Conflict comes to:
Azerbaijani-Armenia:Turkey has been supplying Azerbaijani interests in their aggression against Armenia. Russia is busy with the Ukraine and when Russia falls the field is wide open for Turkey in pushing its strategic interests.
Syria: Turkey will escalate its attack upon Syrian Kurds. The Russia have removed air defenses from Syria to the Ukraine. That leave the door for Israel to deal with Assad as again the West stands aside to watch. Likely with glee from the US as the Russians spanked the US & kept Assad in power during the Syrian civil war. Like Iraq democratic puppets will be installed but corruption will persist as that is how things roll in the Middle East.
Belarus:The Baltic & Nordic states have been chomping at the bit for years to take Lukashenko down to size and peel Belarus out of the Russian orbit. The West will stand aside and allow this.
Georgia-With Russia gone Georgia will settle the Ossetians hash.
Moldovia:With Russia gone Moldova will bring the Transnistra province to heel.
Iran:No conflict but Iran loses its arms supplier and it Security Council member support in the UN. Iran is in a box. Zeihan doesn’t believe the US will move militarily against Iran. Maybe-maybe not-our leadership still has not gotten over Iran taking of US embassy hostages.
The above represents Zeihan’s view and my spin bolded. So if Russia is gone world realignment occurs and old grudges are settled. Personally I am not sure Russia is out of the picture. But if so, I believe Zeihan’s is close on with his predictions.
A FORMER Putin ally and top aviation expert has died in Moscow, becoming the latest of the Russian president’s associates to meet his end in a mysterious fashion since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Anatoly Gerashchenko, the former rector of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), died after reportedly falling down a series of flights of stairs on Tuesday.
When i was last in Russia I saw a large unit of soldiers, it was obvous that they didn’t come from European Russia. I asked what they were doing there and I was told that a lot of the Asian Republics/countries provided military personnel as it was a way out of poverty which was widespread there:
Russia’s military is running enlistment campaigns in Central Asian countries Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as the number of Russians willing to fight in Ukraine decreases, Ukraine’s intelligence service (GUR) claimed.
Many of the Asian Federation areas don’t really see themselves as Russian and having their young people treated as cannon fodder in Ukraine won’t go down too well. When the scale of the deaths in Ukkraine is admitted I suspect this will pull the Federation apart.
Likely with glee from the US as the Russians spanked the US
Huh? Russia could not contain or do much about ISIS so we did. All the forces in the area respectfully avoided our power. Russia built its first air strip for its syrian actions months after we arrived. There was nothing much to Russia in the first place.
While I was in Spain this summer I saw a BIG spike up in the number of Russians; we saw more Russians by a factor of 100 than I was used to seeing on the island of Mallorca, most of them families with teen to tween children – draft age. That Putin would need and draft more young meat for the war was quietly understood and acted upon by Russians with brains by last May June.
I thought it was a powerful sign of what is going on in Russia. And the Europeans are rapidly shutting the gate on Russian tourism. Some of the tourists will no doubt become refugees…
While I was in Spain this summer I saw a BIG spike up in the number of Russians; we saw more Russians by a factor of 100 than I was used to seeing on the island of Mallorca
You should see Cyprus:
How rich Russians turned Cyprus into ‘Moscow on the Med’
The Cyprus Papers reveal that in just two years, 1,000 wealthy Russians bought ‘golden passports’ from Cyprus.
Thanks for that note on Cyprus. Had no idea but it sure fits. Mallorca has quite a few bolthole rich Russians as well, but nothing like what that article shows in Cyprus. What I saw in Mallorca were less rich families, overwhelmingly with draft age boys, looking about for relatively cheap anonymous digs.
Yes, the Russian upper and upper middle classes that could protect themselves and their children are doing so, putting the Russian Army deeply into colonialist empire mode, and that is not very stable.