PUTIN’S WARNING ON THE F-16 — NATO’S ARTICLE FIVE IS NOW FOR BURNING
By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with
Until June 24 the combined air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are conducting their largest operation against Russia in the 74-year history of the alliance. The plan has been to disguise F-16 fighter jets as if they are piloted by Ukrainians, and pretend they are launched from Ukrainian territory.
In response, Russian artillery, missile and fighter-bomber forces have been disabling and destroying Ukrainian airfields, and every Ukrainian aircraft being flown from them.
Then on Friday, President Vladimir Putin dismissed the NATO pretence, warning that if an F-16 threatens to attack a Russian target, it would be “burned”, and so would the launch airbase and supporting aircraft – fuel tankers, electronic countermeasures, command-and-control, and decoys – no matter what NATO member-state flag they are flying, and on what territory they are based.
“The F-16 will also burn, there is no doubt,” Putin said in St. Petersburg on June 16. “But if they are located at air bases outside Ukraine, and used in combat operations, we will have to look at how to hit and where to hit those means that are used in combat operations against us. This is a serious danger of NATO’s further involvement in this armed conflict.” When the president and commander-in-chief announces “we will have to look at how to hit”, he means the General Staff have already assembled the operational intelligence and readied plans of attack with three minutes to launch; that is, against targets in Poland, Romania, Moldova, and possibly further west across the Czech and German borders.
In the president’s phrase “those means that are used in combat operations against us”, Putin also intends to identify airborne targets, manned and unmanned, over the Black, Baltic, and Barents Seas.
Never before has NATO’s collective defence proviso Article Five been explicitly challenged by the Kremlin. In practice, by describing the agreement of the NATO members that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”, the NATO wording does no more than require each of the NATO members to take “forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary.” .
What is happening is that by aiming their display of NATO airpower at the Kremlin, US and German commanders in their Ramstein bunkers have provoked Putin to call their bluff: he is now aiming directly at the Poles, Romanians and Germans, telling them to “deem” whether war with Russia is “necessary”.
“Well, the Poles,” added Putin, “okay, they have their own goals, they sleep and see the return of Western Ukraine. And, apparently, they are gradually coming to this.”
In parallel, the US has escalated to nuclear weapons by flying two US Air Force (USAF) B-1B bombers from the UK Fairford airbase, refuelling in Germany, transiting Poland and Romania, to a point in the Black Sea off the Crimean coast and the Sevastopol naval base, where the aircraft transponders were turned off from public view.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Polish President Andrzej Duda have been also been trying to disguise Article Five by negotiating between themselves — they told the press last week — “what sort of security guarantees they would provide [the Ukraine] once the war ends… ‘Our support will last as long as it is needed’, Macron said. ‘We must ensure that Russia will not only not win this unfortunate campaign but also can never repeat it.’”
At the Elysée Palace on June 12, Olaf Scholz, Andrzej Duda, Emannuel Macron.
German Leopard tanks, US Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) destroyed on the battlefield on June 10; source,
The Financial Times was told to report the three officials are discussing how to provide the Ukraine with security guarantees less potent than NATO membership with its application of Article Five, but instead assurances “that are expected to include annual provisions of cutting-edge weaponry, Nato-standard training and intelligence-sharing…‘The question is between guarantees and assurances’ said one European diplomat involved in the talks. ‘We can’t promise them we will go to war for them, but we can give long-term pledges to keep them safe in other ways.’”
On the Ukrainian battlefield, however, the “cutting-edge” German, French and US weaponry has been defeated, and the Ukrainian and foreign men and means to replace them destroyed. The outcome which the Russians have called “de-militarization” of Ukrainian territory at the start of the Special Military Operation last year has now been defined by Putin to mean the accession of the Russian territories east of the Dnieper River, plus a “sanitary zone” from the river westward from Kiev to Lvov which will be deep enough to prevent attacks on the Russian east; and Polish conversion of the Galician region between Lvov and the Polish border.
Source: https://www.bitchute.com/video/JjxHCw5PP2s9/
For the full speech and question-and-answer session, see: (Russian); the English translation incomplete.
“As for demilitarization,” Putin said on Friday, “after all, look, soon Ukraine will stop using its own equipment at all, there is nothing left. Everything they fight on, and everything they use, is brought in from the outside, but you can’t win for so long. And our defense industry is being promoted from day to day. We have increased the output of military products 2.7 times over the past year, and the increase in the most popular samples is tenfold, and further growth is taking place. Enterprises work in two, three shifts, and some day and night. And this tells us that we have a very large margin of safety.”
The implication is that for the Russian war outcome to be checked or defeated before there is no Ukrainian army left on the battlefield, “security guarantees” and “assurances” from NATO will not be enough — Germany, France and Poland must fight Russia directly, activating Article Five thereby. Their bluff called in Friday’s ultimatum over the deployment of the F-16, “the serious danger of NATO’s further involvement in this armed conflict”, as Putin warned, is that Germany, France and Poland will also be defeated on the field, and have no “security guarantee” or “assurance” to rely on for themselves, let alone for the Ukraine.
