The latest narrative on the pro-Russian side revolves around the big Swiss Peace Summit being a “total failure”. Though I understand the desire to score propaganda points against the Atlanticists, in reality, there was no real ‘failure’ per se, only because the summit itself never truly made claim to even attempting to “achieve” anything to begin with. From the get go, it was nothing more than a cheap political exercise aimed at continuing the unbroken line of morale-boosting PR for Ukraine, to keep the manufactured “unity” and “solidarity” that the European comprador apparatchiks are so desperate to signal in the public’s eye.

Endless reams have already been spun about the summit’s many grotesqueries, incongruities, absurdities, et cetera, et cetera. It’s pointless to rehash them all for something that was ultimately of so little consequence, little more than a theatrical virtue signaling performance by a bunch of unelected, historically-low-approval-rated political sellouts and hacks, hated by their own people, whom they do not even serve.

The more adjacently interesting development was Putin’s preemptive peace offer, a couple days before the summit took place.

Naturally, the Western crowd tried to sell it as some kind of ‘weakness’ or desperate olive branch on Putin’s behalf, but in reality it was clearly Putin’s cunning undermining of the summit. By presenting a legitimate and not unreasonable offer, Putin made the cartoonish cartel’s gathering reek of a mealy hypocrisy to the attuned olfactory senses of the Global South.

John Helmer again covers the angle, writing about Putin’s peace offer:

In practical terms, Moscow’s leading independent military analyst (Colonel Cassad) concluded, the speech was a tactical feint and a strategic deception.

“[Putin’s terms] will obviously not be accepted by the West and their Ukrainian puppets,” wrote Rozhin.  “Against the background of the ‘world summit’ [the Burgenstock, Switzerland, meeting on June 15-16] this will indicate that in fact the West is prolonging the war, so these statements [of Putin] are another torpedo in the summit. Russia is thus showing the countries of the Global South that it has offered a world that will be rejected by those who are broadcasting about ‘peaceful summits’…The war will continue. The goals of the SVO [Special Military Operation] will be achieved by military means.”

I recommend his entire article, as it goes into exquisite detail about several other important items like Putin’s negotiations play and Ukraine’s energy situation.

But the best summation of Putin’s peace power play came by way of Dmitry Medvedev on his X account—read particularly the boldened sections:

The President has spoken at the Foreign Ministry Collegium meeting. Here are some points that, to my mind, deserve special attention considering what the head of the state has said, or carefully hinted at in his speech:

First. Russia had many times offered Washington, Europe and NATO to nip the Ukrainian crisis in the bud thus preventing a large-scale tragedy. The response was nothing but cynical manipulation and outright deception. The first time it occurred – concerning the subject – was in 2014. It was then that the promise to stop the outrages and provocations by neonazi forces in Kiev – the promise given personally by the US President – resulted in a coup d’état. Its outcome was the referendum on the return of Crimea to Russia Federation. The second time was when it materialized as the Minsk agreements that eventually turned into a disgusting counterfeit cooked up just to arm the Kiev authorities – which its Western signatories have acknowledged. It happened for the third time after the special military operation had begun – as a forced rejection by the Kiev regime of a neutrality treaty that it had initialed in Istanbul.

It came as the result of the boorish pressure inflicted by certain American officials and the British freak Johnson, as well as the bestial cowardice of the ruling Ukrainian clique afraid of a new Maidan. (By the way, the foreign executive, mentioned by Vladimir Putin, – the one who visited Moscow in March 2022 was none other than the Israeli PM Naftali Bennett; it was he who went to Kiev after visiting Moscow and proposed a compromise peace based on determination of fate of the then disputed territories. He was simply shaken off as a Kremlin agent. The complete idiots thus rejected the possible peace offered to them on the most favourable terms.)

