network.

You really have no idea, or you're lying. Either way, I can't communicate any information to you. Doesn't matter what you say to your stupid fucking puppet rep, they don't write the laws they sign them, when they're told to. Grow up.

You probably think that Biden actually WAS elected. Well he wasn't, obviously. The man can't get 50 people to show up to an event, we got an extra 25 million new voters in 2020 than we did in 2016, this is the largest increase of voters as a percentage of US citizens, ever in a 4 year period. It's the largest percentage of the turnout ever in the country's history and Joe Biden got the largest percentage of the population to ever vote for him. Guess who is number 2? The president that got the 2nd most number of votes ever in history as a percentage of the population? It's Donald Trump, in 2020. He got 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.

You're not voting your way out of this shit, and you're protesting your way out of this shit, and talking isn't going to help. You have to build tools. It's now over 20 years ago that we could have fixed this. When the Patriot Act went into effect, every electronic communication, ever text, and phone call, they were all legit to intercept and record. I am telling you, this is trivial to do now. In your entire life time, you won't speak or hear more words than you can store on a $10 SD Card.

WookieMan says

You don't even know the people I'll see in the next 2 weeks.

Puppets. Nobodies. They can give you graft and grant favors, and they can take bribes, and you can scratch their back and they can scratch yours. That's the limit of what they can do.

They are low level criminals and nothing more. They will do things like have the government purchase a corporate product, provided they get something out of it like stock options, insider trading information, some bogus property deal and the like, but they won't change policy because they don't control it.

It's easy to be a criminal, it's just I have no desire to be one. I won't work for or with this government, because what you call the government isn't a government, and what really is the government, is an outright criminal syndicate, and you still don't recognize that yet, or if you do, you don't care. Maybe you can make some money, taking tax money that was seized by US citizens and enriching yourself and the "politicians". That's the extent of what you can get accomplished working with any of these cutouts, and that's all they are.

richwicks says

House representatives have no power. They are puppets.

TL:DR. Your normal drivel. You don't do a thing but whine and whine. Enjoy your sour life. I actually do things and you're too lazy. Admit it for once.

WookieMan says

TL:DR. Your normal drivel.

Dude, in there I called you intentionally ignorant, and you are.

You will remain this way until your death having absolutely no clue even though it's been explained to you. You're the problem with this country. You can't even be bothered to understand the problem you PRETEND to fight. Maybe you even think you're fighting it and if you're even attempting to you, you're being led down a false rabbit hole. Most people are.

richwicks says

Maybe you even think you're fighting it and if you're even attempting to you, you're being led down a false rabbit hole. Most people are.

You're not elected. You don't talk to your House Rep monthly or State house or Congress person. You're willfully ignorant and just continue to bitch here and do nothing about it. What have you actually done? Programming and "allowing" people to speak on the internet does nothing. Do you even know how to get on the ballot for any position? No. Keep programming the trash that's making this situation worse and stop whining.

WookieMan says

You're not elected. You don't talk to your House Rep monthly or State house or Congress person. You're willfully ignorant and just continue to bitch here and do nothing about it.

Do you understand the true nature of evil?

Imagine getting 800,000 people killed over a lie you were told to repeat, and you did, shamelessly and repeatedly. Could you do that? Imagine if a town of thousands burned to the ground, displacing something like 10's of thousands of people, and you were instructed to give them a $700 check and that was it. Could you do that? Imagine if you started a conflict by murdering a leader, and bought back slavery to that country. Could you live with that?

The people you think are somebody to go to a solution for, have no problem with any of those, and they are merely puppets. Do you think Biden really cares about 2SLGBTQ+ rights? Do you think he cares if the vaccines are either safe or effective? Do you think Obama cared that Common Core math made a students, for 8 years, incapable of basic math? Do you think he cares slavery is in Libya because of what he did, or that there's starvation in Syria as a result? Do you think he's troubled that by allowing the overthrow of Ukraine, it's killed 100's of thousands of people?

Do you think they THEY decided to do ANY of this? That they took the initiative in doing any of these things?