In his Friday speech Putin warned that Ukrainian military operations are failing up and down the line of contact. “What is going on with this so-called counteroffensive? Not quite so: somewhere Ukrainian units manage to reach the first line, somewhere they fail – that’s not the question. The question is that they use so-called strategic reserves, which consist of several components. The first of them is designed to break through the defense, the second is to use troops to consolidate territories, move through the territory. They didn’t achieve their goals at any of the sites – that’s what’s important.”
“Indeed, their losses are very large, about even more than one in ten compared to the Russian army. This is a fact. On technology: every day there is an increase in the loss of this equipment, somewhere now, to date, 186 tanks have been lost by the Ukrainian army and 418 armored vehicles of various classes. I’m not talking about the personnel right now, it’s necessary for the Ministry of Defense to voice itself. But, I repeat, the most important thing is that there is no success in any of the areas. The enemy had no success, as reported by the military.”
What happens next on the battlefield?
In the broadcast George Eliason introduces the evidence that, in desperation, the Ukrainian military will attempt to trigger a major nuclear explosion at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), causing radiation contamination of the surrounding area, as the Ukrainian destruction of the Kakhovka dam on June 6 attempted to use flood water to the same effect.
For the story of Ukrainian artillery and commando attacks on the Zaporozhye NPP, read this. https://johnhelmer.net/the-internationa ... s-nuclear/
For more details on the Kakhovka dam attacks, click. https://johnhelmer.net/losing-the-war-w ... sequences/
The first segment of the broadcast concludes with breaking news from federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, where the grand jury indictment of Jack Teixeira in the Pentagon Papers case was unsealed and published on June 15. Click to read in full the 10-page document.
For the time being, the Bellingcat intelligence unit and the New York Times, which have been collaborating to convict Teixeira of espionage, have failed to see the dramatic shift in the US prosecutors’ case against the young US Air Force (USAF) national guardsman. According to the Times report, “the evidence presented in the 10-page indictment represents a distillation of the immense trove of secrets Airman Teixeira is accused of taking from computers at an intelligence unit at the Cape Cod air base — and sharing with online friends he was hoping to impress in chat groups on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers. But it was not immediately clear how many of the vaguely described incidents that underlie the charges had been previously disclosed and which ones were being made public for the first time.”
In fact, the new court filing confirms the Justice Department has decided to downgrade the originally reported charges against Teixeira from espionage on behalf of a foreign state or organisation to “willful retention and transmission of national defense information”.
Source: https://drive.google.com/
The government now says that Teixeira had been illegally accessing classified intelligence materials for sixteen months before his arrest. “Beginning no earlier than January 2022 and continuing through in or about April 2023, in the District of Massachusetts and elsewhere, TEIXEIRA improperly retained and transmitted classified National Defense Information on a particular social media platform (“the Social Media Platform”).” The indictment claims this started six months after Teixeira had been vetted by the USAF and qualified for his special clearances to access TOP SECRET and Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) classified documents.
Despite the long duration of this allegedly illegal access, the counts officially filed against Teixeira are limited in time to a two and a half-month period between February 2023 and Teixeira’s arrest on April 13. Although Bellingcat, the New York Times and other US media have been told to report the leaks add up to dozens, if not hundreds of classified documents, the indictment charges Teixeira with leaking just four documents he had photocopied and two handwritten notes he made on classified documents after reading them. The notes, according to the indictment, carry “information regarding the compromise by a foreign adversary of certain accounts belonging to a US company” and “information regarding the provision of equipment to Ukraine, how the equipment would be transferred, and how the equipment would be used upon receipt.”
The new disclosures reveal that the focus of the case against Teixeira is just two documents from the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the deterioration of the Ukrainian military before the proposed counter-offensive, and two other documents, apparently from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
Source: https://drive.google.com/
In the second half-hour Heinrich Buecker returns to the War of the Worlds from Berlin, as the German prosecutors who lost their case against him on April 29 have decided to appeal and take Buecker to a higher court. Buecker has been charged with “publicly approving a crime of aggression in a manner likely to disturb the public peace”; that allegedly was in a speech marking the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 when Buecker also argued against German participation in the new war against Russia.
For details of the Berlin court action, read this. Buecker’s first broadcast appearance can be followed here.
Initially in the Berlin district court last January, Buecker was fined €3,000; this was lifted in April, but may be reinstated in higher court action. In parallel, a court in Cologne has convicted a Ukrainian national, Yelena Kolbasnikova, who had been reported in Bild on May 8, 2022, as saying: “Russia is not an aggressor. Russia is helping to end the war in Ukraine.” This, the court ruled, was criminal approval of a crime of aggression because “it was undisputed that Russia had violated international law by invading Ukraine”. Kolbasnikova has been fined €900.
