The Ukrainian Failed State: Analysis of Phase 3

Small Logo By:  Joaquin Flores

The Ukrainian Failed State: Analysis of Phase 3

Part 6 in our series

Sunday’s election sees an increase in ‘anti-Russian’ representation in the Rada: US-backed Pravy Sektor and Svoboda pressure on the US-backed Kiev Junta corroborates a Phase 3 plan, as the Kiev Junta may resume major operations.  The US needs to create a failed state in Ukraine to advance its agenda, with Poroshenko getting caught in the middle.  Both sides vie for the 4GW advantage, while being careful to not lose site of reality from the expanding hyper-reality. 


A Note to Readers:  This is the 6th installment of a series of related reports on the real underlying methods and framework which characterize the Ukrainian civil war.  These are thorough in exploring and explaining, in as full a way as possible, the most relevant factors which operate upon this phenomenon.  Like our previous works on the subject, this report is approximately 50 pages at about 15,500 words.  In addition to these six reports, there are another dozen or so shorter articles on the subject to be found on our site, as well as about two dozen interviews and podcasts, which can be found either in the multimedia section or embedded in the shorter articles where indicated.  Being familiar with our past reports makes this report more flexible.  A reader is then able to read each chapter as a stand-alone article


old-english-calligraphy-alphabet-the election of Sunday, October 26th, was called by Poroshenko to ostensibly push the government into an even further anti-Russian position.  On the face of it, the election aimed to escalate what has been termed a ‘lustration’ process [1]. This fits well into the common narrative, being that Poroshenko is directly controlled by the US to push against Russia.  While this is true, there is also another more complex dynamic unfolding, which will be explored in this report.

However, the banned Communist Party of Ukraine, coupled with a crippled Party of Regions, a raging civil war, and roving bands of Pravy Sektor hooligans on the US dole to silence dissent in major Ukrainian cities and towns, meant that an increase of various anti-Russian political formations in the Rada was a foregone conclusion.  In order to guarantee that the vote was pulled in the right direction, there must be a marked increase in KJ military activities on the day of the election.  As we wrote about last month, if the Novorossiyans want to see the KJ government stay together, they will wait until after the election and even the formation of a new government before the NM speaks positively of any results.

Ситуация в КраматорскеOn the NM side, the Voentorg will be ‘reopened’ at the earliest need, insofar as it falls within Russia’s ability to control the pacing and information-war side of this conflict.  The Voentorg has a much more interesting role, much more than a mere distributor of army supplies.  Since the start of this conflict, we have explained in numerous talks and articles how Russian soldiers and people with military backgrounds have funneled their way into Novorossiya.  Voentorg has come to mean this process or method of organization.



On September 15th we published a broad piece which forewarned the possibility of the US backing their own Pravy Sektor and Svoboda Party to oust the (also US backed) nominally republican Poroshenko led junta government in Kiev.  Recent developments in the Ukraine conflict continue to confirm the explanatory and predictive power of this thesis. We laid out only several possibilities out of several others, and due to the type of piece and medium used, it is natural that we did not dissect every variable.  This is not even technically possible without the use of complex game theory, with stochastic modeling based on infinite sets, as we have elaborated in greater detail in our past pieces.

But what is clear is this:  so-called ‘far right’ groups in Ukraine are being backed by the US in order to increase pressure on Poroshenko, who by virtue of his position alone, nominally represents the last hanging threads of civil society.  The US also backs Svoboda and other Pravy Sektor groups, an outgrowth of the Social-Nationalists and the surrounding, related, movement.  These in turn are a combined Operation Gladio and OG-B [2], as it is adapted for the Arab Spring tactic, whose external media is Radio Svoboda.  RS is openly a project of Radio Free Europe.

wpid-svoboda-party-nazi4Our thesis presented in the last piece on this subject titled  “Pravy Sektor Coup as ISIS Scenario: NATO to Feign a ‘Unilateral’ Alliance With Russia“, of September 15th, has since shown increasing signs of coming into fruition.  Because this is a strategy which the US has developed and has already used in other theaters, the nature and success of its use in Ukraine will be determined by both Russian responses and proactive measures.  So while it is inevitable that the US will attempt to create a failed state in Ukraine, it is not inevitable that they will succeed.

Yarosh continues to threaten the Rada and Poroshenko with violence and ”revolution”, if the state does not take on more Banderist positions and recognize those traditions, and does not prosecute the war effort further.  This known tactic is ‘win-win’ for the Pravy Sektor, and even for Svoboda who act as something as a quasi-legitimate transmission belt of the former,  into what can be called the ‘mainstream’.  This is the case because failing to heed Svoboda and Pravy Sektor demands demonstrates the failures of Poroshenko and the strength of the Svoboda and PS position, and yet heeding those same demands demonstrates the same.

As indications which corroborate our hypothesis mount, variations of this hypothesis have subsequently been echoed by popular journalists and bloggers on the subject.  In general, it is now possible to confirm that our framework for understanding this conflict has been validated.  The Russians are indeed involved in a very sophisticated use of 4GW strategies and tactics to advance their position, as well as a ‘new media’ campaign which corresponds to (is actually part of) 4GW.  They are using, also, new media methods to create a more effective simulacrum in which various hyper-realities are constructed.

Mostly these revolve around a lack of Russian support or resolve, and Novorossiyan weakness and divisions.  Variations and details involve Putin, Oligarchs, and the promulgation of various forms of magical thinking which reduce complex geostrategic and geopolitical matters to the arbitrary or even calculated flailings of the assorted personalities involved.  Because this magical thinking is a human tendency in the first place, rather than struggling against this tendency, it is instead most prudent to write the script for this inevitable drama in a manner which conforms to the geostrategic and geopolitical goals of the Russian side.

While this election will serve a purpose in this unfolding drama, its results should be understood as a sign post, more so than a monumental change.  Contradictory forces act upon these events, and each phenomenon has the potential to be pulled to the advantage of either of the contending sides.  In general these elections are going to be used by the Atlanticists to further push along the destabilization of Ukraine.  In the narrow sense of the Rada election results, Poroshenko and the US need, in most ways, the same result.

In our above referred report of September 15th, we also included a simplified three phase framework for understanding how the combined Arab Spring and Color Revolution tactic is implemented once the pieces are in place:

Phases:  “The General Strategy – Template Used in All Cases

1.) Color Revolution  protest-to-power Tactic combined with,

2.) Arab Spring uprising with US backed militias and civil war, install ‘democracy’,

3.) A transition from nominally stable ‘pro-western’ government into a failed state ruled by extremist ideological warlords,” [3]

We can see this Ukraine catastrophe moving into Phase 3.  A primary purpose of this report is to elaborate on the desirability of Phase 3 from the perspective of the Atlanticists, and how its aim is to move from a 3GW position into a 4GW position. Congruent with this are problems which Poroshenko is facing and will face, as Phase 3 will possibly, but not necessarily, see him removed from the picture.

This is one of the main themes of this report.  All of the detailed portions can be situated around this.  Standing alone, they may be useful analysis on the Ukraine conflict in general as well.  Additionally, the various sections are meant to ‘update’ some of the developments which occurred between our last report and this one.

We will continue to relate these developments to Generational Warfare theory, and new media theory, and game theory. As these are themselves the product of syncretic and interdisciplinary studies such as social psychology, sociology, ideology, and geostrategy, we will describe these from a combination of those perspectives as well.

If the reader has read the past five reports, and has also kept up generally with the situation in Ukraine, then each section can be readily understood on its own, and read in any order.



Table of Contents 

Chapter I.                  Signs, Elements, and Scenarios of Phase 3

Chapter II.                 Lavrov: Indicative of Russia’s New Infowar Strategy

Chapter III.               The Old Model and the New Model

Chapter IV.                Russian Diplomatic Victory and the Ceasefire that Wasn’t

Chapter V.                  What the “Halting of the Voentorg” Accomplishes

Chapter VI.                 Analysis of the Role of Popular Writers in the Information War

Chapter VII.               Problems in the Separation of Reality from the Simulacrum 

Chapter VIII.              Poroshenko’s Dilemma

Chapter IX.                 Novorossiya: Maintaining the 4GW Upper Hand

Chapter X.                   The Strength of Weakness, and the Organizational Superiority of                                                Disorgnization

Chapter XI.                  The Russian Oligarchy in brief

Chapter XII.                 Concluding Notes


Signs, Elements, and Scenarios of Phase 3

It is also very much possible that Poroshenko will not removed, or that the old Kiev government will continue to nominally exist, but that the real state authority is dismembered, and a strongly developed western media narrative (meme) is pushed which shows a map of a post-Ukrainian ‘failed state’.  Here we may see depictions of the area around Kiev and the northern and center oblasts of the country  branded in comfortable Anglo lexicon as being under the “Coalition/ Reform/ Progress/ Unity/ Democratic” government of Poroshenko (or successor), and other parts being under the control of various ‘extreme right’, ‘Banderists’, and/or ‘neo-Nazi’ control, particularly in the west; in particular Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.  We may also expect that the differences among some of these neo-Nazi groups will be either invented or exploited, and that infighting may occur between them, leading to several fractures.

RnuflagIn a variation of this, only plausible within the context of general western ignorance of the dynamics and groups at play in this civil war, we might expect to see western media begin to speak regularly of neo-Nazi regions in the east of the country, within Novorossiya.  We may expect there to be a description of disparate neo-Nazi groups, with infighting.  Would it not make sense then to play upon the general ignorance of the audience, and point to allegedly ‘far right’ Novorossiyan brigades like Varyag, Ghost, and those out of the RNU and Nazbols as being ‘neo-Nazi’?  This conforms to our previously described use of equivocation and false parallels within the liberal academic and media paradigm.  At any rate, if Russia and the real international community are unable to avert the development of this crisis into a failed state, regardless of the particular name-tags the groups are given, all will be considered ‘extremists’.

In that situation, those will be promoted as equal in their propensity for atrocities, and the battle for Novorossiya and the self-determination of ethnic Russian people will be ignored, and it will be rather explained under the heading of ‘in-fighting’ extremist groups, and a ‘humanitarian disaster’.  These may require an R2P intervention to fix.

Especially problematic will be the discourse on the Novorossiyan and Russian side, where Novorossiyan militias sense that the oblasts along the Crimea pushing to Odessa are no longer in Kiev’s control.  In that scenario, there will be those who want to push farther west, and those who warn of it being an infinite game trap [4].  A possible solution to this problem, is for Odessa and also Mariupol to have an uprising of the citizens using a script taken out of the Arab Spring playbook.

galicia1As we discussed in several podcast interviews starting in March 2014, the failed state of former Ukraine will also feature a Galician claim which Poland may be pushed to act on; and there are any number of ways which that piece can play out depending on the direction of the Polish leadership as developments unfold [5].  As of now, it would appear that Poland would act on behalf of NATO, and any violence between ‘Ukrainians’ and ‘Galicians’, or either against Poles, would be justification for NATO to act in some fashion in relation to that.  Since such justifications are desired, it would be reasonable to surmise that the provocations will be staged, perhaps even in Przemysl or Rzeszow in Poland, which are regions considered by Galician nationalists to be part of historical or greater Galicia.  It cannot be ruled out, however, that Poland may flip.  Which ever way it goes, however, so long as Poland is pulled into a wider conflict on either side, one of the US goals has been achieved.

