Jeremy's Den: The Murderer In His Bunker

What Putin is doing is archaic and barbaric, and he needs to understand that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, none of these countries are part of the Russian Imperium anymore. Nor is Ukraine. It’s over, over, over, over. No more Empire, Vladimir, you fucking idiot.

(Boris Johnson, 11 January 2025)

Russia should be worried about what we're doing, instead of us always worrying about what they're doing. Until they get punched in the nose, until we make them stop, they will continue doing this. And it only gets worse until we act.

(Ben Hodges, 5 January 2025)

Back to a soundtrack of progressive rock classics this time, with Van der Graaf Generator's second and third albums, The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other and H To He, Who Am The Only One, both from 1970. The two bonus tracks, appended at the end, are from their non-album single featuring the alternative orchestral version of "Refugees", also released in 1970 and later included in the compilation album I Prophesy Disaster. This is of course not a random choice, to accompany thoughts about the fight of Ukraine against fascist Russia. Some of these songs definitely conjure images of what is happening today. The wanderers looking to the West for a glimpse of hope in "Refugees". The bloodthirsty shark that everybody hates and fears in "Killer". The mass-murdering dictator hidden from the world in "The Emperor In His War Room". All too familiar, innit? But don't let that distract you from the most important, the greatness of the music.

As usual, the charts look better if you click on them for bigger versions.

After two months of a tumultuous transition, Elon Musk has been sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. Or was it Donald Trump? Who can really tell in this day and age of AI-generated deepfakes? The most salient part of that transition was The Elmonald finally admitting he won't achieve peace in Ukraine in one day, because Putin doesn't want it, and shifting his attention to an obsessive fixation on Greenland that quickly made Danish public opinion turn against the USA. This means that the whole of Europe, including the UK, must reframe its relationship with the USA as a matter of the utmost urgency. YouGov perfectly seized the spirit of the day when they asked their British panel twinned questions, about the United States and Russia on one hand, about Trump and Putin on the other.

A plurality of the Great British Public still see the United States as a friend and ally, but I have a hunch this has more to do with an idealised view of the concept of the United States, rather than a genuine assessment of the United States as they really are. All rooted in the ancestral delusion that we have a 'special relationship' with the United States because we speak the same language, But we haven't and we don't, we don't even spell the most basic words the same. On the other hand, it's reassuring that British public opinion sees Russia, Putin's New Model Soviet Union, for what it is, a hostile threat. But you nevertheless have to wonder where YouGov found 3% of lobotomised cretins and 2% of bribed FSB agents who think otherwise. It's a pity YouGov didn't include Reform UK voters in the crosstabs for this one, as it's surely where we would have found most of that sorry lot. There is an interesting change in the replies to the parallel questions about Putin and Trump.

YouGov asked their panel if they consider them as a threat to peace, or not. Majorities think that both are a big threat to peace, which is probably not what YouGov expected beforehand. This time we have Reform UK voters in the crosstabs and, quite expectedly, they are twice as likely as the average Brit to think Putin is not a threat to peace. A strong majority of them also think Trump is not a threat to peace, which is quite extraordinary now that we have seen him adopting the same extortionist and threatening attitude as Vlad The Butcher, even when dealing with close allies of the United States. Even the Kremlin's Propagandastaffel saw the massive irony in this, and complimented him for it. YouGov's next question was about our confidence in the British military's ability to defend us in case of a foreign attack. Quite predictably, it is low, although we are a bit more confident in their ability to hold their own in undefined, but probably more 'low profile', military operations overseas.

Sadly, the low level of confidence in our military is totally justified. And you can't blame Labour for that, as this is solely the result of 14 years of Conservative mismanagement, which also extended to the Armed Forces they were supposed to support and improve. The most striking example is the Royal Navy, and how it has lost all of its amphibious capability, which is a major component of any credible overseas operations. First they sold HMS Ocean, the largest and most capable of the Royal Navy's amphibious ships, to Brazil without a replacement. Then they carefully hid that the two remaining amphibious ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, were left without proper maintenance for several years while in reserve because of manning problems. And now they are blaming Labour for the inevitable 'tough choice' to scrap both, leaving the UK without any soft power-projection capability for at least ten years. This is especially distressing when we see that European countries, facing the same budgetary constraints as us, have managed to retain a significant capability. Just watch France, Spain and Italy. Even Japan, Australia, Turkey and South Korea are now doing better than us, for fuck's sake. Which is not really a good omen when Keir Starmer is promising Ukraine our unwavering support for the next seventeen generations. No wonder he's now trying to make other countries do it for us.

The power of our long-term friendships cannot be underestimated. Supporting Ukraine to defend itself from Russia’s barbaric invasion and rebuild a prosperous, sovereign future is vital to this government’s foundation of security and our plan for change.

(Keir Starmer, 15 January 2025)

We cannot, as Europeans, let Russia win in Ukraine. It's about our security and the international order. The question is how to support Ukraine long-term, so they can resist and eventually negotiate a lasting peace. No solution can be made without Ukrainians, and no quick fix will serve Europe or the US.

(Emmanuel Macron, 6 January 2025)

It's been almost three years now since Vladimir Putin started his three-day criminal war of aggression to enslave Ukraine within the New Model Soviet Reich. Nothing went quite according to plan right from day one, when Spetsnaz sent to murder Volodymyr Zelenskyy met their demise on Kyiv's Hostomel Airport. Since then, the fate of Ukraine has been hugely dependent on help received from Western democracies, themselves influenced by the level of support offered by their public opinions. Something Putin's totalitarian regime doesn't have to worry about, as the Russian people are constantly and massively brainwashed by the Kremlin's Propagandastaffel. YouGov have been regularly surveying British public opinion, and also some select European nations, and reporting on the evolution of the public's state of mind. Their last omnibus survey was fielded in December, mostly to assess how public opinions were reacting to the return of Donald Trump, and how it may affect the USA's support for Ukraine. Panels were polled in the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Italy. One important background factor is how much people in all these countries actually care about the situation in Ukraine.