Left, Heinrich Buecker at an anti-war protest at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin; Right, Yelena Kolbasnikova outside the Cologne courtroom with a Russian flag emblem she had tried to wear in court until the judge ordered her to remove it. Deutsche Welle, the German state media organ, reported the Kolbasnikova case here. For a brief video clip of the Cologne court proceeding on June 3, click.
Buecker discusses the crackdown on public opposition to the war in Germany, and the reaction among Germans to the defeat of the German Leopard tanks and other weapons which the Scholz government has been supplying to Kiev.
In German public opinion, the most recent polls reveal the war against Russia is damaging the government coalition of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), whose voter support has now been reduced to the level of the Greens, whose leaders, Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock are the most virulent anti-Russians in the government.
The voter impact is reflecting the loss of Russian gas, trade, and other price and job impacts from Germany’s economic sanctions against Russia, and from the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Notwithstanding, the battlefield losses, and the role of the US in directing the war in the Ukraine and the government’s policies in Berlin, including the attack on Nord Stream, have failed so far to diminish German voter confidence in the US first of all, and then in the Ukraine.
In early March Deutsche Welle, the state propaganda organ, has reported a nationwide poll as revealing “Germans are worried about the impact of the war on their own lives. 58% said they fear that Germany could be drawn into the war, while 69% believe that Germany’s economy will deteriorate further…Some 47% of respondents to the latest survey said they believe Germany’s arms deliveries to Ukraine are appropriate — but 53% also say Germany’s efforts to end the war have not gone far enough.”
The poll reports that Olaf Scholz has been steadily losing public confidence, while Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck have been holding stable; the defense minister Oscar Pistorius, as anti-Russian as the two Green ministers, has been gaining over them all. Source: https://www.dw.com/
Source: https://tntradiolive.podbean.com/
https://johnhelmer.net/putins-warning-o ... more-88180
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JUNE 17, 2023 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Russia won’t let Ukraine be bleeding wound
Russian President Vladimir Putin: Kiev has lost 186 tanks, 418 armoured vehicles, losses mounting, St. Petersburg, June 16, 2023
With the Ukrainian offensive under way for a fortnight, all eyes are on the battlefields, and, crucially, Russia’s options ahead. In a little over three weeks from now, the NATO will be holding a summit in Vilnius and the West has choices to make too. We are arriving at a fork in the road.
The NATO expected the Ukrainian forces to punch through key Russian fortifications by now. In reality, they are struggling to get anywhere near the sprawling layered fortifications and in that desperate attempt, are taking massive losses, entrapped in minefields and taken to pieces by Russian artillery and missiles and the dreaded multi-role attack helicopters known as Alligator.
The signposts are best seen in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin press conference on Tuesday, lasting over three hours, with war correspondents. In just a week’s time after Ukraine’s offensive began, “25–30 percent of the supplied equipment (from NATO) has been destroyed,” Putin said.
Putin underscored three things. First, the goals set for the special military operations are “fundamental for us” because “Ukraine is part of the effort to destabilise Russia.” What does that mean?
It means Russian operations will not end without realising the twin objectives of “demilitarising” Ukraine and uprooting the present neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. The security and welfare of the Russian population also remains a cardinal objective — no more pogroms. Putin said Russia is going about realising these objectives “gradually, methodically.”
Second, Putin flagged: “The Ukrainian defence industry will soon cease to exist altogether. What do they produce? Ammunition is delivered, equipment is delivered and weapons are delivered – everything is delivered. You won’t live long like that, you won’t last. So, the issue of demilitarisation is realised in very practical terms.”
Third, the Kremlin’s preference so far has been to continue to grind down the Ukrainian military, whilst giving “selective responses” whenever any red lines were crossed — eg., Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy system, the destruction of the headquarters of the Ukrainian military intelligence. By the way, in that Kiev strike, Russia claims to have seriously injured Ukraine’s spy chief Kyrylo Budanov, the poster boy of western media.
Going forward, Putin said “everything will depend on the potential that is left at the end of this so-called counter-offensive. This is the key question.” After taking such “catastrophic losses,” it is upto the leadership in Kiev to rationally think about “what to do next,” Putin said.
He added, “We will wait and see what the situation is like and take further steps based on this understanding. Our plans may vary depending on the situation when we deem it necessary to move. That includes NATO equipment.”
Putin ridiculed the West’s grandiose talk about matching Russia’s vastly superior defence industrial capacity. He said: “And when they say they will start producing this or that: well, please go ahead. Things are not so simple during a recession… They are not as decisive as we are here in Russia. There is no passion there, these are fading nations; that’s the whole problem. But we have it. We will fight for our interests, and we will achieve our goals.”
Given these stark realities, Kiev should roll back the offensive. But that is not going to happen. Kiev is under immense pressure from Washington to claim some dramatic success. That said, the Ukrainian reserves are not infinite, either. Around 35,000 to 40,000 strong Ukrainian reserves are facing a massive Russian deployment manifold stronger in numbers (in hundreds of thousands) and advanced weaponry, and enjoying air superiority. There is a distinct possibility that at some point, the Russian forces may go on the offensive too.
