Irina Alksnis...

 ... penned a good piece (in Russian) on this "permission" for strikes. You can read it here following this link. The only thing Alksnis messed up is the following of the same meme of "red lines". There never were any "red lines"--those are a figment of imagination of cowards in the West trying to probe the limits of Moscow's patience. But she nails it--the US has no space for maneuver left and it is the last step of desperation. Now it is just the matter what NATO's asset will go down first. To remind you about ATACMS ranges. 

With deployment of 50 km in depth behind VSU lines. Lines changed since then, so did the coverage by Russian ISR.

Too Late For Germany...

 ... when you are born a liver sausage, you stay a liver sausage all your life. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz doubled down Friday on Berlin's refusal to send long-range missiles to Ukraine, even as other Western powers discussed allowing Kyiv more freedom to use such weapons. "Germany has made a clear decision about what we will do and what we will not do. This decision will not change," Scholz said when asked about the issue at a press conference. The leaders of the United States and Britain were due to meet Friday in Washington on whether to let Kyiv fire Western-provided long-range missiles into Russia -- an option that has sent tensions soaring with Moscow.

There will be no friendly relations between Germany and Russia again. Plus, the sausage states those things not because of some moment of clarity but because of sheer terror. As Dmitry Medvedev today revealed some shocking technological truths in his statement: 

Что тут скажешь: ядерный конфликт действительно никому не нужен. Это очень плохая история с тяжелейшим исходом. Именно поэтому до сих пор решение о применении ядерного оружия (нестратегического или тем более стратегического) не было принято. Хотя, прямо скажем, для этого есть формальные предпосылки, понятные всему мировому сообществу и соответствующие нашей доктрине ядерного сдерживания. Тот же Курск, например. Но Россия проявляет терпение. Ведь очевидно, что ядерный ответ – чрезвычайно сложное решение с необратимыми последствиями. Однако напыщенные англосаксонские недоноски не хотят признать одного: любому терпению приходит конец. А правы в итоге окажутся те умеренные западные аналитики, которые предупреждали: «Да, русские, скорее всего, не ответят таким образом… хотя вероятность всё же есть. К тому же ведь ответ может быть и с использованием новых средств доставки в неядерном оснащении».

Translation: What can you say: a nuclear conflict is really not needed by anyone. It is a very bad story with a very difficult outcome. That is why the decision to use nuclear weapons (non-strategic or even more so strategic) has not been made yet. Although, frankly speaking, there are formal prerequisites for this, understandable to the entire world community and consistent with our doctrine of nuclear deterrence. The same Kursk, for example. But Russia is showing patience. After all, it is obvious that a nuclear response is an extremely difficult decision with irreversible consequences. However, the pompous Anglo-Saxon runts do not want to admit one thing: any patience comes to an end. And in the end, those moderate Western analysts who warned will be right: “Yes, the Russians will most likely not respond in this way ... although there is still a possibility. In addition, the response may also be using new delivery vehicles with non-nuclear equipment.”

OK, just adds to the already extremely strong case of NATO losing arms race everywhere and confirms long time circulating rumors about new generation of explosives and delivery systems which will additionally turn warfare into some sort of sci-fi, however gruesome, affair. Thus, Larry's headline is correct:

Following Putin’s Warning that Any Attacks in Russia with Western Supplied Missiles will be Treated as an Act of War, NATO Flips. 

That is why today's Ira Alksnis' excellent piece echoes what I am repeating ad nauseam for many years:

На самом же деле медиа всегда вторичны по отношению к реальному миру. Пропаганда способна влиять на действительность только до той степени, до которой она соответствует ей. На пике однополярного мира Штаты были почти всемогущими, соответственно и их информационное и идеологическое влияние было колоссальным. Но тот однополярный мир уже фактически прекратил свое существование, а вместе с ним сжимаются и возможности западных медиа.

Translation: In reality, the media are always secondary to the real world. Propaganda can influence reality only to the extent that it corresponds to it. At the peak of the unipolar world, the United States was almost omnipotent, and accordingly, its informational and ideological influence was colossal. But that unipolar world has already effectively ceased to exist, and with it, the capabilities of Western media are shrinking.

 

Real life is hard, as are real complex skills required for operating modern society successfully--modern West doesn't have those anymore. BS, propaganda, on the other hand, it has a lot. And it is paying the price for it.

Irina Alksnis Beat Me To It.

When, two days ago, I was writing my post on obvious failure of the combined West in Afghanistan I stressed the point of this war having a serious religious, that is civilizational, aspect which people in D.C. and Europe are incapable of grasping. I also wrote a number of times about Noblesse Oblige between superpowers, which, in effect, should keep interactions, including a conflict, within superpowerdom elite "framework", because delegating own victories to proxies is a very bad business when Islam is involved. Well, Irina Alksnis expanded on this idea in today's piece in Ria. 

Безусловно, тут играет свою роль понимание того, кто приходит на место американцев, и страшных последствий, что связаны с этим. Несмотря на обещание талибов не проводить репрессии в отношении тех, кто служил прежним властям, и их заявление по смягчению позиции о месте женщин в обществе, без сомнения, впереди Афганистан ждут расправы и казни. А судьбе афганских женщин по-прежнему не позавидуешь.Архаика победила современную цивилизацию — и как бы ни относился к Западу, радоваться данному факту невозможно.Впрочем, дело не только в суровых и кровавых афганских реалиях и не в сочувствии к гражданам несчастной страны, возвращающейся в глухое средневековье.События воскресенья оказались столь ошеломляющими еще и потому, что они дали миру очень наглядное представление о том, каким может быть — и каким, скорее всего, будет — окончательный крах глобальной гегемонии США.

