Simply Compare the Behavior of Washington v Moscow – Is America becoming Russia soon?

 Sat 2:19 pm +00:00, 18 Jul 2026  

posted by pete fairhurst 2

Source: https://slavlandchronicles.substack.com/p/simply-compare-the-behavior-of-washington

It seems like the media has been given orders to only speak in hushed tones about the new war on Iran and the invasion of Lebanon. You could be forgiven for not having even noticed that Washington is back to bombing Iran on the regular and that these are serious attacks, almost a prelude to an invasion even, perhaps.

Now, when they took that pause to shove that disgusting scrap of paper at Tehran demanding “understanding” i.e., surrender from Iran, I was treated to victory laps of alt-media pundits who declared that America and Israel had been defeated in Iran.

If they were defeated though, where were the dead soldiers? The sunk ships? The captured enemy bases?

And, how many more such “victories” could Iran suffer?

The last round of winning had their entire government wiped out, and thousands of soldiers killed, their navy wiped out, their air defenses destroyed or revealed to be inadequate and the fact that Iran was completely and totally alone on the world stage was shown to be true as well.

Fast forward to last week, and Washington is once again pounding their critical infrastructure. From WSJ:

The U.S. has now carried out seven consecutive days of strikes, the biggest escalation since the preliminary deal was signed in June. Like other days, U.S. Central Command said Friday afternoon, Eastern time, that the new round of strikes are “designed to continue degrading Iranian military capabilities.”

Recent targets have included multiple bridges in an effort to cut off supply routes to the port and naval base at Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. The port normally handles 90% of the country’s container traffic. Iran also uses the facilities to attack ships, The Wall Street Journal has reported, citing a senior U.S. official.

Several attacks on bridges were reported in and around Bandar Abbas during Thursday night’s U.S. strikes, and highways connecting the port city to nearby provinces were declared closed, according to Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB.

Iranian state media and a U.S. defense official said the U.S. has been striking targets throughout the country and not just along the coast. The official said the targets include weapons and surveillance systems that Iran has used to attack commercial shipping. Among the targets are small boats, coastal-radar sites, air-defense systems and missile- and drone-storage facilities.

The U.S. has repeatedly hit Chabahar, Iran’s only deep water, oceanic port. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a picture of the collapse of a maritime-communications tower in Chabahar, which sits more than 350 miles east of the strait near the Pakistan border.

So, let me get this straight.

When the Americans do their bombing campaigns, they seem to be under the impression that destroying port facilities and bridges are an important part of their campaign.

Contrast this with Putin’s approach, where for 4 years now, the bridges and ports have been left alone. Ah, the bridges, do you remember those? Those impregnable and morally unassailable bridges:

And sure, there was the hit on Odessa’s grain silos, because their owner was a direct competitor to the FSB chief’s agricultural empire, but other than that, the port was left intact. Probably, because it would endanger the Odessan mafia’s interests, and their arms and drugs and human smuggling operations, which the Kremlin and Kiev and all other concerned parties are heavily invested in.

Here:

Let’s read on about Washington’s campaign of total war against Iran.

Iranian authorities have confirmed the facility was struck and insisted it was used for civilian purposes, such as search-and-rescue operations for fishermen at sea. Chris Long, a former British naval officer in the Persian Gulf, said the tower could also have served as an observation and intelligence post.

“We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” Trump said in a prime-time address Thursday night.

Throughout the war, Tehran’s strategy has been to out-escalate and outlast the U.S. It now says it is broadening the geographical reach of its attacks in response to the intensification of U.S. attacks.

In recent days it has expanded beyond routine attacks on U.S. bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. On Friday, Kuwait said Iranian strikes damaged a power and desalination plant, a provocative escalation particularly at the height of summer that forced it to activate emergency plans. The country’s military said 32 drone attacks had been intercepted since early Thursday.

Iran also has begun attacking Qatar and Oman—two countries involved in efforts to find a diplomatic solution—and stepped up its attacks on shipping.

Put another way, the Iranians are still afraid to kill too many Americans. Like Putin, they target secondary targets that would be of great inconvenience to the general civilian population, but not the greater war effort. Like the Iranians, Putin’s drones mostly only attack commercial and municipal gas stations and electric substations. This just makes the costs of living harder on the average Ukrainian, but does nothing to prevent the UAF’s war machine, which runs on imported diesel, from running on time. Putin is deathly terrified of hitting any NATO anything in Ukraine. No, “Mr. Kinzhal” did not eliminate a bunker full of NATO generals and Neo-Nazi shadow legions.

That was simply another Pepe Escobar tall tale that simply refuses to die.

Whenever I bring up the fact that Putin has done all he can to not touch Ukrainian or NATO politicians and officers in Ukraine, I always get “Mr. Kinzhal” lobbed at me as a counter-argument. Or when I point out that Putin has done nothing to support its supposed Resistance ally Iran, I get the other fat whopper lobbed at me about how Putin saved Tehran from getting nuked by shooting down an Israeli bomber.

All lies, among others that I’ve endlessly compiled and commented on before:

Keep all of this fake news from the past in mind as we discuss the current news about sea battles in the Black Sea.

They are ongoing:

Several people have been killed in Russian attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa and Mykolaiv, and Ukraine said it launched drone strikes on 20 Russian vessels as the warring sides escalated their battle over the Black Sea and key trade routes.

Odesa region Governor Oleh Kiper said on Wednesday that a “massive” Russian drone and missile attack on the southern region continued for a fifth day, with civilian, industrial and port infrastructure coming under attack.

At least three people were killed and three others wounded in the Russian strikes on Odesa, the city’s military administrator Serhiy Lysak said on Wednesday.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed the strikes on the Odesa and Chernomorsk ports, saying Russian forces targeted infrastructure facilities that it claims are used to store fuel and assemble drones.

Russia in recent days has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in the Greater Odesa area, which handle much of the country’s grain and other cargo and are vital to its wartime economy.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has escalated its campaign to disrupt logistics for Russia’s forces in areas Moscow occupies in southern Ukraine and to isolate Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014.

Kyiv’s drone force commander Robert Brovdi said Ukraine hit 17 Russian oil tankers, two gas tankers and one tugboat in the Black Sea.

He claimed earlier this week that 116 Russian vessels had been “hunted down” over a nine-day period.

Moscow said on Tuesday that it was preparing to redirect exports following waves of attacks on Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov, while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the Ukrainian attacks on shipping “terrorism”.

The attacks come as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in Kyiv and said she would announce steps to deepen Ukraine-European Union defence integration.

When the smoke clears, I assure you, that Odessa’s port will remain operational.

We had much larger and more spectacular strikes on the port all those years ago when people still naively believed that the Black Sea was a Russian lake and that Russia’s Navy was capable of maintaining a blockade of Odessa. Maybe they were, but they simply weren’t ordered to even try or fight back as the entire Black Sea navy was sunk, piecemeal.

As for the recent sinkings in and around Odessa, this is simply a battle over smuggling rights being carried out by two rival goon gangs, the old KGB-FSB v Zelensky’s new SBU mafia. It is not a conventional military operation or struggle, let me assure you of that. Those battles occurred in the opening months of the war, and that was the last of any kind of strategical consideration by the Kremlin past that point. Look: they used to run operations with the Turks, Israelis and the Assads out of Odessa in the past, and now they’re squabbling because the old criminals of the KGB elite are being pressed out by new mafias, mostly the new SBU gang around Zelensky.

One of the reasons why you hear that Kremlin squealing like stuck pigs so much about “AZOV!!!” is because a lot of Azov work as muscle for this powerful gang running Kiev. That is not to say that Azov runs Kiev, it is to say that Azov is a recruitment tool for psychopaths that then are used by the intelligence gang to do dirty work.

I’d bet my subscriber list on my take on the latest round of strikes and bombings in and around the Black Sea, by the way. And now Turkey is trying to act as a mediator, trying to be the reasonable voice in this profit-sharing squabble.

I will have more to say about the role of Odessa and Ankara in the global arms, drugs, and smuggling circuit and the crucial importance that this network played in the power squabbles between Turkey’s intelligence gangs (the original “Deep State”), the Assad clan mafia, the Ukrainian gangs (Odessa mafia v Dniepro Mafia v Donbass Mafia) and the Kremlin mafia (FSB).

My key thesis about these wars depends on the geopolitical model which I use to assess everything, the lens through which I view politics in 2026, that is.

In a nutshell, my view is that at some point in the previous century, most of the governments that we associate with states were taken over by gangs/mafias/cabals that used the power of the intelligence agencies to gradually seize power from the civilian government, supplant the military elite, and to merge with the oligarchic elites, either as junior or senior partners in that chimera-like relationship. These agencies initially gained power and wealth by running clandestine operations around the world smuggling drugs and arms and precious metals and people for decades. The true story of the so-called Cold War wasn’t the big missiles sitting in silos pointed at rival ideological blocs, but the so-called “proxy wars” that were fought on the periphery of empires. What these wars afforded, was the opportunity for the creation of states within states that were essentially self-funded, accountable to no one, and pursuing their own agendas.

Afghanistan made the fortunes of the KGB and the CIA both. The endless South American wars enriched the CIA beyond their wildest dreams. Even now, you have the remnants of Wagner trying to set up an empire like what the CIA enjoys in South America or the KGB enjoyed in Eurasia. Here:

HEART OF DARKNESS: THE RENAISSANCE OF THE WAGNER PMC

Joseph Conrad’s (actually Józef Korzeniowski’s) “Heart of Darkness” is one of the key works of English literature. This adventure novel tells the story of the sailor Marlow’s grisly journey into the heart of Central Africa.

This work was adapted into the truly remarkable film “Apocalypse Now.” But it seems modern Russian warriors have decided to bring the plot of “Heart of Darkness” to life.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the remnants of the Wagner PMC, led by the son of the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, have settled in the Central African Republic, where they have effectively created their own state.