Against this backdrop, the West claims that the NATO Allies are “looking at an array of options to signal that Ukraine is advancing in its relationship” with the alliance, to borrow the words of the US ambassador in Brussels Julianne Smith. Andres Rasmussen, former NATO chief and presently official advisor to Ukrainian President Zelensky, has threatened that a group of NATO countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states including the US do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kiev at the Vilnius summit.
Specifically, Rasmussen claimed that “Poles would seriously consider going in and assemble a coalition of the willing if Ukraine doesn’t get anything in Vilnius. We shouldn’t underestimate the Polish feelings, the Poles feel that for too long western Europe did not listen to their warnings.” The rhetoric took a heightened tone lately at the meeting of Heads of State and Government in the format “Weimar Triangle” (France-Poland-Germany) on June 12 in Paris where a consensus emerged that Ukraine should receive some security guarantees.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared, “It is evident that we need something like this, and we need it in a very concrete form.” French President Emmanuel Macron also called for a rapid agreement on “tangible and credible security guarantees.”
Indeed, this is all bluster. The idea of Poland “putting boots on the ground” is so patently absurd. The Polish military it will wither away in a confrontation with Russia. But what such theatrics show is that nerves are on edge as the spectre of defeat in Ukraine is endangering NATO’s unity.
So, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary-general, stepped in to inject some realism into the discussion, pointing out that for the present what matters most is that Ukraine survives as a nation. Stoltenberg stated: “I believe it’s not possible to give precise dates (for Ukraine’s admission as NATO member) when we are in the midst of a war… the most urgent task now is to ensure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation… because, unless Ukraine prevails, then there’s no membership to be discussed at all, because it’s only a sovereign, independent, democratic Ukraine that can become a NATO member.”
Stoltenberg took the cue from Washington. In fact, he was speaking while on a visit to Washington, in an interview with PBS.
Russia is not taking the eyes off the battlefield. In reality, Moscow is shoving down the western throat a historic strategic defeat. The choice for the West narrows down to negotiating with Russia on its terms, or to expect a military solution, which might mean the obliteration of Ukraine as a nation and the eviction of NATO.
Make no mistake, Russian offensive plans have been drawn up. There is talk among opinion makers in Moscow about creating new facts on the ground — a De-Militarised Zone along the Polish border. Now, that entails Russian forces crossing the Dnieper and liberating Kiev as well as liberate Kharkov and Odessa, two other Russian cities historically. Russia has no interest in annexing the western regions of Ukraine, which is hostile territory that Stalin annexed.
But western Ukraine has other neighbours — Poland included — who would have unfinished business of partition of their historical lands to settle. The unresolved nationality question is explosive, as Poles still remember the killings by the Ukrainian nationalists aligned with the Nazis. Historians say that more than 100,000 Poles, including women and even the smallest children, perished at the hands of their Ukrainian neighbours in a nationalist drive in areas that were then in southeastern Poland and are mostly in Ukraine now. To put it mildly, what remains of Ukraine under the weight of a crushing military defeat no one can predict.
The Kremlin will exercise its options depending on the exigencies of the situation. Moscow seems to have concluded that there is no real alternative to a military solution. It will not allow Ukraine to remain a chronic wound infected by the microbial species from the transatlantic universe. Cauterisation of the wound is necessary, albeit with potential risks.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/russia- ... ing-wound/
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Africa peace plan
June 17, 15:32
Peace Plan for Africa.
1. Achieving peace through diplomacy through negotiations;
2. Peace negotiations must begin as soon as possible;
3. De-escalation of the conflict on both sides;
4. Ensuring the sovereignty of states and peoples in accordance with the UN Charter;
5. Security guarantees for all countries;
6. Ensuring the movement of grain and fertilizers by both countries;
7. Humanitarian support for war victims;
8. Settlement of the question regarding the exchange of prisoners of war and the return of children;
9. Post-war reconstruction and assistance to victims of the war;
10. Closer interaction with African countries.
PS. In general, the African proposals are close to the Chinese peace plan and are also partially acceptable to Russia, but completely unacceptable to the US and its Nazi proxies. Therefore, they will not be accepted.
Which will not prevent Russia from positively assessing the African proposals during Putin's meeting with African leaders, which should show that Russia is committed to peace, and the United States is committed to war. The reaction of Zelensky is not important here, the reaction of the global South is important here. And the Russian Federation will certainly take it into account in its public assessments of the African peace plan.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8428376.html
Habitual picture
June 17, 20:08
Another German heavy tank got stuck in a ditch. 80 years later.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8429157.html
Additional protocols
June 17, 22:32
Putin unveiled additional protocols of agreements signed in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine.
These agreements were not implemented due to pressure from the United States and Britain, who relied on a long war.
The parameters of the demilitarization of Ukraine reflect the positions of Russia and Ukraine in the negotiations.
Personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - 85,000 / 250,000
Personnel of the National Guard - 15,000 / 15,000
Tanks - 342 / 800
AFVs - 1029 / 2400
Artillery - 519 / 1900
MLRS - 96 / 600
Anti-tank guns - 96 / 380
Mortars - 147 / 1 080
ATGM - 333 / 2000
ZRK - 190 / 200
ZU - 119 / -
MANPADS - 608 / -
Combat aircraft - 50 / 74
Support aircraft - 52 / 86
In general, the boundary parameters are now known. In a number of positions they were quite close.
It is also worth noting that when concluding the Istanbul agreements, Ukraine retained the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions in full. Russia received only Crimea and LDNR.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8429571.html
Google Translator
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Russian Foreign Minister Warns of F-16 Jets Overflying Ukraine
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Jun. 16, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@Alan39982121
Published 16 June 2023 (21 hours 42 minutes ago)
F-16 aircraft can be equipped to carry nuclear weapons, Sergey Lavrov said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that Moscow is ready to give a military-technical response if F-16 fighters fly over Ukraine.
"If we see that these planes fly over Ukraine and pose a threat to us, of course there will also be a military-technical response," Lavrov said in an interview with the RT television channel.
According to the Russian diplomat, the F-16 aircraft can be equipped to carry nuclear weapons. In this regard, Moscow had submitted "a very serious demarche" within the framework of the "nuclear five" panel of the UN Security Council, Lavrov said.
On this occasion, the foreign minister denounced the constant West's pumping of weapons, ammunition, and vehicles to Kiev to attack Russian territory.
Lavrov said that with the Ukrainian crisis, the West seeks to maintain its position of hegemony. It triggered the current conflict at the hands of Ukraine to eliminate competitors it identifies in Russia and China, the diplomat said.
The minister added that Western countries keep saying that Ukraine stands for democracy and the values of Western civilization, but this "is exactly the same as claiming Nazism as a mode of existence."
The Russian diplomat said that the West has failed in its attempt to maintain its hegemonic position as well as in its efforts to draw more and more countries into its condemnation of Russia through countless sanctions.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0019.html
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America at War-Provoking the Consequences
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 16, 2023
Christopher Black
America At WarThe United States of America is at war with Russia. There is not much point in using terms such as “proxy war” to describe the situation. If a belligerent in a war is acting as a proxy for another power and that power is not engaged directly in the war, the term can be useful. But when the power, for which the “proxy” engages in the war, is directly involved in the war itself, then it is a co-belligerent, a party to the war directly, not simply by proxy.
The issue is whether each state is pursuing its own interests and has its own independent means of doing so, or whether the interests and forces of the allied powers are subordinate to the interests and forces of a leader. In such a case, the enemy being attacked can regard all its opponents as a single entity.
In this regard, Clausewitz said that, “if you can vanquish all your enemies by defeating one of them, that defeat must be the main objective of the war. In this one enemy, we strike at the centre of gravity of the entire conflict.”
If we analyse the war in the Ukraine theatre of operations in these terms, it becomes clear that the Ukrainian military forces are in fact forces of the United States of America. They have been created, armed, trained, supplied, financed, and are directed and commanded by the Americans, for American interests. The government for whom they nominally fight is a puppet state, installed in power by the United States and its NATO allies in a coup d’etat in 2014. It has no independent interests outside of American ones, and no control over the war or the forces nominally under its command.
The United States of America is the leader of a hostile military alliance, the purpose of which, since its inception, has been to isolate, threaten, attack and destroy Russia, has conspired with its alliance for years to achieve this end, has spent vast resources to prepare the attack, and has, with malice and determination, sabotaged any proposals for peace. It insists on war. It is the centre of gravity of the entire conflict.
The American government claims that it is not engaged even in a proxy war with Russia, that they are merely assisting an independent nation suffering aggression from another, that this does not put them at war with Russia, a war which, they claim, they are trying to avoid despite their actions and daily propaganda.
But, like the British, and the rest, the truth is the United States of America is a party to the war directly, according to all accepted criteria under international law. It supplies money to conduct the war, tanks, armoured vehicles, aircraft, arms, ammunition, military provisions and other war materials, engages its own military forces-military advisors and combatants, provides military intelligence, obtained on a real-time basis from its spy networks, satellite observations and electronic data collection, engages in an intense propaganda war against Russia, has attempted, through “sanctions,” to impose a blockade on Russia and its economy and people, blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, sends, on a regular basis, senior government and military officials, including the American President, Congressional bigwigs and the leaders of other members of the military alliance, to meet with and direct the actions of their lieutenant Zelensky, and conducts constant military exercises further threatening attacks against Russia. The NATO Air Defender military exercises begin in Europe on June 12, the day I write this, involving hundreds of NATO aircraft.
Make no mistake. The United States of America is at war with Russia. No amount of rhetoric can hide that fact and what the consequences for the United States will be. To quote Clausewitz again,
“Danger is part of the friction of war. Without an accurate conception of danger, we cannot understand war.”
