#trump tower russia

[mylionheart2]

ACTIVE MEASURES

UM HELLO.... The Russians interfering in the 2024 Presidential election to once again help Trump win should be a bigger story... don't you think?

**Tap, Tap, Tap... is this thing on?** 🎙️

How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts

The Kremlin did not bother to hide its efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election, as it did in the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/technology/russia-us-election-interference.html

FBI Calls Russia ‘Most Active’ Foreign Threat on Election Day

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-05/fbi-russia-poses-most-active-threat-on-election-day

[odinsblog]

Uh oh 👀

A squad of FBI special agents, assisted by local police, descended on Trump Tower III at 15811 Collins Ave. to carry out a search of unit 4102. It’s owned by a shell company, MIC-USA LLC, that is controlled by two Russian businessmen, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, according to state corporation records.

Sunny Isles Beach has been dubbed “Little Moscow” by locals because it’s home to many Russian expatriates. Some expressed concerns about a backlash against their affluent beachfront community after the Russian military invaded Ukraine last year and the U.S. government started pursuing sanctions against oligarchs who hide their wealth in real estate in South Florida and other parts of the country.

Before becoming president in 2016, Trump signed a deal with the developers of the 45-story condo buildings to name the property after him to help promote sales. Foreign buyers, especially from Latin America and Russia, flocked to Trump Towers, as they did with other Trump-branded properties in Sunny Isles Beach.

(continue reading)

[trump666traitor]

[reality-detective]

Obama’s Global Spy Network Targeted Trump: Explosive New Evidence Revealed!

Barack Obama’s shadowy betrayal has surfaced, shaking the very core of America. He orchestrated a treasonous conspiracy, weaponizing global intelligence networks to attack Donald Trump—a man who dared to challenge the globalist cabal.

Project Fulsome: A Web of Treason

Obama, in collaboration with Britain’s GCHQ, bypassed U.S. laws to spy on Trump, his family, and his campaign. Trump Tower wasn’t just wiretapped—it was a surveillance fortress. Tools designed for counter-terrorism were turned against an American citizen. Financial records, emails, and private conversations were infiltrated, with the Deep State feeding this intel to fabricate scandals.

This was no ordinary operation; it was a globalist vendetta to preserve their crumbling grip on power. Secret satellites even tracked Trump’s movements during the 2016 campaign. Every action, every word—monitored.

The Russia Hoax: Manufactured Lies

The infamous Russia hoax wasn’t an accident. Phony dossiers, funded by Clinton’s allies and legitimized by Obama’s corrupted agencies, were part of this operation. The Steele dossier? Pure disinformation. Whistleblowers reveal it was a long-planned strategy to discredit any outsider who challenged their rule. Trump just happened to win, making him target #1.

Black Sites and Secret Courts: Deep State Tools

Beyond spying, Obama’s network used secret courts and black sites to crush Trump’s allies. FISA warrants based on lies enabled illegal surveillance. Black sites deployed rogue operatives to infiltrate Trump’s inner circle, feeding intel back to the cabal.

Why They Had to Stop Trump

Trump’s presidency represented a direct threat to their empire. He promised to end endless wars, dismantle corrupt trade deals, and expose their hidden agendas. The globalist pipeline funding their machine was at risk. Trump wasn’t a puppet—he was their worst nightmare.

The Awakening: Deep State on the Brink

The Deep State is collapsing. Whistleblowers are stepping forward. Leaks are surfacing. Patriots within the intelligence community are exposing the truth. Platforms like X and Telegram bypass Big Tech’s censorship, spreading revelations far and wide.

The Fight Isn’t Over

Obama’s betrayal exposed the elites’ desperation. Now is the time to act. Share the truth. Demand accountability. Stand with Trump. The Deep State is crumbling, but the battle for freedom continues.

You would think ALL that 👆 would be something you'd see in a spy/espionage movie like "Enemy of the State" with Gene Hackman and Will Smith.