This very basic question already highlights major differences between the seven countries polled by YouGov. My take on this is that it reveals, even with a fairly neutral question, the level of Russian influence in these countries. What I see here is not a causality, but surely a correlation, with the stance of each country's government on the war, the weight of openly pro-Russian or shy pro-Russian political parties, and the likely level of Russian infiltration in the media and more specifically social media. Its is quite obvious that we are facing a Russia-sponsored Fifth Column on our own soil, as part of Putin's hybrid war on democracy. This is even more painfully obvious in the replies to YouGov's follow up question, about whom the various public opinions want to win the war. I must say I find some comfort in the massive level of support to Ukraine in the UK, which has surely not escaped the avid poll-scrutinisers in Whitehall, and possibly played a part in Keir Starmer's stronger expression of support for Ukraine. Which still needs confirming by bolder actions, though, not just promises of eternal friendship.

There are obvious similarities between the proportion of the public who don't care about the outcome of the war and the proportion who want Russia to win, and plausibly a high level of correlation in most cases. Interestingly, France and Germany don't exactly fit this conclusion, probably as a result of domestic politics. In France, parties who were openly pro-Russian until 24 February 2022 have toned it down several notches since. There is definitely a 'shy Putinist' factor at work in the country of my birth, making vociferous Putinism far less fashionable than it once was. The situation is different in Germany, where Olaf Scholz's endless procrastination and ambiguity have made open support for Russia more acceptable, to the extent it has become a major campaign theme for both the far-left and the far-right in the run-up to their general election, with which I will deal in more detail later this month. There is also an obvious geographical divide here as Denmark and Sweden, the two countries closest to the frontline and direct Russian threats, also have the highest levels of support for Ukraine. Oddly YouGov have excluded Poland, which was surveyed in earlier polls, from that last iteration. But we already know that the level of hostility towards Russia is through the roof there for good reasons. But their relationship with Ukraine has also been strained recently, so it would have been interesting to see in which way it may have influenced their public opinion.

We may soon face strong pressure to reach an agreement with Moscow. But what kind of deal can a reasonable Europe agree to? Certainly not a simple agreement that will allow Moscow to recover. Europe is much stronger than Russian leaders believe. Russia is much weaker than many Europeans think.

(Radoslaw Sikorski, 7 January 2025)

Russia is not going away. And this version of Russia, this aggressive, imperialistic Russia, the one that attacks its neighbours, is not going away. It's here to stay. And we'll have to deal with it.

(Gabrielius Landsbergis, 19 January 2025)

Now that we know to what extent YouGov's Seven Nations are pro-Russian, we reach the stage where it is quite easy for an experienced pollster to make them contradict themselves. A quite obvious way to start is asking them if they think we have done enough for Ukraine so far, or too much. The replies here are not as clearcut as the 'wish to win' as this calls for more nuance than a simple black-and-white choice. The positive side is that majorities everywhere think that their country has not done enough to support Ukraine. The oddity is that there is a massive gap between those who wish Ukraine to win and those who think we haven't done enough in the UK, 76% vs 58%, Denmark, 87% vs 66%, and Sweden, 83% vs 63%. That's the proverbial 'lot of bark but no bite', or more bluntly, not putting your wallet where your heart is. The gap is much smaller in France and Germany, and it's even the other way round in Spain and Italy, where more people think they haven't done enough than wish Ukraine to win. Go figure.

The issue of what we can do for Ukraine is also closely linked to how much we are ready to accept as the proper level for our own military spending. One of the key elements in that debate, which seems to be oddly overlooked, is that Trump's ideology is not 'America First', but 'America Only'. He has actually said it quite often, admittedly in less blunt terms, but the message has always been that we will be left alone in the cold, and have no choice but fending for ourselves. So it's good news to see that only minorities think their country spends too much on defence, in six out of seven countries. But it's surprising to see Germany being the odd one out, with the highest proportion of the public thinking they spend too little on defence. But the Soviet-funded faux-pacifists of the Cold War generation are fading away, while the younger ones must be acutely aware of the decrepit state of the German military, that's much worse than the already dismal state of the British military. Then there is hope that public opinions all across Europe will now wake up and repudiate the self-harming myth of 'peace dividends', that only ever benefited Russia.

This supports the case I already made for a closer relationship between the UK and the EU. Not necessarily 'Breturn', as Donald Tusk called it to Starmer's face, but solid and lasting cooperation. Starting with an ambitious trade deal, to stand up to the USA and resist together, now that Trump is threatening all of us with massive tariffs. Coupled with a deal on a Common European Defence, which would help contain the necessary increase of our defence spending to a reasonably acceptable level for the British public. Because there is not only strength in numbers, but also significant economies of scale with long-term joint procurement and standardisation of military equipment. The EU is our largest trading partner and market, and there is a joint interest in stepping up the defence of our continent by making the best use of every pound and euro available. The British Right is already squealing and fulminating at the sound of the word 'Breturn', and Sly Keir should just tell them to fuck off. Musk’s stream of malevolent tweets will probably continue, but financial market confidence and economic confidence will return if the world sees a united continent back to centre stage. The UK can take a joint lead, with the EU and independent from the USA, in navigating the world through the hazards ahead. If not, then what? It is decision time.

Putin’s ambition to wrench Ukraine away from its closest partners has been a monumental strategic failure. Instead, we are closer than ever, and this partnership will take that friendship to the next level.

(Keir Starmer, 15 January 2025)

Unfortunately, you got a lot of American leaders who like to beat their chest and say, Ukraine is the good guy and Russia is the bad guy.