Second. Now the world situation is totally different. In accordance with the Constitution, the new territories have become part of Russia. And this is forever. Are new negotiations possible? Yes, they are. This is what the head of our state has said today, formulating the new idea of ending the conflict – but only with regard to the reality existing on the ground based on the Istanbul peace deal and the current version of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

Third. It is clear that the events are developing according to a catastrophic scenario for the bandera regime. In the future, it will get only worse: our President has directly stated that, outlining the base for possible negotiations. The room for the compromise is diminishing like shagreen leather, together with the shrinking territory of the dying country. And the day is not far off when only a thin stripe of that can remain. Russia must protect itself for the long years to come. This is where the idea of a “sanitary zone”, proposed by Vladimir Putin, comes from. This zone can extend over as much as f. Ukraine right till the borders of Poland, because this is where the continuous threat is coming from. And then what? The President has not put it directly, but obviously, these territories can become part of Russia – if the people living there wish so.

Fourth. The “summit of the doomed” that starts tomorrow will end in total failure. Because senseless “negotiations” with Russia absent, according to the stillborn formula by the Kiev clown are nothing but recruiting new extras for an idiotic piece of play to legalize the Kiev buffoon as the full-scale head of state. But all, even our pathetic opponents, understand that he is nothing but a miserable usurper shaking with fear and drug abstinence. The systemic interpretation of the Ukrainian constitution given by Vladimir Putin leads to a very simple conclusion: it is impossible to extend the powers of the president, they go to the head of parliament.

And the fifth. By now zelensky is a nobody. He has no real authority, and his orders are not supposed to be followed by anyone. And the officials he appointed after his powers had expired have no right to make any decisions whatsoever. These persons are illegitimate, and their decisions are illegal. Therefore, any Ukrainian soldier commits a felony by following the illegal orders issued by officials appointed by illegitimate authorities. And that is how an usurper, who seized power in the country, took the entire population of Ukraine hostage. And he keeps sending soldiers forth to die day in, day out, while having no right to do so. He will either face trial or be torn apart by a mob, and the f. Ukraine will have to surrender. P.S. The narcoclown has already rejected Putin’s plan. Don’t be offended – to them.

Re-read in particular this portion: “This zone can extend over as much as f[ormer] Ukraine right till the borders of Poland, because this is where the continuous threat is coming from. And then what? The President has not put it directly, but obviously, these territories can become part of Russia – if the people living there wish so.”

Another final analysis which underscores my point:

With today’s speech, Vladimir Putin achieved two goals at once.

Now the summit in Switzerland is a political misunderstanding, at which they will explain why Western countries and the Kiev regime do not agree to peace negotiations, while simultaneously offering their own options for negotiations.

Any politician who signed the final document in Switzerland will sign that he is either a political schizophrenic or a bloodthirsty liar who wants to continue the mass death of people.

Thus, politicians will not discuss the “Western form of peace,” which is the conditions for Russia’s surrender, but, in fact, prove why they want to destroy our country.

The second goal is to demonstrate to the Global South and East, as well as to that small part of the Western elites who still remain committed to the national interests of their countries, the actual inability of the West to negotiate, which, under the pretext of “peace,” wants to maintain its dominant position in various ways, including by force, to crush the rest of the world under itself.

But in all the convolutions of ongoing back and forths, the one important thing that is lost, which I haven’t seen any other analyst cover, is the following:

Everyone understands the dry points of Putin’s demands, which he has articulated over the course of months, about deNazification, keeping to current battlefield gains and ‘realities’, etc. But the single most important point which has flown completely under the radar, and which I believe is actually the very heart of Putin’s proposal, is hinted at in the earlier video where he says that mere ‘ceasefires’ are inadequate, and that he is seeking a permanent solution of some kind.

He didn’t specify there, but he has before—multiple times. What Putin alludes to is that in order to end the Ukrainian war for good, Russia will take no less than a re-working of the entire European security framework. This is why he harps on Zelensky’s illegitimacy, it’s because Putin wants to build up to the fact that there must be a far larger, overriding framework of guarantors which is immutable and inviolable, rather than flimsy and ephemeral like Zelensky.