Stay vigilant. History will remember those who fought for truth. 🤔

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

On 7/31/2019 Trump has a private meeting with Putin. On 8/3/2019, just 3 days after his private meeting with Putin, Trump issues a request for a list of top US spies. By 2021 the CIA reports an unusually high number of their agents are being captured and/or being murdered. During the search executed at Mar A Lago the FBI find more documents with lists of U.S. informants on them.

A Timeline

• FBI wiretapped Russian gambling ring headquartered at Trump Tower for two years - March 21, 2017

• Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador - May 15, 2017

• Trump, Putin Meet For 2 Hours In Helsinki - July 16, 2018

• Rand Paul Goes To Russia And Delivers Letter For Trump, Marking Our Era Of Irony - August 9, 2018

• Following the Money: Trump and Russia-Linked Transactions From the Campaign to the Presidential Inauguration - December 17, 2018

• The US extracted a top spy from Russia after Trump revealed classified information to the Russians in an Oval Office meeting - September 10, 2019

• Trump’s Loose Lips Force US to Extract Spy From Kremlin - September 10, 2019

• Was Mar-a-Lago Trespasser a Tourist or a Spy? A Judge Said Her Story Didn’t Hold Up. - November 25, 2019

• Trump downplays massive cyber hack on government after Pompeo links attack to Russia - December 19, 2020

• Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years, former KGB spy says - January 29, 2021

• There was Trump-Russia collusion — and Trump pardoned the colluder - April 17, 2021

• Longtime GOP operatives charged with funneling Russian national’s money to Trump, RNC - September 20, 2021

• Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants - October 5, 2021

• Files Seized From Trump Are Part of Espionage Act Inquiry - August 12, 2022

• Ex-Clinton aide implies 'President of France' file found at Trump's home during Mar-a-Lago raid could be valuable to Putin as 'kompromat' - August 13, 2022

• Inventing Anna: The tale of a fake heiress, Mar-a-Lago, and an FBI investigation - August 22, 2022

• Russians used a US firm to funnel funds to GOP in 2018. Dems say the FEC let them get away with it - October 30, 2022

• Trump makes shocking comments about trusting Putin over US 'intelligence lowlifes' - January 31, 2023

• Russia's Prigozhin admits links to what US says was election meddling troll farm - February 14, 2023

• GOP operative sentenced to 18 months for funneling Russian money to Trump- February 17, 2023

• Trump allegedly discussed US nuclear subs with foreign national after leaving White House: Sources - October 5, 2023

• 'So appalled': What witnesses told special counsel about Trump's handling of classified info while still president - April 24, 2024

🤔🤔🤔

[yamimichi]

Once again... Russia.

Scores of FBI agents and Florida police ambushed Trump Tower III on “Little Moscow” Sunny Isles Beach Thursday to search a condo unit owned by a shell corporation two Russian businessmen oversee. An FBI Miami field office spokesman told the Miami Herald that it “was conducting court-ordered law enforcement activity in the vicinity of that location,” but did not elaborate on the details. The men, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, did not respond for comment. “I can’t talk about it,” Patsulya’s wife, Roza Pereira, told the Miami Herald. “The lawyer [for my husband] said not to talk to anyone. ... I have no idea what it’s about.” Pereira is also listed under the company MIC-USA LLC, according to state records of the corporate documents. MIC-USA purchased the three-bedroom, three-bathroom residence a decade ago for $1.65 million.

[mugiwara-lucy]

FUCKING DISGRACEFUL.

So not just Ableism but Anti-Semitism as well?? The fact that he's saying all this hatred against Jewish people and Immigrants gives me STRAIGHT ADOLF HITLER 2.0 Vibes.

This guy is a legit DANGER to America and anyone worth a damn and we can NOT let him or his pet dog Vance into the White House! If so the America we've all known and loved will be DONE and replaced with Nazi Germany from the 1930s along with Norea Korea/Russia and China with Christianity bullshit plastered everywhere.

To prevent that bullshit from happening to our democracy, here is the link below to register to vote along with the deadlines varying by state! Also, your own vote isn’t enough! Get as many people as you can to vote for Kamala be it your friends, cousins, parents, grandparents, old friends from high school and college, coworkers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, stepchildren (if they’re 18 and over) and the list goes on and on but every vote counts! ALSO PLEASE check your registration DAILY because MAGA WILL purge your voter registration!!!

