RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 30 MARCH 2017

AMERICA-HYSTERICA. The story continues to fall apart. No evidence says Clapper. Not even Krauthammer believes it. Morell, previously calling Trump an "unwitting agent” now says "no fire, at all". Rogers says no evidence. Nunes says no evidence. The authors of the hysteria are backing off. The source of the "evidence” – Crowdstrike – looks fishier by the moment (even VoA doubts it. It’s just another NATO tool.) In short, fake news. The New Yorker bravely tries to keep it alive, "worked together to halt… a sweeping investigation of Russian interference”, but it’s dying. As a reminder of just how feeble the whole story was, here’s what "All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts” tells us about Flynn: while DIA head he visited his Russian opposite number, he met with the Russian Ambassador and appeared on RT; pretty thin. Maybe we will find out who really leaked the evidence of rigging the DNC.

PUTIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. Pretty much displaced by TDS (humans soon to be extinct, thanks to him) but still some good ones: "Russia’s coming attack on Canada”, "The Senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.” "Russia’s 5th Column” (pretty well anybody anywhere who disagrees with the Establishment line).

DEMOS. I’m not going to spend much time on the demos – I am rather surprised that they happened at all given the gradual elimination of foreign GONGOs and Navalniy’s Western cookie cutter views on Crimea and Ukraine: "referendum at the barrel of a gun”, "invasion” . Karlin was there. I doubt that there will be much in the way of aftereffects. Western hypocrisy was in full cry: Toronto 7 years ago, Washington a year ago, London half a year ago. Nobody likes unsanctioned protests.

TRUCKERS’ STRIKE. Another strike against the Plato system has begun. I don’t know much about it – here’s something – but I believe it to be a genuine protest.

SEPARATION. The Russian defence industry has almost completed its separation from Ukraine. Safeguards against the risk of being shut out of international transaction systems such as SWIFT have been introduced. More evidence of Moscow’s foresight and determination.

RUSSIA INC. Bloomberg says Russia is out of its recession and S&P has raised its sovereign outlook to positive. Which doesn’t stop tripe like this and this from being extruded by the fake stream media.

FREELAND’S GRANDFATHER. It’s not Russia that is the source of the story, it’s Poland: "The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland’s maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war.” Warsaw is starting to be concerned about what it helped to revive in its neighbour (desecration of graves of Poles in Ukraine). And that neighbour is noticing back: a grenade attack on a Polish consulate in Western Ukraine the other day.

NEW NWO. One of the unintended by-products of the neocon direction of American foreign policy has been the increase in Iran’s power. The destruction of Iraq removed a barrier and the attempted destruction of Syria gave it an opportunity: it now dominates its immediate surroundings, from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, in a way almost unimaginable in 2000. It grows closer to Russia: its S-300s are now operating, a port visit to Makhachkala and President Rouhani visited Moscow. Relations will only get closer (China too). It really is remarkable how much the West has squandered in a couple of decades.

US SENATORS NOTICE SOROS. Something to watch.

THE EMPTINESS OF FORMER FLAPS. Remember – it’s only a year ago – when "Russia [was] stoking and exploiting Europe’s migrant crisis to extract concessions"? Neither does anyone else: now it turns out that Norway was playing games with migrants on the border. I can’t say it often enough: practically everything you read in the Western media about Russia is fake news.

UKRAINE. Complete blockade both ways of rebel Donbass: another step towards independence. Two and a half million Ukrainian refugees in Russia and more elsewhere. The nazis join up: their principles; (remember that in Remnant Ukraine, guns get a vote too). The IMF postpones its next disbursement. Kiev loses case. Since the "revolution of dignity", Ukraine has slipped (p 27) in the "world happiness ranking” and now sits at 132/155 (p22). 80% are in poverty. Catastrophic explosion at arms dump near Kharkov (pretty casual behaviour there). A former Russian Duma member shot on the street. It should be pointed out, by the way, that everything bad in Ukraine is immediately blamed on Russia (including attacks on Polish consulates); the WaPo and other FSM outlets usually parrot the accusation.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer

patrickarmstrong.ca