What Putin is seeking is revolutionary: he wants to re-establish a whole new, modern Westphalian Peace. He wants the Ukrainian war to be the linchpin of a new global security system that plays into all the recent BRICS declarations of ‘reworking the UN’ and every other major global institution. Putin wants to reshape how the entire international system functions vis-a-vis their security relationships; in essence, it would be the first new concrete paradigm of the post-Cold War and ‘Iron Curtain’ period.

So for all those people who are asking: what is the ultimate price Putin is willing to pay to give up Russia’s maximalist aims in Ukraine—would he do it for the basic terms of demilitarization, no joining NATO, and all that? Not likely: because there is no way to guarantee Ukraine’s adherence to any such agreements. The only way to end the war would be a reworking of the entire system in such a way as to give Russia credible confidence in the new system holding indefinitely. It would take, as I said, a new Westphalian framework that institutionalizes new, much broader realities of what countries can and cannot do in overreaching via provocative actions against one another. If you really listen to Putin’s speeches and statements on this issue, this is the secret he’s intimating—though not very loudly or aggressively, for now. The reason for that is likely because he knows it’s too ambitious of an opening ‘ask’, and he would prefer to first lure the parties in via basic conditions before escalating it to the logical conclusion when it comes to the issue of: how do we realistically guarantee such conditions between parties?

This is why Putin is likely in no great rush to end the war: in order to effect such an ambitious world-reshaping plan, he knows the currentpolitical class has to first be waited out. That may not take long: just look at the ongoing bloodbath in European politics with virtually every globalist puppet leader on their way out. Putin likely knows that by next year or so, he could very well be parleying with a whole new assemblage of faces.

Vladimir Putin: “The world will never be the same again.”

Putin announced the collapse of the Euro-Atlantic security system, and that a new one will have to be created

On that note: Le Pen did state today that she would not call for Macron’s resignation should his party get obliterated in the early snap elections he announced, but will rather ‘respect tradition’ by operating as a majority ‘cohabitator of power’—according to her. But we’ll see what happens. More and more, pundits and commentators—Mercouris among them—are suggesting that Macron is in fact looking for a ‘way out’ himself, just as Rishi Sunak when he called his own early elections.

Putin knows if he can wait a little longer, he may have a retinue of European leaders in front of him who are actually seriously interested in a new just and fair security framework for all of Europe. Only this could prematurely end the war, and at the earliest, such a setup is likely a year or more away.

As a final point: would Putin really end the conflict prematurely, even without capturing Odessa and potentially Kharkov, if the West agreed to such a revolutionary compromise?

Firstly: the chances of the West being allowed to agree to such a thing by their masters in the ‘cabal’ is very low, even when the new class of leaders takes over. But let’s say, hypothetically, they do—the common question then usually is: “Wouldn’t Russia basically be signaling the loss of the war, and weren’t we told that if such a thing happened Russia would collapse and Putin would be overthrown?”

Let’s get real: if Putin ended the war literally today, right now, no one would be overthrown and nothing would collapse. Would most of us be angry? Of course. But keep in mind nearly half of Russian citizens actually support the cessation of hostilities and a peace deal.

The fact of the matter is: even if Russia were to walk away from the war with its current gains, it would have been more than worth it, and Russia would have still won an inordinate prize. Crimea, the entire Donbass region and its vast riches, millions upon millions of new citizens, a land corridor to Crimea and control over the Azov Sea, etc.

I’m not saying the war will end, far from it—but simply dispelling the notion that if it did, it would result in some ‘catastrophic dissolution’ of Russia, or something like that. Quite the contrary, it would result in Russia being far richer and more powerful than it ever was before the war. Too many people have trouble with absolutes—they can only think of things in extremes and are incapable of processing trade offs. Not to mention they’ve tied their ego into this chauvinistic ideal of Russia “winning” and would feel betrayed and hurt if Russia didn’t go all the way to Lvov.

