Russia's anger at NATO escalation, and whether a direct EU-Russia war is coming
Glenn Diesen interviews Stanislav Krapivnik, a former US Army officer originally from Donbas, now living in Russia.
Summary
Glenn Diesen speaks with Stanislav Krapivnik about the rapidly escalating conflict between Russia and NATO-backed Ukraine, including massive drone and missile strikes on both sides. Krapivnik argues that Russia has shown extraordinary restraint and that this restraint has been a strategic mistake — pointing to the failure to strike Slovakia when it first supplied tanks as a missed opportunity to deter NATO two years earlier. He contends that Russia is not yet on a full war footing, producing 1,200–1,500 tanks per year that are being stockpiled rather than deployed to Ukraine, and that when the economy shifts to 30–40% of GDP on defence, the scale of the conflict will change dramatically. Krapivnik argues that European elites are deliberately pushing toward a direct war with Russia, and that the only way to restore deterrence is through massive conventional strikes on European economic and political infrastructure. He also argues that Trump is either incompetent or deliberately deceptive, having repeated the same pattern as his first term by surrounding himself with hawks, and that the US political system is structurally incapable of changing course regardless of who holds the presidency.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening — Russia's civilian morale and the fuel shortage narrative
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined again by Stanislav Krapivnik, a former US Army officer originally from Donbas who has returned. Thank you for coming back on the program. We see now that — what I would call the US war on both Iran and Russia — appears to be getting out of control in terms of massive escalation. The brutality of the war is increasing. This week I think was especially dramatic. Ukraine and NATO have done massive attacks on Russian ships, then on Moscow. We see Russia retaliating with this attack on Kyiv — a record-large strike in terms of the use of missiles against the Ukrainian capital. And again, the war on Iran is a story of its own. What is happening now? How are you reading the situation?
Stanislav Krapivnik: Hi, Glenn. Just want to warn everybody — I'm on vacation right now, so I don't have my full setup. The audio may be off a bit and there will be some noise from outside. I'm on a balcony to get some privacy.
First of all, just a little on the Western propaganda about there being no fuel in Russia, all the crops rotting in the field, and all the other hoopla — which by the way is a repeat from last year, maybe just came out a little bit earlier. There is fuel. There are some lines — there are always lines this time of year because there are massive numbers of people moving south for vacation. There are additional lines, that's true, I won't deny it. But every second petrol station or so has fuel. You can see the videos. There are tractors working out in the fields, combines taking the first harvest. In the south we get two harvests a season, particularly of wheat and sunflowers. Corn takes longer. But the wheat has already been collected or is in the process of being collected, and the sunflowers in the far south have already been collected and are being replanted. You can see that on the video I put out.
On the strikes — the Ukrainians — well, first of all, just understand Russians. I'm lying on the beach with the family. The sirens kick off. There are drones in the air. Nobody moves. You can hear some of the drones flying by and then you can hear the automatic fire from outside the city in the zone, taking the drones out. Nobody moves. Welcome to Russians. You really can't scare Russians. Anybody remember the takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt? There was a lot of fighting going on. Russians were on vacation in Sharm el-Sheikh and other areas while the Europeans and the Americans were running for their lives in every direction, on every bus and airplane out of there. Russians didn't move. They didn't care. The fighting was outside the resort area. And if you screw with the Russians too much, most of the men know how to fight — they'll just take up weapons. The Islamic jihadists didn't touch the Russians, and when they took over they just let them all leave. It's more peaceful that way. That's the Russian mentality.
Again, Gorlovka is a prime example. Pre-war population 380,000, twelve years with no running water, current population 320,000. You can't scare us. That's the mentality.
Ukraine's shift to economic targets and pressure on Russia to strike Europe
Now, they have moved to strikes on more economic targets. There were two big warehouses hit belonging to Wildberries. Wildberries and Ozon are two giant online order companies — the size of Amazon — covering Russia and Russian-speaking areas outside Russia like Kazakhstan. Two major warehouses were hit. They're switching toward basic economic targets, and this will more than likely backfire even more. Wildberries is owned by Tatiana Kim — she's Russian but of Korean descent, as there are a lot of people of Korean descent in Russia. She's also the richest woman in the world. So with her property being destroyed, it will just add even more pressure and lend more weight to the argument to strike European factories and get this going already.
