Yes, Absolutely.

It also retreats to Moscow. 

The Russian Military Is Falling Apart

Now you know, the truth is out. But give Russians the credit where the credit is due--they hid it extremely well. How about hiding it by steady advance to the West, while annihilating NATO's SOBs? Such a cunning. But then again, look at the background of this "author". 

Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor's degree from DePauw University and a master's degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw. 

And that is why NATO is a paper tiger incapable of real war, with experts and consultants like these ...  

What's The Deal With The US Four-Star Generals?

I don't know. One, certainly, cannot suspect General Barry McCaffrey in cowardice. He is a distinguished combat officer, but this...

Don't they care at all about their professional integrity and honor? And he is not the only one, here is another guy:

  

Petraeus cannot possibly know what the real cost of taking Mariupol is, because only Russia's General Staff knows it. US main-stream media military "experts" long ago chose using Ukie non-stop propaganda BS and their sublimation of a severe professional jealousy and butt-hurt over professional integrity and this parade of military losers, who didn't win shit in their life, and who are still reeling from Afghanistan humiliation, continues non-stop. 

They know what the US Army record of the last 50+ years looks like, they also know what military failures they are and they cannot contain their rage from experiencing the contrast between the two very different militaries and how they fight their respective wars. Even their "very own SOBs" in VSU are nothing more than Nazi war criminals who are singing like birds now both about NATO involvement in crimes against humanity in Donbass and about biolabs. Worst of all for them is well-documented fact of the US (and some NATO) military being directly involved in C4ISR for VSU which reflects extremely poorly on Pentagon's (always grossly exaggerated) reputation.  Hence this:

It would be really difficult to believe that the United States is not in a proxy war with Russia if reports that it plans to send anti-ship missiles to Ukraine are true. In fact, the State Department did not exactly deny this exclusive report from Reuters that Washington was readying to share the weapons capability to help “defeat Russia’s naval blockade…amid concerns more powerful weapons that could sink Russian warships would intensify the conflict.” “As the conflict is changing, so too is our military assistance to deliver the critical capabilities Ukraine needs for today’s fight as Russia’s forces engage in a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine,” a State spokesperson said on Friday. The only thing that is being directly denied are assertions by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser, who tweeted Friday that “the US is preparing a plan to destroy the [Russian] Black Sea Fleet. The effective work of the Ukrainians on [Russian] warships convinced [the US] to prepare a plan to unblock the [Ukrainian] ports. Deliveries of powerful anti-ship weapons are being discussed.” 

Well, Vlahos has been around D.C. for a long time and she surely should know that those "decisions" are not anymore dictated by some military necessity--not to mention the fact that those missiles will not change much militarily for Russia, and Ukraine--but that ANY US Administration in the last 20 years was in a full blown crusade mode against not just Russia, but Russians as people and it is driven by racial and cultural hatred and deeply hidden but not well contained complex of inferiority which exacerbates with the economic decline of the US (and combined West) and Russia taking the lead in forming new geopolitical reality. So, a lot of impetus behind desperate steps by D.C. is simply irrational. There are rumors now that the US considers supplying Patriot AD complexes to 404. The immediate question is who is going to be manning them when they will be annihilated? 

It has to be understood clearly that the US, not taking anything from the entrepreneurial, industrial, creative and scientific genius of the American people, was a main beneficiary of once in a lifetime pure luck in WW II. But the same as you cannot substitute actual annihilation of the most of Ukrainian Air Force with many shots from the video-games, you also cannot buy military history. And no US general ever fought in defense of his motherland against the best of the best, defeating them time after time. You just cannot buy it, even if you want to convince yourself that General Lee was "equal" of Napoleon (he never was even in the same universe) or that Patton fought REAL Wehrmacht at the zenith of its power, Russians did and defeated it. The United States was supposed to be this savior, a providential blessing upon the world, but the immediate benefits of the post-WW II restoration pretty much ran out by the year 2000 and the wobbling then finally resulted in the economic calamity which is only now begins to be felt, slightly. It is getting to number 11 pretty fast. 

For the United States the struggle is existential, it is also with its own chimeras of the past. I am on record, reality is a bitch, it eventually bites and it hurts like hell if you are not ready. Plus, you cannot fight it even with the most elaborate BS narratives, but that, it seems, is the only thing in which the US four-star generals are good at. Fighting real wars and not parading themselves as sore-losers, not much. Unless, of course, one begins to move goal posts and redefine all known truisms of military science. I know, I can only only imagine how it hurts to understand that after the 8 years of US training and support those who the CIA and Pentagon hoped to kill so many actual Russians (killing children and raping women was accepted as collateral damage) have had their ass kicked and humiliated by grossly numerically inferior Russian force. That's gotta hurt a lot. Here are some other "skills" US and NATO "taught" those animals. Here is incomparable Eva Bartlett.

In conclusion, Here is Larry's yesterday's take:

Mariupol’s Final Ukrainian Chapter, Russia Writes New book

Pay close attention to a video of good ol' Russian BM-21 MLRS doing its job. That is how the real war looks like. But I am sure General Petraeus knows all about it, right? Nah, I am being facetious. 

For Monroe Doctrine Junkies.

