By Batiushka for the Saker blog
Foreword
The second half of this essay replies to a commentator who has written: ‘Batiushka, let us know how to read your prophecies’. Here there is a fundamental misunderstanding. However, before we get to that, let us look at the big picture of geopolitical events, only after which the second half will become relevant.
PART ONE: The US and its Lost War in the Ukraine
The US proxy war against Russia via the useful idiots of the Ukrainian puppet-elite was not so much about destroying Russia as weakening China from the north. For the US, China is the only real rival on the world scene. It is overtaking the US in terms of GNP, it is taking over Africa and Australia. China is the main manufacturing nation in BRICS and the SCO, which are replacing/have replaced the G7 club of US vassals. Korea and Japan will also fall to China and, frankly, all the Western Pacific will too. For the US, Russia is only a way of getting at China. China is the Superpower and Taiwan is the Ukraine of China. After nearly one year of the proxy war in the Ukraine, the US elite has realised that its Great Game in the Ukraine was an error. Attacking through the Ukraine will destroy neither Russia, nor, above all, China, which is the real aim.
The Ukraine was meant as a sideshow, but instead it has become a very serious distraction, depleting valuable military resources in a long and unsuccessful campaign. The war there is also destroying the West economically through its suicidal anti-Russian sanctions. The hubristic US totally underestimated Russia, as could be seen already in the arrogant claim of Obama on 25 March 2014 that Russia was just ‘a regional power’. Precious US military resources could be more effectively employed in ‘containing’ China, the real rival. Panic and desperation are now seizing the US. The Ukraine has to be dropped like the hot potato it is. Since even the neocons have now realised that the devastated Ukraine is not of any real interest to them, they have to find a face-saving way out.
The US will drop the Ukraine because it is corrupt/not fighting well/keeps losing equipment and will turn its attention to ‘the real enemy’ – China. Currently, there is talk of the CIA Director Burns offering Russia 20% of the Ukraine in return for peace – in other words, more or less the territory it already holds! It may be a false flag (in Russian ‘утка’, a duck, which is the translation of the French ‘canard’ meaning the same). But the mere fact that this story is even around proves that Washington is testing the water for reactions, watching for ripples after throwing its stone into the ‘duckpond’ and is contemplating dumping the Ukraine. As an attempt to bribe Russia, it is of course a ridiculous offer. Russia is going to remove the Ukraine as a threat. Totally. And there is some very solid other evidence for saying this.
The US and China
A whole sequence of dramatic events regarding US intentions towards China has unfolded since 2019. The first was the appearance of Covid-19. An experiment for a US bioweapon from the Wuhan Virological Centre which backfired through a leak? Who knows? What we can say for a fact is that Covid-19 involves the US and China. Then, as Stage 2, came another US and China operation – the ‘Quad’, the ‘Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral Dialogue’, seriously updated in March 2021. This was a pact made years ago between Australia, India, Japan and the US, maintained by talks between them and joint military exercises on an unprecedented scale.
This diplomatic and military arrangement was an aggressive response to growing Chinese economic and military power. Indeed, the Chinese responded to the Quad with protests to its members, accurately calling it ‘the Asian NATO’. After a period of Australian foot-dragging, the Quad was revived in 2017. Finally, in that joint statement in March 2021, ‘The Spirit of the Quad’, the Quad members described ‘a shared vision for a free and open (= US controlled) Indo-Pacific’ and a ‘rules-based (= US controlled) maritime order in the East and South China Seas’. The Quad then held a ‘Quad Plus’ meeting that included representatives from, predictably, South Korea and New Zealand and, surprisingly, Vietnam. The intentions were clear.
Six months later, on 15 September 2021, came Stage 3, AUKUS, the ‘security pact’ between Australia, the UK and the US for the Indo-Pacific region. Under the pact, the US and the UK will assist Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. (Perhaps the British will be supplying the superglue for repairs to bolts around the nuclear reactors)? The AUKUS pact includes co-operation on advanced cyber, artificial intelligence, undersea capabilities, electronic warfare, innovation and information sharing. The formation of AUKUS in 2021 reduced the French to blind fury because they had lost a huge Australian order worth tens of billions of euros for nuclear submarines, which do not need British superglue. Finally, on 2 August 2022, came the Stage 4 escalation, the ‘visit’ of Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to Taiwan and her threats to China. This was a clear declaration of Cold War.