Yet you want to appeal to them. You're delusional.

richwicks says

Yet you want to appeal to them. You're delusional.

We are the world's police. I don't think you have a remote understanding of the world before your time. You'd likely be dead. Whether it's ethical or not is up for debate. But you'd likely be dead. I like being alive. I'm the opposite of delusional. I'm aware.

Those that forget, or ignore, history are condemned to repeat it.

Friday Night Video Splurge — Ukraine On The Ropes

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/02/friday-night-video-splurge-ukraine-ropes/

Notice in the 3rd. video the woman psychopath, speaking for the Military Industrial Complex, is advocating expanding the war into Russian territory. Follow her advice and we're looking at WW III.

.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html

On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine's intelligence services has "transformed" the former Soviet state and its capabilities into "Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today."

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.

richwicks says

The people you think are somebody to go to a solution for, have no problem with any of those, and they are merely puppets.

Wake up. You're not getting any of my points and continuously go back to whining. I'll take smart peoples opinions and ideas over yours. https://youtube.com/shorts/qCppLqh3QO0?si=SZzmRfz7bIuywe8w

WookieMan says

We are the world's police.

No we aren't. Unless the police is an out of control violent criminal mafia. We're that.

Police are supposed to bring peace and deescalate situations. The US hasn't done that in my lifetime, and I'm 50.

The US announces it has a problem with country X, demands country X to do Y, regardless if X does Y, they go to war anyhow. The demanded that Qaddafi disarm, he did. They demanded Hussein get rid of his weapons of mass destruction, he did. When the US can't find anything that is suitable to start a war, they'll make a situation to cause one. They did that in Ukraine.

Remember women's right's in Afghanistan? That was bullshit. They don't care about Saudi Arabia. The US bombed Syria supposed to stop a civil war, do you think they did that?

Everything the US does, and has done for 20 years, is a lie. We have total psychopaths running the nation and dolts that still, at even this point, don't see them for what they are. People who can't see it by now, are blind. They'll never see it.

The US has sent something like 300,000 Ukrainians to their death in a war they couldn't possibly win in the SLIM HOPE it might weaken Russia although there's no strategic advantage to weakening Russia really. These people are complete sociopaths. These assholes are allowing the entire country rot so they can make a little sliver of money off from the MIC. If they can make 10 million dollars and it cost a 100 billion dollars in debt, and gets 100,000 people killed, they're all in. These are the people that run our federal government. You can't see that. They don't give a shit about Palestine Ohio, or Maui, or Flint Michigan, they don't care if people get murdered by illegal immigrants, they give money to illegal immigrants, and vets starve and die on the streets.

Sure, appeal to them. Good fucking luck. You're delusional.

WookieMan says

I don't think you have a remote understanding of the world before your time. You'd likely be dead.

Oh no. It was quite a bit easier. I knew people and talked at length with them who were alive when we still had a gold standard. Probably the easiest time for a white person like me to be alive would be 1950. Depression wasn't too hard PROVIDED you weren't in debt. Boomers, without question, had the easiest time. The so-called "greatest generation" had a very difficult time, Silent Generation grew up during WWII and those were tight times, but when they were young adults in 1950, they had the greatest opportunity ever.

richwicks says

The US has sent something like 300,000 Ukrainians to their death in a war they couldn't possibly win in the SLIM HOPE it might weaken Russia although there's no strategic advantage to weakening Russia really.

Who cares? Choices were made by a lot of parties involved. Wasn't just the US by any means yet you keep throwing it on the lap of the US.

Ukrainian men are fighting a war. They could flee if they didn't want to. It's not complicated. I could fly to Costa Rica today and flee the US. Everyone fighting this war could just stop. It's a choice. It's not leadership or money. If Canada attacked my state I'd kill them and would join in. Whether Canada got money from Russia or China to attack I give no shits. I'll kill them if there on my land.

A hostile neighbor is one thing. Once you attack regardless of past circumstances, you are the fucktard. And that's Russia in this case. Not even debatable. There was nothing to negotiate from the word go. Regardless of 2014 Ukraine was a sovereign nation with no intention of invading Russia. Dumped their nukes. Already had territory ripped out from underneath them with Crimea. I'm no fan of Ukies either, but Russia is the aggressor and ass hole in this. Not the US.