And early voting has started! And if you don’t wanna vote on November 5th, Early Voting is another option! Like I said get as many people as you know and try early voting that way you can avoid MAGA fuckery on November 5th! Down below is a list of dates by state:

And Mail in Ballots are ANOTHER option I highly recommend!! And like I said get as many people as you can to take advantage of this option! BUT if you decide to go with Mail In/Absentee Ballots; PLEASE mail your ballots at the ACTUAL USPS office!! That way MAGAts won't fuck with it.

And if you’re an American who lives overseas; PLEASE use the option of voting overseas since I know every country other than North Korea, Russia and China do NOT want to see Trump’s stinky ass back in the Oval Office! Here’s a link below:

I don't understand how people find this guy funny. It's the SAME FUCKING INSULTS he's used since 2016 against Hilary and 2020 against Biden BUT he just changes the name.

This is a 78 year old man with GRANDCHILDREN acting like a FUCKING TODDLER.

I can't even laugh at him. (I never laughed at him by the way or found him funny, he was just a bad headache you can never get rid of). I'm just SICK of him.

NEARLY TEN YEARS we've been dealing him. FUCKING HELL.

[velcropygmy]

I can't express my disappointment in the American people. The best analogy I've heard for this election was from a teacher. She said, "Imagine teaching a class of honor students for a whole semester. At the final you give them an open book test and over half the class fails. Now imagine that disappointment. All that hard work for naught. Multiply that times a thousand.

It was all in front of everyone's eyes. I'll start with the orange man. He was never really a successful business man. People bought the image given them by a reality show. The people involved with that very show have all come out and said that no really serious billionaire they approached would touch the show. They built him up for the show and tried to tell you it was all a facade during the campaign. But no, you want to claim fake news because Trump said so. That's like releasing all those guys on death row, after all they all say they were framed and innocent. The guy has always been nothing more than a carnival barker with some inherited coin. 6 bankruptcies including casinos should have been a clue to someone. Not to mention the adultery, not paying his contractors.

The free press is one of this nations most important guardrails against corruption and the GOP and it's supporters followed the path of dictators like Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. You see it in Russia, Turkey, China, any other authoritarian regime. The press has to toe the party line. Trump wants that. He said so.

Vladimir Putin blames the US for the fall of the USSR. He has stated that was the greatest socio/political tragedy in history. He has vowed to fight democracy. And yet I hear cheers at a Trump rally when his name is brought up. In the USA! And how is Putin fighting democracy? Disinformation and misinformation. And they are the experts. Find a vulnerable spot and create a divide. Race, Gay rights, anything. Social media is the greatest gift to Putin he could have ever gotten on Xmas. And Americans eat it like candy. An example was Matt Gaetz using information about the US arming the Azrov Battalion in Ukraine. His source, a Communist Chinese propaganda website. If you need proof I'll get the video. It's easy to find. Let's go on to the congressional investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. Who were their witnesses? A Russian oligarch close to Putin and an FSB agents. Not to mention the fact that once Eric Trump told the press they get their money from Russia when asked because banks quit lending them money. Or that most Trump Towers in foreign countries are fully sold out but unoccupied. Trump has been laundering Russian mob money through his real estate for years.

His affection for dictators and saying they rule with an iron fist like that's a good thing. Has he ever said anything positive about a foreign leader that wasn't a dictator? I'll wait but I'm not holding my breath. His desire for Putin's approval is disgusting. Given that, to me the two greatest geopolitical tragedies would be Trump giving Ukraine to Putin and the fall of American Democracy.

The book was open, it's was all out there in front of everyone's eyes and they ignored it. America failed that open book test and it will cost everyone the world over for this fuck up.

[rosymaraschino]

The Republican dislike of Ukraine is not very much talked about, but recent news has shown Trump has been more open about giving both countries a “fair” deal (basically saying fuck Ukraine because fair isn’t exactly a play in Russia’s game of politics).