This is what Europe wants — and obviously it is. I'm not talking about maybe the average person on the street, but most European leaders seem to back their owners. Europe is really itching for a war. We hear that every single day. Maybe it's time that — not just regular people screaming in the streets to strike the European Union, strike them hard — but when the very rich start saying that, sooner or later that's going to happen. And the sooner the European factories are burning, either we get on with it and get it rolling, or Europe backs the hell off and sits back down and starts negotiating before it's exterminated. That's the point it's getting to.
The average Russian, if you ask them — if you have a choice between saving Russia and having to strike Europe hard — they'll say strike Europe. The hatred is growing. It is growing.
The Russian economy is not nearly as impacted as people would like to think. There have been difficulties, I won't deny that. One of the reasons they're switching to economic targets is that they can't hit the military targets — the Russian military is advancing. But the pressure on the Kremlin to start hitting the European Union is growing. And it'll start with strikes on plants, on manufacturing facilities. The Europeans will do something stupid, as they invariably do — you have to have some kind of brain power to think, "Maybe we shouldn't have done that." They don't. The people that rule Europe absolutely lack anything that even resembles common sense. They will escalate, and it'll be counter-escalation. Where the escalation stops, I don't know.
Just to understand — Russia is prepared for a full conventional war. For the last three years, Russia has been producing between 1,200 and 1,500 main battle tanks every year. These aren't going to the Ukrainian front. These are being stacked, along with thousands of missiles. What you see in Ukraine is not massive Russian production. The Russian economy is not yet on a war footing — not a real war footing. It's 6 to 7% of GDP. When it goes to war footing it will be 30 to 40%. That's a whole different level. And it's being prepared for that. Possibly even after the September election, we may be in a full-blown war, because the pressure is on — and the pressure from society is on. Now the very rich are being hit, and it's not going to have the effect that the Europeans think they're having.
I'll just add this. For the last two months, particularly last month, I've been calming down Westerners living in Russia, because a lot of them — not all, far from it — but a lot of them are freaking out. Some Russians, of course — particularly if you listen to certain commentators who have no idea what's going on outside of having spoken to some moving guys, some taxi drivers, and their liberal friends who don't consider themselves Russian most of the time anyway — but most Russians are stiff upper lip and throw something heavier back at the other guy. That's the Russian mentality. Like I said, we're lying on the beach and you can hear the drones flying overhead, the sirens are wailing, nobody's moving. As Napoleon said, it's not enough to shoot a Russian soldier once. You have to shoot him twice. And then you have to go up that hill and knock him over. That's what Europe is facing.
Measuring the war — deterrence, restraint, and the debate over who is winning
Glenn Diesen: Well, if one makes the comment that Russia has been restrained, it's usually pushed back on — about how brutal and gruesome they are. But I saw Zelensky tweet today that Russia carried out one of the largest attacks ever — 40 missiles and 120 attack drones — and then he notes that one person has been killed in Kyiv. Again, if you use 160 air vehicles and one person gets killed, you would have to think that civilian casualties are being taken into consideration in terms of picking targets.
But what you said — I thought it was interesting — the disagreements we now see between different analysts. I find it interesting in terms of how to assess who is winning. On one hand, the loss of territory, the casualty ratios — all of this indicates Russia is winning. The counter-argument, though, is that NATO is degrading the sovereignty of Russia — that its deterrence is weakened, that NATO can now essentially blow up critical infrastructure in Russia, economic targets, without any consequences. Russia strikes Ukraine, but that's not deterring NATO. They're not counting Ukrainian assets or casualties. So it is an interesting point of view — how do you measure progress? As a former US Army officer who is now in Russia and clearly leans toward the view that Russia should have restored this deterrence already and hit back not just against Ukraine but also its Western handlers — what is your take?
Stanislav Krapivnik: Look, I'm a hardliner and I've always been — maybe because of my military background. You tend to think that way. Military or foreign intelligence types tend toward negotiations. I'm not against negotiations, but I tend toward the view of Rome: I'd rather be feared than loved. Loved gets betrayed. If Europe is terrified every time they hear the word "Russian," we will live in peace. The non-Russian Europe — that 52 to 58% of the subcontinent — will never think twice about looking east again. That has to be the deterrent, and the only way to reach this deterrent now is massive military strikes.
You take a couple of European countries. You don't have to hit everybody — we don't have enough resources to hit everybody equally. You make examples, and you make examples logically. You don't hit the Poles, especially when the Poles are now fighting it out with the Ukrainians and that's getting more and more vicious. Why would you hit the Poles? You hit the Germans. Not the East Germans — you hit the West Germans from head to toe. You take out their bridges. You take out their gas storage facilities. You take out Rheinmetall and its headquarters. First thing you hit is the headquarters. You take it all out. You take the executives out. You take their assistants out. You take out the entire staff. Then you take out the facilities. This is how you do real combat. You go after the elites. The only part of East Germany that should be hit is Berlin — the headquarters of the chancellery. You go after the elites. Why should the people suffer when the elites want this?
Now, if those people in West Germany still want to fight, you destroy their economy. Winter's coming — it always is. You take out those underground gas storage facilities. Good luck in winter when it comes. You take out the ports too — the LNG ports particularly — so they can't bring LNG in. Winter will come. Extreme cold and hunger has a tendency to really get people's minds in focus. You want to fight — this is what the fight is going to be. That's just wave one. Back off, negotiate — or be ready for wave two.
Having said that, I said from the very beginning — understanding the West — when Slovakia gave the first tanks over, I was on Russian media saying we should be hitting Slovakia. Why Slovakia? Because it's small. And if Russia had hit back hard against Slovakia, all of NATO would have backed off and said, "It's not us — it's those stupid Slovaks, we told them not to do it but they went and did it anyway." But because Russia didn't respond, everybody looked and said, "Oh, okay." And the gates of hell opened up and everything started flooding in. That was a massively missed opportunity to end this war probably two years earlier and back NATO the hell off.
All it's done is boost the mouth-breathers running NATO into thinking they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Yes, deterrence has to be reinstated. And unfortunately, deterrence is going to be reinstated only one way — and that's going to be with a lot of bloodshed. The further we go down this road, the more blood it's going to take to reinstate deterrence.
I'm not one to start screaming about throwing around nuclear weapons. That's a final stage, and I don't see actual control once nukes start getting used — it's very hard to slow that down. But conventional, non-nuclear weapons — bring those down on the EU Parliament and see what happens afterwards. See what mood those that survive are going to be in. This is the only way you do it. You bring it home to the elites. European elites will not understand anything else. That's the only way.
America's role — Iran, Trump, and the Ukrainization of Europe
Glenn Diesen: Sadly, I do see this is the direction we're headed. The idea that this is sustainable — these massive attacks on Russia — it's quite obvious the Europeans are behind it, and the Americans as well. That was kind of my last question: the US has shifted its position. I'm not sure if it's the official position. I'm not sure if Trump was ever genuine about diplomacy — I would like to think he was, but given what we've watched in Iran, there's reason to doubt it. Either way, it's beside the point by now. What is interesting is that he definitely sees a greater role for the United States in the war against Russia. He went from wanting to finish this war — at least that's what he claimed — in 24 hours, to now arguing that yes, there's escalation, but that's good to end the war. He praised Zelensky for doing an amazing job with the drone strikes — drones supplied by NATO, with NATO providing the targeting. The main information war we're now seeing is essentially that Trump has been sold the idea that the tide is turning, that the Russians are being defeated and the Ukrainians are ascending.
How do you see America's role in this? As a former American officer, to what extent would they want to get involved given the presence of so many nuclear weapons? Or do you think they will just allow the Europeans to essentially become new Ukrainians — to throw themselves at the Russians while the US sits back and praises them rhetorically or with weapons and intelligence?
Stanislav Krapivnik: The Iran war — the American illegal aggression against Iran — has been shown in the US to be the most unpopular war since polling was started, which I think began after the Korean War. The last polling had it 1% less popular than the Vietnam War at its worst point. Except that the Vietnam War got to that point through a relatively slow process — with an increase of advisors, CIA advisers, special ops trainers for partisan warfare, then eventually the first battalion of Marines coming in to secure an airfield. It grew over time and for a long time the American population backed it, and then eventually disillusionment started and the way the draft was handled started grating on people's nerves. There was no such process in this case. This started as 1% less popular than Vietnam at its worst. The American people have never been behind this war.
