Putin’s Appointment In Samarra: Six Months Left

The end is coming to Putin; he can only evade it a short time longer.

He met recently with another shade-creature, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, in Vostochny Cosmodrome in eastern Russia. They watched a few missiles launch. It was the launch site for the ill-fated Russian Lunar Mission, which did hit the moon. Hit it several times, in fact.

They could not review the legendary Russian Baikonur site to the west, because Kazakhstan has seized the site from Russia for non-payment of debts.

Going further west an equal distance brings a traveller to fabled Samarra, a city of palaces on the road to ancient Baghdad.

Samarra was featured in a famous Somerset Maughan story about a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions. The servant returned quickly, white and trembling. He said: “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by someone in the crowd. I turned and saw it was Death that jostled me. Death looked at me and made a threatening gesture! Now, lend me your horse Master, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra, and there Death will not find me.” The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death standing in the crowd and he came to Death and said, “Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?” “That was not a threatening gesture,” explained Death, “it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

You cannot escape your fate.

Dylan Combellick wrote a nice summary describing the end that is closing in on Russia. He noted that Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s Chief of Defense Intelligence, stated that the Russians are incapable of conducting protracted operations and added: “The professional army in the general sense ended last fall.”

Budanov gives Russia six months to a year until Ukrainian victory.

Before blowing this off as propaganda, think for a moment about all those times that forecasts of Russia’s vast strength have been wrong.