At a time when outlets critical of the war in Ukraine are either temporarily ceasing activity as did Novaya Gazeta or being shut down like Echo of Moscow, the widely-read blogger Anatoly Nesmiyan aka El-Murid appears to throw caution to the winds, unless he believes that bloggers will be exempted by the regime to provide some sort of safety valve. In the blog post below, he draws an analogy between the top Kremlin leadership and Adolf Hitler in his bunker as the Allied forces closed in. The only disclaimer is to title the post "imprecise analogies". Russia, predicts Nesmiyan, will be defeated in the war, and the current Russian leadership will be dismantled.
In Nesmiyan's appraisal, Joe Biden, far from being the irresolute leader, whose weakness encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine, emerges as a latter day Macchiavelli, who carefully lured the Russian leadership into a fatal trap. The US is foisting the entire military burden upon Ukraine, and the economic and political burden on the Europeans promising them compensation in the form of Russian reparations. Nesmiyan's blogpost follows below:[1]
Anatoly Nesmiyan (Source: Autogear.ru)
"In my opinion, trying to gauge the Kremlin's intentions in the ongoing nearly open battle with the West in a rational manner is practically pointless and futile. Dictatorships have the inherent trait of refusing to perceive reality. Hitler, even while sitting stuck in the bunker, continued to hope not just for some sort of turning point in the war, but even for victory in it. I suspect that the top Kremlin leadership has not gone too far from him in this regard. Therefore, where any normal rationally thinking person will simply stabilize the losses and draw a line under the failure, such people continue to pile up ever more new solutions leading to an accelerated collapse.
"The current situation is reminiscent of the last days of the Third Reich – precisely in terms of a completely inadequate assessment of what is happening. Any historical analogies, of course, are sui generis, and it is hardly worth applying them one-on-one, but it is also useful to compare them with existing historical events. After all, human psychology changes little in different historical periods, and this applies all the more to the psychology of despots, even with distinct personality disorders.
"What does this mean in practical terms? The fact that the Kremlin behaves extremely predictably, and in politics this is a very useful feature for the enemy. The main thing is to keep a predictable enemy in the corridor and not let him get out of it. He will do the rest himself.
"You can remember how Biden, neatly and most gingerly led Putin to the February 24 decision [to launch the invasion], literally frightened of scaring Putin off. And in the same way, he is now doing everything to make it impossible [for Putin] to get out of the conflict - or the price for such an exit will prove unacceptable. For Biden, (or rather, for those groups that he represents, both national and global), there are two levels of struggle: on the military level, Ukraine should bear the entire brunt, bleeding the Kremlin’s power resources dry, while on the political and economic level, Europe will have to pay for everything. At the same time, both Ukraine and Europe have US promises of ongoing assistance in their pockets, and in the future, after the victory over the Kremlin, promises to partake in the reparations, which will at least compensate for the current costs of the war.
"For this reason alone, it makes no sense to measure the losses of Europe and Ukraine in terms of current losses: they clearly count on subsequent compensation, although the United States, of course, is still a partner. But the essence remains the same: The Kremlin and its opponents differ greatly in their planning horizon, which is quite logical: Hitler sitting in a bunker in March-April 1945 hardly thought about the post-war order of the world, he simply had no time. But his opponents began planning this future world back in Tehran [1943], then in Yalta, well, and established the frameworks of the new world order already in Potsdam. Now the situation is structurally different: but the new world order will definitely be created not only with the participation of national states, but also with the participation of corporate structures and international bureaucracy, which implements the consensus decisions of global elites, developed both at industry forums and at common global platforms like Davos. Therefore, the new world will be more complex in terms of formalizing its basic provisions and institutions.
"Solely because of this, the Kremlin's victory in this struggle seems not only doubtful, but even impossible: the entire Russian nobility is simply stricken from the register, it will not take part in the formulation of any agreements. Most likely, following the results of the current war, it will simply be dismantled, and the new Russian elite will simply sign all the documents as the losing side. I think that Navalny is being kept for this role, but maybe the plot will be slightly different.
"In any case, the West's goals appear quite rational, and the outcome for the Kremlin in this struggle is all too predictable. Of course, you can play mental games and try to counter with something irrational. But in the end, there are always orderlies around for any violent person, who will wrap him up as usual and return him to an isolated space."
[1] El-murid.livejournal.com, March 28, 2022.
