Felshtynsky: With Time Against Him, Putin Prepares for Major War Sooner Than Later

“The junta ruling Russia today consists of primitive, uneducated officers of the Soviet and Russian special services who have studied all their lives the specific science of destruction. They have never learned to create and build.” They can sell raw materials like oil at world prices, but they are incapable” of managing the country in the direction of development, Felshtynsky adds.

By Paul Goble* for “Window on Eurasia”:

August 28 – Given his economic problems at home and Western sanctions over Ukraine, many in the West have convinced themselves that Vladimir Putin will not launch a major war. But despite or even because of these challenges, Yury Felshtynsky says, Putin is preparing for just such a conflict, even though time is working for Ukraine and the West.

And because time is working against him in that regard, the Russian analyst based in the United States says, the possibility that he will launch a major attack in Ukraine or against other targets in the near future is far greater than many think (apostrophe.com.ua/article/world/ex-ussr/2015-08-28/vse-ukazyivaet-na-podgotovku-rossii-k-mirovoy-voyne/2162).

Felshtynsky says that those who have been following Putin’s aggression since March 2014 can be divided into optimists and pessimists. Among “the optimists,” he says, is Andrey Piontkovsky who argues that Putin is stymied by his current difficulties and that those around him will soon remove him.

Felshtynsky puts himself among “the pessimists” because he believes that “Putin and the people which he has put in power and who have entered his closest entourage have not understood and do not understand” the nature of the situation they face. Consequently, they are likely to act in erratic, even irrational ways from the point of view of others.

“The junta ruling Russia today consists of primitive, uneducated officers of the Soviet and Russian special services who have studied all their lives the specific science of destruction. They have never learned to create and build.” They can sell raw materials like oil at world prices, but they are incapable” of managing the country in the direction of development.

This group “seized power in order to restore the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire, the ‘Russian world,’ but not a civilized, cultural, economically developed and independent state,” the analyst says. Thus, Felshtynsky argues, “it is early to conclude that the danger of a third world war has been liquidated by falling oil prices and the low ruble exchange rate.”

“If it were possible to buy peace,” the analyst continues, “there never would be any wars because any war is more expensive than peace.” A corollary of that “a low ruble or a high ruble is not a guarantee of European or world security.” Wars happen not just because of what one side wants but also how the other side acts or is perceived to act.

Thanks to the recent Bloomberg report, we now know that the West told Kyiv not to react militarily when Russia seized Crimea. “One after another in March-April [2014] leaders of Europe and the US in one voice as from a script told their populations that Crimea is “immemorial Russian land,’ and that Russia has every right to seize it.

And then these same leaders turned things on their head and said that the fact that “Ukraine had surrendered Crimea without a battle” proved that it was not really Ukrainian because countries do not give up land that is really theirs.

Piontkovsky is among those who have suggested that what took place was the result of a new “Munich,” in which the West “paid for peace with the division of Ukraine” just as it had in September 1938 with “with the division of Czechoslovakia.” Nonetheless, the question remains: will the West go to war against the aggressor as Britain and France did in September 1939?

“No one has yet declared war on Russia, but Russia, in contrast to Hitlerite Germany, has stalled at the initial stage of its aggression,” Felshtynsky says. Already for a year and a half, it has not been in a position to break through beyond the borders of its puppet DNR and LNR,” despite its enormous concentration of forces nearby.

Moreover, the Russian analyst says, “Russia continues to exacerbate the military-political situation on the borders with all its neighbors,” not just the Baltic countries and the former Soviet republics but “also with traditionally neutral states like Finland and Sweden.” And it has sent its aircraft along the US borders as a provocation.

And while this is going on, “throughout the Russian Federation are being carried out military training exercises, increases in military spending, changes in laws governing call ups of reserves, concentration of forces in Crimea and Kaliningrad, and so on and so forth,” Felshtynsky points out.

“Absolutely everything points to Russia’s general preparation for a world war.”....................

To read further go to this link: ukrainebusiness.com.ua

This is around the fourth article I've read, regarding the US told Ukraine to give-up Crimea. NONE of the articles give any factual information YET that this was true. Either they're trying to cause division paid by the Kremlin or they're hard-up for advertisement profits.