Just watched this programme on YouTube: Putin’s Army Decimated by Ukrainian Offensive | Cormac Smith.
The interviewee, Cormac Smith, is a British strategic-communications expert and former diplomat. From 2016 to 2018, he served as special communications adviser to former Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin—the first foreign national to hold that position—and also advised Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, National Security and Defence Council, and mission to NATO. Following the 2018 Salisbury poisoning, he joined the UK Cabinet Office’s National Security Communications Team, advising on countering hybrid warfare and disinformation. He is now a frequent commentator and analyst on international conflicts and the war in Ukraine for news channels, podcasts, and digital media outlets such as Frontline.
He provided a wealth of substantive information, but what most caught my attention was one of his predictions. There is a general consensus that Putin is about to carry out a large-scale military mobilisation and launch some form of provocation against NATO. If you want to know more, you must read this analysis of mine: Putin Is Highly Likely to Attack a NATO Country. Most people have predicted that Putin would wait until after today’s State Duma election, on 20 September. Smith, however, predicts that Putin will wait until after the US midterm elections in November.
The reason is that, if Putin were to attack NATO before then, the disastrous consequences of the policies pursued over the past two years by the FSB’s ace undercover, Comrade Vladimir Trump—policies favouring America’s enemies and alienating her allies, all carried out on President Putin’s orders—would become fully apparent, and the Republican Party would suffer a crushing defeat in the midterms.
Comrade Trump has certainly gone to extraordinary lengths. Over more than a decade of painstaking work, Ukraine constructed what is known as the Fortress Belt. This is a 50-kilometre defensive corridor running north to south along the H-20 highway in northern Donetsk Oblast. Centred on Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka, it makes use of dense concentrations of heavily built concrete industrial facilities, ridgelines and high ground, and natural water barriers such as the Siverskyi Donets River. Together, these features have created an exceptionally lethal battlefield for wearing down Russian forces.
The Fortress Belt is not only the main defensive backbone protecting the remaining territory under Ukrainian control in the Donbas; it is also a vital railway and road logistics hub. Beyond it lies largely open, flat country. Once the Fortress Belt falls, major cities such as the capital, Kyiv, as well as Dnipro and Kharkiv, will be left dangerously exposed.
And so, after Comrade Trump received his orders from President Putin in Alaska, he began continuously pressuring Ukraine to surrender the Fortress Belt.
To clear-eyed observers such as Smith and me, Comrade Trump’s identity as Russia’s undercover agent is plainly obvious.
Many uninformed readers will undoubtedly say:
“Not all of Trump’s policies are pro-Russian. Some are neutral, and some are even anti-Russian.”
The problem is that the anti-Russian forces within the American political establishment and society are a hundred times stronger than the pro-Russian forces. If Comrade Trump were openly and unreservedly pro-Russian, would that not immediately expose his identity?
As an undercover agent who also happens to be president of the world’s most powerful country, his value to Russia exceeds that of the entire Russian military. No undercover agent, anywhere or at any time in history, would do so to risk immediate exposure.
However, the moment of truth is approaching. Once Putin provokes NATO, the United States will be forced to choose between withdrawing from the world stage and going to war with Russia—two catastrophic alternatives. The American people will finally understand the disastrous consequences that Comrade Trump’s two years of undercover work have brought upon both the United States and the world. The Republican Party would lose more than two-thirds of its seats in both chambers of Congress, enabling the Democrats to impeach and remove Trump on their own.
Smith therefore believes that Trump must already have sent a request through his handler to President Putin, asking him to postpone the attack until after the midterm elections.
I have no doubt that Comrade Trump would submit such a request. Putin will do everything in his power to protect him. But both the Russian military on the battlefield and the Russian economy at home are accelerating towards collapse. If the war turns against him, then, in Putin’s own words:
“They will hang me.”
Putin may therefore be unable to wait until after the midterm elections. To save his own life, he may have to risk his ace sleeper agent.
Let us wait and see.
做个明白人 