The problem is that the neither the Americans nor the other members of its unholy alliance, seem to realise the danger they are in, neither their leaders nor their citizens. Like the British, they suffer from the delusion that they are insulated from the consequences of their war, that they are invulnerable, that Russia will not dare to respond to the attacks upon its territory and people by attacking their territories. This shared delusion makes them ever more dangerous, since they think, they can keep escalating their actions in the war without any limits. They cannot-not without consequences.
On June 8th Tass reported, following the statement by the former head of NATO, Fogh Rasmussen, that NATO countries may send their forces into the conflict directly, that Dmitry Medvedev stated,
“Fogh Rasmussen wasn’t a very smart man before. And now he has sunk into a doctrinaire’s dementia. In an interview with The Guardian, he stated that even if Banderavite Ukraine doesn’t receive an invitation to join NATO in Vilnius, the countries of the alliance will be able to send their troops there. Sort of on their own.”
“Well, have the people of these countries been asked? Who among them wants war with Russia? Do they really want hypersonic strikes on Europe? And what does Uncle Sam think about this? It would affect him too, wouldn’t it?”
Again, on June 1, TASS reported that Dmitry Medvedev stated, in connection with the attack on Russians in the Belgorod region by NATO-Ukrainian forces,
“The aim was simple – to cause damage, to harm to the civilian population somehow, And the fact that our enemy is already behaving as a terrorist characterizes in a very specific way both the Ukrainian regime and those who are behind it – first of all the Americans and the Europeans, who, in fact, have got on the warpath with us. Terrorist acts must entail the harshest retaliation possible.”
Medvedev’s views have been stated by other members of the government, by members of the Duma and by President Putin when he referred to Russian strikes on command and decision centres wherever they may be.
The Americans can whistle in the dark, lie to their people, try to fool the world, but what matters is what the Russian government thinks and knows, and it thinks, because it knows, that the United States of America is at war with Russia and seeks Russia’s complete defeat and subjugation. The campaign in Ukraine is just a phase of this war, is the current geographical space for this war, so for the United States and its allies to assume that they can carry out attacks on Russia and not suffer being dealt with in kind or worse, that war cannot be waged on their territories, is a serious mistake.
Indeed, on May 31, Dmitry Medvedev stated with respect to Britain,
“London is, in fact, waging an undeclared war on Moscow, which means that any British official can be viewed as a legitimate military target.
“Today, Great Britain is acting as an ally of Ukraine, by providing it with equipment and personnel as military assistance, that is de facto waging an undeclared war against Russia. Therefore, any of its officials, both military and civilian ones, who are making a contribution to the war effort, can be viewed as a legitimate military target,”
Medvedev was commenting on a remark by British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly who had justified the drone attacks on Moscow, saying that Ukraine had the right to attack targets on Russian territory for self-defense.
He added,
“Foolish officials in the UK, our eternal enemy, should remember that under universally recognized international law governing the conduct of war in modern conditions, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions with their additional protocols, their situation can also be qualified as being at war.”
The same analysis applies in spades to the United States of America.
An interesting comment in this regard was made by the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on June 3rd when, according to Tass, he stated in an interview on the Rossiya-1 TV channel, that,
“Ukraine has simply become a tool of the West’s ‘hybrid war’ against Russia, and therefore it is futile to deal with it in resolving the conflict. Now, Ukraine is actually a tool of conflict. The conflict has indeed become broader, as the collective West is waging a hybrid war against our country. It is futile to deal with this tool in order to resolve the conflict, and this must be understood too.”
All the rhetoric from NATO about whether or not Ukraine can become a member of NATO is just a smokescreen to hide from their people the fact that Ukraine is already de facto part of NATO. Whether or not the formalities of signing pieces of paper, of getting the approval of NATO states is followed through, is irrelevant.
Remember that on March 26, 2022, in Warsaw, President Biden stated,
“We have a sacred obligation under Article 5 to defend each and every inch of NATO territory with the full force of our collective power.”
He was referring not only to Poland but to Ukraine as well. What Russia feared is now the reality. Ukraine is de facto a NATO state. And all the rhetoric from the West and commentators about whether or not NATO will invoke Article 5 is another smokescreen designed to mask what is really happening, for NATO has already activated Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.
The talk about invoking it in the future is an attempt to hide NATO’s weakness, its defeats on the military, economic and political fronts, even as they throw one weapon system after another at Russia, and inject NATO forces into the fighting only to have their equipment and forces destroyed.
They have nothing left to throw at Russia that can defeat it. So, they pretend NATO is not yet really engaged. But these facts make the USA even more dangerous as it becomes clear that the combined West cannot defeat Russia, a nuclear power, using conventional means.