One more point connected to the above:

Many people have decried the BRICS as a mostly loose and wayward organization, without any real concrete terms or global directions. And certainly, we know the BRICS was not designed with the same uniformity and obedience in mind as most of the Western institutions, which are mostly aimed to create coercive losses of sovereignty over their vassal nations—i.e. the EU, G7, NATO, etc.

However, tying it into the idea of a new Westphalian global architecture, Putin has now for the first time hinted that BRICS will in fact form a more rigorous framework of global leadership in the form of regulatory control of its members. Here he states openly that:

“The BRICS potential will allow it to eventually become [one] of the key regulating institutions of the multipolar world order.”

What does that mean? That Putin’s vision is clear: to slowly expand the BRICS to the point where it creates a true counterbalance to the decaying Western Atlanticist cartel in both the global monetary sphere and even, eventually, security architecture. The Ukraine war could be the first key turning point, the seed in the ground, from which this system necessarily sprouts.

Things remain slow on the front, so for now some ancillary updates.

Belousov visited the ground forces joint command center, and was given a tour:

Firstly, what was fascinating is the MOD literally has a live feed of their top armor production floors:

The importance of Russia’s tank and armor production and the smooth operation of the facilities cannot be understated if the MOD generals themselves watch the factory floors from their HQ all day long. On the top left is footage from Uralvagonzavod BMPT Terminator production line, as well as Atamanovsky Armored Repair Plant 103 with the refurbishment of T-62s, VPK Plant making 6×6 MRAPs, Remdiezel engine plant, and more.

In light of this, four more Defense Minister Deputies were fired:

And replaced, quite promisingly, by less geriatric and much more physiognomically sound candidates:

One sardonic commentator had this to say about Tsalikov in particular:

Pankova, Tsalikov, Shevtsova and Popov were dismissed from their posts as deputy defense ministers in the Ministry of Defense, and [there are] many deputies. Perhaps this happened after visiting the Joint Command Center of the Ministry of Defense with a bunch of monitors, where top military officials are sitting and doing it is not clear what.

Gornin Leonid Vladimirovich was appointed the first deputy. The most significant among the retirees is Tsalikov, who is responsible for building the information field around the Ministry of Defense and, of course, propaganda. It didn’t seem to work for the country, the people, or the army, but for specific officials and beautiful reports.

More significantly:

The new Defense Minister will link the Ministry of Defense with the network of national defense industries and teach officials how to interact with them. It may seem strange – it is extremely difficult to do this, due to the dominance of formalism and reports, but it is necessary.

In short, all the stale, soggy old Sovoks who got too comfortable in their positions and were too inflexible to keep up with the times are being replaced by young hungry tech-fluent ministers eager to actually whip the armed forces into shape.

In fact, this is a deliberate campaign, as Putin noted in his recent speech:

The army has become younger: the average age of district commanders has become 56 years, army commanders – 50, division commanders – 46, Putin said.

The President noted that during the special operation, there were a lot of changes in the Russian Armed Forces both in the organization and in the promotion of promising people.

It seems the new sheriff in town, Belousov, is a real hard-nosed, no nonsense cattle driver. Here’s an anecdotal description of his latest meeting:

Details of the meeting of Defense Ministry officers and military industrialists with the new Defense Minister Belousov. Quote: “throw out the slides, take a pen, a leaf and let’s paint everything in detail and clearly.” And there people were “shocked” a little, started to argue. And he said, ” If you argue with me – you’ll get the fuck out of here forever.”

As for who the new ministers are, journalist Sasha Kots gives a brief overview:

 

Who are they – the new deputy ministers of defense – and for what they will be responsible

Andrei Belousov continues to strengthen his team with civilian specialists.

1st Deputy Leonid Gornin.

The previous position is the first deputy minister of finance. The whole career is associated with financial and economic activities. Will oversee the whole range of issues of financial support for the Armed Forces. Its main tasks are – increasing the transparency of financial flows and ensuring efficient spending of budget funds.

