Putin himself is helping the West to destabilize Russia
Paul Craig Roberts
Gilbert Doctorow watches the main Russian television programs that assess world events. He reports the news (see below) that the tiny Baltic States are permitting Ukraine to use their territory to launch drone attacks on St. Petersburg, and that the UK prime minister, Starmer, has urged Britain’s navy to seize Russian “grey fleet” tankers in open seas.
Clearly Putin has taught even small and militarily insignificant states to have no fear of Russia.
John Helmer reports that it is not only Trump who has election problems this autumn. Putin’s never-ending war and his central bank’s strangling of the Russian economy has brought the problem to Putin in this autumn’s Duma election. It is Putin’s central bank director, not US sanctions, that is harming the Russian economy. https://johnhelmer.net/juggling-votes-money-and-bullets-president-putin-weighs-the-risk-of-losing-the-state-duma-election-in-september-to-the-opposition/
Putin’s inability to take decisive action is leading the world into World War III. Putin has created the image of Russia as a paper tiger unable after four years of war to drive Ukraine out of Russian Donbas. After four years of gratuitous Russian casualties, St. Petersburg is now faced with Ukrainian drone attacks. Instead of focusing on quickly ending the conflict, the Putin government continues to encourage “negotiations.” Putin seems to regard military victory as a sin.
It is extraordinary that Iran has the confidence to attack and destroy US military bases, but Putin shies away from winning a minor conflict and refuses to acknowledge acts of war against Russia.
Time for Putin to bomb the hell out of Estonia
Gilbert Doctorow
In the midst of all the awful news coming out of the Middle East, where Trump, Hegseth and Company are running amok, unchecked, unchallenged by the Great Power defenders of the Global South, who even deny that they are providing Iran with targeting intelligence let alone military materiel as some residual sense of decency and instinct for self-preservation would dictate, there is a tiny bit of bad news that probably has not come your way yet: that the Baltic States are now allowing Ukrainians to use their territory to send aloft attack drones aimed at St. Petersburg. This shocker from yesterday comes on top of Keir Starmer’s statements in the same time frame urging his fleet to board and take over Russian ‘grey fleet’ tankers in the open seas. Both developments are intended to draw the world’s attention to the only conflict that matters for the EU leadership – the one going on in Ukraine, where they still hope to humiliate Moscow, precipitate regime change and a break-up of the Russian Federation.
This internet platform is not a podcast, and I can speak more freely. Accordingly, I say here that if Putin still has a backbone, which many of you in the Community and further afield are rightly beginning to doubt, as I judge from the Comments section of my interview with Glenn Diesen on Tuesday, then he will react without hesitation and without delay: bomb the hell out of Estonia right now, level Tallinn to the ground after giving the civilian population a few hours advance warning to pack their cars and leave. There is no need to open the Pandora’s box of tactical nuclear weapons. There is no need for showy Oreshniks that strike without doing collateral damage. It is precisely collateral damage that Europe needs to see on its own territory. Artillery, missiles, glide-bombs carrying a ton or more of conventional explosives, and similar will turn Tallinn into a Gaza look-alike in a day or two.
What will NATO do about this? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They are not prepared for war and should be reminded of that fact in the most dramatic way possible if we are not to slip further into a civilization destroying all-out nuclear war by further baby step escalation. The bad boy of Russian political scientists, Sergei Karaganov was saying this to Putin’s face during the November 2024 Valdai Discussion Club gathering. He was very right.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026
https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/todays-message-to-all-but-pacifists