Trump has had ties to Russia as far back as his first campaign, but he’s also held a grudge against Ukraine for not helping him collect dirt on Joe Biden, then a presidential candidate before becoming elected.

It should be so simple to see Ukraine as the victim. It should be easy to understand that this is just another form of colonization. After all, Russia has always been a colonizing power, stealing land from Eastern Europeans and Central Asians all the way to Indigenous peoples within Northeastern Asia and Alaska.

The fact Republicans can’t say who we should be supporting is frightening.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 4, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 5, 2024

The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee today released a 156-page report showing that when he was in the presidency, Trump received at least $7.8 million from 20 different governments, including those of China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia, through businesses he owned. 

The Democrats brought receipts. 

According to the report—and the documents from Trump’s former accounting firm Mazars that are attached to it—the People’s Republic of China and companies substantially controlled by the PRC government paid at least $5,572,548 to Trump-owned properties while Trump was in office; Saudi Arabia paid at least $615,422; Qatar paid at least $465,744; Kuwait paid at least $300,000; India paid at least $282,764; Malaysia paid at least $248,962; Afghanistan paid at least $154,750; the Philippines paid at least $74,810; the United Arab Emirates paid at least $65,225. The list went on and on. 

The committee Democrats explained that these payments were likely only a fraction of the actual money exchanged, since they cover only four of more than 500 entities Trump owned at the time. When the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2023, Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) stopped the investigation before Mazars had produced the documents the committee had asked for when Democrats were in charge of it. Those records included documents relating to Russia, South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil. 

Trump fought hard against the production of these documents, dragging out the court fight until September 2022. The committee worked on them for just four months before voters put Republicans in charge of the House and the investigation stopped. 

These are the first hard numbers that show how foreign governments funneled money to the president while policies involving their countries were in front of him. The report notes, for example, that Trump refused to impose sanctions on Chinese banks that were helping the North Korean government; one of those banks was paying him close to $2 million in rent annually for commercial office space in Trump Tower. 

The first article of the U.S. Constitution reads: “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument [that is, salary, fee, or profit], Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” 

The report also contrasted powerfully with the attempt of Republicans on the Oversight Committee, led by Comer, to argue that Democratic Joe Biden has corruptly profited from the presidency. 

In the Washington Post on December 26, 2023, Philip Bump noted that just after voters elected a Republican majority, Comer told the Washington Post that as soon as he was in charge of the Oversight Committee, he would use his power to “determine if this president and this White House are compromised because of the millions of dollars that his family has received from our adversaries in China, Russia and Ukraine.”

For the past year, while he and the committee have made a number of highly misleading statements to make it sound as if there are Biden family businesses involving the president (there are not) and the president was involved in them (he was not), their claims were never backed by any evidence. Bump noted in a piece on December 14, 2023, for example, that Comer told Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo that “the Bidens” have “taken in” more than $24 million. In fact, Bump explained, Biden’s son Hunter and his business partners did receive such payments, but most of the money went to the business partners. About $7.5 million of it went to Hunter Biden. There is no evidence that any of it went to Joe Biden. 

All of the committee’s claims have similar reality checks. Jonathan Yerushalmy of The Guardian wrote that after nearly 40,000 pages of bank records and dozens of hours of testimony, “no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current or previous role.”

Still, the constant hyping of their claims on right-wing media led then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to authorize an impeachment inquiry in mid-September, and in mid-December, Republicans in the House formalized the inquiry. 

There is more behind the attack on Biden than simply trying to even the score between him and Trump—who remains angry at his impeachments and has demanded Republicans retaliate—or to smear Biden through an “investigation,” which has been a standard technique of the Republicans since the mid-1990s.

Claiming that Biden is as corrupt as Trump undermines faith in our democracy. After all, if everyone is a crook, why does it matter which one is in office? And what makes American democracy any different from the authoritarian systems of Russia or Hungary or Venezuela, where leaders grab what they can for themselves and their followers?

