Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Mon May 16, 2022 1:02 pm

Sweden's ruling party pivots to support NATO membership
Xinhua | Updated: 2022-05-16 09:02

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Sweden's Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson gives a press conference after a meeting at the ruling Social Democrat's headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, on May 15, 2022. [Photo/Agencies]

STOCKHOLM - Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party (SAP) granted on Sunday support for the country's North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership application, marking a fundamental change of the party's position as a staunch opponent of military alignment.

"We Social Democrats believe that the best thing for Sweden's security is that we join NATO," Sweden's Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, also leader of SAP, told a press conference here after the party's extraordinary meeting.

The Swedish Social Democrats' change of its stance toward NATO is regarded as historic, as the party's politics clearly stated that "the military freedom of alliance is a foundation in Sweden's security policy".

It has also stated that "Sweden's partnership with NATO contributes to increased security in our immediate area, while a NATO membership would have the opposite effect".

Andersson quoted the change of security situation to justify the party's decision, which paved the way for the country's widely-speculated NATO membership application early next week.

"The military freedom of alliance has served us well, but it will not serve us well in the future," said Andersson, pointing to the changed security situation, with the Ukraine crisis in particular.

Andersson emphasized the "invaluable" cooperation with neighboring Finland, which made its official decision to apply for NATO membership earlier in the day.

"If Sweden were to become the only country in the Baltic Sea region outside NATO, we would end up in a vulnerable position," she said, adding that Sweden must apply together with Finland and "as soon as possible."

However, the SAP's decision incurred fierce criticism in Sweden.

"Today's message is a big disappointment," said Agnes Hellstrom, chairman of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, adding that "the decision is sad and hasty and leads Sweden and the world in the wrong direction."

"Through this decision, Sweden contributes to making the world more militarized and polarized. A NATO membership does not make Sweden or the world more secure or democratic -- rather the opposite," the society wrote in a statement.

Swedish Social Democratic Youth Union (SSU) also voiced their criticism of the decision.

"Young people are the ones who are most critical of a NATO membership and that is understandable. They are young people who risk being sent to war to defend other countries... Sweden must continue to be a voice and a force for peace," the union's chairman Lisa Nabo said in a statement.

"SSU now demands the government that for future generations they guarantee a Sweden free of nuclear weapons, a nuclear-weapon-free zone across the Nordic region and that foreign military bases are never established in Sweden," the statement added.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 5cdac.html

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Blinken: NATO to Keep Sanctions on Russia for as Long as Needed

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"All NATO members are committed to maintaining sanctions against Russia for as long as necessary" - Blinken | Photo: Twitter @Russia9May45

All NATO member states are committed to keep the anti-Russian sanctions in place for as long as is necessary, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news conference on Sunday.

All NATO member states are committed to keep the anti-Russian sanctions in place for as long as is necessary, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference on Sunday after an informal meeting of NATO top diplomats in Berlin.

“Every member of the alliance wants to bring this war to an end as soon as possible. We are clearly determined to maintain our security assistance to Ukraine, to continue our sanctions, export control and diplomatic pressure on Russia for as long as is necessary,” he said. He added that the United States and its NATO allies are “focused on giving Ukraine as strong support as possible on the battlefield and at a negotiation table.”


Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said earlier that Ukraine’s militarization by the West “directly threatens European and global security.” Moscow is calling on “the sponsors of the Kiev regime to stop instigating bloodshed in Ukraine and think about the consequences of their actions,” he said, commenting on weapons supplies to Ukraine.


On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarize and denazify the country.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bli ... -0003.html

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Russia calls the possible union of Finland and Sweden NATO a mistake

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The Russian government has indicated that it has no plans to advance on its borders with Finland and Sweden. | Photo: www.expansion.com
Published May 16, 2022 (2 hours 25 minutes ago)

The Russian deputy foreign minister pointed out that the security of Sweden and Finland will not be strengthened if they join NATO.

Russia on Monday called Finland's and Sweden's plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) a serious far-reaching mistake.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian media that the security of Sweden and Finland will not be strengthened if they join the military alliance.

Riabkov assured that the decision of both Scandinavian countries will affect stability and increase the general level of military tension in the region.


The Russian diplomat added that Moscow's response after NATO's overall configuration changes will depend on the concrete steps involved in Sweden and Finland's entry into the military alliance.


On Sunday Finland confirmed that it will seek NATO membership, ending nearly eight decades of non-alignment.


The Swedish government is also expected to announce on Monday, after a debate in Parliament, its decision to apply for NATO membership.


Finland and Sweden argue their intention to join the military alliance to threats to their borders by Moscow, after the military operation undertaken by Russia in eastern Ukraine.

However, the Kremlin has indicated that it has no intention of advancing on the border limits with the Scandinavian countries.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-ca ... -0008.html

Google Translator

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Burning of Odessa’s House of Trade Unions Building on May 2, 2014. [Source: theguardian.com]

“The once bright city became gloomy and sad:” survivor of 2014 Odessa Massacre reflects back on tragedy
Posted May 16, 2022 by Jeremy Kuzmarov

Originally published: CovertAction Magazine on May 10, 2022 (more by CovertAction Magazine)

On May 2, 2014, at least 48 people were killed when right-wing Ukrainian forces burned down the Trade Unions Building in Odessa. The victims had taken refuge in the building after opposing the February 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine that was backed by the U.S. State Department.