It is therefore worth noting that Galician Nationalists, who within Ukrainian politics are essentially Banderists, are now talking in this direction [6].

Additionally, because Galicia and Ruthenia overlap in some areas, we have another conflict potential between the Galician Banderists and the pro-Russian Ruthenians of Transcarpathia, who in turn will be backed by the Soviet Republic of Transdniestria.  The importance, finally of Odessa in these future conflicts, cannot be overstated and is of course very obvious.


Another sign that the US is pushing for an increased destabilization effort is the latest round of US backed Pravy Sektor and Svoboda protests in Ukraine [7].   The methods of the US threaten to bring war to the Eurasian continent, but is also aimed at an escalation in theatres in the Middle East, and eventually including East Asia and Latin America.  It is beyond any realistic doubt that the Atlanticist US Empire is the entity pushing for the escalation of war.  Both previous world wars can be accurately characterized as being caused by, and created to serve, the expansion of the Atlanticist US Empire.

Still again, is Nuland’s visit to Kiev during the week of October 6th, to meet with Poroshenko and other Kiev Junta leaders.  Alternate purposes of her visit are also to shore up the Pravy Sektor and Svoboda plan, to increase the pressure on Poroshenko to make sure the Gazprom negotiations ultimately fail, and to push forward on the war effort.   And as for the ‘Ceasefire’ which we concluded was not, the nature of that was confirmed by Andrey Lysenko, Kiev’s National Defense and Security Council spokesman.

On October 6th, he said “We have managed to upgrade the equipment currently used, to get new arms, and to reorganize and retool the defense industries that manufacture armaments and repair hardware.”  Also with this, he stated:  “We have also been able to regroup our forces, to carry out deep reconnaissance, and to gather more information about the enemy. We have completed the third wave of mobilization.  We have replaced the units that needed that, we gave them a chance to have some rest after heavy fighting, and to get back to normal.”


Lavrov: Indicative of Russia’s New Infowar Strategy

Ìèíèñòð èíîñòðàííûõ äåë Ðîññèè Ñåðãåé ËàâðîâLavrov’s statements about the destructive nature of Nuland’s visit should be seen in light of the developments surrounding Nuland’s visit [8].  The active involvement of US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland in the dialogue between Kiev and militias in the south-east will not be useful, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, explained on the Thursday October 9th.



This is highly important, because the Russians are more and more openly taking a transparency based approach to their foreign policy statements, even while continuing to refer to the US as their ‘partners’.  Before the US essentially declared war on Russia, the Russians were willing to explain the world, and their position in it, in a manner which was consistent with the US’s general fiction.  The discourse surrounding the US war on the fictional al-Qaeda was mirrored by Russia, because they could relate this publicly to their fight against al-Qaeda in Chechnya and Dagestan.  They spoke of the US’s plan to increase its ballistic missile capacity against Russia, from Poland and surrounding states, in terms of ‘security partnership’.  Even the coup in Ukraine which ousted Yanukovych, was not widely promoted as such, and after fine tuning of that line, publicly endorsed the Kiev elections in May which delivered Poroshenko.

But the Russians are becoming more open about, to be succinct, the entire Atlanticist agenda and its tools.  In what historians will no doubt later consider to be a monumental statement, Lavrov stated on September 9th, 2014, “There are reasons to suspect that air strikes on Syrian territory may target not only areas controlled by Islamic State militants, but the government troops may also be attacked on the quiet to weaken the positions of Bashar Assad’s army,” [9].

Iraq_ISIS_Abu_Wahe_2941936bAdditionally, the English language, Russian state news agency ‘Russia Today’, has begun to talk about 9-11 as being an ‘inside job’.  They regularly feature guests who are raising the level of discourse, educating the broad public on the whole array of intelligence operations and other unconstitutional, immoral, and dangerous projects which the US engages in.  RT regularly now gives a platform to various radicals and dissidents from within the US including veterans groups, socialists and communists, libertarians, constitutionalists, and popular radical bloggers.

Aside from this, Lavrov has been given the green light to start ‘calling the bluff’ on Ebola, by announcing that Russia has a vaccine, and are able to get it into the affected parts of Africa.  This needs to be understood in light of US justification of the increasing role of AFRICOM, and what Russian statements actually mean in relation to this; recall the Pristina Airport incident and the manner by which the US war on Yugoslavian Serbs was ended by the Russian ‘allies’ of the US.  Lavrov has made several statements, now to date, essentially declaring ISIS as a US proxy project which it supports, and clarifying that they are ‘not’ allied with the US in their otherwise similarly termed goals of ending Islamic extremism in Iraq and Syria.

This clarification and Russia’s ability to promote that meme successfully, is a critical test run of tools needed in the future information and memetic war, which Russia will likely need to utilize in Ukraine.  Recall that we have hypothesized previously that the US will try to confuse the discourse by creating discursive traps, as well as a media framework, in order to create the illusion that it is working ‘with’ Russia and Europe to end a Pravy Sektor mayhem and coup scenario, when in fact it will fund and direct this Pravy Sektor maneuver and work against the interests of Europe and Russia.

We can see then, that it is likely that we have understood Lavrov’s thinking (actually Russian strategy), and that our description best describes Russia’s own understanding of the situation.  If it is not already evident in taking all of the points of this section together, it can be more clearly spelled out in parallels which are numbered precisely by their function (1 =1, 2=2 etc.), :


Syria and Iraq situation

1. Lavrov publicly stated that not only the FSA, but also ISIS and its forerunner al-Nusra and ISIL, are US projects.

2. Lavrov has had to clarify publicly that Russia is not working with the US against ISIS, because Russia is acting within international law and within a rational-coherent approach (it is not funding the same ISIS it is claiming to fight).

3. Russia is supporting the legally recognized, and sovereign states of Syria and Iraq, in their respective fights against ISIS in its borders.

4. The US is actively funding the FSA and al-Nusra to destroy the Syrian state, which is the same goal as ISIS. Crimes against Kurds are being used as a ruse.


Ukraine situation

1. Lavrov has already publicly stated that Svoboda and Pravy Sektor are being controlled by the US.

2. Lavrov sees that in the future he will need to clarify that Russia and its partners are not working with the US against Pravy Sektor, because in acting within international law they cannot side with an entity, the US, which is actually funding the Pravy Sektor which it (the US) formally will claim to fight.

3.  Russia may need to officially support the legally recognized state of Ukraine, and/or Novorossiya, in its fight against Pravy Sektor within their respective borders.

4.  The US will actively fund the mainstream Svoboda to ‘destroy’ the Ukrainian state, having the same goal as the Pravy Sektor, which it also funds and supports.  Crimes against ethnic Russians, Galicians, or even Ukrainians will be used as a ruse.


The Old Model and the New Model

Russia has been engaged in a hitherto successful use of a 4GW military campaign, alongside a 4GW based information project utilizing new media.   This in turn is used alongside a careful and well thought-out diplomatic effort, represented as the mastery of Lavrov.  The Russian use of diplomatic  positioning, and constructive language, has continually created the discourse needed to engender an evolution of the emergent European position, rather than a marginalization based upon blame and reactive psychology.  The scope of this is to overcome a well documented strategy of the Atlanticists, utilizing its Thalassocratic framework against the Telluric [10].

Eh_carrHow does this compare to the 3GW model?  In E.H Carr’s seminal work that includes a critique of English geopolitics [11] , he presents a manner of understanding modern Atlanticist successes in the 20th century, in one section by surveying briefly the centuries long history of England’s manipulation of France and Germany; supporting one against the other until the other was too weak, and then favoring the other.  It demonstrates the use of war as an extension of so-called laissez-faire economics and diplomacy.  While it is also true that the British Empire also used this in India and North america, it is also fair to say that the US has taken this English strategy, and applied it in a more global and complex manner.

This imperial policy was consistent throughout the evolution of warfare.  Changes in media technology and the ideological framework and justifications upon which western society is established, have also necessitated a distinct use of ‘human rights’ demagoguery and a sophisticated use of new media.

Separately, based on a study of joint-stock companies and investment banks connecting Wall Street to the City of London, it is not irrational to conclude that the core of Anglo capital did not dissipate, but rather changed form [12]. When seen in this light, the British Empire did not ‘decline’, but much in the manner of the movement of the Roman administrative center from Rome to Constantinople, the center merely changed place. The ruling class of the Atlanticist Empire has no nationality in the popular sense; their locations of birth and types of passports reflect, unless otherwise strategically significant, little more than minor and peripheral facts.

This imperial project and its later capacity to transcend nation states, rebrand itself, change form, and change the entire discourse surrounding ’empires’, is analogous to the development of the 4GW model. Nevertheless, with England to the US, at this stage in development it was still necessary to move from one state to another.

The development of capitalism and technological progress stemming from the bourgeois revolutions , out of feudalism, also correspond to the evolution of warfare through these generations. These are technologically driven, but not simply technology in the sense of physical machines.

Rather, at least as important is also the technology of mas psychology, marketing, public relations; the creation of discursive traps, world-views, seamless ideologies which interweave into our daily lives and penetrate the core of our consciousness; paradigm, schema, and Weltanschauung construction.  The 4GW model corresponds to late capitalism or post-capitalism (to the extent that these terms are useful), and to a form of so-called ‘post-modernity’. The blurring of the difference between soldiers and civilians, the change of nation-state actors into various complex formations ranging from ‘terrorists’ and political soldiers, to corporate backed mercenary armies, and other irregular armies is a microcosm of the general evolutionary trajectory of society as a whole.

The nature of the war in Ukraine serves as an exemplary model, demonstrating the superiority of the Fourth Generational Warfare model. Having a workable understanding this war requires some knowledge of 4GW. Without this, one is left significantly deficient.

The use of media or the targeting of civilians is not a new feature of war. Once again, the fading of the doctrinary barriers demarcating civilians from soldiers, and the use of peer-to-peer social networking mediums to disseminate propaganda are among some of the distinguishing features that separate the past doctrines from the present ones. Legally, the newer concept in the US of the ‘enemy combatant’ is a permutation of the shifting doctrines. The framework of which apparently justifies the use of extraordinary rendition (kidnapping), refined interrogation techniques (torture), and indefinite detention (imprisonment without trial) is a 4GW approach to warfare and law. How those are marketed is also, itself, a feature of the new paradigm.


Russian Diplomatic Victory and the Ceasefire that Wasn’t

Little discussed is the actual victory Russia found when Brussels announced on September 12th that it would delay execution of the European policy on Ukraine, no sooner than 2016 [13].  Keep in mind that this, in fact, could be an indefinite delay, perhaps being totally shelved.  This is because the agreement between Russia and Brussels is to sit down and re-open discussion on the Accession Agreement no sooner than January of 2016.  While much analysis has revolved around a debate as to whether the September 5th Minsk Agreement constituted a kind of capitulation or ‘sell out’ of Novorossiya, Russia was able to secure a total reversal of the real problem for Russia-Europe bilateral trade relations.  This was, for the European end, their official reason for buying into and supporting the entire Euromaidan in Kiev in the first place.