Are they trying to tell us something?

https://bioclandestine.substack.com/p/the-msm-admit-ukraine-is-a-cia-proxy

In case you didn’t hear, the MSM are now admitting that Ukraine is a CIA proxy.

Meaning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was NOT unprovoked, and that the US are the expansionists, overthrowing sovereign nations for geopolitical gain.

The US brought war to Putin’s doorstep.

Meaning that every single thing Western media told you about the war in Ukraine, was based on a lie. All the analysis you heard from pompous MSM talking-heads, was based on the presumption that Putin did this unprovoked, just because he is “literally Hitler”. None of it was true.

Turns out, Putin’s accusations of Western intelligence controlling Ukraine were correct, therefore his attack is more than justified. Just imagine if Russia funded Nazi militias in Canada, started a civil war, overthrew the government, then installed their own puppet regime, then put Russian intelligence bases and biolabs all over our northern border. Every American would be calling to flatten Canada and Russia. Well that’s exactly what the US did to Russia, and they are pissed.

Russia tried to join NATO, they were denied. Russia tried to negotiate non-violent means to resolve the conflict, they were denied. Russia tried to present their grievances of US bioweapon production and espionage to the UN, they were denied. Russia tried to go the diplomatic route, and the West just cried “Russian disinformation”, while they were the ones pushing disinformation.

The West also went out of their way to censor independent journalists like me who have been telling you this from day one, because if the public knew this detail the entire time, they wouldn’t have supported sending our tax dollars there.

This is going to be a tough pill to swallow for many Americans, but Russia are not the bad guys in this scenario. The West are, and it’s not even close.

The sooner we all recognize this, the sooner we can clean up the mess.

I have to say I haven't seen those MSM articles he mentions, but then, I never look at the MSM at all.

Patrick says

I have to say I haven't seen those MSM articles he mentions, but then, I never look at the MSM at all.

You don't need to read the MSM Patrick. One country is bigger and one smaller. Russia wants it because 90% of their land is shit besides oil/gas. No one wants to live there. No tourism. They pull the resources out of the earth. The people live like shit. Import food. They need Ukraine to sustain at a lower cost. That's all this is.

It's never been about culture. Russia wants warm water ports and something more than a bridge to Crimea. They want to shrink their Western border as well. Good luck, nuke time if they try to take Poland. They're the idiots and could have just purchased the land. Countries did this all the time during colonization. Not a new concept.

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1762107989241078163

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/greedflation-tuesday-february-27

A video making the rounds yesterday purportedly showcased a mild-mannered assassin allegedly hired by Ukraine’s secret police to car-bomb Tucker Carlson for $4,000, but who was somehow stopped or arrested by the Russians. It’s not completely clear. While the tale would be consistent with how the Ukrainians usually man-handle journalists, I could not verify the video’s veracity, and I noted the story was not featured on Russia Today. Nor has Tucker said anything about it. So it remains in the “rumor” category until there’s more reliable information. But I figured someone would ask about this salacious story in the comments.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/burn-notice-wednesday-february-28

Three short days ago, the New York Times ran an unprecedented, astonishing, history-making, exclusive, damaging, long-form story under the intriguing headline, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.” Not ‘helps fight Russia.’ Helps fight Putin. The second sub-headline, which should’ve been the main headline, explained, “A C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases has been constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border.”

The least interesting fact about the article was that it immediately demolished the main argument for Ukraine support and instantly turned dozens of Senators and Congressmen into liars. The most interesting fact was the CIA’s obvious decision to burn its vast, unimaginably-expensive, militarized, networked, anti-Russia intelligence operation in Ukraine.

Note how carefully worded was the sub-headline. The CIA network of spy bases ‘includes’ twelve along the border. In other words, there’s a lot more than twelve bases. The total number remains classified. It’s like the M&M’s-in-the-jar-game. Guess how many secret, underground Ukrainian CIA bases are in the empty Vodka bottle to win a broken M1 Abrams tank!

