So we are actively now acknowledging that the war in the Ukraine will be stretching into next year…

Russia-Ukraine war: Russian forces set to be exhausted by January 2023

Russia is a ticking time bomb. And President Vladimir Putin is being wound up. So now the world is waiting for his invasion of Ukraine to explode in his face.

Ukrainian intelligence believes Russia has only enough fuel, ammunition and military equipment to sustain another seven months of all-out effort. Come January, Putin’s forces will be exhausted.

“The active phase should go to the maximum decline by the end of the year,” says Ukraine’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov.

In Judo, you have submission holds. Moves where you place the other in intense pain until they tap out.

I fear that is what Putin is doing to the West.

It is clear now that Putin’s real danger is not in the pain he is about to inflict, but the pain he can endure.

I called him invading the Ukraine after the Kazakstan coup attempt which the Russian’s concluded was another Western attempt at hybrid war.

While Kyiv is symbolic, I think the real goal here is Odessa.

Putin is clearly looking to legacy and has planned for a conflict for at least 7 years.

Putin’s mentor Alexander Dugin has argued for the invasion of Ukraine…

Russian intellectual Alexander Dugin is the main architect of the neo-Russian imperialism called Eurasianism. In a series of lectures, articles, and books, Dugin has sought to “rehabilitate fascism in Russia.” He has borrowed from obscure 19th and 20th century political theories, adopted a sympathetic interpretation of Nazism that attempts to separate it from the Holocaust, and sought to thwart what he and many Russians believe is a conspiracy led by the United States to contain Russia. Dugin has called for a “Russian spring” and the domination of Europe through Ukraine.

Consider Putin’s war cabinet, which is the locus of most decision-making. It consists of Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Security Council; Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB (the main successor agency of the KGB intelligence service); Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service; and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Their average age is 68 years old and they have a lot in common. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which Putin famously described as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, was the defining episode of their adult lives. Four out of five have a KGB background, with three, including the president himself, coming from the ranks of counterintelligence. It is these hardened men, not polished diplomats like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who run the country’s foreign policy.

In recent years, members of this group have become very vocal. Patrushev and Naryshkin frequently give lengthy interviews articulating their views on global developments and Russia’s international role. According to them, the American-led order is in deep crisis thanks to the failure of Western democracy and internal conflicts spurred by the promotion of tolerance, multiculturalism and respect for the rights of minorities.

…I think the cabal see themselves as part off 1000 year Christian tradition and that this war is for the soul of Russia.

We don’t appreciate the power and importance and motivator Russian Orthodox Christianity plays out in all of this.

In 988AD, Vladimir the Great, whom Putin takes his name from, mass baptised 1000 Russians at the River Nee-Proh in what has become the founding spiritual moment in Orthodox Russian Christianity as the moment Russia became Christian and led to a cultural narrative structure that Moscow is the third Rome and was a homeland for Christianity.

What isn’t widely known is that Putin himself is a very staunch Russian Orthodox Christianand that he has used the Russian Orthodox Church as an enormous control mechanism over the Russian people.

Putin has spent billions rebuilding the Churches smashed down by Communism and uses his relationship with the Church for political advantage. It was the Orthodox Church who first praised Putin for annexing Crimea, a region with much religious importance for the Church.

Recently the Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox Church severed ties with the Russian branchbecause they felt Putin was having too much influence over it.

If Moscow is the third Rome, Kyiv is the second Jerusalem.

Putin sees himself as part of a long line of Christian Defenders of the true faith.

A new angry white Christianity is erupting here with intense violence, and misreading the drivers of Putin means we will fail at stopping him.

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