https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/news-x-world-this-morning-russian
News X World this morning: Russian strikes on Kiev resume
Published by gilbertdoctorow
Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels. View all posts by gilbertdoctorow
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Gilbert Doctorow 
It’s a difficult job being a “kremlinologist”, man what a vulgar term that is, but what the Kremlinology is for the special military operation is anyones guess .
The Godfather was on TV recently and it got me thinking about what is the Kremlinology?
In the best case scenario ,Putin is Michael Corleone. Pretending to be weak, allowing the other crime families to smash his territory and Businesses and make it look like he is running away to Las Vegas. Doing this to filter out the traitors and luring the 5 families , NATO in this case, into a false sense of security before a sudden ,bloody and swift annihilation of all the 5 families- resulting in Corleone being the king of New York.
The added complication is the war within the war- on the frontlines, but there has to be no doubt that all Donbass will be taken at some stage.
Michael Corleone the best case option. In the worst case, the one unfortunately I think is most likely, is that this is the Crimean war mark 2. The stated objectives the western powers of France and Britain used to create the war of them and the Ottomans against the Russians- stopping Russia from kicking out the Ottomans from Orthodox Christian areas- failed and Russia achieved this shortly after the Crimean war. Just as now, one does not get the impression the west thinks Russia won’t obtain all the Donbass.
But the west succeeded in what they wanted- getting Russia hooked on western credit straight after the war and killing plenty of Russians to try and reduce its military power.
It was business as usual as soon as the war ended as French and the British businessmen, engineers, artists,chefs and so on flooded into the Russian Empire. The French did much for the arts in Russia, the British setup the coal mining and steel industries in the Donbass and the railways. For crying out loud, the self-flaggelation of the Russian elites was so much that Britain’s big contribution to the railway industry across the world and in Russia was rewarded by Russians naming their train stations “Vokzal” as an anglicism tribute!
Putin is supposed to be a keen student of history, so if he is repeating the Crimean war history, which all his public statements since 2023 seem to suggest, then he hasnt learnt from it.
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