This parses out the difference between the US-Russia problem and the EU-Russia problem.  The EU’s support of the US plan to oust Yanukovich was purchased on the basis of the Junta government’s willingness to sign the EU Association Agreement.  As Russia lost its somewhat better relationship with Ukraine with the overthrow of Yanukovich, it had to redouble its efforts in Europe.  It could not influence the Ukrainian end to stop or delay implementation, because the Kiev Junta is controlled by the US.  Therefore, its only chance was with the EU, and here they found success.  In some ways, this was also just a product of letting the chips fall where they may.  Because there are already reasons to believe that the EU never had in mind for Ukraine to be an EU member, and the AA was more or less a neo-colonial type effort on behalf of a combined ‘ultra-imperialist’ European power [14].

The very nature of the mechanisms involved in this ought to point more clearly to the thesis we have promoted since the start of these events, being that there are roughly two or three distinct camps in the EU:  Atlanticists, Eurasianists, and Europeanists.  The battle between the former two has been over influence over the latter.  The general trend of Europeanism under contemporary modes of production and technology is in the direction of Eurasian integration, and therefore it is also accurate to consider it as part of the Eurasianist group.  At the same time, the Atlanticists have used a marketing that is quite distinct from the product, in order to sell the Europeanists a false bill of goods based upon a political alliance with DC, and a financial system based in the Wall Street Ponzi scheme of speculative economics.   In that sense, then, the Eurasianists can be described as the true Europeanists.

The ”Ceasefire that Wasn’t” has served as a necessary media illusion to justify to, and create a discourse within, the western media holography.  This technique of employing the simulacrum, and paradigm creation, signifies real progress on the Russian side in catching up with, and really surpassing, the use of 4GW methods in the information war against the US and NATO.  There can be little doubt that Europeanists and European Eurasianists, whose agreement together, was necessary to push back the execution of the Association Agreement, are likely not under any real illusion that there has been anything like an actual ceasefire.

Related to this was the hyper-reality of the closing of the Voentorg, which was yet another example of a long used tactic.  The Voentorg scandal can be understood as memetic shorthand for a kind of supply line, and also for Russian support in general.


What the “Halting of the Voentorg” Accomplishes

First it is important to remember that much of this is fictitious and imaginary, and the meaning one derives from the memes are normally the intended meaning, and the effect of this meme on the ‘collective cognitive process’ (how everyone ‘thinks’), is the only tangible fact.  Like the ceasefire, the Voentorg scandal as well as much of this civil war in general, take on more features of a simulacrum or hyperreality than actual reality.

One, it can be said that the propagation of the meme of the closed Voentorg has helped to control the pacing of events, in the sense of imaginations and perceptions.  Time is on Russia’s side, which means when it controls the pacing of events, it can benefit not only when it speeds certain things up, but also when it slows these down.  There was no need for the “Voentorg to be accessible” when the fiction to promote is one relating to the fictitious ceasefire.  The Voentorg fiction, is related to the Ceasefire fiction, which itself is built upon the fiction that the KJ had anything left to throw.  That, in turn, is built upon the fiction that Poroshenko acts independently, or that his pursuing the war will benefit Ukraine, within the fictitious logic (under neo-liberal norms) of the citizenship oriented nation-state.

This is a fiction, built upon fiction, built upon fiction.  An overarching purpose of each small fiction is that it is premised upon a larger foundational fiction, which in turn builds upon the ‘truth’ nature of both the smaller and foundational fictions.  All together it constructs a ‘truth’ edifice of hyper-reality in which all related fictions can be said to exist and thrive as they become interpreted as actual realities.  The ceasefire, as we have described, was a media fiction which also allowed all parties to appear responsible, while the same kind of fighting that would have otherwise happened, still continued.  This helped to allow the European Eurasianists to justify to the broader European ruling circles, the indefinite delay of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement.  This was not entirely impossible given that the EU does not really see Ukraine as a potential EU member; the marketing was not the product.

With Russia and Novorossiya sharing permanent control over more than 300km of border, it was necessary to create an additional layer of complication by which all kinds of strategic timing issues, ones which involve a level of prudence and finesse which the citizen-soldier, and friends, have no patience for, nor political inclination to accept.  Even this ‘Voentorg is closed’ meme was difficult to see as credible on the face of it.  With countless other ways of getting supplies, it is difficult to accept that Voentorg was a critical piece.  It may, when open, account for the largest volume of equipment, but in its absence its difficult to rationalize how a combination of other outlets and methods would not be able to take its place.

Now the meme is being developed that the Voentorg has been reopened, or at least as soon as the KJ launches a more serious assault, according to Igor Strelkov [15].  Understanding, then by way of reverse engineering the purposes of the ‘closed down’ meme, can we understand also the purpose of the ‘re-opened’ meme.

Russian support has, in the strictly military sense, and in the infowar sense, come in 4GW ways, without any clear or direct orders from the government, nor using soldiers in a standing army.  To understand the nuanced approach to organization here, means to understand the difference between the government and the State.  Even this distinction is complicated, because in mainstream contemporary European understanding, governments refer to parliaments and states refer to the executive branch.

By State we must understand it borrowing from sociology; not the government, nor the executive branch as the ”state”.

Rather all of the real levers and poles of power; the security apparatus; the clergy and religious institutions; academia and the universities; the police and private detectives, the army, mercenary, and militia clubs; pluralist and civil society organizations, charities and non-profits; newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, and websites – public or private, recognized or unrecognized, legal or illegal; and the agreements and social relations of production, both formal and tacit, which hold the order of society together, and represent the interests of that social formation.  With this more robust understanding of State power, we can then, and only then, explain that indeed the military component of the Russian effort in Novorossiya and Ukraine is an effort of the State.

Thus we can describe the Voentorg as a mechanism of State power, while simultaneously not being either an official component of the government or the ‘state’.   Reports that it had been shut down, amplified and reflected through new media, became an undeniable truth; a new kind of truth only possible through new media.

Advancing beyond the old problems encountered with ‘old media’, and the general consensus view that it is unreliable, and mostly controlled as either state information ministries or their proxies; the  propagation of the ‘Voentorg is cut off’ meme occurred through social, peer to peer, media.  It is something that ‘everyone knows’ and ‘everyone says’.  It, like other new truths disseminated through new media, went viral and became a superior kind of truth, over and above old truth.

Is it true to say that the Voentorg was closed?  This is a loaded meme, because much of the discourse surrounded the significance of the closing, the sure signs that Moscow was ‘clamping down’ on Novorossiya militias, that the Minsk ‘ceasefire’ was a capitulation and that Putin had made a ‘backroom deal’; the beginning of the end.  In real effect, the Voentorg was not really closed, not in the way it has come to mean.  Closed in this context most certainly implies that it was ‘shut down’, as in totality; banned, cut off, out of business, illegal, etc.  Images of state police raiding the warehouse, and the owners being cited or even arrested come to mind.  None of this took place. Thus, in actual meaning, this is akin to confusing a nap, for death.

Pro-Russian rebels get ready to take position near the Sergey Prokofiev International Airport during fighting with Ukrainian government forces in the town of Donetsk, eastern UkraineBut what Voentorg has also come to be, is a code-word for the actual project of re-organizing the Russian army suited for 4GW needs. Europeans, Israelis, and Americans have been funneling into the Ukraine civil war since the beginning, through organizations large and small, such as mercenary firms like Blackwater/Xe/Academi’. The Ukrainian government gave them papers, residency and citizenship. We have accurately explained how this is working from the start of this conflict, from our sources on the ground and by logical deduction. It is, in reality, the only way this could be working.

Back in May we noted something extremely strange that was seen in a live-streaming account, of activists for the newly founded DPR in control of an administrative building. This was live and not edited, and possibly a mistake that it was shown.  What was seen was very curious, rolls of uncut, freshly printed hryvnia, covering a whole desk. On the desk also were stacks of ID cards. The cash, whether real or counterfeit (this is a matter of authority, all cash is really counterfeit in this day and age), needs no explanation. But the ID’s, we figured as this: Russians ‘visiting their grandmothers’ in Ukraine were bound to get killed, and their captured bodies identified as being Russians would be all the evidence required for Western media to, irresponsible as they are anyhow, jump on this and declare that Russia was in fact invading. It would be pretty solid evidence. And this never turned up, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that Russian soldiers – in unofficial capacity – were volunteering to join this fight.

The capture of these buildings was not merely symbolic, but also functional in creating administrative cover for the volunteers coming from all over Russia.

Thus the first phase of what is now being called ‘Voentorg’, was for the activists to capture the administrative buildings, and possibly create false birth or residency records, as well as issue ID cards from the oblast, either Lugansk or Donetsk. The ID cards were what were seen on the desk.

The usage of the Voentorg as a memetic shorthand for Russian support is also critical. Actions such as the closing down of Voentorg have the intended result of producing outrage among the most prolific writers on the Ukraine civil war from the pro-Novorossiyan side. These views become echoed in new media, and this creates the overwhelming perception among the KJ and US that Novorossiyan weakness is a very real thing, and that Russia is not willing to support its allies in the region. In reality, this was, again, yet another example of the weakness ruse tactic.


Analysis of the Role of Popular Writers in the Information War

El Murid is one of the most read writers on the subject, and Colonel Cassad, whose name is Boris Rozhin, has a site that is the most visited among them all.  This fact has not gone unnoticed by the FSB, and furthermore one can rationally extrapolate more from this point.  Without direct evidence, it would not be responsible to claim that Rozhin or El Murid are active agents of the Минкомсвязь России (Ministry of Communications and Mass Media) in some way.  However, it would also be academically irresponsible, and dishonest, not to point out that nearly all of Rozhin’s writings have laid the basis by which nearly every Russian ‘weakness ruse’ tactic was actually disseminated.

Someone who wanted to paint things a certain way would state that there was something more to Rozhin’s company wanting to make a deal with Yandex, and that Yandex in turn, like Google with the FBI, is said to have turned over information to the FSB [16,17].

CassadThis, in truth, by itself does not mean anything.  Rozhin may very well just be like a select few who simply support Russia’s efforts and intuitively understand how to manage the information in a way congruent with the needs of both the Russian state and the Novorossiyan revolution.  Cooperation with Yandex is just a matter of doing internet business in Russia, and Yandex’s cooperation with the FSB is not any more than what Google has done for the FBI.  In fact, this is far more likely to be the case, and if the Russian state after the fact sees anything good in what he has done, this is fine too.

But finally, our thesis stands confirmed, and Rozhin’s own comments about the information war are identical to how we have explained the information war and the real nature of Russian support for Novorossiya since we began writing on the subject at the start of this year.  For example, Rozhin writes:

“I think in the future THEY will slowly reveal other details of the invisible but effective work of Voentorg, when the northern wind brought junta forces to a severe military catastrophe.”

Referring to inside information he had in August, he continues:

“I hope now my post from August will be more clear.  Then I could only speak in those terms, today I can say more, and in a few months and even years even more will be told.  It is difficult to keep quiet, when you know about such things and people are asking – where did the new AFV come from or “what is that in the backround of that video?” But you have to understand, that one has to keep quiet until the time comes, due to information war and military secrets. In reality those who fought in Donbass, and those who helped with logistics sooner or later learned about Voentorg and its functions such things which are not shown on TV or online. This is part of ‘hybrid’ and ‘web-centric’ (net-centric) wars, which Russia is learning today, when information cover becomes one of the important parts of military planning.  Americans are pros in this, but Russia for the most part is learning from them, and the war in Georgia, and Crimean spring, and Voentorg in Novorossia show that from a purely military perspective, our army is learning fast, although there are mistakes, problems and shortcomings. And the main thing – officially there was never a Russian army on the territory of DPR and LPR.  [18]”

Due to their large readership, this is an important message: in 4GW, the ‘other side’ also peruses very deeply all of the most trusted bloggers on the subject.  This is something which military intelligence decisions are actually made by under conditions of 4GW, when there is a lack of real or reliable infiltration or interception based intel.  We have already explained how new media truths are considered more truthful than old media truths.

