Sergei Zhirnov: Putin will never end this war.

 

Sergei Zhirnov

Sergei Zhirnov is a former KGB spy who now lives in Paris. 

The translation from Russian is mine.

 

2:25 into the video:

Putin will never end this war. Putin got himself into a dead end, it was a suicidal decision, suicidal personally for Putin, his regime and Putin’s Russia and even possibly, since he mentioned such options, for the whole planet. He amended the constitution in 2020.. Putin could have completely calmly remained in power two more terms .ie. 12 years after 2024, that is, till 2036. He had some internal problems, his rating dropped, he had economic problems but all that is peanuts compared to what he created himself. Putin is such a person who .. I will remind you when he and I entered the Krasnoznamyoni Institute in 1984, it was a department which prepared spies, then Putin in 1985 was given the following evaluation: A man who under the influence of emotions can make decisions which will be detrimental for him personally and for the department he works for. So the external intelligence clearly said: This man we do not need. This man is dangerous. We will not take him. We are returning him after he has taken the course of lessons, to where he came from. That’s it. That is why Putin never became a great spy. A Stierlitz he never became. Not only Stierlitz but any spy. And this assessment proved correct. However, this evaluation also says that Putin is a very dangerous man, because he is a man who is capable of taking suicidal steps.

***

Note.  Stierlitz was the fictional spy hero of Seventeen Moments of Spring, the 1973 Soviet twelve-part television series based on the novel of the same title by Yulian Semyonov.

Andrei Piontkovsky would disagree with Zhirnov: Putin wants to live.

  

  

Mikheil Saakashvili: Vilnius is a victory. Bucharest was a defeat

 WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2023, 2:10 p.m

This handwritten text was sent by the former president of Georgia to the editor-in-chief of UP through his friends. The author's spelling has been preserved.

Google translate from Ukrainian: 

 

I was in Bucharest, so Vilnius is not Bucharest at all. Bucharest was a road to nowhere. Vilnius directly leads to Ukraine's membership (in NATO - ed.) in Washington next year, when President Biden expects to go to the elections on the platform of Ukrainian victory, Russian defeat and NATO expansion.

In 2008, our Western partners asked me to ask President Yushchenko to say that Ukraine is satisfied with Bucharest's formulation, which he did half-heartedly. And I did the same. Such were the rules of the game then, since there was no war yet

Now no one has the right to demand diplomacy from President Zelensky. He is a heroic leader of a heroic country at war.

That is why I consider this summit extremely successful for Ukraine. First of all, it was a completely Ukrainian summit. The NATO world revolved around Ukraine, and that is worth a lot.

The leading Western countries competed with each other not to come to Vilnius empty-handed. Some arrived with long-range missiles, some with hundreds of millions of additional military aid.

From today, the format of the Ukraine-NATO Council will come into force, which will allow Ukraine to use the legal mechanism of the Alliance at any time. Ukraine is really becoming part of the NATO structure and Ukraine's word is becoming very high.

Ukraine is on the accelerated path to membership, and the main achievement for us is that we have removed the requirement for a membership action plan (hereafter referred to as the MAP). Everything is very simple - if the MAP were left as a requirement for Ukraine - it would be at least another 2-3 years of bureaucratic procedures on the way to NATO membership.

And now we were given the procedure of Finland and Sweden. And if there is political will, this is a matter of a few weeks. And after the Ukrainian victory, the political will will be automatic. It is necessary to emphasize separately the discussions on security guarantees - and this is definitely not Budapest.

Therefore, Ukraine won a historic diplomatic victory in Vilnius. Now the main thing is to continue our positive trend at the front and bring it to a victorious end.

And Zelensky really just shone in Vilnius. There are no real leaders left in the world. He really became the leader of the free world and one cannot help but be proud of this. I was really overwhelmed by this emotion when I watched the report with the raising of the flag from Vilnius.

Mikheil Saakashvili 

Prigozhin’s whereabouts according to Libération

 

This morning on the program The Breakfast Show, Yuri Fedorov, the well known Russian  military expert based in Prague, brought up a paragraph from Libération. which seems to have created quite a confusion in Russia. He himself was at odds how to interpret it.  Here is the paragraph, the crucial sentences in blue. 

Où est passé Evgueni Prigojine ? Depuis son coup de force et la marche de ses hommes vers Moscou le 24 juin, le patron de Wagner est invisible. On a cru le voir à Minsk ou à Saint-Pétersbourg, mais il serait bien dans la capitale russe, selon des sources au sein des renseignements occidentaux. Depuis au moins le vendredi 1er juillet, le mutin serait retenu au Kremlin où il a été convoqué avec ses principaux commandants. Il aurait rencontré Vladimir Poutine, et également été entendu par le général Viktor Zolotov, commandant de la garde nationale Rosgvardia et très fidèle du président, et par Sergueï Narychkine, le patron des renseignements extérieurs russes.  

Where did Yevgeny Prigozhin go? Since his show of strength and the march of his men to Moscow on June 24, Wagner's boss has been invisible. He might have been seen in Minsk or Saint Petersburg, but he is most probably in the Russian capital, according to sources in Western intelligence.  Since at least Friday, July 1st, the mutineer seems to be held at the Kremlin, where he has been summoned together with his main commanders.  He is said to have met Putin, and would have been interrogated by general Viktor Zolotov, commander of the Rosgvardia national guard and very loyal to the president, and by Sergey Narychkin, head of Russian foreign intelligence.

Sergey Naryshkin is the director of foreign intelligence whom Putin humiliated in front of the whole world on February 22, 2022, just two days before the invasion of Ukraine. Today, the 502nd  day of the war, what is transpiring within the Kremlin remains unclear.   

Update, July 10, 4:20 p.m. IST:

 The info in Libération was apparently true since Putin’s spokesman Peskov just confirmed it today: Putin held post-mutiny talks with Wagner leader Prigozhin and his fighters - Kremlin  

“The meeting was first reported by French newspaper Liberation, which said Prigozhin had met Putin and the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, and SVR Foreign Intelligence boss Sergei Naryshkin.”