(J.D. Vance, 14 January 2025)

One of the key questions before Donald Trump's inauguration was whether or not he would stop aid to Ukraine, as a way to strongarm Zelenskyy into a very unfavourable deal with the Russian Reich. Those were the days when The Donald bragged he would end the war in 24 hours, before he used these very 24 hours solely to sign full bags of Executive Orders, some of which violate foundational provisions of the Constitution of the United States, seeking to establish the first stages of the MAGA One-Party State. This was pretty much Trump's Ermächtigungsgesetz Day, and the whiny woke media frenzy about the abolition of 'preferred pronouns' gave him his lucky break, as he didn't have to elaborate on how the '24 Hours To Peace' had first become 100 days, and then more probably six months. What the YouGov poll shows is that, at the end of December, majorities in all countries included in the survey thought that Trump would cut aid to Ukraine. Some may have feared it and some may have wished for it, and this is certainly not the last we hear about this.

What has happened since the Inauguration makes me feel that this polling is already obsolete. We have seen Donald Trump again demonstrating his proverbial unpredictability, and appearing to switch pressure to his erstwhile BFF Vladimir Putin. This may just be Trump playing mind games and keeping all his options open, but he hasn't put the same amount of pressure on Ukraine during the last week. I have no doubt that YouGov will conduct another omnibus pan-European poll at the end of February, coinciding with the third anniversary of the Russian invasion, and I fully expect visible changes in the replies to this question. And also in the replies to the closely related question, about how our levels of support to Ukraine should evolve. Worryingly, approval of solid levels of support for Ukraine has decreased over time in the UK and France, but it has surprisingly gone up again in Germany.

In this context, I can only commend Keir Starmer for the new 100-year partnership pact with Ukraine. The whole civilised world must send similar messages to Vladimir Putin now, before Donald Trump wrecks all the efforts we made to help Ukraine. Like all cowardly bullies, Vlad The Butcher understands only brute force, so only our united front will convince him that further aggression would be futile and only bring more retaliation. We can only expect that Keir will also bear in mind that actions speak louder than words, and not just act on what the UK can do, but also on how the UK can lead by example and strengthen the resolve of our nearest neighbours. The YouGov poll shows that there are many spots of weakness. Even in Denmark and Sweden, the proportion of people who want to cut aid to Ukraine has increased, and it is even more spectacular in Italy.

I definitely don't think you can blame all this on spontaneous 'Ukraine fatigue'. I am quite sure most of it is the result of fabricated Ukraine fatigue, created and amplified by a growing web of bribed FSB assets and Putinist influencers among us. There is nothing new here, the Soviet Union were already experts at manipulating Western public opinions through a hybrid network of actual agents operating undercover, and useful idiots acting in plain sight to promote 'causes' that only benefited the Soviets. Vlad The Butcher knows all about this expertise, as a former Lieutenant-Colonel of the KGB based in East Germany, and a former Director of the FSB, who are only the KGB with a different logo on their business cards. And now social media, AI, bots and Elon Musk have aided and abetted the infiltration and interference to grow hyper-exponentially, buy elections, promote authoritarianism and change policies in the democratic nations. All of which benefits Putin's New Model Soviet Union and gives us a thousand reasons to up our game and act more strongly and decisively, and also act more together.

I had a long talk with Zelenskyy today. And I think that as long as we continue to keep Western Europe united as it relates to Ukraine, that there is a real chance that the Ukrainians could prevail. Because the cost to Russia is incredibly high.

(Joe Biden, 10 January 2025)

I'm not here to go hand in hand with Zelensky. He's running around Europe, just begging and blackmailing, begging for money from others. It's just time to put an end to this.

(Robert Fico, 11 January 2025)

At the end of December, YouGov explored a subplot of the international situation, with a Six Nations' poll about the UK's involvement with the EU on a number of current issues. It surveyed the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, just like the omnibus poll about Ukraine. But this time Denmark and Sweden were dropped, and Poland reinstated. Which is more logical, as Poland is the fifth most populous nation in the EU, its fifth biggest economy, and soon to become its first military power on land and in the air. Not at sea, yet, as the Baltic theatre does not require the same type of blue-water power-projection capability as the UK and France need. This, and the massive involvement of their Prime Minister Donald Tusk in diplomatic matters, has made them a major player in any action involving Ukraine. The British part of the poll clearly says that a significant number of Brits, and even a majority on a couple of issues, welcome closer cooperation with the European Union.

From where I'm sat, it is a self-evident truth that closer cooperation would boost the UK's economy, especially when the whole of Europe is under threat of extravagant tariffs from Donald Trump. I also love to see a strong plurality supporting the idea that close cooperation with the EU would allow us to better stand up to the USA, when Trump himself is making a farce of the 'special relationship'. Switching our priorities to another 'special relationship', this time with the EU, would also be highly beneficial to our security and the strength of the continental alliance supporting Ukraine. You don't even have to whisper 'Breturn' and send Nigel Farage squealing 'Betrayal!'. All you have to do is, for once, follow in Boris Johnson's footsteps, affirm the UK's position as Ukraine's most determined ally in Europe, and thusly send a clear message to all the Russian agents on the continent that they will not prevail. To the vociferous ones like Fico and Orban, just as loudly as to the appeasers like Scholz. The flip side of the YouGov poll is how the Europeans feel about the impact of greater British involvement on European security, and they look both welcoming and cautious.

We have pluralities in every country thinking that the continent's security would be best served by greater cooperation with the UK, but ironically smaller than the proportion of Brits who think our own security would be enhanced by closer ties with the EU. I guess France may still see us as the 'perfidious Albion', and others may still remember how we conspired with the USA to walk them up the garden path about Iraq. We still have to convince them that it's more than time to turn that page and let bygones be bygones, and that brings us full circle to the obvious necessity of loosening our ties with the USA and strengthening those with our closest neighbours. This could start with a common strategy, both ruthless and widely publicised, to fight off Russian sabotage of key infrastructure, whether it's direct or by proxy. But it would surely take a lot of discussion and convincing, as the Europeans definitely have doubts about cooperation with the UK being the best way to "allow Ukraine to stand up to Russia", per the poll's wording.

