Putin Makes A Point

Russia's President Vladimir Putin offered to provide a transcript of his Foreign Minister's visit to the White House in order to settle the recent fake news controversy regarding the release of classified intelligence by President Trump.

SOCHI, Russia, May 17 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump had not passed any secrets onto Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting in Washington last week and that he could prove it.

Speaking at a news conference alongside Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Putin quipped that Lavrov had not passed what he said were the non-existent secrets onto him either.

Putin said Russia was ready to hand a transcript of Trump's meeting with Lavrov over to U.S. lawmakers if that would help reassure them.

Two U.S. officials said on Monday that Trump had disclosed highly classified information to Lavrov about a planned Islamic State operation, plunging the White House into another controversy just months into Trump's short tenure in office.

Putin later remarked that the two American officials were "full of shitsky" and that, in Mother Russia, "Leakers" could only be a mispronunciation of a California basketball team.

Source

UPDATE

Zero Hedge quotes Putin as saying:

"We are seeing in the US a developing political schizophrenia," Putin said quoted by RT. "There is no other way I can explain the accusations against the acting US president that he gave away some secrets to Lavrov" and added that "it's hard to imagine what else can these people who generate such nonsense and rubbish can dream up next," said Putin.

"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans. Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."

"Anyway, this is a US matter, and we don't want and don't plan to interfere," the Russian president said.

Bingo

Russia And China Spank Obama

I just know there's gonna be another line drawn in the Syrian sand for Russia to ignore and a rubber duckie thrown in the water for China to play with. Like I stated in the prior post, the next five weeks will be interesting.

Obama's ass is going to be very sore when he leaves next month.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is promising that the U.S. will retaliate against Russia for its suspected meddling in America’s election process, an accusation the Kremlin has vehemently denied.

Amid calls on both sides of the political aisle on Capitol Hill for a full-bore congressional investigation, including assertions President Vladimir Putin was personally involved, Obama said in an interview that anytime a foreign government tries to interfere in U.S. elections, the nation must take action — “and we will.”

Neither country is going to listen to Obama. Putin is preparing to kick some Arab ISIS ass with Trump and China ... who knows. Do we have the resources to back up our interests in the area? I don't think so.

Trump has his work cut out for him. Both Pakistan and the Philippines are moving towards China as economic and strategic partners. Also check out LL's blog here for more on the Pakistan development.

This should not come as a surprise. Obama's weak sister, ass bowing approach to diplomacy does not create good allies.  If a foreign nation is going to cooperate in protecting our interests, they want a partner strong enough to jack up anyone who comes against them. This does not mean war; just make an offer that they can't refuse and do it quietly. Roosevelt's Great White Fleet was a good example of this. A gesture of good  will and strength.

The US is viewed as weak. It will take a little time and competent, consistent diplomacy to change that as well as improvements in our military strength.

Putin understands strength.
China understands strength.
Most of the world's leaders understand strength and how to apply it in international relations.
Obama never had a clue.

Cage Match: Putin v. Hillary

It seems like everyone has Hillary's emails except for the FBI and the DOJ. Of course this story makes for some extremely interesting speculation as Trump has already stated that he can do business with Putin.

The Kremlin is debating whether to release the 20,000 emails they have hacked off of Hillary Clinton’s server.

According to a report from four days ago, beginning in 2011, the Russians began monitoring Romanian computer hacker Marcel Lazăr Lehel (aka Guccifer) after he attempted, unsuccessfully, to break into the computer system of the Russian funded RT television network.

After monitoring Guccifer, the Russians were reportedly able to record (both physically and electronically) his actions which allowed the Russian intelligence analysts, in 2013, to not only detect his breaking into the private computer of Secretary Clinton, but also break in and copy all of its contents as well.

The report notes that shortly after Russia obtained Clinton’s emails, they released a limited amount to RT TV which were published in an article in March 2013, titled Hillary Clinton’s ‘hacked’ Benghazi emails: FULL RELEASE.

Story here.

Two Can Play At This Game

Putin is building an airbase in Belarus? Let's build one in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has backed plans to establish a Russian military air base in neighbouring Belarus in a move that will unnerve Poland and the Baltic nations.

Belarus has made clear it would not welcome a Russian base, but the former Soviet republic remains dependent on Moscow for credit and energy.

