Lifting the Veil on Russia’s SMO in Ukraine: Is Putin’s Response to NATO’s Provocations a Potemkin Village?
Legend has it that when Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, visited Crimea in 1787
Legend has it that when Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, visited Crimea in 1787, her lover, Prince Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, came up with the idea of constructing entire villages of elaborate-looking wooden structures to impress her.
These beautifully decorated buildings were supposed to deceive the empress into believing the recently developed region had become prosperous under her rule. According to the legend, Crimea was, in reality, a vacant, desolate land, devoid of human activity, much less of thriving villages and a vibrant economy.
Is this folklore based on fact? Hardly. Catherine the Great, being an astute observer, would have never been fooled by such an obviously devious scheme. In fact, the story of these “Potemkin villages”—a term later coined in honor of supposed scammer Prince Potemkin—was a myth perpetrated by a Saxonian diplomat who wasn’t even in Crimea at the time.
True, Grigori Potemkin was responsible for the development of the former lands of the Crimean Khanate. But that’s the only accurate part of this otherwise-fake story.
Indeed, Russians and foreigners who visited Crimea in those days painted a very different picture. They described a region where all the villages and towns were real—though, granted, they were erected in haste. Russian carpenters and farmers were forced to be fast builders—an essential skill if one were to survive the harsh winter conditions.
The wooden structures were hardly built to perfection, and some of their elaborate exterior accoutrements—“flowers, painted backdrops, and triumphal gates”—may have been just for show, but that was not rare in 18th-century Russia, and no attempt was made to fool anyone, least of all the visiting empress.
Still, the mythical part of the story has endured to this day. Articles continue to be written debunking its origins. One piece that handily disposes of the legend, “The Potemkin villages myth EXPOSED,” was published in March 2020 on the website Russia Beyond. Staff writer Georgy Manaev is the author of the partial quote in the previous paragraph.
These days the term “Potemkin village” is employed to describe a situation in which an undesirable condition is hidden behind an impressive-looking-but-fake exterior. By masking the undesirable condition, the designers of the plot hope to deceive observers into thinking that the reality is better than it actually is.
I especially like this dictionary definition of Potemkin village: “a pretentiously showy or imposing façade intended to divert attention from an embarrassing or shabby fact or condition.”
Many political analysts from both East and West depict Russian Federation President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in Potemkin village-like language. They practically idolize him as some sort of grandmaster anti-globalist strategist who, in their worshipful eyes, liberated the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine from the evil clutches of the “neo-Nazi” regime in Kiev.
This article will attempt to prove that these pundits are propagandists whose work is the modern-day equivalent of fake Potemkin village façades. Either because they are duped or by design, they are obscuring an undesirable reality about Russia’s special military operation (SMO). They want readers in the West to think Putin is doing a spectacular job of outmaneuvering Ukraine—I mean the Pentagon and the CIA—at every turn. Since the start of the SMO in 2022, though, the Pentagon and its offshoot, NATO, have been steadily funneling arms to Ukraine, thereby keeping its military on the counteroffensive and even expanding the conflict into Russia proper.
Those who characterize Russia as triumphantly winning the war on the battlefields of Ukraine fail to focus on two factors: the nature of the dominant economic system prevailing in the Russian Federation and President Putin’s close relationships with the world’s foremost globalists.
As to the first factor: Russia’s economic transformation from a centrally controlled economy to a Wall Street-like neoliberal economic model was initiated in 1990 by Soviet Union President and Club of Rome member Mikhail Gorbachev. That model carried over into the Boris Yeltsin era (Yeltsin served as Russia’s president from 1991 to 1999) and accelerated when Putin took the helm (Putin has been either prime minister or president of Russia since 1999).
As to the second factor: Not only are these analysts obfuscating the truth about how rashly Putin and his incompetent defence ministry are conducting the SMO but they are hiding the fact that, to the detriment of 146 million Russians, Putin is 100 percent on board the globalist agenda being promoted by the United Nations (UN), the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Furthermore, Russia, like Ukraine, is being led by a gang of treacherous oligarchs who act as if they are one unified cabal working arm-in-arm—ruthless tycoons who care not one whit about the well-being of their Russian and Ukrainian countrymen.