There is something approaching a 1:1 ratio between the general thrust of Rozhin’s write ups on the one hand, and the continual weakness ruse-meme which has – hard to conceive as coincidentally – benefited both the Russian and Novorossiyan initiative.  From this we can make rational deductions about what this implies with regard to the fantastically important role of Rozhin.

The real meaning of Rozhin’s work will be the subject of analysts and students alike for a generation to come.

According to our guide  to “Technically Correct Propaganda”, from last July, El Murid and Rozhin are serving the proper function in reporting this conflict within the context of a struggle against all odds, including the narrative of a betrayal from ‘our own’ at the top, in this way [19]. This is a brilliant way of explaining things which are, in reality more complex, and less inspiring.  It is a popular theme in television and films: the captain who won’t let the platoon finish the job and take out an easy target, the police chief who won’t let the detective follow the leads and crack the case.  These are popular because they relate to both the way we interpret our subjective experiences in life and work situations, and these also exploit a fundamental sense of alienation (based in a sense of unrecognized ownership) which individuals experience working and living in institutions, where decisions are made at the top for reasons outside of what we understood the mission of the institution to be.

That the Ukraine/NATO side has not been able to mirror this really demonstrates a real weakness, and hopefully in part answers any question about ‘why’ the Ukrainians would fall for these ruse memes so many times consecutively.  They come from sources which now exist at the pinnacle of truth, through new media.


Problems in the Separation of Reality from the Simulacrum 

From the syncretic work we have produced on this subject, drawing from numerous schools such as Baudrillard’s post-structuralism and Kuhn’s theory of of the structure of scientific revolutions, to name just a few, we have attempted to explain both some features of the information war and how the present schema or paradigm is constructed, and how that construct contains certain features which can be manipulated and exploited through the use of simulacrum and hyper-reality.

More to the point, we have based much of our understanding on the premise that societies composed of managers and the managed must create a paradigm which has exploitable features for the purpose of social control.  The Ukraine civil war is the first war in history in which both actual sides (US and Russia) struggle for supremacy using similarly derived theories of new media and their connection to 4GW.  While the use of proxies has long been a feature of war, that both sides use proxies in the sense of 4GW doctrines, and that the ‘stories’ being told extend from new media, is a new phenomenon.

There are some problems, however, for both the US and Russian information and reality managers.  Being able to create hyper-reality does not, in the first place, require having a solid footing in the actual reality.  In many ways, ‘actual reality’ may be an ever-elusive thing which can never fully be grasped.  We are, as human beings, a species which is already born into a reality comprised of the previous generation’s interwoven combination of actual reality and hyper-reality.  Our society, a social construct, is an outgrowth of our genetic potential.  The creation of various primitive forms of hyper-reality is as natural to humanity as the bird constructing its nest.  But just as the invention of the train or automobile changed forever our relationship with distance, and even the relative size of the earth, the invention of new media has changed our relationship with actual reality and the kinds of reality and hyper-reality we construct.  It is not difficult, then, for even the agent of social control, working at the think tank, to lose sight of reality itself.  What was that individual’s origin point?  Everyone working today on these projects was already born into a world of machines, production of the means of creation and destruction, automated wars, electricity, and mass media.

From an analytic point of view, this creates a conundrum.  Analysis, discourse, map-drawing etc. are themselves a form of hyper-reality creation.  Analysis is done in the mind of the analyst, and is drawn from, at best primary sources, but are generally not the primary source itself.  It must go through the medium of language and contrived/presented imagery (photos, etc.) before it gets to the analyst.  Additionally, even when the analyst is the witness percipient, their interpretations and written or spoken analysis reflect their prior biases, beliefs, prejudices, and thought processes; which in short can be described as defective by way of their subjectivity.

Thus from the analyst:  all words, language; things signifying and signified; which pertain to actual reality, are themselves indistinguishable from hyper-reality.  Analysis based on interpreting actual reality and analysis based in interpreting the simulacrum are both, in many ways, hyper-real presentations.  The map is not the terrain.

To problematize ‘objective’ reporting and analysis, is really to lay-out the problems with the concept of objectivity, which leaves us with only a remaining intersubjective agreement [20].  Therefore we can see the power of new-media (which is based on the echoing of information through many subjects, peer to peer), and the transformation of the simulacrum from being a distinct hyper-reality unto itself, into a totalizing entity which subsumes, devours, and overtakes reality into itself.  It becomes, then, within the liberal, emotional state, of the Popperian ‘critical rationalist’ paradigm, most appropriate and ‘reasonable’ to uphold the hyper-reality as the actual reality [21].

Given this reality, or rather lack of solid reality, one can only imagine how individuals like Poroshenko even survive, if they do.  While being of above average intelligence, he cannot be capable of really understanding the complexity of the constructed and managed world – the stage – upon which he acts.  Imagine the frustration Poroshenko may feel, to be smart enough to understand that he is not smart enough to really understand; to be able to see in the distance the outlines of a system of world control, but to never really make out its features or get close enough to it.  How must he feel being in a room with Putin, knowing that Putin has analyzed him and understands him far better than he understands himself? What must it be like to be a blind person who stands naked in front of the seeing?


Poroshenko’s Dilemma

Petro Poroshenko, 'Chocolate King', Ukrainian MP and backer of the Euromaiodan protests in KievThe root problem for Poroshenko is that he is in over his head, and relies upon the advice of others.  But how to trust advisers, and which ones?  What Poroshenko may understand is that the actions he is being threatened with overthrow to carry out, will themselves likely result in his overthrow.  That is the dilemma, while Pravy Sektor and Svoboda pressure upon Poroshenko’s regime is increasing by the day. These are being largely orchestrated, as we have explained, by the Atlanticists’ intelligence network.  There are numerous short and long-term problems with the US propping up a semi-legitimate government in a state which they want to destroy.  The CIA, MI6, and Mossad are controlled by an interlocking directorate, and form the deep state of the Atlanticist, US Empire.  The Mossad has considerably greater human resources and direct intelligence assets in the Ukraine theatre, and due to FSB assets within the present Ukraine SBU, these are likely to be further utilized to replace the existing compromised intelligence and leadership structures, as events unfold.

All the while, even Poroshenko has been spared any really broad or irreversible condemnation from Moscow officialdom, leaving necessary doors open, as the US project adaptively unfolds, based on its various contingencies [22].

This had the effect of creating a discourse which allowed either a flourishing or an evolution of Poroshenko’s position.  Poroshenko was vetted through the US’s ‘Our Ukraine’ program, and was set up as one of the network’s leaders [23].  This vetting creates for us a difficult analytic quandary.  The debate, and the question for the FSB and the Russian state, surrounds around whether Poroshenko is used by the US because of his ambivalence towards power, or his desire for it.

Also at issue is whether his disposition is solid, or whether it can it be influenced and is of a transitory or amorphous nature.  These were and are significant questions because the answers will indicate the scope of possibility, as well as the likelihood, of success of the US effort against Russia in this phase.

If Poroshenko wants – in his thinking – to transform from a mere puppet of the Atlanticists to an actual decision maker, he will require Russian assistance.  This is because nearly all of the proscriptions from the US, required of Poroshenko, were not just aimed at drawing Russia into an ever growing Ukraine quagmire, but also at destabilizing the Poroshenko led junta.  The Kiev Junta still retains the semblance of a representative republic based on some ostensible notion of pluralism and civil society, and this is ultimately an obstacle to US aims.

Poroshenko’s military misadventures create a further decrease in public legitimacy. This was, for the US, very clearly foreseeable from a military perspective, and its political and social ramifications no less obvious.  This gives a plausible piece of corroborating evidence that in fact this dynamic is not accidental.  Combined with this being, actually, the only in-context based method which can arrive at the desired evolution of the conflict towards 4GW, from the US perspective, makes it nearly certain to have been intentional.

The Kiev Junta’s use of media must be understood as 3GW, which is inferior to 4GW.  This is not optimal for the US in terms of escalating the war effort successfully.  Recall that for the US, success is not the creation of a stable ‘ally’ in the region, but rather the creation of a failed state on Russia’s border with both the potential to grow into a broader regional conflict and quagmire, but also to set back Russia-Europe bilaterial relations and the economic integration process spanning from Iberia to Siberia.

The US’s main asset within Ukraine, moving forward, is its control over the Pravy Sektor and Svoboda, and in this context, it already has a well developed 4GW contingency.  In order to regain strategic parity, the US must evolve their end of the conflict from a 3GW paradigm into a 4GW paradigm where the Pravy Sektor and related take the lead.

Conversely, they would also want to get Russia to over-commit on an official-state level, either prematurely or haphazardly, regressing the Russian effort from a 4GW one to 3GW. Thus the 4GW guerrilla war and proxy war is no longer waged by Russia, but on Russia.   Likewise, with official Russian involvement, then official Russian statements and Russian media coverage on the old media (3GW) model, would overtake and marginalize their so-far successful new media (4GW) approach.

Russia may be able to manipulate any psychological attachment Poroshenko has to his position, if their assessments are accurate and lead to that conclusion.  This will draw the situation out, as time is on Russia’s side.  That doesn’t mean that Russia thinks that they can either believe ‘in’ Poroshenko, or see him as a reliable long term partner.  Critical here will be if Poroshenko’s attachment to power can allow him to self-delude into believing that the Russians see him as a long-term viable partner.  Alternatively, if Poroshenko has no ambitions in statecraft, then Russians can appeal to those aims as well, provided they are able to establish that Poroshenko’s ‘exit’ will not be clean and will not leave him absolved of the crimes committed on his watch and under his orders.

Factoring in account Nuland’s visit and the continued bolstering of the Pravy Sektor and Svoboda, it would corroborate the thesis that Poroshenko is himself conflicted between one of several inevitabilities.  Certainly that the US must use its far-right tools as a pressure on Poroshenko reveals a strong likelihood that there are other pressures he perceives and is influenced by, which are either material or organizational.  It would be highly unlikely that an FSB asset or agent assigned to Poroshenko would not have also helped him connect some of the obvious dots.  Additionally, it is probably true that he has some skeletons in the closet, most likely to be related to something in the arena of ‘sexual deviance’.  These kind of skeletons are practically prerequisites for the US to take someone on as a political agent.  We see this being more or less thoroughly the case within the US governorships, congress, senate, and presidency.  It is also probably true within the top brass of the military.

So it is not rational to speak of Russian or American ‘trust’ of Poroshenko.  Him being under some kind of Manchurian Candidate type of mind control would be the only other viable option for the US  in terms of knowing for certain what he will do.   So, this is not a matter of “trust” in the way it is entirely misunderstood in the mind of the layman.  The liberal idealist is mostly unable to understand what it really means. It has little to do with intentions in the abstract.  Rather, trust relates to predictability: correct assessments, that one is able predict exactly how the other will act.  This is based in a proper assessment of the machinations and the pressures acting on the subject combined with a correct assessment of the subject’s psychological makeup.  That is realist trust: “I trust you as far as I can throw you.”

