The unexpected thing that happened recently was that Russia gave Belarus tactical nuclear weapons, and I don’t mean it in the sense that Russia deployed tactical nukes in Belarus under Russian military and political control; no, the nukes are under Lukashenko’s military and political control. This is unprecedented, because the Soviets never allowed the Cubans direct control over nukes deployed in Cuba, for instance; nukes leaving Russian control is an extraordinary move, literally breaking the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) – literally, Article 1 as stated: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.”
Considering how anal Putin is about domestic and international law, this is really a shocking development and I don’t really understand what it means, in terms of geopolitical strategy. I would venture a guess that this was a concession Putin made to Lukashenko, and since we are not privy to their internal talks, I won’t even try to guess what it’s about. The statements in the news are phrased in a way that makes one assume that the Russian nukes are deployed in Belarus, and that they are Russian-controlled, but that’s not how I’m reading this.
The weapons are deployed in the Western part of Belarus, and, if we assume they are mounted on Iskander missiles with 500km range, they cover Poland and the Baltic states, as well as the western Ukraine. This is the most likely scenario. An extension of this scenario are the nuclear-tipped Kinzhal missiles on Mig-31 planes stationed in Belarus, but I would expect those to be under Russian military-political control. The tactical nuclear warhead is probably a variable-yield 5-50kT device. Since the Belarusian airplanes have already been modified to enable them to use nuclear weapons, this probably means cruise missiles, in addition to the ground-based forces.
In reality, since America is merrily proliferating their own tactical nuclear weapons within NATO, this can be seen as a response, but I still find it shocking. If we combine this development with the fact that the Russians have been arming their ships with tactical nuclear weapons for a while now, things begin to look quite serious.
Another unprecedented event is Admiral Gorshkov frigate (the one armed with Zircon hypersonics and, likely, tactical nukes; the one that made the American analysts freak out because it can sink anything in the Atlantic ocean) arriving in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This is obviously a message to America – not only do we no longer need your “protection”, but we invited this specific ship for a specific reason, which is for you to understand that any attempt to bully or intimidate us will end badly for you. The other side of this agreement between Saudis and Russians is the announced OPEC reduction in oil production, which will put pressure on America and its vassals. Also, I would expect American oil theft project in Syria to come to an abrupt and violent end.
In the meantime, in America the liberals are trying to prosecute Trump on some bogus charges related to some slanderous porn star and his lawyer paying her money to shut up, the deranged trans-perverts are shooting people in Christian schools, and the only thing they apparently produce there are rainbow flags that the rest of us find revolting and abominable. This rainbow-mania looks like a combination of a train wreck and something you think must be a joke but then you see that they are actually serious and you just stand there with mouth agape, not knowing what to say to that at first, but then you get your shit together and say “fuck that, you are all insane”. America is a lunatic asylum pretending to be a country, at this point. Basically, the sane half of the country seems to be in a combination of shock, incredulity and panic, and the other half of the country seems to be waging an all-out war against reality. Also, they spent most of their petroleum reserves already, they no longer control OPEC (in fact, Russia seems to be doing that), their economy is producing mostly “financial products” and it all looks like Wile E. Coyote from the cartoon, after he ran off a cliff and is still hanging in the air because he didn’t look down yet. Gold is at an all-time high, but honestly it’s dirt cheap compared to what it’s going to cost once the coyote looks down.
On a comical note, Finland just joined NATO, which at this point looks like a suicide pact of the broke and the gay. No industry and no energy, but plenty of money printing and banning cars because of “climate change”. Also, lots of gay and Ukrainian flags, which seem to be interchangeable at this point, because both stand for Satan.