Remember also that the United States has a first strike nuclear arms policy, and they have already placed, in Romania and Poland, land-based versions of the Aegis Air Defence System, which can be used to launch nuclear-armed missiles at Russia. These systems have been tested. The one in Poland is reported to be fully operational as of June 30. The danger to Russia is immediate and existential. Those systems are one of the reasons Russia activated its military operations. Russia has further responded to this, and to the attacks on Russia, clearly planned and ordered by the US and UK, by placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus which are to be made operational after July 7, when the facilities to store and use them will be completed.
Those tactical nuclear weapons are designed for battlefield use. We hope it never comes to that, but Russia faces a direct threat from people bent on its destruction that think they are untouchable. So, Russia faces very difficult choices on what to do and how to prevent an escalation to all our nuclear war while ensuring its own security.
On May 23, during his visit to Laos, Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issued a warning on the day Russian security forces destroyed the Ukrainian raiding force that attacked civilians in the Belgorod region.
“The North Atlantic alliance does not take the threat of nuclear war seriously enough, thus making a big mistake. NATO is not serious about this scenario. Otherwise, NATO would not have supplied such dangerous weapons to the Ukrainian regime. Apparently, they think that a nuclear conflict, or a nuclear apocalypse, is never ever possible. NATO is wrong, and at some point, events may take a completely unpredictable turn. The responsibility will be placed squarely on the North Atlantic Alliance,”
Medvedev pointed out that no one knows whether the point of no return has been passed,
“No one knows this. This is the main danger. Because as soon as they provide something, they say: let’s supply this, too. Long-range missiles or planes. Everything will be all right. But nothing will be fine. We will be able to cope with it. But only more and more serious types of weapons will be used. That’s what the current trend is.”
So, we come back to Clausewitz. The American government and people cannot understand the war they are engaged in unless they understand the danger, they are in. They have to understand their country is the centre of gravity in this war, whose defeat will mean the defeat of all its minions in NATO. The Russian people know the danger they are in. The Americans, through NATO, through their NATO puppets in Ukraine, have attacked Russians in Russia. It is logical to expect that Russia will decide to bring home to the Americans what war means, what danger they are in, and they do not need to use nuclear weapons to achieve this.
Russia can strike using its conventional hypersonic weapons as well, against which the USA has no defence whatsoever, as has been established with the destruction of the Patriot Air defence complexes in Ukraine which could not stop Russian missiles. They have no other air defence systems operational in the United States territory or on its naval forces that can stop them either. Russia has not decided to take this step yet. But it can and the Americans can do nothing about it except bluster about using nuclear weapons against Russia, But Russia took that possibility into account when the special military operation began.
The American people have not directly experienced war in their own territory for a long time. They have no idea what it is. They have no idea of the danger they are in so long as their government continues its aggressive policies, not only against Russia, but China as well. The American people, misled and misinformed, have no conception of the dangers of this war anymore than the British people and the peoples of the other NATO countries do. The American people must be warned. The United States of America is at war, and no amount of bluffing and lying can protect them from the consequences their government is provoking. To repeat what I said in my warning to the people of Britain, the consequences are predictable and they will be catastrophic.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/06/ ... sequences/
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Chronicle of the special military operation for June 17, 2023
June 17, 2023
Author4
Chronicle of the special military operation for June 17, 2023
Ukrainian formations continue to attempt an offensive in the Orekhovsky sector : after long fighting, Russian units retreated in an organized manner from Pyatikhatki southeast of Kamensky , after which the fighting continued on the outskirts of the settlement.
Massed artillery strikes are inflicted on the concentrations of enemy forces, and army aviation is also actively working. According to some reports, the enemy's irretrievable losses are at least 400 people and twice as many wounded.
At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine again attacked the frontline settlements of the Bryansk , Kursk , Belgorod and Kherson regions , as well as the DPR : residential buildings and infrastructure were damaged. One person was killed and three others were injured, including a child.
In addition, the demonstration by Russian President Vladimir Putin of the initialed draft treaty with Ukraine , which was being prepared in March 2022 in Istanbul , was actively discussed today . According to the head of state, after the promised withdrawal of troops from Kiev , the Ukrainian authorities refused to comply with the agreements, obeying the instructions of Western curators.
The situation on the front line and the fighting
Positional battles and mutual reconnaissance continue in the Starobelsky direction . Near Kremennaya , the enemy attempted an offensive, but the Russian troops held their positions, forcing the Ukrainian formations to retreat to their original positions. Artillery and aviation provide fire support to the defenders.
In the Bakhmut direction, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to try to break through the Russian defenses in the areas of Kleshcheevka , Kurdyumovka and the Berkhovsky reservoir . At the same time, the enemy did not manage to advance in the area. To maintain the morale of the members of the Ukrainian formations, the commander of the ground forces of Ukraine, Alexander Syrsky, once again arrived .
[youtube]https://rybar.ru/wp-content/uploads/202 ... -43-40.mp4[/youtube]
In the Donetsk direction, fighting continues in the Maryinsky and Adveevsky sectors : Russian troops are advancing house by house, from time to time repelling enemy counterattacks. At the same time, the military personnel of the RF Armed Forces are attacking the Zverinets fortified area of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the southeast of Pobeda .
