Majorityrights News > Category: Russian Politics

For some weeks now there have been growing signs of Russian failure at the front, particularly in the north and south.  In Donetsk, meanwhile, the Russian advance is slower than ever.  Pokrovsk is still not fully under Russian control, and may now never be so.  In this video Jason Jay Smart alights on the apparent flight of Vladislav Surkov as a sign of trouble in Putin’s inner circle, and pulls together the political and military strands to make the case for something broken at the top of Russian power that can’t be put back together again.

00:00 – Intro: Putin’s House of Cards
01:40 – Kremlin Exile: The Fall of Vladislav Surkov
03:04 – Putinism Unmasked: The Architect of Russian Propaganda
04:17 – Crimea Assault: Ukraine Destroys Russian Radar
05:04 – Frontline Failure: Russian Soldiers in Retreat
05:47 – Command Paralysis: The Kremlin’s Communication Crisis
06:52 – Internal Sabotage: Putin’s Health and Elite Purges
08:53 – Bot Network Collapse: Russia’s Failed Influence War
09:51 – Russian Shadow Fleet: Espionage and Oil Smuggling
12:38 – The Breaking Point: Putin’s Final Stand

From the exiled dissident news outlet Moscow Times:

Residents of the town of Valdai in Russia’s Novgorod region said they neither heard nor saw signs of a large-scale drone attack overnight on Monday despite official claims that nearly 100 Ukrainian drones targeted President Vladimir Putin’s residence there.

Fourteen residents told the independent outlet Mozhem Obyasnit that they received no text alerts warning of a drone threat and did not hear any buzzing sounds or explosions characteristic of a drone attack.

“There was no noise that night, no explosions, nothing,” one resident was quoted as saying. “If something like that had happened, the whole town would have been talking about it.”

Putin’s Valdai residence, known as Dolgiye Borody, lies northeast of the town and is separated from it by Lake Valdai.

Residents told Mozhem Obyasnit that they usually know when the Russian president visits his residence due to the heavy helicopter traffic accompanying his arrival.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Ukraine’s armed forces had attempted a “massive” drone attack on Putin’s residence using 91 drones, all of which were allegedly destroyed by air defense systems.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s official report said only 18 drones were shot down over the Novgorod region during the night.

Lavrov said the alleged attack would prompt Russia to revise its negotiating position on Ukraine, though he added that Moscow did not plan to withdraw from talks with the United States.

He also warned that the incident would not go unanswered, saying Russian forces had already selected targets and timing for retaliatory strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Lavrov’s allegations “fake” and “extremely dangerous,” arguing that Moscow was trying to sabotage diplomatic efforts to end the war and justify continued strikes on Ukraine.

Shortly after Lavrov issued his statement, the White House said U.S. President Donald Trump concluded a “positive” phone call with Putin about Ukraine.

Trump then criticized the alleged Ukrainian drone attack, saying it was “not the right time” given the ongoing talks to end the war.

This morning Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Russia’s negotiating position towards Ukraine will become tougher.  So the lumbering, lying Kremlin machine clunks into gear to prevent Donald Trump from moving forward on the basis of Zelensky’s 20-point peace plan.  It had been 95% agreed, Trump had said.  Now nothing will be agreed.

So, a question.  Does Trump actually believe that Ukrainian armed forces chose this most critical moment, of all moments, to launch a 91-drone attack on one of Putin’s palatial homes, but failed to get a single one past the creaking Russian anti-aircraft defences?  Or does he, in fact, understand perfectly well that Putin told him the most obvious, bare-faced lie, but his policy-aim of making American corporations great again requires him to smile on the Russian dictator all the same and in all things?

As was revealed by France24 video, using this CCTV recording on Uniannet, the RoseMarie restaurant beside the playground in Kryvyi Riy was not, in fact, “hosting a meeting between military commanders and Western instructors” on 4th April.  Only the local folk and their children were killed and wounded when two Iskander-M ballistic missiles struck.  They both had cluster warheads to maximise casualties.  Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov was retailing a lie, which should surprise no one.  He has doubled-down since.

For the avoidance of doubt, Russian war policy is to attack the people of Ukraine, and lie about it.  It is a settled policy, visible to all in the west since the attack on the railway station at Kramatorsk on 8th April 2022.  That also involved two ballistic missiles with cluster warheads.  Then, it was refugees escaping west.  Now, it’s children forty miles from the front line - no matter that peace negotiations are supposedly in train between Moscow and the Trump team.  On which subject, in the aftermath of the attack Bridget Brink, the American ambassador in Kyiv, managed to deliver herself of these cowardly sentiments:

It is horrifying that tonight a ballistic missile hit near a playground and restaurant in Kryvyi Rih. Over 50 injured and 16 dead, including 6 children. This is why this war must end.

In Zelensky’s words:

They are even afraid to say the word “Russian” when talking about the missile that killed children.

I think he is wrong about fear, though.  The American government response is calculated and forward-looking, to a world in which rules are supplanted by force and the will of the Great Powers as the driver of world affairs.  Children die, refugees die, but what are these deaths to the powerful?

... be cautious about who seeks to inflect you!

As the Trump administration struggles to impose a ceasefire on the Russian aggressor, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine warns of an intensification in the Kremlin’s propaganda programme:

The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine records the transition to an acute phase of the hostile information operation conducted by the Russian federation against Ukraine. Its aim is to eliminate Ukrainian statehood not on the battlefield, but in people’s heads: by delegitimizing the Ukrainian Government, devaluing democratic institutions and imposing an external political scenario with signs of controlled capitulation. The operation is conducted with the use of the capabilities of the Russian federation’s special services – the FSB, SVR, and GRU – under the overall coordination of the presidential administration of the rf.