The US Pivot to China of 2023
Already last November it had been reported by the American State mouthpiece, the New York Times, that the US military-industrial complex could not sustain the pace and scale of military supplies to Kiev. It followed repeated warnings about low stocks of ammunition in the US and other reports that the US was running out of arms to supply the Kiev regime with. That was followed this January by the US Naval Secretary Carlos del Toro, who declared that the US might soon have to choose whether to meet its minimum national security needs or those of the Ukraine. Then the RAND Corporation, one of the main Pentagon think-tanks, advised against continuing the US proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine, meaning the US must end the war asap. This was because a long war would degrade US capabilities against China.
On top of all this, a memo from Air Force General Minihan, leaked at the end of January 2023, stated that the US should be ready to fight a conventional war against China by 2025. In other words, the US must find a way to back out of its Ukrainian proxy war in 2023, so as to use 2024 to ready itself for war against China in 2025. Now come the absurd events of the first days of February, the huge Chinese airship, identified as a ‘spy-balloon’, floating 18 kms (12 miles) up in the air. (Curious, why use 1950s technology, a giant balloon/airship, when Chinese satellites overfly constantly? After all, China has landed on the dark side of the moon – the US has not).
Anyway, whatever the truth, this airship was the excuse for cancelling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing, which had been aimed at Sino-American ‘détente’. The very next day, 4 February, Beijing announced that it was reinforcing its relations with Russia. No détente there. Then came the brave US fighter pilot who in a valiant dogfight managed to shoot down the evil oriental airship with a single missile. Medals all round! Clearly, the geniuses at the White House are in a hurry with their face-saving exit strategy from the Ukraine. Threatened by a giant airship, or maybe a whole fleet of them as in a 1950s UFO movie, the US must refocus on China and forget distant Russia, which was only ever interested in the Ukraine (indeed, originally, in a small slice of the Russian Ukraine in the east and the south, though now it has been forced by US policy to neutralise the lot). Let us now turn to Russian Orthodox prophecies regarding all this, prophecies which I have known of for decades, but which made little sense until very recent years.
PART TWO: Orthodox Christianity
First of all, an apology. I know that most readers of this site are not Russian Orthodox Christians, not Orthodox Christians, perhaps not Christians of any sort, and perhaps not even believers in any kind of faith. Please just suspend your disbelief for a few minutes. I have no intention of trying to convert you. I am just a messenger. I just want to explain how most Russian Orthodox see current geopolitical events. Firstly, statistical facts: 200 million people belong to the Orthodox Church. Of these 140 million, 70%, are Russian Orthodox, though since that Church is multinational, only about 100 million of them are ethnic Russians, many others live or used to live in the Ukraine.
Another note: Most practising Russian Orthodox remain outside the artificial and absurd ‘left/right’ manipulation of Western politics, invented to hoodwink the zombified into thinking that they live in democracies and have democratic choices. True, the vast majority of Orthodox are social conservatives, making us in Western eyes, right-wing (‘Fascists’), but we are also for social justice, free health and education, making us in Western eyes left-wing (‘Socialists’). Just the opposite of the neocons, who are social liberals and economic liberals, LGBT anything goes plus law of the jungle capitalism, anti-Family and anti-Nation. Like the Chinese and other Non-Westerners, we are for pro-Family and pro-Nation policies which unite the people. That explains both President Putin, his ‘conservative’ Party called ‘United Russia’ with its national policy of Russian reunification in the Ukraine, as well as the ‘socialist free market’ policies of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party.
The Orthodox Church has 1,000 bishops. 400 of these are in the Russian Orthodox Church. However, probably the most respected Orthodox bishops are in persecuted Serbia and the persecuted Ukraine, not in Russia. Once the Russian Orthodox Church has been cleansed of the corrupt Americanised inside itself, it will become an unmatchable spiritual rival to the USA. For though some traitors may have power in the Church, they have no authority in the Church. Those who have authority in the Church, who have the respect and reverence of the people, are the saints and righteous and those who are considered to be saints, elders and righteous, a few of whom are bishops, most of whom are not, and some of whom have made prophecies.