Democracies are different from authoritarian governments because they have laws to prevent the corruption in which it appears Trump engaged. The fact that Republicans refuse to hold their own party members accountable to those laws while smearing their opponents says far more about them than it does about the nature of democracy.

It does, though, highlight that our democracy is in danger.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mylionheart2]

[cmesinic]

Donnie has been sucking up to his Butt Buddy since he had plans for a Dump Towers in Russia, and Vlad is reputed to have Donnie’s Golden Showers video. Did you guys forget about that?

[peakwealth]

You Run

Vladimir Putin, flanked by airline cabin crew (reportedly Aeroflot trainees), shortly before ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

Two recent quotes stick in my mind. The first one was by an American woman who escaped from a mass shooting incident after the US Super Bowl in Kansas City. (One dead, twenty-two injured.) Interviewed minutes later on TV, she said: In this day and age, you run.

I forget where I saw the second quote but I thought of it after Donald Trump threatened to pull the plug on NATO, should he be re-elected this year: It's as if the devil had changed sides.

Near panic broke out across Europe. Trump was willing to throw European countries, previously known as America's allies, to the wolves.

Vladimir Putin, do as you please. Ukraine, prepare to be sacrificed. And by extension, Taiwan, your time is up.

I keep coming back to this: the West isn't what it used to be. I think of myself as fortunate to have grown up in a 'eurocentric' world order, or the outcome of the second world war if you prefer. It may have been delusional but it was printed on perfume bottles: PARIS - LONDON - NEW YORK.

In reality, eurocentrism and the colonial empires that created it were already faltering by the time I came into this world. It took, however, a long time to see and accept it. As for the 'American century', it ended in 2001 with the apocalyptic scenes of 9/11 in New York City. As the towers collapsed, the world pivoted into a new era. To put it differently, the world was changing hands.

---------------

On February 24 2022 I woke up in a small hotel south of Granada and went downstairs to have coffee at the bar. I flipped open my tablet and there it was:

RUSSIA ATTACKS UKRAINE

Until then I - we - had assumed there existed a fundamental contract with European history, immovably rooted in postwar reality and shared by all: never again, no more major wars in Europe. No one in their right mind would want to mess with that contract.

Except that Vladimir Putin had just ordered his army across the border into Ukraine.

Now I wake up every day and want to hit my head against the wall as the Russian war of aggression grinds on. Grind, meat grinder, human waves, trench warfare. The words are all desperately wrong.

After two years of daily annihilation, hundreds of thousands of lives casually erased or ruined, it goes on and on. Both sides, it has been reported, are running short of young men to waste at the front.

We do not know exactly what goes on on those front lines. We hear about Russian soldiers dispatched to their deaths as a matter of course. But we do not get to see that, nor do we get any real casualty numbers. At the beginning of the war, things were more graphic, the bodies photographed where they had fallen. Two years on, we don't know. But the broken, blasted cities tell the story, as they do in Gaza: not many people walk away alive.

And now no one seems quite sure what to do about Ukraine. The war looks unwinnable because Putin does not care about the cost in human lives.

Why fight if you can't win? Is a negotiated settlement still possible? Land for peace would mean the partition of Ukraine accepted as a fait accompli. But can there be peace without justice for Ukraine, which would effectively be sacrificed in the hope of keeping Putin's Russia in check? Putin, however, cannot be trusted, nor can Trump for that matter.

Should Trump return to the White House, a new world order might emerge overwhelmingly inimical to the west or what would be left of it. It might not even be clear where the USA would position itself. As for the loss of Ukraine, in whole or in part, it would be like small change.

You can go on like this, endlessly turning over the options and arguments in your head, none of them acceptable: Ukraine's outright surrender? Or an indefinite ceasefire that would humiliate Kyiv but leave it attached to Europe?

Faced with a historic opportunity to rewrite everything, a moment of dizzying recalculation of how the planet works and who's boss, it is hard to imagine that China would hesitate to seize the moment. Others would follow, like India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, eventually lining up with Russia in an historic act of opportunism and Schadenfreude.

In this day and age, you run. The devil has changed sides.

A lot is at stake in 2024.