Most of my readers already understand how deplorable Ukraine’s leadership is. The Ukrainian government is the epitome of a kakistocracy hellbent on heeding the wishes of its handlers in the West, to the detriment of its 36 million-plus people.
To wit #1: Over the past decade Ukraine’s valuable, incredibly fertile agricultural land—its breadbasket—has been sold to US multinationals Cargill, Dupont, and Monsanto. The main shareholders of these companies are the world’s two largest investment firms, BlackRock and Vanguard.
To wit #2: Ukrainian actor-and-comedian-turned-President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was bankrolled and promoted into office by Ukrainian-born Israeli oligarch Ihor Kholomoisky. This oligarch-to-beat-all-oligarchs is now behind bars on money laundering and fraud charges in Ukraine.
Yes, this is the very same Kholomoisky who helped create and fund the Ukrainian “neo-Nazi” Azov battalion in 2014. He undoubtedly sees President Zelenskyy—and almost every Western leader—as simply a useful pawn for him and his New World Order (NWO) buddies—until such time as they choose to replace the current handpicked “ruler” with another puppet perceived as more profitable to their pockets.
It is my hope that by the time you finish reading this article you will have a better understanding of the true nature of the Potemkin-like Putin and the Potemkin-like Russia/Ukraine conflict.
The Current Situation in Ukraine
Contrary to what most independent pundits are saying, the war is not going well for Moscow. At the start of the SMO in February 2022, Russian forces approached Kiev from the north, hoping that this maneuver would incentivize pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians living in Kiev to persuade their fellow countrymen to sue for peace. But after Russia’s unsuccessful attempt to take Kiev upon the SMO’s inception, the overall situation has been slowly deteriorating for the Kremlin.
[Further detail: When they launched the SMO in February 2022, Russian forces approached Ukraine’s capitol, Kiev, from the north with the intent of pressuring the Kiev regime into immediate ceasefire negotiations. Apparently, Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, gave the Kremlin the impression that pro-Russian assets living in Kiev would be able to persuade their fellow countrymen to sue for peace with Moscow. That hope never materialised, and the Russian forces were compelled to make an embarrassing retreat two months later.]
What do I mean by “slowly deteriorating for the Kremlin”?
For one thing, the initial gains the Russian forces achieved in the regions of Kharkov, Liman, and Kherson have all been lost.
For another, apart from capturing the city of Bakhmut in May 2023 and the town of Avdiivka in February 2024—both of which are still under Russian control—Moscow has still not achieved any major strategic goals in Ukraine. Other than giving the Russian soldiers a badly needed morale boost, the capture of Avdiivka did not change the overall strategic situation.
In short, Russia is not winning any major conflict in Ukraine. In fact, if anything, the inverse is true.
Ukrainian military units are now actively engaged in fighting Russian forces on Russian territory. They are flying drones into Russia and shelling Russian villages along the border and even conducting long-range drone strikes against radar facilities deep in the Russian interior—actions they never took before the SMO commenced.
One specific example: Belgorod, Russia, is now being routinely bombed and shelled with impunity by Kie
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Brilliant article that must be read in it's entirety. Initially, when this conflict began, it was easy to be convinced of Russia bad, Ukraine good - that was the narrative heavily pushed by virtually all controlled media outlets (and many independents as well). As people became more educated on the history of the region, recent and distant, many, including myself, shifted to blaming NATO expansion and the neocon maniac's perpetual desire for power then drifting into the pro-Putin camp. Articles like this, and some others I've read by independent journalists, have snapped me out of my fog and woken me up to the fact that there is no good side nor bad side. Not unlike the uni-party concept in the US, this war, along with the Israeli/Hamas conflict, Convid, The Climate Scam, ESG, DEI, Etc. always lead one back to the same anti-human agenda of the puppet masters - our overlords who own everything and have no national identity. The only enemy humanity faces are the technocratic elite power brokers! The homeless oligarchs (they have many houses but no HOME). I pray the paradigm shift I've experienced over that past 5 years, which continues to evolve, hits at least 10% of the worlds so-to-be serfs before it's too late to stop them. They have shared their plan via Agenda 2030 so we know what's coming if we let them keep rolling. It's time to unite!
Again, bravo on the article - I for one will share the hell out of it!