Minsk is one of these characters I’ve been watching very closely. The Disinfolklore analytical method enables us to feel free. It prompts us to look for archetypal characters in the data — characters which aren’t typical. It’s not always Kellogg. Sometimes it’s Ukraine, the country itself. Ukraine archetypes as David or Goliath. Russia archetypes itself, switching between David and Goliath — on the one hand, “everyone’s ganging up on us, let me into the G8”; on the other, “we’re the mighty second army.” The power of this as an analytical tool comes to the fore when we recognise, for instance, that Kellogg is going to Minsk.

I bet you Kellogg doesn’t know what I’m talking about here. He doesn’t understand why he is going to Minsk. The reason he’s going to Minsk, I believe, using the Disinfolklore analytical method, is to push this perennial troll about Minsk into the information space again.

For me, Minsk is a living character. A living being. I was in eastern Ukraine on the day Minsk II was signed in mid-February 2015, and my job immediately changed. Under Minsk II, Russia and Ukraine agreed to withdraw their weapons systems a sufficient distance from the line of contact, which in the area I was in ran along the middle of the Donets River in eastern Ukraine, in Luhansk Oblast. Artillery had to move more than 30 kilometres away on each side. Myself and my colleagues from the OSCE — our job was to monitor the withdrawal and then, over the coming years, to ensure it was maintained.

For instance, Russian occupiers on the Luhansk side, the Russian-occupied side of the river, used to go home in their tanks for lunch. We went through this whole debate about whether this was a breach of Minsk. Then we found out they were just going home for their lunch in the tank. So it was less than 30 kilometres, but we let it go. When there were breaches of Minsk, I had to certify them in a legal sense. These were then reported. Sometimes I certified thousands of breaches of the ceasefire.

Minsk for me is a living character. It’s the difference between knowing a famous person because you’ve seen all their films or read the character in a book, and actually living in the same house as that famous character. That’s why I particularly tune in to the dynamic meaning of Minsk in Russian Disinfolklore. That’s why I tuned in immediately when I saw Kellogg was going to Minsk.

My working assumption — and no data has displaced this yet — is that what Russia really wants is Minsk III. I archetype Minsk III as actually the agreement which was then breached between Duncy Putler and the Chef of Disinfolklore himself, Prigozhin, brokered on the day of the coup — the agreement that Prigozhin gets to go to Belarus and disappear, and they’ll fake the aeroplane crash. So that’s Minsk III. I then wrote about Minsk IV. What I’m trying to do in my small way is re-archetype Minsk, because what Russia really wants is the contact line to be frozen as is, faking in the tiny advances they’ve made since February 2022.

I heard today that Donald in Canada was again pushing for Crimea to be recognised as Russian. This is what they’re fixed on. This is why I call Duncy Putler the village idiot, the village dunce. They fix on these things and they want their Minsk. We even saw the head of the OSCE in Moscow a few months ago — I wrote about it at the time. Russia denied there would be OSCE monitors, which told me Russia actually wants them. But of course, in the era of drone warfare, the job I did would be absolutely impossible today.

The 30-kilometre withdrawal zone either side of the contact line for artillery, tanks and different weapons systems according to their range — that’s a really quaint, old-fashioned way of maintaining a ceasefire or a peace. Now you have drones which no one can see, which radars can’t detect and can’t stop, as we see with the Shahed drones. Monitoring a ceasefire would be absolutely impossible. Someone flies a drone — that should be a breach of the ceasefire.

But that doesn’t mean Russia isn’t still madly trying to push Minsk as a concept, as an idea. James, you mentioned someone in President Zelensky’s team said there will be no Minsk. I recall it from that meeting in Indonesia where Ukraine set out its 10-point peace plan. The first point is: there will be no Minsk III. Ukraine cannot say this enough. It has said it a thousand times. Thankfully, all of our leaders are now on board with this — apart from one, sadly, who is indulging the Russians. And that is the purpose of Kellogg going to Minsk.

Publicly, Russia says it can press on and keep going forever. But what it really wants is to stabilise the front lines and rerun this whole Minsk III troll — where you had five years after the Minsk agreements, in December 2019, President Zelensky in Paris at that very memorable, important meeting with Macron, Merkel and Putin. Russia just wants to replay the same tune again and again.

I don’t think Kellogg would understand this. Paul Manafort might — he is probably the liaison between the oligarchs, Putin and Donald’s team. He may understand why they’re pushing Minsk. But as far as Kellogg goes — he’s the one who said “we need to hit the mule to teach the lesson.” He’s just like a mule, a dumb mule, who is probably doing this without understanding it. He still thinks people are listening to what he is doing in the peace process.

I didn’t pick up any vibes from Merz or Meloni or any of them suggesting otherwise. If we look at the body language from Meloni — some epic photographs from Canada. There’s no one pushing for Minsk III now. I think all of our leaders have been convinced of what I knew immediately: that after the full-scale invasion, you would never have another Minsk. This war goes on to the end, until Russia leaves the whole of Ukraine — if that’s in a hundred years or in a few weeks. All of us are working for it to be in a few weeks or a month or two. But there will be no Minsk III.

It’s not technically possible. Belarus entered the war. We remember this. It is a party to this war. Ukraine remembers this. Ukraine would be fully within its rights — and may well do this — to take out all of the Russian matériel and troops supposedly assembling in Belarus. The idea of Lukashenko playing coy and innocent — he is very much party to this war and sanctioned as such. Ukraine is perfectly within its rights, as Will has pointed out, to strike sites in Belarus.

That’s why I believe Kellogg is going to Minsk. It’s an embassy on behalf of Russia, and it’s mainly to feed the information space. We’re going to see Minsk for the next week or so. It’s supposed to provoke in people’s minds this halcyon moment where we had a ceasefire and people stopped dying — and Russia was able to get on with brainwashing the people in the areas it occupied, disassembling all the factories, licking its wounds.

As an American, it astonishes me that the people around that great country — the greatest country there’s ever been — can be laid so low as to have Kellogg unknowingly going merely to serve as a prompt for a Disinfolklore character, “Minsk,” in our information space. That’s really what I want to talk about today.

⚡️Russia’s Core Competency? Industrialisation of suicide-bomber creation.

Sculpting Suicide Bombers out of ordinary humans used to be an artisan trade. Russia learned it from Assad’s father, who perfected the art.

Every day since March 2023 1000+ Russian soldiers, knowing they will be killed, have executed assaults in Ukraine which are doomed to fail.

How does Russia get ordinary humans to participate?

We have seen thousands of videos of such assaults, ghosts crossing no-man’s land turned to dust by Ukrainian drones.

We’ve read hundreds of first-hand accounts like this one:

“A Russian soldier fighting in Chasiv Yar says that new recruits sent to the front die almost immediately, with his own unit taking over 90% casualties. The fields are strewn with rotting corpses. To avoid having to pay compensation to relatives, collecting IDs is banned…”

Drugs, of course help. Yet, it’s the systems inside Russia’s army which have enabled Russia to turn artisan workshop-created suicide bombers of Isis, Hamas, and Al Quada into a mass production industry.

At every point in the assembly line between recruitment and death on a hopeless meat assault in Ukraine Russia’s corruption system propels recruits forward towards their inevitable death.

You go to buy eggs for your dinner in Russia.

You wake up, still drunk, on a train to Ukraine. In a stupor you’ve signed a mobilisation contract.

Multiple Russians have already pocketed segments of your sign-on bonus.

At training you’ll die unless you bribe the Sargent.

You’ll starve unless you bribe the cook.

On the way to the front, you’ll freeze, unless you bribe someone else for a blanket. You’ll be put in the carriage with the ex-prisoner convicted of cannibalism.

The list of iterations and market opportunities for Russia’s army of parasites is endless.

Guilty of corruption? Pay your way out of jail with the corruption proceeds by spending the rest of the war in a boarding house in Berdyansk.

At the position you’re tied to a tree as a sacrifice to a Baba Yaga drone until you hand over your money card to the commander…

Eventually you end up in a video like this:

Be warned though, this system is not an accident.

It’s Russia’s core competency.

⚡️How NATO can prepare for today’s wars.

Probably the only way militaries will innovate commensurate with challenge facing them is if, as I still maintain might well yet happen, Ukraine, Poland, maybe Türkiye,Baltic, states, aided by Finland, Scandinavians and Nordics will eject Russia from 100% of Ukraine.

Way things are going (currently) US ...