There is quite a striking contrast here with the attitude of the British public, half of whom think that closer cooperation would be best for Ukraine. Of course, this only reflects what the various public opinions think, not what their governments may have in mind. Ay, there's the rub, all of them have some ulterior motives to not want greater British involvement. Poland are already building their own brand of 'special relationship' with the USA. Germany would not welcome a new player disrupting their own policy of appeasement, though this is probably bound to change after their incoming general election. France could be the most reluctant, as Emmanuel Macron probably still fancies himself a major player in the resolution of the conflict, even if the sequence of events has already proved he has been punching way above his weight for a long time. But protecting Scholz from the fallout of his cowardice, of helping Macron mend his bruised ego, is not our part in this power play. Keir Starmer has to follow his best instincts, and firmly stand with Ukraine. The best way to win against Putin remains a wide-ranging European cooperation, even it that means bypassing the EU bureaucracy and seeking individual partnerships for a start. Never mind the ruffled feathers, just do it.

Robert Fico might head to Davos but end up somewhere in Sochi instead. We don't know who buys his tickets, as he constantly fails to reach his intended destinations.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

I insist that no leader in the world has the right to negotiate with Putin without Ukraine. We have never delegated this mandate to anyone. We are victims. It would be unfair if everyone started talking about how the country should live.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

A very strong pan-European alliance, ready to counter Putin until he agrees to an acceptable deal, and also Trump's efforts to coerce Ukraine to submit to an unacceptable deal, is all the more necessary when you consider what Europeans think will be happening a year from now. Very few seriously think that either side will have won, whatever 'winning' means after years of massive destruction and planned war crimes from Russia. This is a situation where all will be losers. But not many think the war will still be continuing, and you feel a sense of guilty relief in the belief that it will have ended with a negotiated settlement. Because the only kind of settlement we can realistically predict right now is one that would massively favour Russia, reward their crimes, and protect their ability to wage another genocidal war of aggression in the near future. Just the outcome we should never accept. Sadly, even Brits are giving in to this defeatism, albeit more reluctantly than most others.

Sadly but predictably, you see the same patterns in the replies to YouGov's question about what the Western approach should now be. There are definitely echoes here of the public's feeling in 1938, just after the infamous Munich Agreement. French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier fully expected to be booed on his return to Paris, and instead he was widely acclaimed by a massive crowd at Le Bourget Airport. Daladier is rumoured to have muttered to himself, "Such cunts! If only they knew!". One of the first opinion polls conducted in France back then revealed that 57% of the French public agreed with the deal, but 70% opposed any more concessions to Hitler. But a line had been crossed, and what happened next totally vindicated Winston Churchill's famous prediction that Britain had chosen shame, and would get war. Only the useful idiots of Putinism will deny that we are now facing the exact same options, Just like Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin is a bloodthirsty imperialist and ethnic supremacist, hell bent on exacting revenge on those who allegedly 'humiliated' the Fatherland as if he was on some sort of divine mission.

The huge network of Kremlin-bribed influencers and FSB bots, now openly backed by Elon Musk, clearly have a massive responsibility in this climate of defeatism and appetite for surrender. They create this in several different ways. One of them is a reboot of the "Why die for Danzig?" narrative peddled by French fascists in 1939. Why would we risk dying for Kyiv, when Vlad The Butcher is reminding us every other day that he can annihilate us with nuclear missiles? This is a typical fascist strategy, that was uncoincidentally used by the Soviet Union too, creating a climate of fear to drive us into submission. Then we have the favourite relays of the totalitarian regimes within democratic countries still PTSDed by the memories of past wars, the so-called 'pacifists'. Efficiently hijacked by both Communists and fascists in the 1930s, funded by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, openly rallying behind Putin's Weltanschauung today. With the transparent goal of making us accept the most abject of capitulations, forcing Ukrainians to surrender one-fifth of their country to the New Model Soviet Union's Lebensraum. This scenario of 'land for peace' triggers quite a mixed bag of replies from YouGov's European panels.

It is quite reassuring to see that the Great British Public have a very negative opinion of the idea of Ukraine trading peace against territories, as have the Danes and Swedes, who have definitely not just fallen off the turnip cart. Sorry, had to do that one at some point, bear with me. Sadly there is far less opposition to in in France, but I won't make any joke about the French and surrender. Yet. Again, Germany stands out as the most unreliable of Ukraine's allies, which won't surprise anyone who has closely followed the sequence of events over the last three years. That's just what you have to expect when your Chancellor has form as leader of a 'Marxist pacifist' youth posse within the SPD, and was also a frequent guest of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, where he several times met officials of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands up to Egon Krenz, the last party leader and head of government before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This being said, the one certainty is that the peace negotiations cannot be entrusted to a one-on-one between Trump and Putin, unless the Orange Baboon intends to be as aggressive and confrontational with Vlad The Butcher as he was with the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen about the hijacking of Greenland. This should be another serious wake-up call for all Europeans, who should first stand up to Trump over the aggression of Denmark, and instantly make it clear that none of them will condone a deal that didn't involve Ukraine right from the very first day of negotiations. Just man up, mates, and don't let a ballsy far-right MEP be the only one telling Trump to fuck off.

Ukraine will not agree to any compromise recognizing the occupied territories as Russian, even if all our allies and partners insist on it.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

Macron, along with the Brits, is planning to send peacekeepers to Russian territory. What peacekeepers, you idiots? You have Paris and London to defend. We'll take London and Paris. And we'll be greeted with flowers because everyone is sick and tired of your faggot rule. We'll just march with flags that say ‘traditional values’.

(Sergey Soloviev, 21 January 2025)

One of the issues probed by YouGov since February 2022 is support for sending troops to NATO countries in Eastern Europe. Remember that the definition of NATO has changed since. The Western border of the New Model Soviet Reich, from the Artic Ocean to the Black Sea, is 5,913 kilometres long. Before 24 February 2022, 22% of it was with NATO nations. Now it's 44%. The Eastern border of the West, still counting Ukraine as not being part of the West yet, is of similar length at 5,926 kilometres. Before 24 February 2022, 77% of it was covered by NATO nations. Now it's 100%. All thanks to Vladimir Putin. Similarly, only about a third of the Baltic Sea's coastline was under the jurisdiction of NATO nations before the invasion, and now it's almost all of it, with Russia retaining access only in a tiny area around Leningrad and the even tinier Königsberg Enclave. Most European public opinions are reluctant to send troops to the Eastern Marches, which is a moot point actually as it has already been done. We already have 29,000 Giovanni Drogo out there, 40% of them in Poland where we think the Tartars are most likely to come.

Our European partners are even less thrilled by YouGov's other option, sending troops to Ukraine, which has already been dangled under our noses a few times, mostly by Emmanuel Macron. The reality is that there already are European boots on the ground, including Brits, and plenty of Americans too. We just don't call them 'troops' because that would trigger Vlad The Butcher into doing something really fucking stupid. But they're there, have no doubt, mostly as 'private contractors' training the Armed Forces of Ukraine or maintaining all the sophisticated stuff we sent them. Possibly even operating some of the stuff themselves when we don't want to give the Ukrainians too many details about how it's done. And of course there's the CIA, MI6, the DGSE and whatever seventeen-syllable word the Germans call their own spies. They were already there before the invasion, for fuck's sake, and the New Model Soviets have their own behind the lines too. And we also have Jack Lopresti. More relevant, from where I'm sat, is how British public opinion has evolved about these options since YouGov started polling them just after the invasion.

The Great British Public still support the principle of sending some of ours to watch over the Eastern Border, even if the level of support has dwindled. They have always been far less enthusiastic about sending our people into Ukraine, but there is a change of narrative now with the scenario of an international peace-keeping force. Of course, we would have to set our own red lines about that. Like not agreeing to just a thin khaki line along the current front, which would only be an incentive for the Orcs to attack us. It has to be something more meaningful, like a genuine Demilitarised Zone, at least 50 kilometres deep into the occupied territories. Which would allow us not only to shield Ukraine more efficiently, but also to gather evidence of Russian atrocities in a significant part of the war zone. Because we also have an obligation to fully document Russian war crimes, and give the prosecution an open-and-shut case when Sauron has his day at the ICC. The peace-keeper option has been polled twice, by YouGov and More In Common, who found broadly similar results, with just slight differences because of the different wording. The Great British Public strongly support sending our own to Ukraine on this specific mission, All but the British Union of Putinists' voters, that is, but we fully expected that, didn't we?

This result is just what we need if Starmer wants a mandate for further support to Ukraine, which now goes though the plausibility of a post-truce peacekeeping force. Zelenskyy wants it, Trump wants it, albeit reluctantly and without American boots on the ground, Starmer wants it, Macron wants it. Only Putin doesn't want it. Oh, Scholz, Fico and Orban too. But these three can definitely fuck off, can't they? Volodymyr Zelenskyy has deliberately set the bar very high, at 200,000 troops provided by the Allied coalition, which is not as far-fetched as it sounds at first glance. For example, the UNIFIL numbered 10,251 personnel at the end of 2024, and the area they cover is less than 10% of what would have to be covered in Ukraine, and generally with far less high-intensity military activity. Also consider that the total number would have to include personnel involved in logistics, and allow for rotations to grant the troops well-needed R&R during an obviously high-stress mission. Looks like the ball's in our court now, just as it should be.

Membership in the EU and NATO, serious arms packages and support for the Ukrainian army, as well as the possible deployment of foreign military contingents on the territory of Ukraine, these are the security guarantees that we are seeking.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

Ukrainians are not a brotherly people. They are enemies. They might become brothers again only after we defeat them and begin rehabilitating them.

(Tigran Keosayan)

Over the last three years, YouGov have been polling their British and European panels about various ways we could help Ukraine in their fight for freedom against the Russian aggression. One of the most outlandish ones is that we could coordinate air strikes against Russian targets in Ukraine. That would obviously be quite risky business, with all the Russian talk about co-belligerence and whatnot. But are we really sure we have never done it? At the very least, we did provide Ukraine with intelligence that helped them prepare and deliver such strikes, that's one of the war's worst-kept secrets. And it didn't bother the Russians that much, did it? That's the problem with these polls, when you start polling things as hypotheticals when you don't know we are actually doing them already, and then have to continue polling them as if they're not happening even when you now know we have been doing them for months. The ironic part is that nobody in Europe is really supportive of giving the Ukrainians a helping hand to smash the Orcs into sawdust, not even the Brits, when our own Men In Kyiv have probably been the first to do it.

Europeans are more open to YouGov's less visibly belligerent option, cyberattacks against Russian military capabilities, but not really conclusively. Though there is an obvious upside to it. It is the only area where you can easily get unbreakable plausible deniability. Niet, tovaritch, we did not do it, the Chinese did. Or maybe it was Mossad, who could possibly know when the IP address of your attacker keeps jumping from one country to the other every nanosecond? Also consider that the least sophisticated hack can be the most successful. Don't bother about being undetected for hours while you download all their secret files. All you need is enough time to irretrievably delete all their files, that's quicker and just as efficient. And then format the master hard drive on your way out for good measure. Let MI6 hire and unleash nuclear-Armageddon hackers, not smart-war hackers, and see what's left of the Soviet Deep State the morning after. The sequence of replies from only YouGov's British panel shows that we remain open to cyberattacks against the Russian Reich, still more than any other Europeans, even if we have summat distanced ourselves from the more brutal option of coordinating air strikes.

In the subtext of these questions, there is the neverending debate about the proverbial 'red lines'. My first obvious reaction, many moons ago, was that you should never draw your red lines in plain sight, as your enemy will come just one nanometre away from them just to test you, and see what your baws are actually made of. But it has worked the exact opposite way since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We drew our red lines about what we were ready to deliver to Ukraine, and then crossed them all. Remember the controversies about tanks, F-16s, long-range missiles? Each and every time, without exception, we gave Ukraine what they asked for. Too little and too late, obviously, but we always did. Likewise, Vlad The Butcher drew his own read lines in the sand and threatened us with nuclear annihilation if we crossed them, or him. Then we did and nothing happened. Just a mock trial of a 'new' missile that had been in the making for thirty years. We know now that China would rather eliminate Putin themselves than let him use nukes, because that would be bad for business, and that's all that matters to them. Consider that, and the self-evident truth that the whole of Russia is on the brink of collapse, and let's be bold. Help Ukraine, don't procrasturbate, just do it!

Putin can't be thrilled, He's not doing so well. I mean he's grinding it out, Most people thought that war would have been over in about one week, and now you're into three years. So he can't be thrilled. That's not making him look very good.

(Donald Trump, 21 January 2025)

Putin is the new Hitler, intoxicated by impunity, a ghoul drunk on blood. And I will not tire of repeating: “Crush the serpent!”. Death to Putin, the murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel! Death to the Russian fascist invaders! Glory to Ukraine!

(Aleksandr Skobov, 16 January 2025)

We have often been told that we should offer more support to the Russian opposition, but should we really, as they are more often than not opposing the man, but not his politics? The courageous Aleksandr Skobov, who will most likely die in Putin's Gulag, is actually one of the few exceptions. Vlad The Butcher was all too happy to get rid of some of them in a massively publicised prisoner exchange some months ago. Fucking relieved, actually, as they are no longer his problem, but ours. Of those, only Vladimir Kara-Murza and Aleksandra Skochilenko had explicitly expressed support for Ukraine, and Kara-Murza did it again after his release. But a lot of the others are from the nationalist wing of the opposition, who stand against Putin personally, but share his Russian supremacist views. They're just like the German generals who plotted to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. These never wanted to end the war and the Holocaust, and eradicate Nazism. They were German nationalists who only wanted a separate peace with the Western Allies, allowing them to continue the war against the Soviet Union. But YouGov's polling shows that the idea of offering support to Putin's token opposition is still mostly seen favourably.

It doesn't have really overwhelming support, though, as if European public opinions have become aware of the futility of granting them support when they don't show full commitment to ending Putin's imperialist policies. Or maybe they have learned from the mistakes we made about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whom the whole West celebrated as a hero of freedom, only to discover he was a reactionary Russian supremacist who denied Ukraine their right to exist, and ended up painting Holodomor as a fabrication of extremist Ukrainian nationalists. Once bitten, thrice shy, or summat. Since the beginning of Russia' criminal invasion, YouGov have also tested what might have appeared once as a smart and sensible option, targeted media campaigns in Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, to somehow boost the spirit of patriotism and resistance. Oddly, after almost three years, this idea too still has sone traction in Europe, even more than support to the Russian opposition.

I guess it would be useless to point out how futile this idea is, knowing what we now know about the modus operandi of Russian military occupation, and the process of accelerated Russification that goes with it. This is quite literally the reign of terror of pro-Russian enforcers, who already prospered in the fake Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, under de facto Soviet-style military rule since 2014, aiding and abetting separatist terrorist militias. Besides, any morale-boosting counter-propaganda would have to go through social media, you just can't think in terms of rebooting Radio Free Europe. We already know how access to social media and independent sources is tightly controlled by the Russian Deep State apparatus, so any effort to communicate through them is doomed to be inefficient at best, a dismal failure more probably. We thusly should rely on much more practical ways to help Ukraine, which do include boosting their morale, but not just that. Sadly, it also now implies that we may have to act against those who should be our and Ukraine's most powerful ally, and are now pushing the limits of strategic ambiguity to a worrying level.

Nobody attacked Russia, nobody threatened it. It was Putin's regime that attacked Ukraine. Solely because of the megalomania of its leaders, because of the inhuman thirst for power over everything around it.

(Aleksandr Skobov, 16 January 2025)

We are not ready to give our freedom to this fucking terrorist Putin. That’s it. That’s why we are fighting. That’s it.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

The Europeans outside looked from Putin to Trump, and from Trump to Putin, and from Putin to Trump again. But already it was impossible to say which was which. In which world are we living, when it so easily shifts from 1984 to Animal Farm? In which world are we living, where the President of the United States' priority is not to cooperate with Europe to help Ukraine defend itself against fascist Russia, but to threaten an European nation with military aggression in terms directly lifted from the Kremlin's soundbites? Just like Putin, Trump lied through his teeth all along about Greenland, where the population have massively told him to fuck off and exposed his moron son's PR stunt in Nuuk as a complete fabrication. Never thought we'd see the time when we would miss Joe Biden's asinine procrastination, but it has taken the Orange Baboon just ten days to achieve that with his unhinged testerical born-again imperialism. The saddest part, for the UK's reputation, is Peter Mandelson rebranding himself as a shameless Trump-cocksucker just to secure a plum job he is unfit for. Interestingly, Trump's mantrum of anti-European aggressivity is coming just at the moment YouGov's panels are found to agree that we are not doing enough to help Ukraine beat the fucking crap out of the Russian invaders.

In 2024, and on average of all seven countries probed by YouGov, the proportion of those finding we are doing enough has decreased by 3% and the proportion of those who think we are not has increased by 2%. Just as we may have to do it all by ourselves when Elon Musk shuts down US aid to Ukraine to fund a rocket to Mars. Interestingly, the most spectacular movement in that direction comes from Germany, much against the talking points of their Appeaser-In-Chief soon-to-be former Bundeskanzler. We have heard a lot about cutting aid because money spent on Ukraine would be better spent at home, from all corners of the Putin-enabling far-right and far-left, and sadly also from some clueless idiots within the Labour Party. I have already made my case against this asinine appeasatory position on Christmas Eve, but it had also been conclusively argued in the United States almost two years ago, and again two months ago in Germany, the country whose government most urgently needed being reminded of that self-evident truth. It is nevertheless quite difficult to reconcile this with another part of YouGov's polling, where they find that support for military aid to Ukraine has gone down in Europe by 4% on average in 2024.

The very issue of military aid to Ukraine has always been a tricky one for European governments, caught between other pressing needs and conflicting priorities, not to mention pressure from their own public opinions, most of which are submitted to a neverending flow of pro-Russian propaganda. Again, only Germany goes against the trend, with a majority now supporting military aid to Ukraine. This could prove crucial to fend off the FSB-planted influencers when the next Chancellor, Friedrich Merz of the CDU-CSU, decides to bin Olaf Scholz's Putin-enabling policies and delivers Taurus missiles to Ukraine with full permission to strike any legitimate Russian military target anywhere in Russia in compliance with international law. Sadly, the UK has also seen a sharp decline of support for the delivery of additional weaponry and assorted supplies, from 74% in March 2022 to 53% in December 2024. But that was five weeks ago, and we can only hope that Trump's shenanigans in the meanwhile have convinced the Great British Public to think twice and reverse that trend. In this context, Keir Starmer's visit to Kyiv is hugely significant and important, It is also very revealing that Russia tried to intimidate him with drone strikes while he was meeting Zelenskyy. Of course, I hope Starmer will go all the way, and not just cuddle Zelenskyy with kind words or promises of unwavering comradeship for the rest of eternity, that wouldn't be backed by very concrete measures without any strings attached.

But is this our only hope to see Ukraine resist and prevail? Oddly, there is plausible alternative scenario on the table, where Donald Trump's aggressive attitude towards Denmark is just a stunt to make Europe wake up to the necessity of higher military spending, and he then at last totally U-turns from Joe Biden's policies, but in the exact opposite direction from what everyone expects. A scenario in which Vladimir Putin fucks around and finds out that you don't piss off the Orange Baboon without suffering the consequences. The key is in Trump's favourite approach, to treat everything as a business transaction. And Trump's transactionalism implies that Putin must give away something significant, or else... Trump will turn Rooseveltian, and by that I mean Theodore Roosevelt, and hit hard with his big stick. It could be the delivery of far more American weaponry to Ukraine, from tanks to planes, taken from the huge inventory currently mothballed in the middle of the American deserts. There is also speculation it could include allowing Ukraine to strike military targets anywhere in Russia with American long-range weapons, not just in restrictively-defined areas close to the frontline. No matter how implausible that huge final step might sound today, it is not totally impossible if Trump advances armed with the certainty that Putin will do what bullies always do when confronted. Back down. We can only hope...

My answer was to Trump, and this is one of the security guarantees. Take $300bn of frozen Russian assets. We will take it. Take what we need for our interior production, and we will buy all the weapons from the United States. We don’t need gifts from the United States.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

Russian economy and Putin’s military machine will dry up very quickly. This will allow Putin to sit at the table. We have leverage, such as lifting restrictions on long-range weapons by Ukraine.

(Michael Waltz, 12 January 2025)

There are about five dozen reasons to believe that Russia's economy is going down the same road as one of Elon Musk's rockets, towards a rapid unscheduled disassembly. The most potent one being that Vladimir Putin himself has said so. Twice. And it's actually not as unscheduled as a Space X explosion, there have been many warning signs for months. It is even starting to fuel discontent now, especially since the Russian government decided to pretty much confiscate all the money deposited on their bank accounts by private citizens, to pour it into the bottomless pit of corruption-ridden military spending. YouGov have been surveying support for increased sanctions since day one three years ago, and have added the option of just maintaining current sanctions two years ago, when support for stronger ones started to decrease. Fortunately, support for harsher sanctions remains high all across Europe, even in the countries most openly targeted by the FSB's Propagandastaffel, or most obviously infected by Russia-bribed appeasers within their political establishment.

I have always said that the effect of sanctions would only be felt gradually and that we needed to give them time, and this is exactly what we are witnessing now. Venture capitalists are deserting Russia in droves because they don't want to have their money robbed by the State. Industrial production and investments in key sectors are at their lowest since the fall of the Soviet Union. Civil unrest, even in the privileged and protected cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg, is also triggered by the skyrocketing inflation, which even manipulated official statistics cannot hide anymore. It is now officially reaching a monthly rate as high as the yearly rate in the UK, and the Russian people know first-hand it is actually much higher on the bare necessities like foodstuffs and energy. It's not yet a Weimar Germany level of hyperinflation, but is surely feels like it for the common folk. Western public opinions know it, and also that the negative effects on ourselves are now way past, no matter what some cowardly politicians are saying, and support upholding the current level of sanctions more conclusively than enforcing new ones.

I presume that we see here the realisation that sanctions can only have a delayed effect, but then it quickly becomes a cumulative one. The Putinist Crime Syndicate are now fully aware that nothing is safe, no matter how smartly they thought they were protecting it. It's a domino effect, and once the firewall crumbles, the floodgates are opened. And mixed metaphors work fucking well, don't they? The point is that the question is no longer "if" Russia's economy will fall apart as the Soviet Union's did in the 1980s, but "when". The best experts give it a year, give or take. Since we no longer have the means to challenge Russia into a massive arms race, our best choice is massive sanctions, and more of them than ever before. But it looks like we still have to deliver that message loud and clear, even in the UK. The sequence of YouGov's polls over three years shows that the Great British Public's support for sanctions, increased or just maintained, has gone down over time. We clearly need to do better than that if we want to convince our government that the only way is harsher sanctions and bringing the Russian economy down further, which the key to victory.

Sadly the greatest threat to our united front is now coming from the usual suspect, who fully deserves to be called The Enemy Within. The former Soviet-hugging influencer who transitioned from Chamberlain to Quisling, Olaf Scholz. Now he supports Putin-ally Hungary's proposal to reopen Russia's only lifeline, the sale of oil and gas to the European Union. Three weeks before a general election he is bound to lose, Scholz is willing to trade Ukrainian lives for German votes. Shame on him, and all those in Europe who support that scenario. But it looks like the Armed Forces of Ukraine will solve that problem for us, setting Putin's whole oil industry infrastructure on fire. Remember when Joe Biden tried to tell them they shouldn't do that because it was bad for American business? Zelenskyy didn't give a fuck, as he didn't have to use any American weapons, only home-made drones. At the rate they're doing it, there will be no Russian oil industry left when the peace talks begin, a major trump card in our hand. Lousy pun fully intended, but at least the Orange Baboon is going where Biden never dared to go. Like pressuring Saudi Arabia to open their own floodgates and slash oil prices on the international markets, which would dry out Russia's main vestigial source of military funding. You clearly don't have to be a lobotomised Musk-hugger to support Trump on this one, Go, Donny, Go!

You will have to learn Russian in four or five years, or go to New Zealand, if you do not allocate significantly more money for military needs than the current 2% of GDP.

(Mark Rutte, European Parliament, 13 January 2025)

They want to kill Zelenskyy before the end of the war to show the insecurity of neither people nor places in Ukraine. It is important for Putin to eliminate the President, they will do everything possible for this.

(Vitaly Portnikov)

There are even voting intentions polls in Ukraine, even if no elections will be held in the foreseeable future. Which, if you consider the true facts and not the rants of Putin's Propagandastaffel, in not because Zelenskyy doesn't want them. But because the Constitution of Ukraine suspends elections so long as the country is under martial law, or in a state of war. There is nothing undemocratic in not holding elections during wartime. Remember we did the same, and had the same Parliament sitting for eight years during the First World War, and ten years during the Second World War. There was even an agreement that by-elections would be uncontested, and nobody claimed we had become a dictatorship. But now Donald Trump and his envoy Keith Kellogg are pressuring Zelenskyy to hold elections in 2025, which is beyond moronic as the inevitable post-truce chaos would only offer Russia the perfect opportunity to rig them as they have done in Georgia and attempted in Romania, and get FSB-controlled sock-muppets elected. The last pre-war poll, conducted on the last day before the Russian invasion, shows that Zelenskyy was facing strong discontent and would have barely made it in a rematch against Petro Poroshenko, the former President he had defeated in a landslide in 2019. Then these polls became decidedly very odd.

The first wartime poll, held a month after the invasion, is purely circumstantial and meant jack shit even back then. Later polls are more significant, but not just because of the results. Actually mostly because of whom the pollsters selected as alternative candidates, Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Kyrylo Budanov. Zaluzhnyi was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine until February 2024, when Zelenskyy sacked him over the proverbial 'irreconcilable differences' about strategy. He is now the Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, a position that is bound to become the most important in the whole Ukrainian diplomatic corps if the relationship with the United States becomes strained in the near future. Budanov is currently the head of Ukrainian Military Intelligence, the GUR, a key player in the war. They most likely fed information to the Security Service, the SBU, that led to the elimination of several high-ranking Russian officers, which Ukraine identified as war criminals, including a spectacular 'e-scooter execution' in the centre of Moscow. I don't think either is really likely to stand against Zelenskyy at an election that probably won't happen until 2026, where they would probably endorse him. Oddly the pollsters have not tested another plausible, and in my opinion much more likely, competitor, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba. He has a long and diverse experience in international affairs and is strongly pro-European, though in a less EU-focused way than Zelenskyy, so could be a credible challenger, Time will tell. In the same time frame, polls of an hypothetical parliamentary election were also not good for Zelenskyy's party Servant Of The People.

The last pre-war poll shows that Servant Of The People would not have held the massive majority they won at the 2019 election, in the wake of Zelenskyy's election to the Presidency. Interestingly this poll also shows that the openly pro-Russian parties represented only a small minority, similar to their 2019 results. These parties were first suspended, and then banned after the Russian invasion. Not by Zelenskyy, but by a ruling of the Supreme Court of Ukraine on grounds of national security. Remember that we did the exact same, and by a government decision, when the British Union of Fascists was banned in 1939. Same situation, and nothing undemocratic in it. Interestingly the pollsters chose to base later polls on the assumption that Zaluzhnyi and Budanov would have their own parties competing in a future election, which I consider even more unlikely than a presidential candidacy. Here too, pollsters should include a 'Kuleba Party' option to cover all bases. There is some irony in this polling too, as the far-right parties, one of which could even be called 'Ukronazi', weigh about 5% of the votes, less than the ethnic supremacist far-right in Russia. But the more important result is that there is definitely a 'central bloc' in Ukrainian politics, worth about 60% of the electorate, with oppositions on its right and on its left both weighing about 20%. Even if Zelenskyy himself is not as popular as he once was, which the polls are probably overestimating, his political choices remain valid for a majority of Ukrainians. And that's for a social-liberal Ukraine within our democratic Europe, a goal we should support by all means necessary against Putin's New Model Soviet imperialism.

We have no right to be tired. I must be worthy of my people. We will definitely rest after the end of this war, when there will be a lasting and just peace. Life will win over death, and the light will win over darkness.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

Jeremy's Den

02/02/2025

The Murderer In His Bunker

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