Deputy Anna Tsivilyova.

In recent months, the Foundation « Defenders of the Fatherland », which provides assistance to veterans of the SVO – from legal to medical. I attended one closed meeting with her. She is very immersed in the problems faced not only by veterans, but also by the current fighters of the SVO. From supply deficiencies to non-payment.
She will be responsible for the organization of social and housing support for military personnel, the transformation and removal of all related processes in the military department to a new quality level, where the center is a person. (Ed: Rumored to be Putin’s cousin)

Deputy Pavel Fradkov.

Previous position – from May 21, 2015 — deputy, from January 18, 2021 — First Deputy Manager of the President of the Russian Federation.
In 1998 he graduated from the Moscow Suvorov Military School, in 2003 — FSB Academy of Russia with a degree in « jurisprudence », in 2005 — Department of World Economy, Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, majoring in « world economy ».
He will be responsible for the management of property, land resources, as well as the construction of facilities for the needs of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and the national economy.

Deputy Chief of Staff Oleg Savelyev.

Previously held the position of auditor of the Accounts Chamber. Since 2019, he oversaw the direction of the audit of defense, national security and law enforcement. So the sphere is familiar.
By the way, before the Accounts Chamber, he worked both the Deputy Minister of Economic Development, the Minister for Crimean Affairs, and the deputy head of the government’s apparatus.

—

I reported last time how Europe’s touted appropriation of Russian funds was not quite what it was billed to be. Now Janet Yellen has corroborated:

The United States Administration believes that using proceeds from Russian assets frozen in the West for the needs of Ukraine is not theft, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

“There is no point in calling it theft. Russian assets remain in this institution (on the international Euroclear platform in Belgium). They have been frozen. The investments that Russia had have already reached their maturity date. Thus, Russian funds are lying in the form of cash, but they bring income to the institution, to which Russia has no right,” the minister asserted on ABC television.

Well, actually, now that she mentions it—I’m not exactly sure which method is more slimey—outright theft, or forced freezing where the money’s accruing interest profits are milked and bilked.

—

Reuters writes that in late summer – in August, Ukraine may default on international bonds. The deferral of payments, which started in 2022, ends on August 1, and creditors refused to make a debt restructuring in the amount of $ 20 billion-pay up. Most likely, the Americans will come up with something to smooth out the consequences of this crisis.

—

Two drone related updates:

Russian developers of electronic warfare systems demonstrated the first domestic tracked platform with a jamming system installed on it. It has successfully passed tests.

The mission of the “EW Valli” is to cover assault groups during an attack . Its technical capabilities allow it to work in standby mode for a very long time.

And:

Official report from the Ministry of Defense about the Perun drone. Transportation of goods, people, strike capabilities. Short interview with the developer. I really hope that the guys won’t have to prove to anyone that they did the right thing. The Ministry of Defense or other authorized structures must begin to finance the project. Perun has enormous opportunities to develop the platform.

—

A strange episode: Russian criminal court opened a case against a Ukrainian AD missile commander—of a unit reportedly tied specifically to the Patriot missile battery—who ordered the shoot down of a Russian ‘patrol craft’ on February 23, which is precisely the date that an A-50U AWACs was said to have been shot down over Krasnodar:

Interesting news from the fields of domestic justice. Thus, the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow arrested in absentia the commander of the 138th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade (ZRB) of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Colonel Nikolai Dzyaman, for giving the order to shoot down a Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft.

According to investigators, the order was given by a Ukrainian colonel on February 23, 2024 , which led to the destruction of the plane in the airspace of the Russian Federation and the death of 10 crew members.

It was on this day that the A-50U AWACS aircraft was shot down , crashing near the Trudovaya Armenia farm in the Kanevsky district of the Krasnodar Territory. At that time, the main version put forward was friendly fire from a Russian air defense system, but it is now obvious that this was not the case.