Lukashenko of Belarus has played a critical role in maintaining the veneer of neutrality, and using the spectacle of media to create the false impression that Eurasian Customs Union members and CSTO members act independently.  These are aimed of course at certain sectors of undecided elites in Afghanistan, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan.  But in the immediate context, these are aimed at Ukraine and Poroshenko.  Lukashenko may also have Belarus play an increased role, now that they have established the veneer of impartiality.  The symbolism in hosting of the September 5 meeting in Minsk was itself a declaration of sorts.

If Poroshenko actually wants to retain power, then he must avoid anything which would shift power outside of the the formalized process, and further in the direction of the PS and Svoboda.

Keep in mind that most of Ukrainian security establishment’s ‘sense’ of the ebb and flow of the Novorossiyan end of this conflict are based on the work of the top two or three Russian bloggers, with Cassad being the topmost.


Novorossiya: Maintaining the 4GW Upper Hand

Both the Russians and the Americans want to be the ones running vaguely defined 4GW type actions. If you can push the other side into using 3GW tactics, they are losing.

There have been numerous concerns raised by various analysts about the ‘divisions’ in the Novorossiyan leadership.  The chatter from the Novorossiya side seems to indicate that there exists a serious problem in this.  Because these involve people under strenuous conditions, and ambitions and ideologies, as well as trust issues, lead to clashes of sorts, we are confronted with another factor.

Because much of the Novorossiyan reporting on these conflicts is promulgated in official or quasi-official sources; then consider what that means.  Novorossiyan leadership’s job is to dissemble the reality of a highly organized hierarchy with clearly defined short, middle, and long terms goals, along with the strategies needed to get them, and the various tactics that will be used along the way.  In our past work, we already described the numerous times that the various Novorossiyan militias were able to conceal their strength and compel the enemy to attack prematurely, haphazardly, and in manner leaving their supply lines and rearguards over-stretched.  This resulted in the now infamous cauldrons.

Still, further clarity on the subject is needed. What is distorted, using new media in the information war, on the receiving end for the media consumer, is not the same as what is understood within the leadership itself.  They are acting out their ‘confusion’ script.  It cannot be forgotten that nearly every  person on both the political and military side was placed there by the Russians.  There is only one chain of command and there is only one grand strategy.  It follows from this, that with a high degree of certitude we can say: they are on the same page.  Each major event of real significance confirms this thesis.  Our work has centered around this thesis and has allowed us to explain and forecast the events with a considerable degree of accuracy, since January.

Calls to better centralize the command are very important to make, because they create the impression of a decentralized command.  But the new methods of centralization, and this is critical, in 4GW which mirrors the technology used, allows for a greater degree of autonomy and decision making at the ground level.  Communication technologies and the dissemination of broader ranges of knowledge, an increase in generalists with specializations, as opposed to the older model which saw a clear separation of these two, are features of modern organization in all spheres of life including war.  In many ways, the new ‘centralization’ has many similar features with what would be called ‘chaos’ or disorganization in 2GW models.

So while it is true that there is significant decentralization among the NM fighters when compared to the Russian Army, it is actually the NM that is creating a new model for the Russian Army and not the Russian Army that is setting a standard for the NM that it cannot yet achieve.  Talk to the contrary serves a propaganda purpose, and not much else.



The Strength of Weakness, and the Organizational Superiority of Disorgnization

Russia is winning the 4GW side of the information war, and the 4GW side of the action on the ground.  Russia has supposedly various militias, ostensibly organized now, but who is in charge?  Not being able to answer that is key to understanding Russia’s position.  This is the preferable position to have.  Problems arise in trying to present different messages to different audiences, when there are significant instances of the right information going to the wrong people, and so forth.  While there is a command structure, it has been important in ‘net-centric’ information war to dissemble this fact tremendously.

The US uses its conventional mainstream media to push their position – this is the information war side of 3GW.  At the start, they used 4GW methods to get the Maidan square protests going, and escalated into controlled chaos.  But now, things have evolved against them.  The US uses a conventional Ukraine Army organization with a clearly responsible leader (Poroshenko) and command structure underneath.  The situation fails, and Poroshenko falls. This is the 3GW position liability.

Why is promoting that there is not clear leadership a strategic strength?  Having a clear leadership means a lot of liabilities.  First we must consider that there are a lot of expectations and emotionally based political views; it cannot be ignored that the people of Novorossiya have been shelled and have lost many people to this, to death squads, and countless more have fled to Russia.  Strategic planners must develop their plans based purely in the cold and calculating logic of geostrategy.  The wants and needs of the people cannot dictate the course of action.  The resolute commitment and determinations of the people must be steered and managed a certain way.  Being led by those determinations (popular needs and wants), however, would lead to defeat and far more death and destruction.

Therefore, being able to create a fictional division between a Novorossiyan government and army which wants to fight, and  a Russian government that is holding them back or threatening to cut off humanitarian aid, is very important.  Variations of this mythic theme, for obvious reasons, would and have included also that there exists a divide between the civilian government of Novorossiya and the armed forces.  Lastly, and to an extent more reality based than the others, (though still greatly exaggerated), is the propagation of the view that there is significant political infighting between the militias themselves.

At issue is the role of public statements of any kind.  Perhaps people would like to think they are getting real information from the Novorossiyan and Russian leadership, but this would make little sense.  It would cost a lot and pay very little.  The truth is not palatable to the people, and secondly it reveals both your own real situation as well as likely future plans.

Disorganization is the new form of organization in 4GW.  Things like accountability, compromises, agreements, transparency, debt, government, sovereignty, courts, laws, and rights are all entirely too cumbersome and problematic for the coming future world.  The far west is losing touch with reality, existing within its notional hyper-reality.  Combined with some transhumanist fixations, they may be attempting to create walled cities which will be mirrored in the walled garden internet they are building.  Nation-states, in their model, will dissipate, allowing for a further realization of their neo-liberal agenda.  The Washington Consensus views the final disappearance of national boundaries and sovereignty as an ideal goal, allowing for the flow of capital and labor in ways which they can manage.

The entire outside world, beyond the safety of the walls, will be a dystopic world of ideological and post-ideological fighting groups, bandits and marauders, religious leaders and their followers, engaged in a free for-all struggle for resources.  This struggle for resources will be contrived, and aimed at a destructive winding down of the world population, based on new modes of production and distribution.  New forms of energy and production will allow for a post-scarcity economic system, but only to be enjoyed by the elites and only at the expense of the multitudes.  This is an ideal world for the far western elite, who have been deracinated and alienated from humanity for too long, and who are, ethically and spiritually speaking, homeless.  It will be socialism for the rich, and ‘The Road Warrior’ for the rest.

This kind of planned chaos or disorganized organization is a developed feature of 4GW. Combined with the doctrines of 4GW and the military industrial complex, we encounter an approaching near-term future where all people are consumed in very direct ways with an endless and ever expansive war effort taking place both on the real and hyper-real planes.

While in the microcosm of the Ukraine conflict, Russia has proved a high level of adaptability and capacity to employ the new doctrines of warfare and information, it is operating on a distinctly different trajectory.  It is pushing for an opposing trend, one which counters the broad civilization-ending trajectory of the far-west.  It is seeking to build multipolarity and constructive, horizontal ways, of juggling the dual needs of sovereignty and cooperation.  It has a very real and practical need to maintain elements of its traditions and history.

Both the US and Russia have demonstrated different ways of using weakness as strength. For the US it has been able to use its post-war counter-culture as a volatile toxic agent, which it spreads around the world as a destabilizing, culture destroying, and alienating element.  This simultaneously destroys self esteem, making for compliant consumers, while at the same time building false senses of meaning in activities which erode human trust and detract from human interactions.  It has had the same effect within the US, but the tremendous productive capacity combined with extracted surplus value from the ‘world economy’ has allowed it to justify the imprisonment of more people than anywhere else in the world.  When other countries attempt this, if they can afford it, they are declared a ‘regime’ – the second part of that term now being ‘change’.

The weakness in the US of not having a single culture or identity was used as a strength. Being instead premised in part on the conquest of lands from indigenous peoples, and the stolen  labor and lives in the form of the slave trade, this lack of a single national or ethnic identity was transformed into the strength of a class society.  In a manner mirroring Oswald Spengler’s criticism of English political-economy, the US has no other identity but its class identity [24].  It is a class system without a national consciousness.  This allows extreme forms of exploitation without a sense of remorse or the kinds of intra-tribal affiliations, which otherwise may act as a deterrent against the worst expressions of class on class exploitation.

The Russians, as Slavs, and less discussed, as Turks, on the other hand, have a very different history.  Eurasia is a giant land-mass, existing as a ‘big space’ within which allows for the self determination of this spectrum of European, Slavic, Turkic, and east Asian peoples.  It possesses no shortage of lebensraum, and its various peoples have not undergone the deracination process.  These peoples have thrived in various organized forms of disorganization, and their various larger political-space building processes have experienced expansion and contraction.  These repeated cycles of expansion and contraction over hundreds and thousands of years have given a great impetus for the development of local and familial bonds and social organization, transmitted inter-generationally within the multi-generational household.  Layered over this, a developed sense of not just being a population, but rather belonging to a ‘narod’ [25].  Through this lens, we can see that Russian and Asiatic power have been practitioners of ‘soft power’ before there was such a conceptual framework to place it in.  The special needs of individuals become the common cause of whole families, villages and small communities; a sense of commonality connects these even where endless plains separate them, and even when power groupings are not only decentralized or contracted, but also at odds.

In a sense, talk of a clash of civilizations, while disturbing to the western pacifist, is a reality.  Because of the Atlanticist system of values, it is inevitable.  People of the world are forced to fight wars of self defense, and the western pacifist equivocates and blames ‘both sides’ for the bellicosity.  The 4GW model is a very elucidating lesson indeed, because the methods used are not confined to war, or even to information, but also to social formation, morality, law, and culture.  Its effects in the realm of political economy and normative economics (in practice, as positive economics) have been no less organized through disorganization.

Thus, the far-west and the east are now at war, here economic, there military, which grows more open and more official with each passing day.  It has been ratcheted up over the last several decades as to become a normal feature of life.

The de-dollarisation of BRICS is another front in this war.  How long will it be before Gazprom demands payment in euros or rubles from all customers as a matter of policy?The dollar will phase itself out as the world’s reserve currency. Being able to continue to use the dollar is good for everyone’s well being for now, because any nation who does this when they have the option not to is doing it from a position of strength, which they realize.

Keeping the dollar in the game also may create incentives the US to behave a little better. This will keep them at the bargaining table, and may mitigate their more destructive alternatives.   Because if the US finds its dollar totally collapsing, then little will be there to keep them from escalating the present state of war to unimaginable proportions.

This can help explain why Russia has repeatedly shown an interest in keeping the dollar afloat, has, up until sanctions made it impossible, continued to buy treasury bonds, and participate in the western stock markets.

Disorganization following the collapse of the USSR resulted in new forms of organization, playing upon informal models; game theory stopped operating at the level of state to state interactions, and broke down to powerful individuals within the society resulting in a “tragedy of the commons” scenario.  Some have, with no small degree of credibility, pointed to the thesis that this Russian involvement in the western economies is indicative of the dangerous and problematic nature of the Russian Oligarchy.   Connected with this idea, then, is that such investments are creating serious divisions within Russian society. This much is very true, but there is more to this.