Many in the US still cannot come to grips with a simple historic fact that Monroe Doctrine was not just about Western Hemisphere being US sphere of vital interests. Here is a short reminder: 

Monroe Doctrine, (December 2, 1823), cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy enunciated by Pres. James Monroe in his annual message to Congress. Declaring that the Old World and New World had different systems and must remain distinct spheres, Monroe made four basic points: (1) the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of or the wars between European powers; (2) the United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere; (3) the Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization; and (4) any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States. 

As you can see, the whole doctrine was predicated on a quid-pro-quo principle of not screwing with Europe and her possessions. Of course this whole thing was not worth the paper it was printed on once the United States solidified and started to grow in the postbellum years and suddenly recognized herself a colonial power with  pompous rhetoric about democracy and liberty serving as a fig leaf for full blown imperial conquests. Donald J. Trump is not known to be well endowed with historic knowledge so, naturally he, and many of his warmongering "advisers" concluded that:

US President Donald Trump has warned that Russia must get out of Venezuela. Two planeloads of Russian troops are currently in the Latin American country under the terms of a 2001 cooperation treaty. Speaking at the White House, Trump also warned that “all options are open” when it comes to getting Russia out of Venezuela.Around 100 Russian troops touched down in Caracas on Saturday, a show of support for President Nicolas Maduro’s government. The move caused consternation in Washington, however, with Vice President Mike Pence calling the deployment an “unnecessary provocation.”Pence also called on Russia to withdraw its support of Maduro and “stand with Juan Guaido,” the Washington-sponsored opposition leader who declared himself interim president in January.

So, when Donald J. Trump, and the whole choir of America-based Monroists, tries to convince Russia to "get out" of Venezuela they should really read attentively what Monroe Doctrine is actually about, you know pp. 1 and 2. Last time I checked the United States has more than 800 military bases around the world and, surprise, surprise, is involved in fomenting troubles, humanitarian catastrophes, support of terrorism and other activities which null and void any idea embedded in the Monroe Doctrine. After all, it was the United States which unleashed a bloody coup in Ukraine (together with her lapdogs from EU) and any referrals to Monroe Doctrine and its principles are just for PR. United States through its incessant aggression around the world since 1999 lost any moral and judicial grounds to demand anything from anybody. The ongoing coup in Venezuela, with all my huge reservations about "lefty" Latin American regimes, is a blatant violation of Venezuela's sovereignty and having a convicted crook and neocon such as Abrams (supported by draft-dodger and coward Bolton) as a handler of Venezuela pretty much answers all questions who is behind events in Venezuela. I omit now a criminal role of propaganda and disinformation US media play in all this affair--by now no one should be surprised with that.

So when chicken hawk Bolton proclaims with pathos that:

The United States will not tolerate hostile foreign military powers meddling with the Western Hemisphere’s shared goals of democracy, security, and the rule of law. The Venezuelan military must stand with the people of Venezuela. 

And Trump threatens with "all options" being opened, they should really consider some few cost-benefits factors in case (and it may happen) of US attacking Venezuela with Russian advisers in it. Never mind the fact that militarily a hundred or so military personnel, primarily IT people to help Venezuela fight off those "strange" electricity blackouts, are not really there to set up a base or anything of like.  Even Bloomberg gets it. Russia knows that the US now is in full blown attack on Nord Stream-2 and that new (what round? Number 100?) sanctions are coming, but Russia doesn't care. Why Russia doesn't care? Few factors:

1. Militarily Russia can annihilate conventionally any combination of threats in Eurasia. This capability only grows with time and US knows this. Pentagon has to live (and it tries, actually) with the fact that it neither has forces nor force structure to win anything conventionally in Eurasia in general and especially in Russia's immediate vicinity. 

2. Economic, and here are two really stunning graphs. 

Russia's Gold Reserves:

China's Gold Reserves:

And I mean physical gold, not those funny papers which pass for gold on all those speculation platforms such as Wall Street and other so called "exchanges". 

What you see is the death of a US Dollar in progress. The US simply ran out of her military luck and ability to "color revolutionize" serious players. It also ran out of ability to bomb those--how can US bomb China or Russia, or India? Did anyone even calculate the consequences for the US? Once the United States stops being able to overthrow or bomb into submission nations which prefer to trade in own currencies and in gold, you already guessed what is going to happen with grossly overvalued US economy and US Dollar. Remove US military "power" from equation and then just dismantle present US-based global financial system one country at a time. As per Venezuela, will see where it all goes. In my mind the best way to do things would have been US and Russia secretly negotiating some kind of settlement but I doubt today, seriously doubt it, that there is much time left for that or that US has competent people on its very political top to negotiate anything at all. Russia and China seem also settling something really huge which both dramatic growth of Chinese gold reserves and Russia's incessant growth of the same support. 

Well, this, plus a dismantling of Russia's "liberal" economic block together with massive purges of inept and corrupt administrative elite--leftovers from Yeltsin's criminal years. Paradoxically, Russian-American trade continues to grow despite all sanctions and other monkey wrenches morons in Congress continue to throw at it. Well, of course, this trade is small relative to Russia's or US' trade, but still--in few billions. I think it is too late for the US but who knows, now she has to think how US can block China, if the US even have any resources for that. I doubt she has but US still has some aces to play but are required skills there? This I don't know but something tells me--not anymore. It could have been great, it could have been new prosperous century--too bad self-proclaimed hegemon turned out to be the main reason for everything going down the drain. Time of reckoning is upon us.