The Russian President ordered his Defence Ministry to hold talks with their Belarusian counterparts and sign the agreement.

Make that two, build two bases in Ukraine.  And a couple Walmarts.
Story here.

Putin's Panties In A Wad

The Rooskies are in a lather after the Poles decided to destroy a Soviet WWII memorial. BTW, it was on Polish soil.

Like my ex-wife, the Rooskies have a very convenient memory when it comes to events that they'd rather forget. Especially when it relates to massacres:

MOSCOW/WARSAW (Reuters) - Russia said on Saturday it was outraged by Poland's destruction of a Soviet war monument, warning Warsaw of the "most negative consequences" after what it said was a flagrant violation of an agreement between the two countries on protecting memorial sites.

Poland has been one of the most vocal critics of Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in 2014. Russia and Poland share a history of conflicts and the disagreement over war memorials is likely to add to tensions.

[...]Authorities in the western Polish town of Nowa Sol took down the brotherhood-in-arms of Polish and Red Army soldiers memorial at the end of June, reducing it to a pile of rubble.

Apparently a little walk in the Katyn Forest for an estimated 22,000 Polish soldiers and civilian slipped the Rooskies' minds.

One of the earliest--and certainly the most infamous--mass shootings of prisoners of war during World War II did not occur in the heat of battle but was a cold-blooded act of political murder. The victims were Polish officers, soldiers, and civilians captured by the Red Army after it invaded eastern Poland in September 1939. Strictly speaking, even the Polish servicemen were not POWs. The USSR had not declared war, and the Polish commander in chief had ordered his troops not to engage Soviet forces

 

 So much for the celebrated "Brotherhood-in-Arms of Polish and Red Army Soldiers."

At the end of WWII, the Soviets were so embarrassed by their Katyn indiscretion that for the next 50 years they blamed it on the Nazis and forbade any mention of it in Poland.

Katyn was a forbidden topic in postwar Poland. Censors suppressed all references to it. Even mentioning the atrocity meant risking reprisal. While Katyn was erased from Poland's official history, it could not be erased from historical memory. In 1981, Solidarity erected a memorial with the simple inscription "Katyn, 1940." Even that was too much. The police confiscated it. Later, the Polish Government, on cue from Moscow, created another memorial. It read: "To the Polish soldiers--victims of Hitlerite fascism--reposing in the soil of Katyn."

Doesn't that remind you of Hillary's accusations against the maker of that infamous anti-Islam video after the Benghazi debacle?  Perhaps Hillary was channeling her inner Stalin.

In 2010 President Putin delivered a half-assed apology of kinds in a ceremony commemorating the victims but it fell far short of what the Poles wanted. Putin's words were:

“... it would also be a lie and manipulation to place the blame for these crimes on the Russian people.”

*cough***bullshit!***cough*

To this day the Russians have refused to release all Soviet era documents relating to the Katyn Forest massacre.

The Polish Foreign Ministry stated that their agreement only extended to cemeteries and did not include monuments; the Mayor of Nowa Sol had this to say:

“The monument was large (dozen tonnes of concrete), ugly, always dirty with rust leaking out of the abyss of its emptiness, like blood or tears,” Wadim Tyszkiewicz, Nowa Sol’s mayor said on his Facebook profile earlier this week.

FTR - The victims were transported from Soviet-occupied eastern Poland to Byelorussia where they were exterminated. It is estimated that over 300,000 Poles were seized by the Russians and relocated or murdered. Nowa Sol is in western Poland near the border with Germany.

 

source

Putin It To Obama

Hopefully he'll get it again when the polls close tomorrow evening.

This is actually part of a Rooskie art show.

H/T iOTW Report.

Putin On The Wan

Rumor: Russian Tsar Wannabe Vladimir Putin may be checking out sooner rather than later. From the NY Post:

There is an explanation for Vladimir Putin’s hurry to invade Ukraine — it is rumored he has cancer.

News outlets from Belarus to Poland have reported for months that the Russian strongman has cancer of the spinal cord. But my sources say it’s pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal forms of the disease.

Putin is allegedly being treated by an elderly doctor from the old East Germany whom Putin met decades ago while serving in Dresden for the KGB. The doctor has been trying various treatments including steroid shots, which would explain Putin’s puffy appearance.