The Russian Oligarchy in brief

The Russian oligarchy is not to be trusted, but neither should their power be over-estimated.

In understanding and describing the delicate balance between a rationalist, centralizing, long-term thinking power like the ‘state’, vs. the profit oriented, quarterly thinking, self-interested oligarchy, it can be difficult to summarize certain aspects without necessarily ignoring others.

Nevertheless, our general thesis has been that the information war and ‘weakness’ ruse-meme being superimposed onto the actual Novorossiyan situation, is also being used within Russia. It is an effective use of simulacrum.

In the same way that the KJ forces can be lured out into open battle, and summarily encircled or routed, the 6th column in Russia can expose themselves as an actual 5th column.  This 5th column, feeling a false sense of security and being emboldened, will be lured out into open political conflict, encircled and routed..

An underlying component is, psychologically, that these oligarchs are opportunity oriented. Their success so far has depended on making pseudo-calculated decisions, combined with a psychological fear of missing opportunities. An age old known quantity, is that opportunities can be missed, and for these oligarchs acting too late is something they would want to avoid at all costs. They are risk takers of extraordinary proportions. That is their “psychological profile”.

So for the Russian state, creating a hyper-reality based conditions under which oligarchs would feel emboldened to come out openly in political battle, would fit quite well into how this model is known to function.

Understanding the context of a Russian state, employing thousands of brilliant minds in think tanks and study groups, divided into separate teams – to varying degrees free of cross contamination – and avoiding Abilene paradox – we can surmise with a fair degree of confidence, that because one can sketch a scenario under which otherwise stochastic phenomenon can be explained, at least partially, as a tactic, then it is most prudent to deduce that it is likely connected to a known tactic.

Revolution is hardly the game of the Oligarchs, and the course of the Novorossiyan Revolution has raised serious alarms. The question here, however, is the extent to which the more responsible oligarchs, the ‘nationalized bourgeoisie’, can be sold the package – however possible, true, or not – that the Novorossiya ‘Revolution’ more resembles an ‘Arab Spring’ tactic, but this time employed by the Kremlin.

Since these oligarchs would tend to, from ideological bias, dispute the idea that there is a such a thing as naturally arising revolutions (most of them believe that the Bolshevik revolution was the product of foreign tinkering and freemasonry/Decembrism among the officer corps, ‘jews’, Germans etc.), then the Russian State could sell them on the idea that the ‘spectacle’ of Revolution in Novorossiya is ‘under control’, and actually in their class interests.

Since the early 1990’s, the Russian deep state has struggle to nationalize its own bourgeoisie, and to align their interests more coherently with the national interests.  What we have found most compelling in the course of our research and development of a total view of the Russian situation, is the thesis that Putin is primarily a representative not of the oligarchy in the anarchic sense, but of a national elite which has taken an rather Oriental approach to power.

A strong state separate from the global hegemon with a characterizing sovereign nature, which has nominal independence from, but exists within the global framework of, international finance capital, cannot be a plutocracy or an oligarchy.  It will have plutocrats and oligarchs, with investment and political ties internationally, which we can also term a bourgeois aristocracy of sorts.

But the strong sovereign state cannot be ruled by an oligarchy in this global stage of late imperialism or late capitalism, and rather must be ruled by, under nominally bourgeois norms, an executive power which sits above these oligarchs, and derives power from a trans-class alliance; using popular reforms and the specter of the class struggle in order to place a check upon the oligarchy, plutocracy, or aristocracy.

This approach to power involves thinking in terms of decades at the very least, and even centuries, and placing an importance on soft power.  It often surprises the western academic how well the Russian academics and educated elites actually know their own history, and how much literature and effort has been put into understanding how the essence of the Slavic world has endured through the centuries.

Long term and strategic thinking is a prominent feature of Russian academic and elite culture.  These differences between Russian and far-Western approaches on any number of things, from philosophy of life, to the nature of and purpose of civilization ,should neither be over-stated or idealized, nor should they be overlooked and ignored on the faulty basis of a belief in the ‘sameness’ of people around the world.  The Russian oligarchy should be entrapped and encircled in legal, political, and cultural ways just as the KJ forces are in Novorossiya.


Concluding Notes

(These concluding notes will attempt to tie a few things together, but also address a number of questions which have come up regularly from readers and colleagues alike. Some of these do not require enough to merit their own chapter, and will be addressed here.  Of course they all relate to the war in Ukraine, but they are not necessarily connected by theme.  Others are just meta-political issues and commentary which explain some of the processes that operate upon me in the background.  Because of this, some of these smaller issues will just appear, in the below, without any introductory or transitional comments.)

It is an enticing analogy to make, that the project termed ‘Novorossiya’, New Russia, is not just a piece of land in the former Ukraine, but a larger concept which reframes something else.  In the 1990’s, we heard much of ‘New Russia’, which Yeltsin symbolized.  This was actually the most disastrous decade in Russian history outside of the suffering during the Great Patriotic War in the 40’s of the last century.  With the civil war in Ukraine, the outing of the Russian oligarchy, and a revitalized sense of purpose and mission which distinguishes Russian civilization from that of the far-west, the term ‘Novorossiya’, New Russia’ represents an empowering appropriation of the term.

Likewise, Euromaidan was termed the ‘Ukrainian Spring’ at first, from Occupy Kiev/99%, which was accurately termed this because this was among other things, also an NED backed project with all of George Soros’s people involved, such as the Otpor! criminal at large, Srđa Popović.  A few years ago, also, an attempt was made by the same cabal to organize a Russian Spring or Occupy Moscow.

In a similar sense, the term ‘Russian Spring’ has been appropriated and flipped on its head.  The renewal of Russia, through the New Russia project, has really been a Russian Spring.   And yet for this to be realized in full, certain goals must be realized by Russia.

It is possible that Russia’s goal of regime change in Kiev will not be had anytime soon, and that Novorossiya will solidify and cohere more and more.  Still, an independent Novorossiya and regime change in Kiev are not mutually exclusive. At the same time, neither is entirely contingent on the other.  Yet still, the European angle is one deserving attention as well.

The goal of the US was never for Ukraine to enter the EU. The inner party EU Atlanticists knew, and know, that the efforts pertain to the US minimum and maximum goals. This has nothing to do with the economy of the EU.

Keep in mind that wealth is relative and moreover, EU elites whose power is not based in domestic wealth but in currency manipulation and foreign investment are themselves not invested in the well-being of their ‘own people’. They can destroy all of EU, it’s all good for them.

The inner party EU Atlanticists sold to the outer party EU Atlanticists a false bill of goods. The outer party believe that Europe prospers ‘generally’ (in either the liberal capitalist or social-democratic sense) with deep US ties.

Together, this was sold to the outer party EU Eurasianists. In general, all Eurasianists are for things which lead to further EU and Eurasian integration. They were sold the false bill of goods that while Russia will be initially resistant, that this could lead to further integration with Ukraine being part of a broader integration process.  Only the inner party EU Eurasianists could see what the US was up to. They are the ones on the inside track with the Russians.

On the subject of Poroshenko’s future, Russia may want to help keep Poroshenko in power and have him do a Karzai/Saddam/Assad maneuver, giving up on a western alliance in order to pursue the intersection of national and personal interest.  Realistically, it the only way that the Russians can give him a model by which he may think he could remain in office. 

Poroshenko may require Russian support for any number of outstanding issues.  To remain in power and avoid the devolution of the present situation into a continually devolving catastrophe, he will need to use the Russian FSB to root out the CIA, MI6 and Mossad, from the levers that control him.  Other areas of help may include sending in Pravy Sektor fighters into dead zones.  That may not be really possible in totality, but everything is in degrees and shades. It can certainly set back the US effort to make Ukraine a perpetual warzone, if only by a few seasons.

Russia may also be wise to come back with another deal for gas.  300 euros per unit of gas, or some forgiveness of past debt, tied to certain conditions, which will draw a deal close to this equivalent.   Ukraine will also require loans to the tune of billions for reconstruction.  Perhaps the Chinese can bail out that 15 billion that it already offered in December.  A cost benefit analysis needs to be done.

“No Gas for Ukraine” will create the failed state, and Russia does not benefit from the failed state in a condition of perpetual war.  The US actually wants Russia to turn the gas off, it is really not a realistic or responsible threat for Russia to carry through with.  There is some power in projecting a willingness to do this, because the US believes it has Russia between a rock and a hard spot with the way it has set up the current conflict, and in a way it has.  There seems to be, coming from the external pro-Novorossiyan camp, some destructive attitudes to this conflict, resulting in things like ‘let them freeze’ and referring to Ukrainians as ‘Ukies’.  At the end of the day, these are just human beings, and for the most part of history, Ukrainians were seen as another kind of Slav across a pan-Slavic world, and even closest in kind to Russians.

An unfortunate product of this war has been the desired one from the Atlanticist perspective – the increase in animosity between Ukrainians and Russians.  It is also unfortunate that those sympathetic to the Novorossiyan side have bought into an increasingly polarized discourse.

The reality is that up until the middle of the last decade, the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians had positive attitudes towards Russia and Russians.  It is important to see that the Ukrainians too are the victims in all of this.  It is far too easy to blame the regular Ukrainians for what is going on, even if they are supportive of the so called ATO.  If mass psychology, advertising, marketing, propaganda weren’t the real cause of the majority of people’s commitments, beliefs, and attitudes, then it would not be considered as perhaps the most important factor in society.

It is also important to remember a world not too long ago, 25 years ago, in 1989.  A war between Russia and Ukraine – a civil war within the USSR, would have been a dream come true for the Pentagon.  If you want to understand who made this war, who wanted this war, and who benefits from this war, just consider whose dreams and long standing fantasies this scenario is a realization of.

The officially stated goals of the Russians over Novorossiya are simply autonomy for Novorossiya in a federal Ukraine, but this is only possible with a pro-Russian government in Kiev.  Without the latter, the former is impossible.   The Russian population within Ukraine’s east had hitherto been able to be part of a semi-rational political outcome within the entire Ukrainian space.  That is a workable scenario, but because it is, NATO will do everything to stop that.

But US efforts to frustrate this, if successful, also mean a likely Independent Novorossiya, but also an ongoing US backed proxy war with a Pravy Sektor Junta.  The truth is that this is a man-made phenomenon, it issocially constructed.  It is too easy to see a lot of the peripheral events related to this as being random or arbitrary.  They are not.

A hard reality for many people supporting Novorossiya is that Russia is controlling the political and military process on the pro-Russian side.  The desire to want the events in Novorossiya to be in the hands of the locals comes from a good place, but it is also not a reality based place.  However, this belief that the locals are fundamentally in control also allows for the interesting use of feigned divisions and scripted dramas.  This has worked at very well for the Novorossiyan side.

At the end of this major chapter in the war, we stand at the horizon of the next.  From here looking back, more things are clear and any number of things can be said now with more certainty than every before.  In looking at end games, conclusively, we can say this.

The end game for the US is minimally a failed state in this region, which sets back economic development at the very least, and frustrates economic development connecting Europe to Eurasia.  To create perpetual animosity between Ukrainians and Russians, is also an achievement.  Even if the war ended soon, much work would have to be done to rebuild the ties between these people.

The end game for the US maximally involves drawing Russia into an over-committed direct conflict in three regions simultaneously (Syria, Ukraine, Caspian), and possibly world war.  This involves such a degree of material, infrastructural damage to the economy and the normal functioning of every day lives for the people, that even an eventual victory would be almost Pyrric.  Forward, this would also include, as we have stated in the past, a land-war in Eurasia between European and Asian powers, allowing the US to retool its economies and erase its debt.