The Essence of the enemy’s Operation

Under the guise of “peacekeeping initiatives” and “analytical discourse”, on the Ukrainian and international societies is being imposed the idea of:

the Ukrainian government’s alleged loss of legitimacy due to the failure to hold elections during martial law;

the need for a “temporary administration” under the auspices of the UN, the USA, the EU, or even the “quartet format” with the rf;

the impossibility of russia’s concluding a peace agreement with the Ukrainian government, which, according to the enemy, should become a casus belli for changing the political course.

Such narratives are not just disinformation, but an element of a special operation to force Ukraine to political capitulation under the guise of a “peaceful settlement”.

Methods of Implementation

The operation is carried out through:

⁕ formally Western or “neutral” media, which act as a proxy for Russian theses. Among them:

Magyar Nemzet, Magyar Hirlap, Pesti Srácok (Hungary): promote the idea of “Ukraine’s being incapable of self-governing”;

Salon24.pl (Poland): published a fake blog by an anonymous author “MarcinWi”, which, under the guise of “expert analysis”, supported the narrative of a “split” between the military and political leadership of Ukraine;

Réseau International (France): promotes theories about Ukraine’s alleged being incapable of conducting combat operations on its own and the “deep strategic gap between the Ukrainian political leadership and the General Staff”.

⁕ anonymous telegram channels posing as “insiders” in the Armed Forces of Ukraine or political leadership;

⁕ a coordinated wave of emotional videos on TikTok and YouTube with the narratives such as “the West no longer supports Ukraine,” “we have been deceived,” “we need a change in government,” as well as “it’s time for a change,” and “we need another government for peace.”

⁕ massive dissemination of destructive materials with the same theses on (Telegram /Strana.ua, Scott Ritter/, X /RothLindberg, DougAMacgregor/, Facebook /Florian Filippo, Fernand Kartheiser/) with the involvement of botnets and accounts associated with pro-Russian structures in Europe and Latin America. They publish pseudo-documents, statements and “analytical notes” that question the authority of the Ukrainian government;

⁕ quoting pro-Russian “experts” with the titles of “former diplomats”, “independent political scientists”, “UN veterans” who promote the thesis that “even the West needs a different Ukraine”;

⁕ the use of Ukrainian defendants in treason cases to legitimize narratives (including publications and comments by representatives of former pro-Russian political structures).

These actions are accompanied by the infiltration of the Kremlin’s narratives into the structures of influence of Ukraine’s partner countries, in particular through the organization of public “discussions” on the legitimacy of the government, the prospects for negotiations without Ukraine’s participation, and the alleged “loss of trust” in Kyiv.

Radosław Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, powerfully rebutting the accusations of the Russian representative to the UN Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya:

Madame President,

I associate myself with the words of minister Kuleba and my colleagues from the European Union.

I’m amazed at the tone and the content of the presentation by the Russian ambassador.

And I thought I could be useful by correcting the record. Ambassador Nebenzya has called Kyiv a client of the West. Actually, Kyiv is fighting to be independent of anybody.

He calls them a criminal Kyiv regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.

He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the defence minister is Muslim, and they have no political prisoners.

He said that Ukraine was wallowing in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is.

He blamed the war on US neo-colonialism. In fact, Russia was trying to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century, again under Bolsheviks, and now it is the third attempt.

He said we are prisoners of Russophobia. “Phobia” means irrational fear. Yet, we are being threatened almost every day by the former president of Russia and Putin’s propagandists with nuclear annihilation. I put it to you that it is not irrational – when Russia threatens us, we trust them.

He said that we are denying Russia’s security interests. Not true. We only started rearming ourselves when Russia started invading her neighbours.

He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War II. What is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with Nazi Germany on the 17th of September 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on the 22th of September.

He says that Russia has always only beaten back aggression. Well, what were then Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? They were on a topographic excursion? The truth is that for every time Russia was invaded, she has invaded ten times.

He says that it is a perfidious proxy war by the West. My advice is – don’t fall into the Western trap. Withdraw your troops to international borders and avoid this Western plot.

He also says that there was an illegal coup in Kyiv in 2014. I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovych murdered a hundred of his compatriots and was removed from office by a democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including by his own party, the Party of Regions.

And finally he is saying that we the West are somehow trying to persuade that Russia can never be beaten. Well, Russia did not win the Crimean War, it didn’t win the Russo-Japanese war, it didn’t win the World War I, it didn’t win the battle of Warsaw, it didn’t win in Afghanistan and it didn’t win the Cold War.

But there’s good news. After each failure there were reforms.

Such demagoguery is unworthy of a member on a permanent basis of the Security Council. But what the ambassador has achieved is to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now.

They failed to subjugate us then. They’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine and us now.

Thank you very much.

Another old and wise hand who understands the global contest in which the war in Ukraine is a key element.  As he says, “The question is: will the world in the 21st century be based upon force and tyranny, or not?

Andrei Illarionov, who worked as a senior policy adviser to Vladimir Putin at the start of his term, supplies his insights into the Russian dictator and the global strategy he is advancing.
Interviewer Dr Jason Jay Smart of Kyiv Post.

The American diplomat and academic Mitchell Reiss airs his views of Donald Trump’s forthcoming conversational intervention in Ukraine, indicating that Trump has a degree of realism that will disappoint the bravado-filled pro-Putin right.  Interview by Times Radio.