WTF Are Russia’s “Super-Nuclear” Weapons???

Russia is unexpectedly testing its strategic nuclear reserve, by practice launching intercontinental ballistic and cruise missiles within striking distance of the Ukrainian border. Simultaneously, Russian-backed separatists are firing explosive artillery shells into eastern Ukraine and they just hit a kindergarten, wounding three teachers, but thankfully no children.

This comes in the middle of reports by western intelligence that Russian president Vladimir Putin has now officially decided to invade Ukraine in the coming days - although previous similar predictions by President Joe Biden and his NATO counterparts have not yet come to pass. Still, the continued escalation by Russia is impossible to ignore, and begs the question, if they’re not about to invade: what the hell are they doing?

In the last few weeks, the number of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border has nearly doubled from 100,000 to 190,000 approximately 70% of all Russian ground forces are now stationed alongside Ukraine. And neighboring Belarus, which is essentially a Russia satellite state, is hosting tens of thousands of additional Russia soldiers along THEIR border with Ukraine, allowing Russia to encircle Ukraine’s entire eastern border, and placing troops less than 50 miles from Ukraine’s capital of Kiev.

Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko, who calls himself “Europe’s last dictator” is also threatening to host “super nuclear” weapons for Russia, although it’s not clear what that means. And despite Putin announcing a reduction of forces from the border, he’s actually increasing the number of troops and sending more military equipment. At the same time, in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, which has been controlled by the Russian military in violation of international law since 2014 - pro-Russian forces are claiming without proof that the Ukrainian military is committing genocide and planning terror attacks, and the kindergarten bombings in the region are believed to be an effort to try and either provoke a response or blame Ukraine for the attacks as a false flag to justify invasion.

And if all of this feels uncomfortably strange and kind of dragged out and phoned in, it has a lot to do with the fact that every part of this has been loudly, publicly, and preemptively announced as Russia’s gameplan by western intelligence. But undoubtedly, western intelligence, the United States, and NATO are not just unbiased observers of Russia’s clear and open threat against Ukraine - a number of serious geopolitical experts, and of course Vladimir Putin himself, are saying that this is all just warmongering by the West, who are trying to instigate a war between Russia and Ukraine - and the truth is: the American imperialist war machine has done so much damage over the last century to basically every country involved in this dispute, that the knee-jerk reaction to assume that the US is manufacturing consent to feed the military industrial complex and make billions for weapons manufacturers while looking for an excuse to justify a multi-trillion dollar military budget and send American troops overseas, is basically the most logical and default position to take in any conflict that involves the US.

America has built up so much distrust after blatantly lying, invading, and destroying half the world, that even while watching Russia send more than half of its military to the border of a country that they JUST invaded, and are actively occupying in violation of international law, while bombing and shooting artillery shells at children, it’s not that impossible to believe those who are saying there’s actually no threat and that this whole thing is a fabrication on the part of Biden and US allies.

It’s tricky, because Vladimir Putin is openly toying with the fact that rightfully so, people will never fully trust US intelligence even if and when an invasion does occur. By stretching out the buildup, lying about deescalation, moving troops to another country, hosting unplanned nuclear readiness tests, and most importantly biding his time, the longer Putin waits, the more likely he is to get what he wants, because until he actually invades, despite all of the literal war-buildup that is actively happening on Ukraine’s border in front of our eyes, it’s still a he-said he-said that delegitimizes the West even more than they’ve already delegitimized themselves, while normalizing an unprecedented military occupation that’s almost certain to happen.

But until it actually does happen, Putin, and his allies get to point at Biden and his allies and say, “you’re lying, and warmongering, and you WANT us to invade” to which the US has no real response because… Russia hasn’t invaded despite repeat warnings that it’s imminent. The water around this is so murky that even though it’s pretty obvious what’s happening, everyone involved has such a long history of being irrational jingoist hawks that only care about their own interests that deciding who to trust between the US and Russia is a lose-lose scenario because historically you really can’t trust either of them.

So, for now we’ll just have to keep waiting because there’s not much else we can do. And in the meantime, we’ll keep bringing you updates, and try to unmuddy the waters as much as we can.