And for Russia?  Their end game is minimally regime change in Kiev, with either neutrally Russia leaning or outright pro-Russian leadership. In all reality, the issue of Novorossiya should be understood in different terms, because a federal Ukraine allows both for the autonomy and self determination of the ethnic Russians in Novorossiya while at the same time they have a tremendously positive influence on the national political scene, making sure to elect people to positions in Kiev which hold all of Ukraine together, and keep it safely in a Russia friendly position.

The end game for Russia maximally is redirection of EU away from NATO control, disinvestment with US bonds and banking problems arising from repackaged debt.  A controlled, slow motion, collapse of the US is the most prudent safe way to go about the dismantling of the empire in the face of the emergent multi-polar world.

In analyzing the Ukraine conflict, we have attempted not to cover every possible variable, this is far too complex.  Being aware of what this involves, we understand both the extent and scope of such work, including the kinds of resources involved.

What have done, however,  is provide a meta-analysis, so we are explaining the mechanisms involved. We are explaining that it is formulaic, and in that sense structural, and we even describe the features of the formalization process that are used by intelligence and planning departments.

We explain that this involves stochastic/Markov analysis, Von Neumann equilibria theory, and using Osborne and Rubinstein game theory. All of these in the context of the related zero sum non cooperative scenario, and infinite game theory.  This is overlaid onto a generalist perspective involving social psychology, and neo-realist, and neo-idealist theory in the field of GP and IR.  It requires a formalization process which we have only described, but have not the resources to perform.

One of the main purposes in describing the process and the basic tools used is to dispel a lot of the mythology surrounding not only the war in Ukraine, but how decisions between states, within states, and between and within power structures in general are made optimally, when they have access to think tanks and similar institutions.  That formalization would need to be fleshed out with the things we have mentioned, as well as other variables, and then the formalization equations are aimed at developing values.

In short, we are explaining that there is a mathematics involved, but we are not performing the mathematics. These requires teams of scores, and several teams working under sequestration as to avoid Abilene paradox and cross contamination.  Only the very most broad and structurally arising trajectories can really be described by us, and even here, as you read, we are responsible in assigning a >40% chance of occurrence for events that have not yet occurred.  In the industry, this is called a PFA value.

We are confident in that what we have described is as accurate as we can deliver, precisely because we are aware of the real calculus involved in these planning/strategic scenarios.

The US’s goal is not resource extraction, but to create – to use a popular reference – a Mad Max scenario. Yes, this involves the reality of evolving post-state actors, and an ongoing struggle between a destructive Sea Power tendency which wants to Balkanize the world into endless conflict, vs. a Land Power which wants to congregate various people’s into pan-national blocks on a multi-polar basis – of which BRICS is simultaneously real, symbolic, and embryonic. This relates to ‘three worlds theory’, core-periphery theory in IR and GP, and can be summarized in part by the phrase ‘south-south’ trade. The idea being here that southern-hemispheric countries (it’s not geographically accurate, to the frustration of analysts!), which also include as many northern hemispheric countries, are by-passing the US and EU, and this relates to the eventual marginalization of the dollar, and its passing into history its status as the global reserve currency.

The US is working against the general tendency of the rate of profit to fall – see Kondratiev’s ”Long Wave theory”. Kondratiev was a Marxist but his work is used by the Austrian STV and MTV theorists, so it’s quite remarkable.

This tendency also affects the Chinese and Russians, and this will affect the class antagonisms in their own societies, as the increase in constant capital over variable capital leads as well to the possibility of significantly reduced work-loads, and a decrease in prices. But this corresponds to declining profits, based in LTV theory (as well as Kondratiev).

Economic development means price deflation. That is the primary contradiction of capitalism.  The best course to counter-act economic development is to destroy the means of production, achieved through perpetual war, destabilization, and the manipulation of the emerging/existing post-state reality into something quite opposite its final potential.

In our past work it is explained that the US’s ‘showing’ an interest in resource extraction is a ruse, a psychological operation aimed at marketing. But the marketing is not the product.

Some of the US’s miscalculations, to the extent that there are a few, is primarily ideologically based. There was an equally bloody and craven US imperialist oriented ruling class in the past, but they produced excellent planners, statesmen, and strategists.  Since the 1980’s, US culture has been overtaken by a sort of cult of capitalism, enshrined in films and TV shows, as well as music culture, from that period onward.

The cultural ideology promoted by the ruling class in turn begins to affect the next generation of the ruling class as well; with potentially catastrophic results.  Part of this culture is based on some ideas which result in underestimating the potential of people to resist.  This is because class differences are presented as reflecting intelligence differences. This underlying flaw, upon which many rational calculations are otherwise made, is one of several hubris-based clay feet which the Atlanticist empire presently stands on.

One cannot forget Glazyev’s view that Ukraine is under a US occupation. This seems the most likely. All ‘tests’ indicate that. He would not be permitted to say this if this were not one of only a very few official views which Russia is floating. It’s something like their ‘undercurrent’ official view; one they can couch as being just Glazyev’s, which allows them to give Poroshenko some wiggle room and encourage him where possible to act in ways which, in small ways, frustrate his US bosses.




1.  “Poroshenko frustrated by Rada refusing to recognize self-proclaimed republics as terrorist organizations”, Interfax Ukraine, August 4th, 2014

 2.  “Why was a Sunday Times report on US government ties to al-Qaeda chief spiked?”, Ceasefire Magazine, May 17th, 2013

 3.  “Pravy Sektor Coup as ISIS Scenario: NATO to Feign a ‘Unilateral’ Alliance With Russia”, Flores, Center for Syncretic Studies, Sept 15th, 2014

 “The US stages a coup ousting Poroshenko and installs Pravy Sektor in order to build international support for a Human Rights intervention against Pravy Sektor and to restore ‘democracy’ and ‘order’; the real aim being to create a failed state, perpetuate indefinite war on Russia’s door and even World War … and beyond”     

 4. “Ukraine & Novorossiya: There Never Was A Ceasefire”            

5.  “Battlefield Eastern Europe: The Anglo-American Alliance VS. The Eurasian Project”, J.V Capone, April 18th , 2014, Center for Syncretic Studies & Time Monk Radio – Paul Plane Interviews Joaquin Flores                                                                                                 

 6. “Galician Separatists Seek Independence from Ukraine, EU Membership”  DNR-News, October 20th, 2014                                                                                                                                                                   

 7.  “Nationalist Protest Turns Violent in Kiev”, Wall Street Journal , Oct 14th, 2014

“About 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside parliament Tuesday morning, faced by lines of armed riot police. Thirty-seven protesters were detained and 15 police officers injured, officials said, as riot police held back demonstrators from the parliament building.”

 8.  “Nuland’s active involvement in dialogue between Kiev, militias will not be useful”, Tass, October 9th, 2014                                                                                                                                                                 

9. “Lavrov: West may use ISIS as Pretext to Bomb Syrian Government Forces”, Russia Today, September 9th, 2014                                                                                                                                                    

10.  “Geopolitical Conception of Globalization in the Interpretation of Alexander
Dugin”  Robert Ištok, Zuzana Jakabová, OSU Conference paper; Prešov University, Prešov, Slovakia

 11. “The Twenty Years Crisis”, E.H Carr, 1939

 12.  “London Is Eating New York’s Lunch”, New York Times, March 4th, 2012

 13.  “EU-Ukraine integration pact postponed till 2016 after talks between Moscow, Kiev & Brussels”. Russia Today, September 12th, 2014

“Moscow scored a major diplomatic coup after Kiev agreed to postpone the enforcement of its Association Agreement with EU until the end of next year, following three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and European Union officials in Brussels.”                                          

14. “Der Imperialismus” , Karl Kautsky,  Die Neue Zeit. 32 (1914), vol. 2, p. 908–922.

15.  “Игорь Стрелков: военторг заработал, надеюсь враг не решится наступать”, Russian Spring, October 23, 2014                                                                                  

16.  “Russian search-engine Yandex passed information to FSB”,                                                                                                                               

“Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, has confirmed that it passed confidential data to the country’s state security service, FSB.”

17.  “«Кассад» поставил информационный щит против потоков лжи с Украины”, Gregory Studnev, Rudis, September 16th, 2014                                                           


19. “Novorossiya: Analysis of the Propaganda War – Methods and Framework”, Joaquin Flores, Center for Syncretic Studies, July 9th, 2014            

20. “Intersubjectivity: Towards a Diological Analysis”, Gillespie, A. & Cornish, F. (2010), Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 40, 19-46

21. “Understanding the Astounding Novorossiyan Victories”, Joaquin Flores, Center for Syncretic Studies, August 30th, 2014                                      



24. “Prussianism and Socialism”, Oswald Spengler, 1920

25. “Battle for the State. Russians Awaken.”, Alexander Dugin (Nina Kouprianova translation), July 11th 2014            

“Liberalism’s view of epistemic matters is greatly lacking and involves a process of double-think.  On the one hand it suffers from a naive skepticism with regard to both epistemic and ontological matters, and tends towards a Popperian ‘critical rationalist’ view of the sciences and cognition.  Yet it is neither critical nor rational, but rather reasonable. Reasonableness is an emotional state like anger or infatuation, and like anger or infatuation is blinding in that it clouds judgment.”



27 thoughts on “The Ukrainian Failed State: Analysis of Phase 3

  1. Very good material. Thanks. Lots to chew over.

    By the way, do you think Russia has a realistic goal in hoping to keep the Ukraine in one state, minus the Crimea, and not hostile to Russia? Some of us see that as a totally logical goal, but have doubts about whether it is feasible. It looks like the views of Ukrainians vis-a-vis Russia have gradually gone down over the last 23 years, and the gradual death of older folks will lead to an even higher percentage of anti-Russians. So, to play Devil’s Advocate, Russia needs media and educational influence, plus a certain number of years to try to go back to how things were ten or fifteen years ago.

    • Hi Paul,
      And thanks.
      With your last point, actually we agree. Maybe we’re both Devil’s advocates then? 🙂

      With Crimea …. all I can really say at the moment is that in bargaining sometimes you are negotiating for something that you can’t really state in certain terms, you have to sort of talk around it, hint at it, hope its essence basically wafts over in the wanted direction.

      With that said, It will be very difficult to do this without saying ‘Crimea’ and ‘cheap gas’, ‘debt forgiveness’, and ‘Chinese loans’ in the same proposal.

  2. Hi Joaquin,

    Right after Yanukovich was ousted, I read someone from within Russia’s diplomatic circles saying something along the lines of “We overestimated the importance of buying things in the Ukraine.” The general implication is that money can resolve problems. That is frequently true, but the issue with certain geostrategic issues is that money is cheap for major countries, while control of choke points or destruction of enemy assets is beyond money. Additionally, Russia didn’t buy what the US and Germany bought, such as paramilitary groups or media and educational assets. The other thing for the Kremlin to ponder is whether their prostitutes inside the Ukraine were as bought as the US’s were. To spend a fortune on someone who puts his money in a Western bank doesn’t make him yours.

    So some of us are skeptical of the idea that Russia can buy peace in the Ukraine. The US might trade Syria or Russia’s influence in Germany for the Ukraine, but those are above money.