Trump has a lot of problems. Within the next month to month and a half, the big campaign season starts. Lindsey Graham has had his little talk with Jesus — I don't know where God sent him, but I can guess. At this point, the pro-war people in Congress are having a problem because it turns out Lindsey was their main spokesman. We're already seeing a lot of problems with the armed services bill. Congress came back two days ago from break — they spend more than a third of a year on break — and they're now having problems pushing it through. It looks like it's going to fail. They basically put Israel inside the US military bill and they're having a lot of problems. It turns out Lindsey Graham was actually one of the biggest movers and shakers. Blumenthal is a dud as far as popularity and being a face on television. Cotton's not much better. So how much are they going to be pushing to go into this war, especially with both Democrats and Republicans losing people left and right? Something like 80-something percent of the population is now in the independent voting population. That's a big question.
But of course, for the Americans, the ideal is still the Ukrainization of Europe. Let the European meat go to the butcher shop — we're making money off this. Europeans, this is hard to swallow: you're meat. You are no more than — probably not even a little better than — Ukraine. You're just a little further behind Ukraine in being turned into a commodity.
As for the English — the English always have the problem that they're not as smart as they think they are. They're really good at starting wars and they keep thinking they can start wars and get other people to fight them, and they always wind up getting sucked into those wars. Be it the Napoleonic Wars, be it the War of 1812, be it World War I, be it World War II — they keep getting sucked into the conflicts they start. And they've lost everything to it. They put their bets behind the Americans — the Americans who did the most to destroy the British Empire more than anybody else, at least finishing it off. Let's not forget that in the 1950s and 1960s, the Americans were doing as much if not more than the Soviet Union in freeing the colonies — that is, destroying the colonial empires of Western Europe.
So no, I don't think the Americans are going to be too keen on fighting a war against Russia. First of all, we know that the Patriot is a piece of crap. It can more or less take out fighters and fighter-bombers unless their missiles can do standoff range outside its effective range. It's worthless against ballistics — we've seen that. Russian missiles work. Russian radars work. We see them work every single day. We also see videos of dozens of Patriots flying up and missing a not-exactly-super-high-tech ballistic missile. We're not even talking about hypersonics. We just saw ballistics strike a Jordanian base and believe me, there was more than two guys killed. You see those videos — the blast, the soldiers living in containers, those containers going kaboom and rolling when the blast came through, raging fire. You think only two guys died from that? Maybe three injured? Of course, a hell of a lot more people have died than the US will ever admit to. But that's the point — they may not admit to it, but they know it. They know what they're taking as far as casualties.
So they're probably not going to be too interested. They can't handle Iran. Short of Trump going nuclear — and apparently, from what I've heard from different sources, he's now tried that twice and the military has told him to go bounce. At least the US military is making a stand on not going nuclear, for now at least.
Where will Trump take all this? He's going to be very happy to have Europe fight. For those Europeans that haven't woken up — I guess when the press gangs show up to take your kids or you, and they will, because the leadership of Europe is watching what's happening in Ukraine and learning the exact same rules — here's the thing to understand. The best way, when you're in an unstable regime — like almost every EU member state, including the EU itself — the best way to get rid of your opponents is war. It's martial law. It's mass arrest of the enemy or the fifth column. The best way to get rid of them, just like the Ukrainians are doing to priests and to Russians in central Ukraine, is to send them off to the front to die. And that will be repeated across most of Europe.
I hope Europeans wake up, especially those who are already awake and understand just how deep they're in. The people that rule over you hate you and will more than love to take that opportunity to get rid of you. If this was any kind of sane nation, there would have been armed revolts across every EU member state. A couple of them have basically had that — Bulgaria has overturned the government, a few others are on the edges of it. But the people that rule over Europe have destroyed the economies, destroyed the future for generations, and are replacing the population with incredible speed. There's nothing to compare to this short of the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire — except that this isn't barbarians pushing across a weakened Roman Empire's borders. This is the leadership saying, "Hey, we love you, come over, breed out our own people." That's the reality of what's happening. And now this is just the next step.
No European in the EU lives better today than he lived ten years ago, except the very, very rich, who are making a lot of money out of it. The average person — the bottom 98% — is not living better, and the bottom is living on barely survival rations at this point. It's only going to get worse.
Trump, the deep state, and the one-two step of US politics
So the Americans are not going to get involved. China's having a great time because the US has stretched itself so ridiculously thin. And Trump can't back out for several reasons. One, he still owns property. Two, there are no voices left. Look who's left in the White House that was against this. Vance. But there's only so far a vice president can go against the president without invoking the 25th Amendment. And he's been neutered because all the people around him that he brought in have been removed. He's the only one left and he's been basically thrown as a human sacrifice to big pharma that he tried to control. So he's out of the way too.