[reality-detective]

Brandon Biggs, who famously predicted the first assassination attempt on Trump, now claims to have visions of a massive bomb attack during Trump’s inauguration.

He foresees large trucks carrying 50-gallon drums and a dump truck packed with fertilizer, strategically hidden in underground garages and ready to detonate.

His visions also depict coordinated strikes targeting Trump Tower, golf courses, and even another direct attempt on Trump’s life.

Remember 👇

You Decide 🤔

[mariacallous]

Northern Russia must have felt bitterly cold to U.S. soldiers, even though nearly all were from Michigan. On Sept. 4, 1918, 4,800 U.S. troops landed in Arkhangelsk, Russia, only 140 miles from the Arctic Circle. Three weeks later, they were plunged into battle against the Red Army among towering pine forests and subarctic swamps, alongside the British and French. Ultimately, 244 U.S. soldiers died from the fighting over two years. Diaries of U.S. troops paint a harrowing picture of first contact:

We run into a nest of machine-guns, we retire. [Bolsheviks] still shelling heavily. Perry and Adamson of my squad wounded, bullet clips my shoulder on both sides. … Am terribly tired, hungry and all in, so are the rest of the boys. Casualties in this attack 4 killed and 10 wounded.

These unlucky souls represented just one prong of the sprawling and ill-fated Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. From 1918 to 1920, the United States, Britain, France, and Japan sent thousands of troops from the Baltics to northern Russia to Siberia to Crimea—and millions of dollars in aid and military supplies to the anti-communist White Russians—in an abortive attempt to strangle Bolshevism in its crib. It’s one of the most complicated and oft-forgot foreign-policy failures of the 20th century, captivatingly retold in technicolor detail by Anna Reid in her new book, A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention Into the Russian Civil War.

The specifics of the conflict, which Reid brilliantly weaves alongside personal diaries from the participants, often feel otherworldly. Japanese troops occupied Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East. The mercurial French—at first the most hawkishly pro-intervention out of all the Allies—led the occupation of southern Ukraine, tussling with the Reds over cities now familiar to readers: Mykolaiv, Kherson, Sevastopol, Odessa. The British—who invested the most in the intervention, including 60,000 troops—were crawling all over Russia’s fringes: defending Baku from the oncoming Turks, conducting naval sabotage against the Bolsheviks in the Baltics, and ultimately evacuating the Whites from Black Sea ports as they crumbled in the face of a Red Army onslaught.

The disturbing question hanging over Reid’s excellent book is whether the West is doomed to repeat history. The intervention failed, and if you squint hard enough, today’s intervention in Ukraine may appear similarly futile in the face of a vast and determined Russia with a seemingly endless well of materiel, manpower, and political will. It’s what the far-right flank of Republicans in Congress, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and former U.S. President Donald Trump would lead you to believe. A sense of hopelessness articulated by Edmund Ironside, the British commander of Allied forces in northern Russia during the intervention: “Russia is so enormous that it gives one a feeling of smothering.”

But despite the strong historical echoes, the differences between the two interventions are more instructive than their similarities. A close study poses perhaps an even bigger question: What conditions make for a successful foreign intervention? Yes, the Allies bungled things, but in fairness, they mostly failed because of what was out of their control, rather than what was in it. The most limiting factor was their feckless (and noxious) White Russian allies, a disparate group of anti-Bolshevik socialists and incompetent former Tsarist officers who were Great Russian autocrats at heart. They had the buy-in of neither the Russian population nor, critically, Tsarist Russia’s tapestry of ethnic minorities—from Ukrainians to Balts—whom they sought to restore under Russia’s heel.

The circumstances today are much more favorable. The United States and Europe have a unified and determined partner in Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine, in a struggle with blinding moral clarity. Russia’s economy may be on wartime footing, but collectively the West has significantly more resources at hand. And the task—defending a motivated Ukraine against a hostile invasion—is much less ambitious than trying to topple the government of the largest country in the world. A sober comparison of the two interventions should, in fact, fortify Western resolve that it can see Ukraine through—as long as its own political will, waning now as it did in Western capitals then, doesn’t get in the way.