According to the publication, Wagner veterans led by Pavel Prigozhin are now out of reach of local law enforcement, the West, and even the Kremlin.

The neo-Wagner group is said to have a base in the upper reaches of the Ubangi River in the Central African Republic (CAR). The core of their business is the trade in tramadol, often referred to as “cocaine for the poor” (which we strongly disbelieve and condemn), according to the WSJ.

Following the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 and the transfer of most of the group’s operations to the control of the Russian Ministry of Defense, up to 500 fighters remained in the upper reaches of the Ubangi in the CAR.

Control over the tramadol trade allows them to exploit the country’s forest and gold resources. Western organizations estimate that gold exports bring Wagner approximately $180 million annually, while smuggling painkillers to neighboring countries provides an additional source of income.

In recent months, Wagner veterans and their allies have further consolidated their control over this business, according to researchers and traders in the CAR capital, Bangui.

Moreover, according to the WSJ, the influence of Russian mercenaries has grown so much that they supply tramadol to the Presidential Guard and the Sharks youth militia, which regularly organizes armed patrols in Bangui.

Today, the former Wagner group has effectively subjugated the Central African Republic, according to a study by the Pentagon-funded think tank Africa Center for Strategic Studies. Russian mercenaries have been integrated into the CAR’s national army, the WSJ writes.

Western analysts fear the former private military company’s influence will spread to neighboring African countries.

If this astonishing story turns out to be true, one cannot help but marvel at how literary-centric our world is. But it’s not the deranged Colonel Kurz who sits at the heart of this “heart of darkness,” but Russian fighters.

You wanted your own Republic of Fiume? You got it.

And what is their great sin, exactly?

Only that they are setting up a rival project to compete with more established mafias. And these mafias still enjoy the support of states, which they have taken over and wear like skinsuits.

Russia is not a real state anymore, it is a collection of feudal fiefdoms.

What we know as “Russia” with its Dostoevsky and worker’s struggles and caviar is just a familiar and appealing skinsuit worn by several mafias that treat the Federation and the post-USSR as its hunting grounds. Wagner was banished to the badlands, simply because the FSB didn’t want to share. They treated Wagner, comprised heavily of the former Soviet GRU (military intelligence gang) as greater enemies to their rule than they ever treated Azov or Zelensky in general. Wagner was the last bid of old GRU veterans to attempt to regain some measure of money and power from the FSB. In my opinion, of course, and that of other old-timer conspiracy theorists. Hell, even the operations and networks that they inherited in Africa were old GRU ops for crying out loud.

…

America is not a real state anymore either.

It is also a collage of competing mafias. The CIA, the various intelligence gangs in the armed forces, most notably the Marine Corps, Eric Prince and the Mormon Mafia, and of course, the various factions of G_d’s Chosen — it seems that Chabad, which is the most ruthlessly and heavily armed of these factions, is now ascendent.

Unfortunately, these mafias enjoy access to a tax base, a scientific and technological base, and an image/illusion base that they have inherited from what was once a great nation-state.

They are busy fighting amongst themselves to loot and parcel out fiefdoms within America. You have probably heard of this process being described in terms of “The Dark Enlightenment” or whatever they’re calling it now. Basically, this new political “theory” states that America will remain a territory on the maps, but will in reality, internally, be divied up by rival cartels that operate with total impunity on their territories. This will be good, or rather, this is justified because it will accelerate technological progress.

One of the sponsors, or gang leaders who plan to profit from this balkanization effort, just fled to Argentina, by the way.

This sort of behavior is unheard of in American political history.

A powerful background/shadow scion or don of American politics forced into exile?

That’s like something that you’d hear coming out of Russia, right? Some powerful oligarch or other fleeing to London to escape arrest by Putin’s FSB goons, after having lost one political wrangle or other.

And now you have the same occurring in America, for the first time ever.

If you want my rather speculative perspective, the coming of Trump and the turbulence and rancor around his first bid was simply part and parcel of the ascent of Chabad to the big boys’ table, and them jostling for room at the feeding trough, causing outrage and retaliatory measures in the political and media scene over the last decade. Now, more and more, you see that the American State has been leashed to this mafia’s private interests. The strange foreign policy or military decisions made by Trump that seem to coincide with market dumps or runs that are very profitable to his inner circle and their allies, are one example of this new, far more open kleptomafia method of rule. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Trump is both America’s Boris Yeltsin and, maybe, even it’s Gorbachev.

I.e., he is a shameless swindler and profiteer who has been bought by a foreign mafia, like Yeltsin was. Will this lead to some sort of “reform” or “implosion” like what Gorbachev effected though? I sure hope not. Hopefully, there is a rival mafia that isn’t interested in having the remaining might of America completely at the beck and call of the Chabad syndicate.

I’m not saying that America will collapse, mind you.

I’m saying that America will simply become another Russia soon.

This can be achieved without a full-blown collapse; probably another crisis or two would be enough to push through the consolidation of this new model and dissolve whatever obstacles are in its way.

Each “collapse” or “crisis” is simply a power grab by these mafias.

Factor that into your End Times fantasies.