It was a big, giant article, penned by Pulitzer-winning reporters Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz who, the byline informed us, interviewed more than 200 people in the US, Europe, and Ukraine for the story. Adam and Michael are both well-connected intelligence community hired guns and Russia hawks. Adam won a Pulitzer for his story exposing Russian meddling (to ‘help Trump’) in the 2016 election. Michael won a Pulitzer in 2020 for his series of articles exposing Russian intelligence assets around the world. So.

For the story, Adam and Michael got deep access to top-secret CIA material and even toured one of its secret underground bases on the border in Ukraine. I’m wondering, how much top-secret, classified information was exposed to these reporters so they could write this story, obviously with close CIA cooperation?

I’m not sure that, in the entirety of its long, dubious existence, the CIA has ever dumped this much current, classified information into the public domain before. I think we have witnessed yet another historic, record-breaking 2024 disclosure.

Especially given recent classified-document controversies here in the States, one wonders who authorized the declassification of all that classified information? Was it authorized?

But the even bigger question is: why.

Before we attempt to answer that particularly pesky question, a question that, in the hours following the article’s publication, has consumed hundreds of hours of podcast time and libraries of blog articles, let’s first check in and see how the boys in Ukraine are doing. When last we left them, Russia had just taken over the strategically-paramount, fortified city of Avdiivka following a frantic, five-month battle.

There’s pretty big news. Right after Avdiivka fell, something new happened in the Special Military Operation. Something we have never seen before. The entire, vast Russia-Ukraine battle map lit up like a secret CIA switchboard.



The Live UA Map (shown above, with my annotations) is compiled from open-source information, including published news stories, official announcements, and clever scraping of geolocation data found in the metadata of cell phone pictures and drone videos. Russian-controlled areas and attacks are shaded red, Ukraine’s are blue.

What first strikes you about the proportion of red and blue on that map?

Yep. What the map strongly suggests — a conclusion shared by most independent war bloggers — is that, once Russia had captured the key strategic location of Avdiivka in central Ukraine, it commenced a massive, all-theatre offensive, all along the extended front, putting Ukraine in an impossible situation: where should it send its dwindling, aging, worn-out reserve forces? To what part of the line?

Somehow, Western ‘leaders’ appear completely taken by surprise — how could this happen? They seem to be panicking and are politically freaking out. Mercurial gadfly Emmanuel Macron called for an emergency, last-minute NATO conference yesterday and shocked attendees by suggesting the West should give Ukraine not just ammunition, but uniformed troops, a development that would ring the World War III dinner bell.

Macron’s ridiculous proposal was immediately shot down, leaving the French President standing alone in his bikini-style briefs. The instant take-down included wide corporate media coverage, which means they were really talking to Russia, saying don’t worry, we may be stupid but we’re not THAT stupid. For example, from an article in yesterday’s USA Today:



Over here in the U.S., President Biden — just like panicky Macron — convened an “emergency” summit yesterday with Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson, a painful interview including a separate half hour where Biden asked to speak to Johnson privately, causing this author to conclude that whatever we’re paying Mike Johnson, it isn’t enough. ...

Why is Joe panicking? Does he love the Ukrainians that much? Better yet, would the aid package really turn the tide at this point? Even if Congress approves the $61 billion aid package, it would almost certainly be too little, the ammo would get to Ukraine too late, and it would not solve Ukraine’s actual biggest problem, which is not lack of ammo. As Macron’s freakout suggests, Ukraine’s main problem is that we could send it all the weapons and ammo we want, but Ukraine is running out of fresh men to fire the weapons.

Ammo, you can buy. Weapons, you can buy. More Ukrainians? Not so much.

So what’s the panic? The panic is, Ukraine may lose, and it may lose soon, and so this one might be the very last aid package. Biden’s money train may soon be pulling into the Russian-occupied station. Privet, comrades! In other words, once it gets clear that Ukraine is lost, there won’t be any more multi-billion dollar aid packages for politicians and oligarchs to graft from.

This could be Biden’s last chance.