The physician, who is 84 years old, quit recently, confiding that he hated coming to Russia and was always mistreated by Putin’s security detail.

Crispin Black, the British army veteran who reports on terrorism and intelligence, reported earlier this year that recurring rumors about Putin’s health “are back again with a vengeance.”

Of course the Post's Page Six isn't a national security briefing source, but - hey - it beats stories about some Kardashian's butt.

BTW: Ten years ago my wife lost her mom (a simply wonderful lady) to pancreatic cancer. It's a stone killer.

Putin Is Not Our Problem

President Obama Negotiates with Russian President Putin

Herbert E. Meyer was the Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council during the Reagan administration. He has some common sense advice on how the US should handle President Putin.

From the American Thinker:

[...]Simply put, we should make clear to the Russian business executives and oligarchs who are the target of Western sanctions that Putin is their problem, not ours. These people may lack the spark of political genius or the high-minded patriotism that drove our country’s Founding Fathers -- but they aren’t stupid. It won’t be long before a bunch of them get together for a quiet conversation -- perhaps in a Moscow board room, more likely on a yacht anchored off the Cote d’Azur -- to, um, decide what might be best for Russia’s future.

Since subtlety doesn’t work with Russians, the president and his European counterparts should also make absolutely clear that we have no interest whatever in how these people solve their Putin problem. If they can talk good old Vladimir into leaving the Kremlin with full military honors and a 21-gun salute -- that would be fine with us. If Putin is too too stubborn to acknowledge that his career is over, and the only way to get him out of the Kremlin is feet-first, with a bullet hole in the back of his head -- that would also be okay with us.

Nor would we object to a bit of poetic justice.... For instance, if the next time Putin’s flying back to Moscow from yet another visit with his good friends in Cuba, or Venezuela, or Iran, his airplane gets blasted out of the sky by some murky para-military group that somehow, inexplicably, got its hands on a surface-to-air missile.

A Putrrhic Victory?

The Spectator has an interesting read by Newsweek’s former Moscow bureau chief, Owen Matthews, who tells us not to worry. In the long run, Putin's actions in Crimea will not be to Russia's advantage.

In a nutshell, Crimea is a worrisome carbuncle on Ukraine's backside. Cut it off, get your political and economic systems fixed and the Ukes will be a lot better off. And please, stop already with the mail order bride scams.

[...] Let Crimea go: it will be the making of Ukraine and the end of Vladimir Putin. Without Crimea, there will never again be a pro-Moscow government in Kiev. Ukraine will have a chance to become a governable country — a strongly pro-European one with a Russian minority of around 15 per cent. Putin will have gained Crimea but lost Ukraine for ever. And without Ukraine, as former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously said, ‘Russia can no longer be an empire.’

[...] Thanks to Putin’s rash decision to occupy Crimea, not just the EU but its most powerful members — notably Germany, the UK, France and Poland — realise that supporting Ukraine is no longer about handouts but principle. Countries that strive towards European values — and suffer for it — should be rewarded and protected. Angela Merkel, the European leader who knows Putin best and is usually the most conciliatory towards Russia, told the Bundestag last week that he was ‘on a different planet’. Brussels has hurried to offer an amended Association Agreement; the US has backed a generous bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

[...] What’s more, in taking Crimea Putin has made himself a hostage to Kiev. Putin’s main economic leverage is that he sits on Ukraine’s gas pipelines: but now Kiev sits on Crimea’s road, rail, water and power. And unlike the gas wars that the Kremlin launched against Ukraine in 2005 and 2009, which cut off Moscow’s European customers, a Ukrainian blockade of Crimea will hurt only Crimeans.

There's a lot more here.

No Fertilizer Exists That Will Help Barry Grow A Pair

It was already tried by giving Bary a Miracle-Gro enema.

Pray For Ukraine

Around 1971 or so I was into dirt bikes and met a young Czech refugee who was quite a rider on his Bultaco one-lunger. He had spent six months in an Italian refugee camp before getting a visa to live with his aunt in Syracuse.

This teenager left Czechoslovakia with two of his friends (they were in high school!) after the Russians invaded in August of 1968. They snuck into Italy from Yugoslavia by evading armed border guards and dogs - quite a story for he was only 16 years old at the time. His friends were frightened at the presence of all the border security and returned home.