The critical ingredients of any foreign intervention are clear and achievable objectives, reliable allies on the ground, an assailable adversary, material means, and the political will to finish the job. On nearly every measure, the Allied intervention in Russia was fatally lacking.

Perhaps most striking about Reid’s narrative is that it’s often unclear what exactly the Allied troops were meant to do in Russia. Yes, all Western governments loathed Bolshevism and feared its expansionist and infectious potential. But beyond that, there was little in the way of shared strategy or purpose. In fact, Western troops were initially sent to guard railways and Allied military stores in northern and eastern Russia that they feared would reach German hands. But this was slightly complicated after Germany surrendered in November 1918. As George F. Kennan put it in his masterful volume The Decision to Intervene, the “American forces had scarcely arrived in Russia when history invalidated at a single stroke almost every reason Washington had conceived for their being there.”

Zealous British officers on the ground—egged on by hawkish ministers at home such as War Secretary Winston Churchill, who nearly depleted his own political capital advocating for the quixotic Russian adventure—soon took the initiative to actively intervene and fight the Reds. In other arenas, including southern Ukraine, the mission was clearer in support of the local White forces—though France quickly lost heart and sailed home in April 1919 after it suffered a series of setbacks and mutinies.

Encapsulating this ambiguity were instructions for the U.S. military intervention written personally in a July 1918 memo by President Woodrow Wilson, who was characteristically tortured by the decision and “sweating blood over what is right and feasible to do in Russia.” He opened the memo by warning that military intervention would “add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it”—yet then committed U.S. troops to aid the Czech Legion operating in Siberia and to northern Russia to “make it safe for Russian bodies to come together in organized bodies in the north.” Hardly clarifying stuff.

U.S. officers took these instructions quizzically. Gen. William Graves, in charge of the 8,000 doughboys in Siberia, was decidedly skeptical about the United States playing a role in the conflict and interpreted Wilson’s instructions as permitting him only to guard railways, not fight the Reds. He later wrote in his memoirs that he had no idea what Washington was trying to achieve. This was all to the chagrin of his more pro-interventionist British colleagues in Siberia, who instead proactively aided the Whites’ monstrously incompetent “supreme ruler,” Adm. Alexander Kolchak, a former head of the Russian Black Sea Fleet who incongruously found himself fighting deep in landlocked Siberia. (He was also, incidentally, a dead ringer for current Russian President Vladimir Putin.)

Which brings us to the White Russians. Perhaps the sine qua non of any foreign intervention, especially one as ambitious as the Western intervention in both Ukraine and in the Russian civil war, are allies on the ground. It’s the difference between the chaos that followed Western intervention in Libya and the successful intervention in the Balkans. On this score, the Whites failed miserably.

It’s hard to know where to begin. Beyond Kolchak, there was the overmatched Gen. Anton Denikin leading White forces in southern Russia, who dissembled to Allied governments about the horrific pogroms against the Jewish population of Ukraine perpetrated by Whites under his watch. And beyond operating across an impossibly large and disconnected front covering the entire periphery of Russia—a country of 11 time zones—the different White factions acted essentially as warlords, with little loyalty or coordination among them.

Just as fatal to the Whites was a conspicuous vacancy: any coherent or compelling ideology. Antony Beevor, in his fabulous new history of the Russian civil war, pins the White loss on both their lack of political program and fractious nature: “In Russia, an utterly incompatible alliance of Socialist Revolutionaries and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against a single-minded Communist dictatorship.”

Contrast all this with the Reds. They controlled the industrial heartland of Moscow and St. Petersburg, operating from the inward out with stronger interior lines of communication. It allowed Commissar Leon Trotsky—who, Reid notes, “blossom[ed] into a war leader of near-genius: shrewd, decisive and boundlessly energetic”—to hop on his armored train to shore up flagging fronts as the Whites advanced from the east and south. The Bolsheviks—though enacting ruinous economic policies and initiating the first waves of terror at home—were motivated and possessed a clear ideology that held, at least at that juncture, some appeal to the local population.