This is the same thing that happened in Trump's first term. Exactly the same thing. And people were saying, "Oh, making excuses — Trump was an inexperienced politician, he didn't know they were going to all get replaced by neocons. He made mistakes, but he's smarter now." No. I mean, I don't know whether he's smart or not, but he knew exactly what was going on. And he did it again. Actively did it again.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. During the election campaign when he was on Joe Rogan, he was making the point that his mistake was to surround himself with hawks like Bolton. But what did he do? He got Graham as his new sidekick. So I'm starting to think this is by design. Either he's incompetent or he's deceptive. But at this point, does it really matter?
Stanislav Krapivnik: Right — it doesn't. He is deceptive. Let's begin with that. He is absolutely deceptive, beyond a doubt. He played this well — or the deep state has played him well as the outside candidate.
They always go one-two, one-two. The Democrats are used to take a big step forward in whatever agenda is being pushed, and then the Republicans come in: "Oh, this is too far, we need to pull back." So the Democrats take two steps forward, the Republicans take one step back. "See, now this is better." And it continues like this. They calm people down.
You went from family values, nuclear family, all of that — to let's cut off the gonads of little boys and drug them up with hormones that'll destroy their bodies, puberty blockers and so on. That's the Democrat step. And then the Trump side comes in: "Oh, we're back to traditional values — just LGBT minus the T." That's traditional values now. He said, "I'm the most pro-gay administration ever." But that's the difference. That's just the obvious one that anybody can see.
Honestly, as long as it's between two consenting adults, I don't care what they do inside their house. I don't want it out in the street, period — especially around kids, regardless of what sex you are. And I honestly feel sorry for people who define themselves entirely by what they do in their private life. If that's the only defining thing about you, you're a sorry human being. That's all you have in your life. But that's how a lot of these people characterize themselves, and this is the one-two step.
We've seen this in the financialization of the US. Obamacare was supposed to be a pseudo-socialist thing for the people, for medicine. Of course it was never that — it was just a present to big finance. And then people started arguing, "Oh, this is horrible, we can't handle this." So the Republicans come in: "Oh, we're going to fix it, we're going to get rid of it." But of course when they got in, they didn't get rid of it. They modified it to make it easier to swallow, and then the next step, and the next step. It's the same thing we see in the US — and not just in the US, we see this in Europe too. The agenda keeps getting pushed forward: two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back. And it works beautifully. People's attention span is so short that they go, "Oh, see, it's changed. It's not as bad as it was a year ago." Yeah. But now look — think back three years ago how things were. But that's already too far for most people.
So yes, this is continuing. Trump is just part of this agenda, and they played it absolutely well — him as this outside force that came in.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. I don't know. I like Vance in many things about him, but I remember Bush Senior — the Wolfowitz Doctrine was all rolled out and I thought, "Oh well, that's not good, well at least Clinton will be better." Then he had his nation-building. Then Bush Junior comes along arguing, "Well, we're not going to do nation-building" — and then of course he became the worst nation-builder. Then you have Obama: "We're going to change." And every single one of them mobilizes some enthusiasm from a population exhausted by war, and it doesn't change. While I would see many positive things about Vance, I think it would be better than Trump — but at the end of the day I don't think it really matters who sits on the throne anymore. The whole structure is built for empire, and I don't think that's going to change no matter who sits there.
Stanislav Krapivnik: It's not just built for empire. It's built for oligarchical empire. Because at some point you may have an emperor who can actually do something or take a nation in some direction outside of what it was. But here it doesn't matter who sits on the throne. The last two presidents in the United States who could do anything outside of what they were told were Reagan and George H.W. Bush. I'm not defending Bush Senior — he had a lot of issues. But when the man could actually stand up to Israel and cut them off, he knew he had some amount of actual power. And that was the last one. He wasn't exactly a free agent — he was quite a bit part of the machine. But since then it's just gotten worse and worse, incredibly worse. It's absolute control. So yeah, I don't see anything changing, unfortunately.
Glenn Diesen: Well, thank you very much for taking the time, and I hope you enjoy your holidays.
Stanislav Krapivnik: Thank you.