Which brings us back to pondering the bizarre, unprecedented decision by the obsessively-secretive Central Intelligence Agency to burn its Ukraine operation to the ground.

The Time’s extensive, detailed article prints to 34 single-spaced pages. It’s a small book. But here are the basics: according to the Times, on the same day Ukraine’s democratically-elected, pro-Russian government fell in 2014, CIA director John Brennan’s private government plane landed in Kiev. The Director immediately formed a enduring friendship with the new, pro-Western replacement president (Zelensky’s predecessor), and forged a lasting work relationship with its brand-new spy chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko.

Many analysts credibly believe the CIA helped or even engineered the coup that overthrew Ukraine’s fairly-elected, Russia-friendly government on February 24, 2014. (Eight years later — to the day — Russia invaded Ukraine.) If true, the CIA had a complete claim to the government it created. And, if true, all the top Ukrainians are actually handpicked CIA assets.

What happened next in February 2014, according to the article, could be best described as the CIA moving into Ukraine’s master bedroom and making the owners move down to the basement. “Working with” Ukraine, Obama’s CIA began building its “network” of underground bases in Ukraine — who knows how many — including the aforementioned dirty dozen of militarized, underground, US-built bases right along Russia’s border. Sadly, the CIA was aided by intelligence-friendly, Cold War-era Republicans, too...

The article continued, citing example after example, trying its hardest to put the CIA into a good light and make the article into some kind of CIA recruitment brochure. But the reader can only avoid feeling nauseated and betrayed by the CIA, by believing that Russia is an existential threat to the United States and no risk is too great to oppose it. In other words, you have to still be an all-in Cold Warrior.

Too much top-secret information was disclosed to describe here, because of space constraints. But I’ll give you one example for flavor, and it’s not even the most shocking example:

"Around 2016, the C.I.A. began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that C.I.A. technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)"

A commando force? Military intelligence? In other words, although the article studiously avoided describing any direct wet work, it doesn’t say there wasn’t any, either. But clearly, the CIA was involved in helping direct and train Ukraine’s military. In other, other words, the CIA built itself an army in Ukraine. And the Russians obviously didn’t like it.

Note the cited date: “around” 2016. Do you think Trump was briefed on the CIA’s massive network of bases and its captive army in Ukraine? Could that have been what Trump was trying to figure out when he called Ukraine’s president, a call the deep-state immediately leaked and impeached him over? Was the great quid-pro-quo-ing of Trump really intended to send a message: keep your hands off Ukraine, or else?

Is that what Chucky Schumer meant when he gleefully warned Rachel Maddow the CIA has six ways from Sunday to get back at you?

Again: who declassified 34 pages of detailed, top-secret CIA information, details like naming unit numbers and members, and who invited Times reporters to tour top-secret underground bases? I’ve been assured by many democrats that even having classified information not carefully declassified through multiple layers of review and sign-off is a treasonous crime. (Unless you cooperate more with FBI agents investigating your illegally kept files, but I digress).

The CIA’s top-secret, multi-billion dollar militarized spying operation in Ukraine is now public knowledge; in other words, it’s been burned. Agents and sources have been placed in harm’s way. Secret bases have been compromised. America’s foreign policy has been damaged. Was all this unprecedented disclosure a crime? Should the FBI now raid intrepid reporters Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz, to find out who leaked?

We now enter the realm of speculation. Obviously we don’t know, and will probably never know, the real reason the CIA burned its active Ukraine network. But some possibilities loom larger than others. I’ll begin with my own conclusion.

This looks like the most unlimited limited-hangout ever I’ve seen. My best guess is someone or something was about to leak the story of the CIA’s ownership of Ukraine, so the spy chiefs got ahead of the story, in order to spin the harmful disclosures as best they could, as some kind of helpful, patriotic mission abroad, perfectly normal, nothing to see in Ukraine. To get it out, the agency dished the story up to two allied reporters on a plate and swanked them around some high-tech underground CIA military bases on the Russian border.

I pray someday, someone will ask Trump whether he was ever briefed on what the CIA was doing in Ukraine, and if so, when. Either way, limited or not, this story is terrifically damaging to the CIA, a permanent black eye that has only just started oozing.