Over the past weeks, fierce clashes have not subsided on the Vremievsky ledge : the Ukrainian command over and over again sends new forces to storm Russian positions, which become a tasty target for artillery crews and army aviation crews. The heaviest fighting continues in the area of Novodonetsk and Urozhaynoye , while Russian servicemen from the 37th brigade had to retreat in one of the areas to take up more advantageous positions.
At the same time, new footage with damaged APU equipment regularly appears on the Web, despite the fact that the enemy is trying to protect it as much as possible, given the enormous losses in the previous days of the offensive.
Heavy fighting continues in Pyatikhatki southeast of Kamenskoe . Company groups of the 128th Guards Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried several times to gain a foothold in the village, losing several dozen people.
Early in the morning, Ukrainian paratroopers resumed the assault with the support of artillery. Putting up a smokescreen, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the side of Lobkove again stormed Pyatikhatki .
The Russian fighters were forced to retreat to spare positions on the surrounding heights, but soon they launched a counterattack and, as of 11:00, were clearing Pyatikhatki .
Ukrainian formations do not take into account losses, throwing bodies at the front (in fact, Russian positions were taken not by quality, but by quantity). According to reports from the field, there are practically no Western vehicles on the site, there are only a few pickup trucks and Soviet infantry fighting vehicles. Army aviation is working on enemy assault groups. According to some reports, the enemy lost almost 400 people dead and twice as many wounded.
South of Orekhovo, the enemy resumed the attack at the Rabotino - Verbove line , where they had previously failed to advance to the assault groups of the 47th and 33rd Ombre of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After artillery preparation, the Ukrainian armored groups advanced to the positions of the 291st and 70th regiments of the RF Armed Forces.
Russian fighters on the front line, artillerymen and aviation are working non-stop. The cannonade does not stop for a minute. South of Malaya Tokmachka, a column of armored vehicles was destroyed, including two tanks and three AFVs. The fighting continues.
Shelling of rear territories and residential areas
In the Bryansk region, Russian air defense systems intercepted three Ukrainian drones that tried to attack the Novozybkov PS of the Druzhba oil pipeline : there were no casualties or damage .
The oil pumping station has been the target of attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine more than once: in addition to UAV raids , they tried to hit it with a Tochka-U missile, and several explosive devices were found on the territory of the pumping station.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine again fired at the border areas of the Kursk region . In the Khomutovsky district, the village of Salnoye was hit : two residential buildings and two outbuildings, as well as a power line, were damaged. There were temporary problems with the electricity supply in the village.
Ukrainian formations also launched attacks on the border Volokonovsky district of the Belgorod region . In the village of Tishanka , shell fragments damaged a power line, no one was injured. Emergency services are on the scene.
At the same time, shelling of settlements in the Donetsk agglomeration did not stop . Throughout the day, several times the enemy fired cannon artillery shells at Makiivka : residential buildings were damaged, one woman was injured. A child was injured in Gorlovka, and a 62-year-old man died in Yasinovataya, a woman was injured.
In the Zaporozhye region, Ukrainian formations shelled Molochansk during the day , destroying a residential building. There were no casualties or any other damage. Later, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired on the Kuibyshev region : according to preliminary data, two civilians were killed and a child was wounded.
Today, Ukrainian formations once again fired at settlements on the left bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region . Chaplinka , Novaya Kakhovka , Kardashinka and Sergeevka were hit .
Political events
On the draft peace treaty with Ukraine in 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin showed a delegation from African countries a draft peace treaty, which, according to the Russian leader, was signed by the head of the Ukrainian mission at the talks.
An annex to the treaty was also shown, according to which the number of Ukrainian armed forces, as well as military equipment, should be significantly limited.
In response, Russia, the United States, Britain, China, Belarus, Turkey and several other countries were supposed to become guarantors of the fulfillment of the treaty and the security of Ukraine .
The Ukrainian side has not yet commented on this information.
On the possibility of seizing Russian assets in the EU
The European Central Bank has warned the EU authorities that the withdrawal of Russia's previously blocked Russian assets would greatly undermine confidence in the euro as a world currency and harm the eurozone's financial stability.
https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 2023-goda/
Google Translator
(Other images at link.)
Makarovka is under the fire control of Russian units: from the surrounding heights, the RF Armed Forces are conducting aimed fire at assault groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: Orekhovsky section
Despite the unsubstantiated statements of the Kyiv authorities, the enemy's air defense could not repel the raid. In justification, the speaker of the Ukrainian Air Force said that this was due to the lack of air defense systems, which the Armed Forces pulled to the front line.
The units of the "Center" group of the Russian Army are conducting assault actions in several areas. Artillery suppresses enemy firepower, after which infantry comes in.
Artillery strikes were carried out against the ammo depots in Torskoye and Yampolovka.
In any case, thanks to the Chinese comrades for their help and assistance.
