https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/10/ukraine-open-thread-2022-186.html
John Helmer reviews “Not One Inch Back” a new book about the last of the Gorbachov years in power, and the demise of the Soviet Union….
http://johnhelmer.net/stab-in-the-back-not-one-inch-but-right-to-the-heart/#more-69049
“Sarotte reports the Americans and Germans were cock-a-hoop. “Bush and Kohl needed,” she concluded, “to persuade Gorbachev to give up his legal [sic] right to keep troops in divided Germany. While doing so, they needed to avoid undermining Gorbachev so much that it might hasten the storm that Kohl feared: a coup that would topple the Soviet leader before he blessed reunification.
As Baker put it, ‘ensuring a unified Germany in NATO’ would ‘require every ounce of our skills in the months to come.’ He was more right than he knew.”
That’s another of Sarotte’s faulty ideas. By the time in August 1991, when Kryuchkov and Akhromeyev had the opportunity to remove Gorbachev for his betrayal, Yeltsin delivered on the first part of his assignment by rallying support for Gorbachev in Moscow; four months later he delivered the second part – the coup the US backed, not the one Kohl had been afraid of.
Not US nor German skills, but the betrayals of Gorbachev and Yeltsin delivered the outcome they were hoping for.
This is how the President of Russia, the Defence and Foreign Ministers, the General Staff, the intelligence agencies – the Stavka – understand the history and judge US assurances to be worth today. Not to understand these things is not to understand why we are at war.
What can be said is what Akhromeyev’s last words mean. “I cannot live when my fatherland is dying and everything that has been the meaning of my life is crumbling. Age and the life that I have lived give me the right to step out of this life. I struggled until the end.”
The end for the marshal came on August 24, 1991.
Almost thirty-one years later, on February 24, 2022, Putin and the Stavka decided they did not have the right to step out of this life, and that faced with the war Germany has been planning since the Third Reich, and the US since 1945, Russia would not commit suicide.
I repeat my assertion…. Operation Barbarossa II failed…. Operation Bagration II began on 24 Feb 2022… Destination Berlin…..
INDY
Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Oct 28 2022 13:53 utc | 1
I know that this will explode some minds, but when I look at a current map of Ukraine
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/36a7f6a6f5a9448496de641cf64bd375, Russia controls almost 100% of the 3 Oblasts that they annexed in their referendum.
The big territorial gains for Ukraine were almost all in the Kharkiv Oblast but it’s possible that Russia did not have an interest in holding it. If Ukraine takes Kherson, yes, that would be a big deal but until then – meh.
Posted by: Christian Chuba | Oct 28 2022 13:59 utc | 2
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/10/ukraine-open-thread-2022-186.html
John Helmer reviews “Not One Inch Back” a new book about the last of the Gorbachov years in power, and the demise of the Soviet Union….
http://johnhelmer.net/stab-in-the-back-not-one-inch-but-right-to-the-heart/#more-69049
“Sarotte reports the Americans and Germans were cock-a-hoop. “Bush and Kohl needed,” she concluded, “to persuade Gorbachev to give up his legal [sic] right to keep troops in divided Germany. While doing so, they needed to avoid undermining Gorbachev so much that it might hasten the storm that Kohl feared: a coup that would topple the Soviet leader before he blessed reunification.
As Baker put it, ‘ensuring a unified Germany in NATO’ would ‘require every ounce of our skills in the months to come.’ He was more right than he knew.”
That’s another of Sarotte’s faulty ideas. By the time in August 1991, when Kryuchkov and Akhromeyev had the opportunity to remove Gorbachev for his betrayal, Yeltsin delivered on the first part of his assignment by rallying support for Gorbachev in Moscow; four months later he delivered the second part – the coup the US backed, not the one Kohl had been afraid of.
Not US nor German skills, but the betrayals of Gorbachev and Yeltsin delivered the outcome they were hoping for.
This is how the President of Russia, the Defence and Foreign Ministers, the General Staff, the intelligence agencies – the Stavka – understand the history and judge US assurances to be worth today. Not to understand these things is not to understand why we are at war.
What can be said is what Akhromeyev’s last words mean. “I cannot live when my fatherland is dying and everything that has been the meaning of my life is crumbling. Age and the life that I have lived give me the right to step out of this life. I struggled until the end.”
The end for the marshal came on August 24, 1991.
Almost thirty-one years later, on February 24, 2022, Putin and the Stavka decided they did not have the right to step out of this life, and that faced with the war Germany has been planning since the Third Reich, and the US since 1945, Russia would not commit suicide.
I repeat my assertion…. Operation Barbarossa II failed…. Operation Bagration II began on 24 Feb 2022… Destination Berlin…..
INDY
Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Oct 28 2022 13:53 utc | 1