First, the CIA’s bases obviously aren’t on the literal border with Russia, because Russia has already captured twenty percent of Ukraine’s eastern flank, but the CIA is still offering reporters spy-base tours. So the bases are more likely placed along the country’s ethnic borders, leading to an ugly conclusion that the CIA was actively helping Ukraine’s Nazi military attack and brutally oppress its own people in the more Russian areas in eastern Ukraine. So that’s one very ugly fact.

Second, the biggest media narrative in support of Ukraine from Day One has been that Putin invaded Ukraine for no reason. They told us Putin only invaded because he had deranged dreams of becoming a 21st-century Czar and reuniting the old USSR’s borders and putting the communist band back together. Joe Biden constantly blabbered about how the war was unprovoked (i.e., without reason or excuse)...

But this article proves beyond cavil that Putin was provoked. Putin even said so, although sold-out corporate media refused to believe him...

What would the U.S. do, if Russia were building dozens of secret military bases along our southern border and training Mexico’s military and installing Russia-friendly, KGB assets into all of Mexico’s top political, military, and intelligence services?

At what point would enough become enough?

Third, if I were a Senator or Congressman who had gone around repeatedly assuring my constituents and telling the media that Russia invaded Ukraine for no reason, I would be pretty hot right now. This disclosure just made liars of them all.

Finally, looping back to where we started, the story signaled that the CIA obviously expects Ukraine to lose the war. Apart from getting in front of the story, the CIA burned its secret underground border spy bases because it probably expects Russia will capture them soon. By burning its spy network in Ukraine, the CIA crossed a sort of geopolitical Rubicon, a point of no return, and has decided it has no realistic way to stop the Russians. So the CIA has abandoned ship. Or base.

It was an amazing story and we’ve never seen anything like it in history. It took fifty years for the CIA to declassify some of its files on JFK’s assassination. Putin got them to declassify their twisted Ukrainian network in about fifty minutes.

No more money for Ukraine until our own border is fully secure.

Next, the disclosure of all this detailed information about the CIA’s activities in Ukraine is opening up vast new panoramas of connecting dots. For example, Mike Benz reminded Twitter yesterday about the curious timing of Hunter Biden’s Burisma Board job compared with the timeline of the CIA’s admitted invasion of Ukraine:



A side-effect of the CIA’s limited hangout will be the chance to keep putting the puzzle pieces together. So, stand by.

Signs of trouble in paradise! One unavoidable side-effect of the panicked CIA base disclosures is also an inability to predict what else its disclosures might affect, or who might be upset about them. I have no way of knowing, but one day after the Times helped the CIA burn its own Ukraine network, which included painting a picture on Ukraine’s spy chief’s back as a CIA asset, while President Biden was still making the rounds justifying $61 billion in Ukraine aid because of Alexei Navalny’s murder, guess what happened?

CIA asset (former?) and Ukraine spy chief Budanov announced Navalny died of natural causes, eviscerating the latest US narrative for ginning up Ukraine support:




Did Budanov push back on the CIA because they burned him? Or is the CIA undercutting Biden, and directed Budanov to do it? What happened?

And … a blood clot! If you go back and read C&C the day after Navalny died, you’ll find I said it sounded more like a jab-related sudden adult death than anything else. Well, well, well.

Why would Budanov support the Russians instead of Biden just now? One day after the epic Times article. Even if he felt a need to be honest, there would be no reason for the spy chief to go public with his conclusion that Navalny died of natural causes, tossing a sandbag right in front of Joe Biden’s orthopedic sneaker.

All we can know for sure is there are massive movements afoot behind the scenes.

Patrick says

I’m not sure that, in the entirety of its long, dubious existence, the CIA has ever dumped this much current, classified information into the public domain before. I think we have witnessed yet another historic, record-breaking 2024 disclosure.

Especially given recent classified-document controversies here in the States, one wonders who authorized the declassification of all that classified information? Was it authorized?

But the even bigger question is: why.

Pretty obvious. Don't need a CIA Pet Journo Gaslighting Operation for something called out last year: