Access the Twitter thread here
Watch this first to understand the background & context of the FSB letters
URGENT: My translation of the June 26th #FSBletters from the #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Subjects: Planned World War & Possible (potential, not definite) strike on #Lithuania, a NATO member, around sunrise June 27th. Please share far & wide.
As always, my comments for clarification are in (parenthesis). Wind of Change's parenthesis are in [brackets]. So, let's roll: "The situation is heading in an absolutely grim direction.
Ukraine has already become a strategic defeat for Russia, and any potential tactical success will not change the situation.
This is understood both at the General Staff – Ministry of Defence, and here (FSB), and it appears, the leadership of the country is arriving at extremely negative conclusions:
Russia's main unspoken goal now becomes a large-scale geopolitical conflict [the planned relocation of Iskanders to Belarus is a direct challenge]. Whether it will be a classic world war or takes on a different format is not so important.
On the subject of Ukraine: even if we theoretically realize military success in capturing most of the country, it would take many months, at least 100,000 more deaths at a monstrous cost,
and in return you would probably get a scorched field with an overwhelmingly insubordinate population with a historical tendency to partisanism and protest.
Sanctions will only exacerbate this situation, and there will be no economic bonuses (from military success) even in theory. And this is in case of Russia's military success, which is still under a big question mark.
The existence of Russia in the “pre-24.02.22" version is already impossible in the current world order, and critically there are not enough forces to unleash several more fronts.
Even the small Baltics are much more than Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, which have bogged down the lion's share of Russia’s military.
At the very beginning of the war [or Special Military Operation, whatever floats whoever’s boat] I wrote to you that we were expecting a Chinese war over Taiwan by fall. Several months have passed - circumstances only confirm this prediction. https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1502026364903313408?s=20&t=vu4wsIQGOvrxofpIEZpzHQ
The worst thing about the current situation is that calling for peace today is the best way to drag the world into a major war. One of the factors our leadership clings to is that the world is not ready to raise the stakes to the maximum and will accept the conditions imposed.
In general, I can't say that there is some logical error in this - for a tyrant-victim relationship, the tyrant alone is not enough, you also need a victim. The Western world generally copes quite well in this role (as the victim).
Seemingly, it would be more correct to list the entire set of assumptions on which we now rely:
- The world is not ready to raise the stakes to the maximum:
Under a demonstration of the reality of the nuclear threat ("Gordian knot" has been adapted, but has not been abolished)
and a promise to "destroy the whole planet if Russia is defeated" the world will collectively agree to negotiations followed by rewriting the terms and rules "from scratch";
- Russia does not have time to play for long - resource-wise the situation looks so critical that it is better to act too early than too late;
- In a global conflict, old tensions around the world will escalate everywhere at once to such an extent that it will be enough to shatter the long-standing balance;
- Modern warfare is not only a military invasion, but also a bet on regime change in unfriendly countries.
Meanwhile, as of today there is no way to return to peace without a global reformatting of the whole world order - even if we were to assume that tomorrow morning Ukraine and Russia sign peace on any terms, it will only mean the beginning of preparations for a new, much larger conflict.
The Russian authorities have already taken the step after which they can only have either a global victory [in terms of the world - it is ridiculous to talk about just Ukraine here], or a global defeat.
If a global victory is not visible in the current versions of the conflict, then the scenario must be changed, and unwinding the military spiral is the only way. We don’t have enough of our own military forces – so it is necessary to involve other (countries’) forces.
It does not matter how - to provoke, to take them as allies, to involve them in secondary roles. All the talk, especially by Europeans, about Russia's peace with Ukraine is simply bringing closer a big war on themselves.
(REDACTED)
The current system in Russia realizes that it has no chance except for a major war, and no other options will be considered, because the current system equates the question of its self-preservation to the question of the country's survival.
Right now, it’s not important that this is wrong, what is important is that the subject of decision-making is monolithic in this understanding.
"Russia" as a country decides nothing - It's the leadership system that decides, which, in reality, perceives this very "Russia" as a tool for its own protection.
So, my unequivocal verdict on whether our country can come to a consensus with the Western world is No, impossible unless there is a complete change in the system of government (in Russia).
How this can be accomplished – I don’t see a solution, because a victory by any of the active factions inside Russia will not change anything, and there are no other powers capable (of achieving a coup) as of today.
Czarist Russia collapsed under the onslaught of military fatigue; today's Russia is about to initiate a world war on a new scale as soon as possible.
I do not claim to predict when and what military decision may be made, our unit has prepared more than 20 scenarios for the development of events: it is possible that in a few hours [half an hour before dawn at the point of impact] a military strike on Lithuania will be launched.
Perhaps the Europeans will be able to adjust to make a compromise with Russia, and the military solution will be delayed, but this will only increase the conflict’s imminent inevitable scale - one playing the role of victim is as guilty of creating a tyrant as the tyrant himself.
And I will say something that many people cannot even accept: it is fundamentally wrong to say that "Russia is starting a new world war," it is correct to say that "it was the Russian leadership that instigated the situation that is leading to a new world war.”
But there are more guilty people than meets the eye. Even in a simple victim-tyrant pair, it’s not so easy to distribute the guilt, and in our performance, there are many more participants.
Unfortunately, I have neither the energy nor the time to give a more substantive analysis. This time I had to simplify everything almost to the point of breaking the design, but I will still try to give more specifics and interrelated aspects next time.
Best wishes….
P.S. I noticed that comrades from the FSO became involved (with Osechkin), and there also appeared realists and sources.
We (FSB) already have a whole group working on you and the search for leaks from the FSO's Office of Information Systems, but they are working without fanaticism, for fear of outing themselves.
All of the employees at Vernadskogo 10 (street address in Moscow) have not yet been put through a polygraph and even the director of the service is being kept out of the loop. That’s definitely never happened before at such a high level.
No one understands, myself included, what volume of data from Vernadsky (reference to the security service office based out of the above Moscow address) has been leaked to you.
But, of course, the Deputy Prime Minister reporting to Putin's daughter and her girlfriends – that’s intense. Will wait for information to be released. There have always been plenty of petty tyrants in power (in Russia), for the past 130 years at least.
And we already have a lot of material (compromising information) on her (Putin’s daughter) and her entourage, and soon, after the wave from above, everything will be used to discredit this next "cult of personality."
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