    On a different topic, what do you think of Russia’s 4GW regarding the Middle East or other important economic struggles, such as the dollar, BRICS, or the takedown of Cyprus?

  3. Pingback: Агент Минкомсвязи | Анти-Перестройка-2

  4. Pingback: Агент Минкомсвязи

    • Dear reader, read the article next time:


      So you see, it says the opposite, my friend.

  5. Pingback: Civil war in Ukraine - Page 427

  6. Thx a lot for the massive brainfood. Since a few days ago i´m reading in your blog and can not stop….
    Vieles sind völlig neue Erkenntnisse, Gedankengänge und Sichtweisen für mich, und manches habe ich mir ebenso gedacht, hätte es aber nie so treffend und auf den Punkt formulieren können.

  7. Joaquin,
    Congratulations, very good article. I have a few comments, can you reply for these comments, please?
    You said:
    That is exactly what happened in the WW2 with the Soviet Union, they were the big military winners of the war against fascist Europe (Germany, Italy, Croatia, Spain, Finland……) and the big economic losers. They paid the price for the 30 millions of death and the total destruction of their economy all along until Gorbachev.
    I read an article in Asia times Online (I don’t remember the author) in which he said that Uzbekistan will be the next trouble spot for Russia, China and Iran. Could be that? If that is true, the NATO occupation of Afghanistan makes sense from the point of view that Afghanistan will be to Uzbekistan what Poland has been to Ukraine.
    I don’t see how Russia can achieve such goal. Russia is totally collateral to capitalist system, they don’t have neither the economic, financial, military or technological power to do that. Maybe with China, Iran and India assistance they can, but right now is just wishful thinking.

    4. “The US is working against the general tendency of the rate of profit to fall”
    I totally agree that they are trying to destroy assets all around the world to obtain the same result that they achieved at the end of the WW2, to be the only producer of value. But I believe that is much more difficult this time. The creation of value is much more spread all around the world that it was in the 30’s when only a few Empires monopolized the creation of value, USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany, USSR, Japan, Italy, Netherland and Belgium.
    If US oligarchs can achieve such goal, that will means the destruction of the world in the way that we know today, not by nuclear means but terrorist means, IS, pravy sector and balkanization………
    If this theory is true, we can see the occupation of Iraq and the bombing of Serbia from another point of view. It was not only for the petrodollar, the investment cycle (also named bubble) arrived to the peak at this time (1999) and there was nothing left to invest to generate value in the same way that has been since. The house bubble was small potatoes.


      Yes, so we see a similar script playing out, in some ways, again. Uzbekistain has about 130km of shared border with Afghanistan, it’s quite well possible.


      It’s their goal. I did not intend for anyone to infer that this was some ‘go it alone’ plan of theirs, and theirs alone. Apologies for not clarifying. The ‘real International Community’ is working in concert to achieve this renegotiation of the world system, without either enabling the US to be destructive or confronting them in a manner likely to evoke an even further hostile reaction.


      Yes, more difficult, but the US has a lot more unspent/unused in the conventional means of destruction. The thing is that while the developmental forces in the world stand situated today on a higher productive capacity level than in the past, this is delicate and unstable because few countries possess the productive capacity to produce from start to finish. The productive process itself is globalized. This means that destroying targeted productive points in selected places can throw off much more than would otherwise be intuitive.

  8. Joaquin,
    I have one question more. Next November 30 in Switzerland will be a Referendum to decide if the Swiss franc will be supported by gold deposits in Switzerland Central Bank by 20% of the paper emission.

    Personally I don’t believe that this idea is just from grassroots, quite the opposite I believe that is from a sector of the Switzerland leadership (Bankers) that knows that China, Russia and India have been accumulating huge storks of gold in reserve for a (probably) future world currency alternative to U$ Dollar and they (Switzerland bankers) want some piece of that action like they already have with the Bank of International Settlements.

    Do you believe that my theory is totally wrong or could be right?
    If that is right, a lot of things will happen at the end of the 2014 against USA rule.

  9. Pingback: Агент Минкомсвязи

  10. Joaquin, thank you very much for an in-depth analysis of the Ukraine situation. I will be following you from now on. By the way, that was a good podcast with Ry. You are now my go-to guy regarding critical information along with Ryan(Ry) Dawson and Mr. Corbett.

  11. “Alternate purposes of her visit are also to shore up the Pravy Sektor and Svoboda plan, to increase the pressure on Poroshenko to make sure the Gazprom negotiations ultimately fail…”

    Everyone guessed that outcome wrongly.

    Any ideas as to why Moscow agreed to the gas deal?

    • Steve,

      There is no outcome yet, the key word here is ‘ultimately’. Russia and sections of European elites want there to be a deal, but this depends on the whole of the EU, and the IMF which is requires US support as they dominate it.

      The marketing of a ‘deal’ served several hyper-real purposes, which may be connected to the support that Poroshenko needs; an excuse of sorts to wait on pulling the trigger on the pending major attack.

      There’s no deal, and no agreement. This was signed “without prejudice”, meaning that the Russians have not waived their rights, it is not-binding, as the parties are free to pursue their rights in other matters and venues. This relates as well to the arbitration currently underway in Stolkholm.

      This means that it is like a tentative agreement, because there is no ‘res judicata’, it is not binding. This tentative agreement moreover depends on a number of unresolved factors, such as a means for Ukraine to pay.

      Ukraine claims it has a side letter with the EU to cover the payment or first payment, but none yet has surfaced. Now with Russia recognizing today’s vote in Novorossiya, things will only get more interesting.

  12. The argument against your postmodern turn half-way through this otherwise excellent piece; is that reality always gets through….

  13. Joaquin – Thank you for replying. On re-reading my point, it could have been better written. A long time ago I did a PhD in postmodernism and your comment viz “…which leaves us with only a remaining intersubjective agreement” reminded me of all the philosophy books I ploughed through whilst upholding a ‘realist’ position. I won’t stray too far into philosophical territory but – whilst I can see the utility and explanatory power of your hyper-reality approach – I was always persuaded by philosophical realism as ‘ultimately’ the arbiter of political struggle. My original comment was a poorly chosen play on the phrase ‘the bomber always gets through’. That is, after all the talking has been done – cold uncompromising unposited (the list of adjectives could go on but the final noun is difficult to pin down) ‘things’ get to ‘dictate’ outcomes.

    Time is not on my side domestically here so apologies for shallowness of my defence. I do appreciate your blog and find your analysis puts the explanation of the Ukraine crisis by our ‘actual existing media’ well in its place.

    I take your point on the Gas deal too. ‘The gas deal that wasn’t’.

    Is there any ‘IS’ in this crsis?

    Keep up the excellent work please.

    • Steve,

      I very much appreciate the feedback, and thank you for clarifying. When talking about ‘intersubjective agreement’, I mean this almost exclusively in the reality construction within our heads (cognitive processes). I can try to parse out the point. A rock is thrown at my head – this involves both an object (physical, existing) and a phenomenon; it’s motion, (real, actual). That is the ‘objective reality’ that will cause me to get knocked over.

      We certainly agree that in a conflict, those who land the most rocks (if that is the criteria) may, in fact, end up winning. “reality always gets through”.

      Intersubjective agreement, and the the place for hyper-realism comes in any reports, even from firsthand observers, of that event. One witness percipient may have even been the person who threw the rock, and in their account I “jumped in the way in order to make sure to get hit, to create power through victimization”.

      All various reports take on the processes I described (interpretation, reflection, reporting) and the reality of that event takes on another dimension – through reporting on it, it becomes known by more people.

      One the one hand it becomes ‘more real’ because more people agree it happened, but the method by which more people know it is in actuality less genuine than having being struck by the object (or being the thrower).

      As far as ‘reality’ being the ultimate arbiter of political struggle – that’s a nut for me to crack, because politics involves interpretations, inspiration, reporting, ideology, etc. In the US campaign against Yugoslavia, the Serbs probably had a lot more fight in them, but the hyper-reality of defeat and the ‘subjective’ attitudes of the leadership led them to surrender. Maybe I’ve missed your point, a bit?

      Thanks again,


  14. Pingback: Putin’s End Game For Novorossia | Rise High Novorossia!

  15. Joaquin, can we possibly look forward to you starting your own you tube channel? Your interviews with Morris are fantastic, and you my friend seem to be a wealth of information. I see you becoming quite the alt. media superstar if that’s what you might see for yourself. Just a thought brother!

  16. Could you recommend some good histories of Russia and Eastern Europe during Soviet and post-Soviet times? Also what would you recommend we read on topic of 4GW.

    • Hugo,

      Hello, there are just too much out there that is written about that time period in that region. This covers over 100 years of history. I have personally not read much in the way of books about post-soviet history, because I have been following the unfolding events in real time since the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, and so my knowledge draws upon many countless reports, articles, testimonies, eyewitness accounts, etc.

      For reading about 4GW, I recommend Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, Colonel Mike Capstick, S. Katoch Ghanshyam, Rod Thornton, Dr. George Friedman, and of course William S. Lind. You might find more casual articles written by them for various amateur and enthusiast publications. Peer review type stuff is just too technical.

      However some of these can be overly technical and focus on the technological aspects of the communications, weaponry and use of terrain, types of fighting units, etc. A lot of this may sound like guerilla warfare and insurgent combat (but its much more than this).

      Therefore, I highly recommend the post-structuralist school, in particular Baudrillard’s Simulacrum and Simulation, and others writing after him, in that vain or in response to him.

      That will focus on the process of manufacturing reality, hyper-reality, etc.

      Some may say that to this extent, it is really ‘5GW’ warfare, because it also allows for small teams and use of net-centric warfare etc., but it’s really 4GW if you apply rules of evolutionary stages strictly.

      Same technologies evolved a bit or used in new ways does not, in my opinion constituted a new generation but rather a continuation of the same.

      – Joaquin

  17. Joaquin,

    Is there any chance that the Kremlin wants to see the Ukraine smashed so that an “order out of chaos” restructuring can be done to Russia’s liking? In this case, one would accuse the US of wanting a failed state, which may be the case, but ignore that Russia might benefit from a cleaner destruction and rebuilding. If all the factories and major properties of certain oligarchs were destroyed, wouldn’t that be in Russia’s interests?

    The idea behind this would be to try to stabilize the Donbass and probably take over Kharkov without too much destruction, but let the rest of the country get destroyed. This would be different from Libya or Somalia in that Russia would be able to point to the protected, pro-Russian areas and say that they had heat, electricity, and water, whereas large parts of the country would be getting the Iraq treatment.

    This scenario is politically incorrect, of course. Not simply with those who have love for their fellow Slavs or relatives involved, but also in terms of the oligarchical relationships that may be in play. So just don’t tell anyone, right?

    If you contemplate Russia’s interests, it may no longer be possible to achieve the goals from ten years ago or so. As an example, the Ukrainian military-industrial complex is now doomed, and most of the industrial complex as well. There is nothing to save. Besides, they were too old. And keeping the country in one piece would be very troublesome due to the bad blood over the Donbass and incorporating the Crimea. Even mundane trade with the Ukraine in things like vegetables is a mess. In other words, all the arguments from the past do not seem as relevant today. Then contemplate the bright side of seeing the Donbass rebuilt and perhaps some investment in Kharkov depending upon the situation.

    Anyway, just the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist.

Leave a Reply to Paul Cancel reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s