On Prophecies
We must be very careful now to distinguish between prophecies and the hoaxes and frauds of attention-seekers and money-seekers. Any fraud can get up in the morning and say: ‘I received a message about the future, I had a dream about the future, and was told so and so’. No, I am talking about words said by those who have had authority for decades and generations, who are venerated for their humble lives, about saints or elders who will be declared saints by the people, if they have not already been. In other words, we are not talking about George Bush’s idiotic ‘God told me to invade Iraq’. We are talking about the spiritual.
Here it must be added that all authentic prophecies are conditional. Prophecies are only warnings, whose timings can be postponed by hundreds and even thousands of years. People can change their ways and then the realisation of the prophecies is postponed. The prophecies remain true, but their application may be delayed, depending on human reactions to the warnings they contain. Never doubt that people can regret, turn back and change. But also never doubt that the prophecies will come true, if there is no change in behaviour once the warning has been issued.
Now we come back to the commentator who asked: ‘Batiushka, let us know how to read your prophecies’. First of all, I have no prophecies. I am not in any way a prophet. But I do know of prophecies that are relevant here. Those for example of St Seraphim of Sarov (+ 1833), St John of Kronstadt (+ 1908), St Aristocleus the Athonite (+ 1918), Archbishop Theophan of Poltava (+ 1940), St Seraphim of Vyritsa (+ 1949), Elder Seraphim of Belgorod (+ 1982), with whose blessing I act, St Paisios the Athonite (+ 1994), whom I met, Elder Nikolai Guryanov (+ 2002), whom I venerate, and Elder Jonah of Odessa (+ 2012), on whose tomb I pray.
Prophecies
Here are some of their prophecies: St John of Kronstadt said that ‘the deliverance of Russia will come from the East’. At the end of his life St Aristocleus said that ‘the end will come through China. There will be an extraordinary outburst and a miracle will be revealed from God’. Archbishop Theophan of Poltava said that there must be a Tsar forechosen by God and that the restoration of Orthodoxy in Russia would provoke hatred in the world, which ‘will take up arms against Russia’. This was confirmed by Elder Nicholas Guryanov, who predicted that President Putin will be succeeded by a Tsar, as was predicted also by St Paisios the Athonite.
Elder Iona, beloved by Orthodox in Odessa, said: After me there will be a bloody Easter, a hungry Easter and a victorious Easter’. Of course, as with all prophecies, interpretations vary. Does a bloody Easter refer to 2022, a hungry Easter refer to 2023 and a victorious Easter refer to 2024? There are those who say that a victorious Easter may refer to 2023. If only it could be so…St Seraphim of Sarov predicted that: ‘Towards that time the bishops will become so impious that in their impiety they will surpass the Greek bishops of the time of Theodosius the Younger, so that they will no longer even believe in the chief dogma of the Christian Faith…There will begin the preaching of worldwide repentance’.
You can dismiss all this as nonsense, if you wish. But you will still have to admit that there are some curious coincidences. And that it is not nonsense for Orthodox Christians, Russian or not. We see that the White House thinks only in terms of world supremacy by force and that for it the real battle of the 21st century is not between the US and Russia, using the Ukraine as its ‘Tonkin incident’, but between the US and China using Taiwan as its ‘Tonkin incident’. For us, a cleansed Russia will be the real rival because that is where the spiritual potential is. China has only manufacturing potential. What the US secularists do not understand is that the long-term domination of the world does not come through secular power, which is only short-term, it comes through spiritual power, which is long-term. The White House is like the Roman governor Pontius Pilate who asked Christ: ‘What is Truth?’ because he had a secular mind. There was no answer to his question because he had asked the wrong question. He was staring the answer in the face. His question should have been: ‘Who is Truth’? And here we are, avoiding nuclear Armageddon and we shall continue to do so, however blind Pontius Pilate is.
