We Are At The Molotov-Ribbentrop Stage

We Are At The Molotov-Ribbentrop Stage

by David Archibald

26 October 2026

 

History rhymes a lot. The countries of the allied powers fighting Russia in the Crimean War of 1853-1856 were Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Italy wasn’t formed until 1861 and Germany was united in 1871. By attacking Russia in Crimea, the allied powers took it upon themselves to thwart Russia’s expansion along the south coast of the Black Sea. We are still blocking Russia’s westward expansion 170 years later.

Another parallel with the current situation is the beginning of WW2. There were two major powers in continental Europe — Germany and Russia; everyone else was feckless. The foreign ministers of Russia and Germany, Molotov and Ribbentrop respectively, signed their non-aggression pact on 23rd August, 1939. Germany attacked Poland a week later, with the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opening fire on the Polish port of Westerplatte at 4.45 am on 1st September, 1939. The German excuse was that German minorities in Poland were being oppressed.

The current day equivalent of Westerplatte is the Estonian town of Narva, in the northeast corner of the country, on the border with Russia. Russia claims that the Russians in Estonia are being oppressed. There is a US tripwire force based at Camp Reedo in southern Estonia. The bulk of this force has been rotated out, with only some 100 troops remaining. The next US armoured formation is due to arrive in November 2026. If they don’t arrive, or the base is abandoned, that will be a sign of an imminent Russian invasion.

 

 

Now, how could that come about you might well ask. It seems that Putin has been reading the weird ideas of the US Undersecretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, who proposes that the world should be divided into three spheres of influence: the Americas under the control of the United States, the Eurasian landmass controlled by Russia, and Asia is to be controlled by China. Mr Colby is doing his best to bring that about by white-anting NATO. He held a meeting of NATO countries, excluding the nuclear powers of Britain and France and the Baltic states, in Bergen, Norway in June 2026. This ‘Bergen group’ is due to meet again in November in Poland. No doubt they will be told to stand down when Russia invades the Baltic states. That sounds strange but there is no other explanation for such weird behaviour.

Having read Colby’s febrile geopolitics, Putin has proposed a meeting of the three Colby superpowers in Shenzhen, China, on 18th November, 2026, on the sidelines of the APEC conference. Putin expects this meeting to impose a peace settlement on Ukraine, which gives him what he wants. Russia may or may not want to invade the Baltic countries at the moment, but an invasion is necessary for the US to abandon NATO. The US has its own big, kinetic war going on with Iran. At some stage President Trump will call for NATO members to come and help out with his Iran War. When they don’t, and they won’t, that will be his excuse to abandon Europe to the Russians.

In return for this perfidy in the name of hard power realism, what do regime associates in the US hope to get in return? Zerohedge is the main channel for socially acceptable Russian propaganda, so what do its articles say? This one, entitled Five Reasons Why Trump Is More Serious Than Ever About Cutting Deals With Russia, lists things including data centres powered by cheap hydropower. The US, under Trump, is expected to trade its reputation for data centres.

But why would Russia call this meeting now? Calling a meeting is a sign of weakness and negates the ‘Russia strong’ narrative. That would be due to the antics of the vile weasel running Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. When the war started, Ukrainian forces were commanded by General Zaluzhnyi. He may or may not have been competent but his heart was in the right place, he was a patriot, he was liked … and he had political ambitions. Zelensky can’t stand someone having a power base that makes them popular and a potential political rival. So in February 2024 Zaluzhnyi was shunted off to London as Ambassador to the UK. He was replaced by General Syrsky, who was a known quantity as being unliked and a butcher who micromanaged and wasted troops. Syrsky would never become a political rival to Zelensky. Similarly, there was a General Budanov who was exemplary in running the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence. So in January 2026 he was shifted to Zelensky’s presidential office where his efficiency would add to Zelensky’s aura, not his own. But you do need some competent people involved in running things when the battlefield is on a knife edge. Thus in January 2026, Mykhailo Federov was made Minister for Defence with a mandate for reform. As expected, Federov quickly made great improvements in defence acquisition and became quite popular.

You know where this is going. Zelensky used the excuse of a dispute between Federov and the butcher Syrsky to fire Federov as Defence Minister. With a non-weasel personality, Federov would have become immensely popular. Protests started straight away and continued for weeks in many Ukrainian cities for Federov’s reappointment as Defence Minister. That didn’t happen but Zelensky did replace the butcher General Syrsky with General Mykhailo Drapatyi in July 2026. General Drapatyi started reforms, including get rid of micromanagement.

This is where it gets interesting. Ukraine had been inflicting 30,000 to 40,000 Russian casualties per month. Ukraine adopted an aspirational target of 50,000 casualties per month. That’s the point at which Russian recruitment would fall short of casualties and Russia would have to end the war. Ukraine, in three short months, has blown past that aspirational level. Recently there was a day of 2,500 Russian casualties which equates to 75,000 casualties per month. It seems to have settled down to about 2,000 casualties per day which is 20,000 per month higher than it was prior to General Drapatyi’s appointment. If we assume that we could have had the higher rate of Russian casualties for the last two years, that is half a million Russian casualties and the war might have been over a year ago due to Russian exhaustion.

In effect, Zelensky’s political ambition has been the second biggest killer of Ukrainian troops and civilians after Putin himself. Nobody cares about Russian casualties. They took the King’s schilling to go to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians. They deserve a long and agonising death but some cheat on that fate by shooting themselves through the head first. The Russians, and Musk himself, have called for Zelensky’s replacement. Be careful of what you wish for, as they say, because Ukraine could become a yet more efficient machine at killing Russians when Zelensky goes.

 

What the moving finger has written above is an interpretation of events. But there is independent witness to Zelensky’s corrupt weasel character. He did try to  weaken Ukraine’s anti-corruption safeguards at one point, most notably in July 2025. His government pushed through a law that significantly reduced the independence of two key anti-corruption bodies. After substantial public protest and international pressure, Zelensky reversed course and signed legislation restoring their independence. Being corrupt in peacetime is one thing, but doing it during a war with the result of more Ukrainian deaths is vile. Vile weasel indeed.

 

P.S. Elon Musk is a smart man so how can he regurgitate Russian propaganda like this?

This is the sort of idiotic Russian propaganda that Trump himself spouts, such as saying that the Russians would have won but an idiot general took the tanks off into the mud instead of straight down the highway to Kiev.

 

 

Musk was initially hyper-enthusiastic about the Trump victory, for example calling the Canadian Prime Minister ‘governor’. Then there was a brief falling out over the 2025 budget in which Trump wasn’t going to run the country as a going concern but blow it all on bread and  circuses. Now he is back in the fold and spouts amoral nonsense. But why? It is because the Democrats have said that they will take his operations from him and jail him for life. He actually does fear for his life, at least subconsciously. As such he should be forgiven for his statements on Ukraine. Of necessity, he has nailed his colours to the mast and the mast is rotten. If the Democrats win, he would be wise to go into exile immediately. Australia should pass legislation to be able to offer him extradition-free asylum.

 

David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare