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‘Is Putin Saber-Rattling or Preparing for War? ‘


COGwriter

Voice of America reported the following:

Is Putin Saber-Rattling or Preparing for War?

Saber-rattling or preparing for war?

Western officials and analysts remain split on the significance of Russia’s military deployments along its border with Ukraine. Russia deployed around 100,000 troops earlier this year, claiming the movement was temporary and for training exercises.

But most of the force has remained, and elite units have been added recently, often covertly overnight, according to Western and Ukrainian officials. That has prompted rising alarm in Kyiv and Western capitals.

Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency, added to rising anxiety Sunday when he told America’s Military Times newspaper he suspects the Kremlin is preparing a major offensive for early next year, probably by late January.

According to Budanov, the attack would likely involve airstrikes, artillery and tank bombardments as well as an airborne assault in eastern Ukraine and amphibious assaults on the Ukrainian port towns of Odessa and Mariupol. A smaller incursion might be mounted through neighboring Russian ally Belarus, Budanov added. …

Senior U.S. officials have warned NATO allies that the Kremlin might be plotting to seize more parts of Ukraine in a repeat of its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“We don’t have clarity into Moscow’s intentions, but we do know its playbook,” warned U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month. “Our concern is that Russia may make the serious mistake of attempting to rehash what it undertook back in 2014 when it amassed forces along the border, crossed into sovereign Ukrainian territory, and did so, claiming falsely that it was provoked.”

The Kremlin on Monday claimed the dire warnings about a troop buildup along the border are being used to justify supplying Ukraine with high-tech weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles. Amid the weeks of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow: “Kyiv is itself building up its forces, Kyiv is being helped to build up its forces, Kyiv is being supplied with a significant number of weapons, including modern high-tech weapons.”

He added, “The number of provocations is growing and growing significantly. These provocations are being carried out with weapons being supplied by NATO countries, and we are observing this with great alarm.”

He suggested Kyiv is looking for a way to vanquish pro-Moscow separatist rebels who seized a swathe of the country’s eastern Donbas region after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Ukraine, the United States and the European Union accuse Russia of manufacturing the separatist land grab and sending troops and arms across the border to support the rebel forces. Moscow denies those claims.

Over the past few weeks, American officials have been sharing with European allies their intelligence assessments which highlight that Moscow is close to being able to launch a quick large-scale push into Ukraine from multiple points of the map, according to European officials who spoke with VOA. U.S. officials told Bloomberg News Monday that Moscow had also called up tens of thousands of reservists, who could be used to secure territory overrun by tactical battalions, freeing them up to press on with offensive operations.

No one is saying a Russian offensive is for certain.

“I can’t speak to Russia’s intentions. We don’t know what they are,” Secretary Blinken said earlier this month. But officials do see something different and edgier this time from previous troop buildups along Russia’s shared border with Ukraine. 11/23/21 https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-saber-rattling-or-preparing-for-war/6323352.html

The heads of the Russian and United States militaries held a rare and urgent phone call on Tuesday in efforts to deescalate soaring tensions in eastern Europe, with both sides cryptically confirming it was to discuss “current” international security issues.

Russia’s most senior military general, Valery Gerasimov, held the call with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, in which the two top generals talked about “pressing issues of international security”. The past days have witnessed heightening rhetoric and threats being exchanged between Moscow and Washington over tensions in Ukraine and Belarus, especially given recent reports from US media over a Russian force build-up and planned “invasion” of eastern Ukraine, reports which the Kremlin has vehemently denied.

The US side’s readout of the call acknowledged it was for the purpose of rapid “de-confliction” between the two superpowers, also coming the same day CNN reported the Biden administration is now mulling additional weapons and military trainers for Ukraine.  11/23/21 https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-russia-military-chiefs-hold-urgent-deconfliction-call-ukraine-crisis-20-looms

Ukraine is NOT part of NATO and Russia does not want it to be.

Russia tends to believe that Ukraine is part of it, while those in eastern Ukraine tend to accept that, most in western Ukraine seem more interested in being part of Europe.

Changes are going to occur in the relationship between Ukraine and Russia (see also Russia and Ukraine: Their Origins and Prophesied Future).

Pat Buchanan wrote the following:

For days now, U.S. officials have been warning that the 100,000 Russian troops stationed near the borders of Ukraine may be preparing for an invasion.

As Ukraine is not a NATO ally, the U.S. is under no obligation to come to Kyiv’s defense. But any Russian invasion to expand the share of Ukraine it now controls could produce a crisis more serious than Putin’s annexation of Crimea or support for the separatists in the Donbas.

For Putin, the situation in the Black Sea, where U.S. warships and warplanes lead NATO vessels on regular visitations, must truly stick in the craw.

When Putin was a KGB officer in the last days of the Soviet Empire, Romania and Bulgaria on the Black Sea were Warsaw Pact allies. Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia on the Black Sea were, like Russia itself, Soviet republics of the USSR. NATO Turkey alone excepted, the Black Sea was a Soviet lake.

And today? Romania and Bulgaria are NATO allies of the United States. Ukraine and Georgia, having broken free of the USSR at the end of the Cold War, are independent nations that look to Europe, not Moscow.

The goal of both is become NATO allies under the protection of the U.S. and its nuclear umbrella.

Another consideration: Ukraine and Russia have historic ties — religious, ethnic, cultural — that go back 1,000 years.

What Putin sees in Russia’s loss of Ukraine and Kyiv’s alignment with the U.S. and the West was what Americans of Abraham Lincoln’s generation saw when France exploited our preoccupation with the Civil War to turn Mexico into a subject nation of the French Empire. https://buchanan.org/blog/playing-with-fire-on-russias-borders-158765

Ukraine is NOT part of NATO and changes will take place. That being said, powers like the USA promised Ukraine some type of protection when it agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal long ago. How much that American promise is worth now can be debated.

While many Protestant prophecy watchers believe that Russia is the power to now watch related to WWIII, notice something that the late Pastor General of the old Worldwide Church of God, Hebert Armstrong, wrote decades ago, during the time of the old Soviet Union, in an article titled Why Russia Will Not Attack the United States:

For decades now, the prospect of war between Russia and the United States has continually heightened and lessened.

Many who claim to be authorities on prophecy assure people a war involving Russia and the United States, Canada and England is prophesied in Ezekiel 38.

The United States, Britain and other democracies of north-western Europe, they recognize, are nations descended from the lost Ten Tribes. Therefore, they conclude, the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 foretells a military invasion of the North American continent from the Soviet Union. But this is not what prophecy says…

But this very fact – that this invasion will not come until after the Second Coming of Christ – will seem preposterous to many, at first thought.

That is because we have been accustomed merely to assume things that are not true. We have blindly assumed that when Christ comes, there will be no opposition. Every person and power on earth, we have thought, will simply submit meekly and instantly to him and his power. But that is not true!

Some gentile nations understandably shall not submit until forced to. The final restoration of the Roman Empire shall be subdued and conquered at a battle commonly called “Armageddon.” But the populous nations of Eurasia that the Almighty God up to this point has not dealt with shall still have to be brought to submission.

“Gog” Identified
“Gog in the land of “Magog” is the vast regions of the U.S.S.R. in northern Eurasia extending from the Baltic to the Pacific. “Meshech” is Moscow, “Tubal” is Tobol’sk.

Notice the allies who come with them in this future battle. You will find “Gomer” “Togarmah,” “Magog,” “Meshech” “Tubal” identified in Genesis 10 as the sons of Japheth, father of the Eurasians. Ethiopia and Phut (mistranslated Libya) are descended from Ham.

Therefore, this prophecy of Ezekiel 38 shows who shall finally succeed in marshaling peoples of each major race into a gigantic invasion upon our people.

When God begins to rule the world, through Christ – with His chosen people restored to prosperity in the land of Israel, the very center of the land surface of the earth (verse 12, Moffatt translation) – this, great Eurasian union of nations shall finally be tempted to use their mighty air force. (Armstrong HW. Why Russia Will Not Attack the United States, article).

Some Bible scholars assert falsely that these prophecies of Ezekiel were fulfilled anciently. They never were. Others believe they are about to occur but some years before Armageddon. Both views are erroneous. The events of Ezekiel 38 and 39 are without question still future – for the “latter days” (38: 16) and “latter years” (38:8). Moreover, Ezekiel 38:14 describes the time setting as being “in that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely.” This is certainly not the situation in the State of Israel to- day! The Israel described by Ezekiel is a nation that dwells in security, in unwalled villages, totally unprepared for war (38:8, 11, 14). Read it for yourself! (Why Russia Will Not Attack the United States. WCG booklet)

Ezekiel 38 is for the distant future–after the millennium (cf. Revelation 20:7-9; see also Ezekiel 38: For Russia & Iran in Our Day?; a related video is also available titled Ezekiel 38: For Russia, Ukraine, & Iran Now?).

But that does not mean that there cannot be military conflict between the USA and Russia now (and there may be some).

Back in 1962, notice something from two articles that the old Radio Church of God published:

Modern Europe is counseling and making treaties and alliances and agreements to conquer this earth! … Germany, those living in Germany, even the German government, may not yet know that they are going to join in a treaty with the Russians to destroy the United States and bring it to its knees-it is not in his “heart” to think so, but on the other hand it IS in his “heart” to destroy-the very characteristic of the Assyrian, the modern German, is a harsh, cruel, iron, dedication to militarism and destruction! … MAN’S ONLY HOPE LIES IN TURNING TO HIS CREATOR GOD! “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom. to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, TURN FROM THEIR EVIL, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them… Behold, I frame evil against YOU, and devise a device against YOU: return ye now EVERY ONE from his evil way and make your ways and your doings good!” (Jer. 18:7, 8, 11). The case of America and Great Britain is hopeless! The case of America and Great Britain is hopeless! (Hill DJ, God’s Destiny for Germany. Plain Truth, March 1962, pp. 28-29)

The German people are now asking themselves: “Can we rely on the Americans and British?” … These questions lead to the logical conclusion that maybe the only people the Germans can rely on themselves. They are now thinking: “Perhaps we can strike a better bargain with the Russians ourselves.” …

Once a German-dominated Europe is fully established, Germany will be ready to negotiate and bargain with Russia– and behind the backs of the Western Allies if necessary. …

When will a Russo-German deal be made? Here is a quotation from a circular letter issued in September, 1950 by the Nazi Geo-political Center in Madrid: “However long we may continue to milk the Americans of millions of dollars, there must come the inevitable moment when we shall have to make it crystal clear to them that we are not willing to join the fight against Russia for American interests … (Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T H. Terens, p. 15). …

Most Americans and Britons are not aware of what Germany and Europe are planning against them. This is partly due to the cunning of German. politics. …

World events are moving swiftly toward the climax when Great Britain and the United. States will be attacked, conquered and DESTROYED! (Boraker R. Are the Germans Secretly Dealing with Moscow? Plain Truth, May 1962, pp. 45-47)

Yes, I, too, expect that Russia will make a deal with the Europeans.

I also expect Russia to end up with at least some additional territory that is part of Ukraine.

This is a region of the world to “watch” (Mark 13:37).

Some items of possibly related interest may include:

Russia and Ukraine: Their Origins and Prophesied Future Russia in prophecy. Where do the Russians come from? What about those in the Ukraine? What is prophesied for Russia and its allies? What will they do to the Europeans that supported the Beast in the end? There is also a video sermon available: Russia in the Bible and in Prophecy and a video sermonette available: Ukraine in Prophecy?
Is Russia the King of the North? Some claim it is. But what does the Bible teach? Here is a link to a video, also titled Is Russia the King of the North?
Ezekiel 38: For Russia & Iran in Our Day? Is Ezekiel 38 about to be fulfilled? Are we close to the battle with Gog and Magog? Three related videos are available: Ezekiel 38 Gog and Magog War: Is it Soon?, Ezekiel 38: For Russia, Ukraine, & Iran Now?, and Russia, Iran, Syria, & the Bible (Code).
Islands and Bible Prophecy What’s ahead for islands? What does the Bible prophesy about them? Here is a link to a related video: Is
World War III: Steps in Progress Are there surprising actions going on now that are leading to WWIII? Might a nuclear attack be expected? Does the Bible promise protection to all or only some Christians? How can you be part of those that will be protected? A related video would be Is World War III About to Begin? Can You Escape?
The Times of the Gentiles Has there been more than one time of the Gentiles? Are we in it now or in the time of Anglo-America? What will the final time of the Gentiles be like? A related sermon is available and is titled: The Times of the Gentiles.
Armageddon Who is involved and when will this gathering happen? Here is also a video from Dr. Thiel, from Tel Megiddo in Israel: Armageddon. Other videos include: Armageddon Will it come on Trump’s watch?, Iraq, Armageddon, & Prophecy, Freemasonry, Armageddon, and Rome, Is China paving roads to Armageddon?, and Jordan, Petra, and Armageddon.
The Eurasian Union, the Kings of the East, and Bible Prophecy Is there a Eurasian union that will be formed? Are any leaders working on that in the 21st century? Does the Bible teach that there will be a Eurasian union? What about the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)? A related video would be Is The Eurasian Union Rising?

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2021 at 8:00 am and is filed under Prophecy.



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