Translation: Of course, understanding who comes to the place of the Americans and the dire consequences that are associated with this plays a role here. Despite the promise of the Taliban not to repress those who served the previous government, and their statement to soften the position on the place of women in society, there is no doubt that Afghanistan will face reprisals and executions. And the fate of Afghan women is still not to be envied. The archaic defeated modern civilization - and no matter how you relate to the West, it is impossible to rejoice at this fact. However, the point is not only in the harsh and bloody Afghan realities and not in sympathy for the citizens of the unfortunate country returning to the remote Middle Ages. Sunday's events were also so overwhelming because they gave the world a very clear idea of ​​what the ultimate collapse of US global hegemony could be - and is likely to be.

As I stated not for once, the United States was to a large degree an accidental superpower. Superpower by default, which never understood a complex relation between domestic and foreign policies, nor, overwhelmingly, developed any coherent view on military power and its application. Today it all came to a head. I am not talking about the defeat of the combined West--that it was in a precipitous decline was clear since mid-2000s. I am talking about the West and its leader the United States being incapable to maintain a civilization as, in the words of late Huntington (he quotes also somebody else), "a culture writ large". While today's headlines are filled with this: 

The world took notice and the United States handed the victory to Islamic fanatics and thus emboldened them, the same way the United States fanned the flames of Political Islam in 1980s and helped to form the force which is radically anti-civilizational in its essence. This IS the main failure of the combined West and it will be, yet again, up to someone else to clean this fucking mess after the US, whose political and military "elites" not only did not learn shit from anything but are incapable of learning. In that, when combined with a myriad of other economic, scientific, cultural and moral failures, modern West, headed by the United States, declared itself a failure. Events in Kabul today demonstrate perfectly and are the epitome of the modern West. I write about this for many years, but I am not enjoying my "I told you so" moment. Neither does Irina Alksnis. 

 

Against this background of yet another America's lost war, this news should be taken into account:

The Tehran Times reported on Wednesday that Moscow has conveyed to Tehran that the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has reached a consensus on Iran’s admission as a full member of the grouping. The Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev conveyed this momentous news in a call with his Iranian counterpart, Admiral Ali Shamkhani. Later, Shamkhani tweeted that he and Patrushev also discussed Afghanistan, Syria and the Persian Gulf. The SCO is finally decoupling Iran’s membership from the nuclear talks and the US sanctions. Significantly, Patrushev’s phone call also marks the first high-level strategic communication between Moscow and Tehran after Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as Iran’s new president. Patrushev is a very senior figure in the Kremlin ‘Politburo’. The SCO consensus — quintessentially a Sino-Russian move — speeds up Iran’s admission, notwithstanding the uncertainties appearing on the Biden administration’s political will to press ahead with the nuclear deal in the face of robust ‘bipartisan’ opposition on the Hill and from other interest groups.

There are no uncertainties here, I may add, combined West failed as a civilization and is spiraling into the military and, by definition, geopolitical second league if not irrelevance with an astonishing speed. Unlike with post-Vietnam syndrome, however, US loss in Afghanistan is not to capable and supported by other superpower fairly advanced Vietnamese military and Vietnamese people, the United States lost to a primitive force driven by the most retrograde ideology which stands against everything most of the world recognizes as essential for its existence. Meanwhile American idiots, a euphemism for US "journos" and media still discuss percentages and a political psychobabble which in the US, for some reason, is called "strategy". 

Morons, in order to make a brothel profitable, try to change not beds, but whores. See what happens. But don't hold your breath, and those who feel like it--mark today's date as the official end of US self-proclaimed hegemony. We will discuss consequences of this clusterfuck later. I am not celebrating because I know what is coming. 

Irina Alksnis Hits It Out Of The Ballpark.

Notable Russian journalist Irina Alksnis wrote a wonderful metaphysical piece on the fate of superpowers. I don't have time to translate it all but, apart from really universal perspective on the existence of real superpowers, she delivers both moral and, in a sense, sympathetic response to the the fate of the United States. I highly recommend, even if using crude Google Translate which will most likely degrade a wonderful emotional message of this piece, to read it by Americans and others. I will translate just conclusion:

Однако чтобы услышать эти немудреные советы – и тем более последовать им – Соединенным Штатам надо остановиться, хотя бы на мгновение, и замолчать. Прекратить сотрясать воздух заявлениями, требованиями и угрозами, которые выглядят то странными, то откровенно смешными из-за все более явной неспособности сделать их реальностью.А вот именно этого они, похоже, сделать никак не могут. В результате продолжается бесконечная громкоговорящая карусель: Москва, Асад должен уйти! Русские, мы накажем вас за защиту Мадуро! Россия, мы обеспечим свободу мореходства в Керченском проливе!А самое обидное для американцев, что только Россия может их понять. Потому мы помним боль, стоящую за этими словами.

Translation: However, to hear this simple advice--not to mention  following it--the United States need to stop, at least for an instance, and silence themselves. To stop shaking air with statements, declarations, demands, and threats, which come across as either strange, or outright silly because of their obvious inability to ever become a reality. But it is precisely, it seems, what the US is not capable of doing. As a result--the continuation of never-ending declaratory carousel: Moscow, Assad must go! Russians, we will provide for freedom of navigation in Kerch Strait! Russians, we will punish you for support of Maduro. But the most insulting for Americans is that only Russia can understand them. Because we remember the pain behind those words. 

I always said--genuine superpowers move in their own world and they have their very own, unique, complexes and "disabilities" only other superpowers can understand, even when being enemies. Irina Alksnis completely and masterfully conveyed this in her article.