And, fundamentally, their will was much stronger than the Whites’ or the West’s. After the devastation of World War I, Allied governments feared the spread of Bolshevism but couldn’t bring their exhausted publics along with them. Here, the historical echoes are most troubling. Public support understandably flagged, and budgetary pressures mounted. As Britain’s Daily Express put it in 1919, in echoes of today’s Republican rhetoric in the United States: “Great Britain is already the policeman of half the world. It will not and cannot be the policeman of all Europe. … The frozen plains of Eastern Europe are not worth the bones of a single British grenadier.” Rolling White setbacks in Siberia and southern Russia were the nail in the coffin. Then, as now in Ukraine, foreign political support for intervention depended most on the sense of momentum on the battlefield.

The job of foreign-policy makers is to distinguish between what is in versus out of their control. To the degree that they intuit favorable conditions—allies, geography, the enemy’s vulnerability—then the task is to focus on and optimize the things they can manage: strategy and objectives, mobilizing political will, providing the materiel to support the effort, and coordinating with allies.

Despite the current pall of pessimism pervading Western capitals, today’s war in Ukraine presents some of the more propitious circumstances a policymaker could hope for—unlike those faced by the Allies during the Russian civil war. Ukraine is a worthy and competent ally, fighting to defend its territory with a highly motivated population behind it. The Ukrainian cause is a righteous one, with a Manichean quality to it easily explained to Western publics. While Putin’s personal will to win is strong, it’s clear by his actions and hesitancy to fully mobilize Russian society that he senses a ceiling on what he can ask from his population. Though Russia’s manpower and materiel are larger than Ukraine’s, the amount needed to keep Ukraine armed and in the fight is completely manageable. A $60 billion aid supplement from the United States—currently held up by far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives—is a pittance compared with the returns: holding the line on international norms; standing up for the Ukrainians and, in doing so, Western values; bogging down Russia in a strategic sinkhole and reducing its capacity to threaten the rest of NATO’s eastern flank; and fortifying the trans-Atlantic alliance. Today, Western capitals are much more united than they were in 1918, and defense coordination among them is strong. Though they can sharpen the shared sense of an endgame in Ukraine, everybody knows that the conflict will end in some sort of negotiated settlement—the questions will be on whose terms.

If the United States and its allies can avoid the pitfalls of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war—developing a clear long-term strategy, continuing to coordinate closely, and reinforcing domestic support by making the case to their own populations—then they have a real shot of prevailing over Putin. Given the auspicious conditions, the main, perhaps only obstacle to long-term success is the political will to see the job through.

[nostalgicamerica]

I would be the first to admit seems somewhat scatterbrained at times. Lately, he seems more in a fog. I attribute that to age and having a lot on his plate. His taking oil out of the strategic supply is not something we should be doing at this time. Especially if it's not put back at the same rate. Trump as you know railed at Biden for doing this. If you look up what Trump did while in office, he took from the strategic oil reserves on many occasions. As to Trump hitting back. Yes, he does that. He likes to take the low road. He puts people down to make himself look good. Not a trait in a good statesman. Now let's get to the border crisis. He took money from the Military Budget to build part of the wall. That money was to go to military bases to upgrade the poor living conditions for military families. He did that because congress wouldn't give him what he wanted. That money for military bases was already approved by congress. Trump is like a bull in a china shop when it comes to world politics. He's pissed off more than one leader in a country and if you don't realize it. He is in Putin's pocket. More of that will come out and I hope that if Biden is in China's pocket or Ukraine's pocket, that news will come out. Remember when Trump said he didn't have money in China. Turns out he's had a bank account in China and other Countries. Russia backed up a loan when Trump went to Deutsche Bank. Back in the eighties he wanted build a Trump Tower in Russia. That hasn't happened. Why? Because the Russians know that he can be manipulated.

Do you really believe that if there was anything to all the allegations against Trump it wouldn't be trumpeted from the rooftops and plastered in all the newspapers in 108 point font headlines? The swamp's goal from day one was 'Get Trump!' everything thus far has been yawn-inducing nothingburgers.