He had lived on a farm with his parents and woke up that night to the sound of hundreds of Russian tanks, armored vehicles and troop transports driving by his house. The farm house shook from the military traffic. Needless to say he had no use for Russia or Communism.

How come no one listens to the real zealous anti-communists who actually were forced to live under it?

Apparently the Rooskies are going to do it again 45 years later, this time to Ukraine. 
Pray for Ukraine.
Pray for America.

Ukraine Explained

Makes sense to me.

Putin: Bring It! -- Obama: Fore!

Apparently the Poles are paying attention; they know what it's like to get mauled by the Russian Bear.. Obama, the wanker, can't even be bothered to attend his own security meetings.

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea – After blocking Ukrainian military bases in Crimea on Sunday, Russia issued ultimatums to the Ukrainian army and two ships on Monday to surrender or face a “military storm.”

“If they (Ukrainian troops) do not give up by 5 a.m. tomorrow (March 4), there will be a real storm of subdivisions and units of Ukraine's military forces all over Crimea,” Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Aleksandr Vitko was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry denied information about ultimatums as “utter nonsense.” The Ukrainian defense and foreign ministries insisted that ultimatums were, in fact, real, and part of psychological warfare against Ukraine.

Poland took the threat seriously enough to call an Article 4 meeting of NATO. This article is used when one of the military alliance members feels that its security or territorial integrity is under threat.

More here.

Putin Promises

I can think of very few American politicians who I believe will keep their word. It is truly a sad state of affairs when I think that Russian politicians have more credibility. Somehow I think Putin will keep his word.

Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s vow: ‘Complete annihilation’ of terrorists

Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence after two deadly suicide bombings ripped apart Volgograd this week with a stern warning to terrorists: We will pursue you until we have seen your “complete annihilation.”

“Dear friends, we bow our heads before the victims of cruel terrorist acts. I am certain that we will fiercely and consistently continue the fight against terrorists until their complete annihilation,” Putin said in an unusual, second televised address close to midnight Tuesday, according to The Globe and Mail.

Putin broke a “long-time” New Year’s tradition and “gave up on the pre-recorded address to the nation shot at the Kremlin several days before the New Year” to give a second address that included his condemnation of the terrorist attacks:

“We’ll lead a confident, tough and consistent battle against the terrorists until their full elimination,” Putin vowed, according to Russia Today.

More here.

The World Turned Upside Down

Here is a video of Vladimir Putin decrying the lack of morals in Russia.
It seems tailor-made for the USA.

I was going to use the 18th century British song, "World Turned Upside Down" in juxtaposition with "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to a) show how the world is not what it used to be and b) just how clever a chap I am but c) that's not true for either scenario.

Yes it's true that I never would have thought that I would favor Pravda over most American media outlets and that I would be applauding a speech made by a Russian Prime Minister who used to be the head of the KGB. Is that upside down enough?

Our Revolutionary War song Yankee Doodle Dandy was not based on the Brits World Turned Upside Down; the tune for YDD was allegedly derived from a British nursery rhyme. But the nursery rhyme (Lucy Locket), like "London Bridge is Falling Down," may be based upon far darker doings than macaroni, perhaps involving illicit sex among the British royalty  - so all is not lost.

The WTUD was actually composed during the reign of the Puritans in the mid 17th century. They had control of the Parliament and passed legislation banning certain traditional Christmas celebrations. These are the lyrics which were written in opposition to the Puritan laws:

Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:

Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.

Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.

Old Christmas is kicked out of Town

Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.

The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christs Nativity:

The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing.

Let all honest men, take example by them.

Why should we from good Laws be bound?

Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.

Command is given, we must obey, and quite forget old Christmas day:

Kill a thousand men, or a Town regain, we will give thanks and praise amain.

The wine pot shall clinke, we will feast and drinke.

And then strange motions will abound.

Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.

I'll bet you still tried to sing those lyrics to YDD, dinja?

Anyway, the Brits actually celebrated Christmas for twelve days at this time and the Puritans, being the strait-laced lot that they were, thought that things had gotten out of hand and outlawed certain practices. They finally eased up in 1660 after Cromwell died (1658) and after the riots.

Don't mess with Christmas.

In any event, now that I've thrown this entire thread down a rabbit hole, let me be the first to wish you all a very Merry and Traditional Christmas.