An important fact is that the mentioned 138th air defense missile system of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is armed with American MIM-104 Patriot PAC-2 air defense systems transferred from Germany. This brigade was also responsible for the May 2023 tragedy in the Bryansk region, where several planes and helicopters of the Russian Aerospace Forces were shot down at once. In addition, a week ago, the Americans officially announced that another lost Russian A-50U in January 2024 was also shot down from the Patriot air defense system .

Thus, it can be stated that the American MIM-104 Patriot air defense systems were capable of hitting Russian AWACS aircraft at ranges completely unexpected for the command of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which led to the loss of two valuable aircraft within one month, as well as unfair (in these cases) public accusations against the domestic air defense for allegedly “friendly fire”, since it was extremely difficult to believe in such a range of fire from enemy anti-aircraft systems.

Military Informant

A couple caveats: firstly the Russian criminal report does not specify it was an A-50 specifically, but that is being inferred. But just for the sake of due diligence, there is no real evidence to this date that an actual A-50 was shot down though it does appear likely according to this.

Also, that was the incident where a Russian Buk/S-300/400 system was seen on video firing in the direction of the landing plane, which was shooting out flares. This led us to conclude it was a friendly fire incident on either an A-50 or Il-76 at the time. However, the new revelations clearly dispel this. Thus, the only other logical explanation is the Russian S-400s detected the alleged Patriot missile incoming toward the plane and attempted to shoot it down to no avail. Either that, or the whole thing is a coverup and face-saving exercise of an embarrassing friendly fire incident.

However, if it’s true the Patriot shot the plane down, we can say two things, one negative, one positive:

1. NATO clearly caught Russia sleeping with some unforeseen new capability given that the range of nearly 300km to the shootdown location of Trudovaya Armenia is beyond the capabilities of all known Patriot missiles. Unless of course the report about Patriots is wrong and it was some other legacy Soviet system, like the long-suspected S-200, some variants of which can in fact reach that range.

2. The positive is that, if this does unequivocally prove that Ukraine shot down the plane, it puts to rest the concerns that Russia has no functioning IFF (Identify Friend Foe) systems, which to be honest, would be a far more concerning issue. The reason is, a slight oversight with Ukrainian capabilities can easily be fixed—and apparently has—but a critical flaw in your IFF is a far more serious problem that can endanger your entire airfleet during the course of the war.

Sure, the AFU may have caught Russia sleeping and ambushed them a few times with unknown capabilities, but it means IFF is intact which would be a gigantic relief and further validates Putin’s long ago statement that “our AD systems cannot shoot their own planes down.”

Also, one other small thing: the fact that an A-50 can be shot down from nearly 300km away by potentially long outdated systems is actually bearish for Ukraine, not Russia. Ukraine is putting a lot of stock in their next wunderwaffe of the Swedish AWACs they’re slated to receive, if you’ll recall. This merely proves that AWACS are sitting ducks in modern war, and Russia’s capabilities for shooting such large planes down far exceeds that of Ukraine.

And lastly: not related to the above, several days ago Fighterbomber had posted a photo of a pair of Russian A-50s somewhere on the line:

With the caption:

Who was worried about our A-50s?

They are working.

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Another Western ammo dump goes up in flames—last week it was a Polish arms plant, now Czechia:

—

Last item:

Two back to back exchanges of bodies were carried out between the Russian forces and AFU on May 31st and June 14th:

“So the number of body exchange in this and the last one is: Russians: 45 (31st May) + 32 (14th June) = 77 Ukrainians: 212 (31st May) + 254 (14th June) = 466”

As can be seen, the total of Russian 200s handed over by Ukraine was 77, and the total of dead AFU handed over by Russia was 466. The above is a 6:1 ratio in favor of Russia. The recent POW ratio revealed by Putin was 1,348 to 6,465, a ratio of 4.7. And Putin pinned the kill ratio to 5:1, if you’ll recall. What further evidence does one need? Every piece of data we’ve gotten suggests a minimum of roughly ~5:1 ratio for every loss category.

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