Eight years after the massacre, the International Action Center, a New York-based anti-war group founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, hosted a public commemoration that included testimony from a survivor named Alexey who currently lives in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

Alexey spoke movingly about his friend and comrade, Andrey Brezevsky, who was beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs with a metal bar after he jumped out of the Trade Unions Building to escape the fire.

Brezevsky’s mother, after her son’s death, lost her teaching position at a local university after being denounced by right-wing groups.

Alexey emphasized that none of the perpetrators of the Odessa massacre was ever punished. In the aftermath of the atrocity, neo-Nazi groups mocked and persecuted the relatives of the victims, like Alexey’s mother.

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Memorial to victims of the Odessa Trade Unions Building massacre. [Photo: tass.com]

The once bright city became “gloomy and sad,” Alexey said. The massacre had not happened by accident, but was a “planned act of intimidation” by Ukraine’s post-coup government. It was “designed to intimidate the opposition [and] was an act of political terrorism perpetrated by the Ukrainian state targeting unarmed civilians [the victims in the fire were all unarmed].”
Alexey believes that the power of the Nazis will soon come to an end in Ukraine. He said that now “they are dying every day. The Russians are destroying these murderers, and rapists and justice will prevail. The people guilty of the Odessa trade union massacre will finally be brought to justice.”

“A Human Rights Disaster”

Leonid Ilderkin, a Ukrainian communist in exile and member of the coordination council of the Union of Political Refugees and Political Prisoners of Ukraine, followed Alexey, stating that Ukraine has become a “human rights disaster” following the 2014 Maidan coup.

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Leonid Ilderkin. [Photo: nitter.net]

Since that time, the Ukrainian government under Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky have tried to demolish all types of political opposition and to hunt down everyone who does not like them.
The CIA, it should be noted, has assisted in these latter operations and helped to produce blacklists that are used to pinpoint dissidents for arrest.

Ilderkin said that he was a witness to the protests in Maidan Square which began in November 2013, and saw the kinds of groups that were supporting them.

The unrest led not only to the coup ousting pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych but the resurrection of Nazi ideals in the country, resulting in this situation where anyone who is progressive and on the left of the political spectrum is being hunted down.

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Petro Poroshenko, left, Volodymyr Zelensky, right. [Photo: bbc.com]

According to Ilderkin, the Odessa massacre followed a pattern of state repression that was also exemplified by the crushing of demonstrations after the 2014 coup in Mariupol, Odessa and Zaporizhzhia, where the people almost took back control from the central government.
On May 9, 2014, seven days after the burning of the Odessa Trade Unions Building, an unknown number of unarmed demonstrators were shot and killed by state security forces and neo-Nazi militias in a massacre that was never reported on in the West.

The resistance to the new regime, Ilderkin said, was more successful in Donetsk and Luhansk, where armed struggle developed.

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Kyiv army bringing in tanks and shooting at civilians in Mariupol on May 9, 2014. [Photo: rt.com]

Which Side Are You On?

Besides fueling state repression and civil conflict, the disastrous 2014 coup, according to Ilderkin, brought in leaders—Poroshenko and Zelensky—who have demolished workers’ rights and accelerated Ukraine’s deindustrialization.

Far from being a beacon of democracy as is presented in the U.S. and Western media, Ukraine is a police state where people considered disloyal to the regime are arrested and then vanish—no one knows where they are taken. The Azov Battalion is only one of many group of Nazi regiments which constitute the core of the Ukrainian army.

Ilderkin compared the Ukrainian army today to the morally bankrupt armies that fought with U.S. forces under the puppet Lon Nol regime in Cambodia and Thieu-Ky governments in South Vietnam during the Indochina War.

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Azov Battalion troops. [Photo: ft.com]

Ilderkin asked audience members: Who are you going to support: the South Vietnamese or Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam?
Zelensky, he said, is like Lon Nol—who courted Western intervention that destroyed his country. Another similarity is to General Francisco Franco and the Fascist forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Ilderkin ended his talk by asking the audience: Which side are you on?

Indeed, which side are you on?

https://mronline.org/2022/05/16/the-onc ... y-and-sad/

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The Donbass Diaries Part II: The Azov Battalions – ordinary Fascism
Originally published: United World on May 13, 2022 by Mehmet Perinçek (more by United World) (Posted May 14, 2022)

We gather around the school in Mariupol. All windows without exception are broken. The rooms inside are fully demolished. The Ukrainian have used the school and its surrounding as defense position. At 09:00 in the morning, humanitarian aid will be distributed. We start talking with Mariupol’s locals.

‘The Azov Battalions have bombarded our house’

The biggest and most urgent problem is housing. A great number of houses and building are in a shape they cannot even be accessed. The Azov Battalions have occupied the houses, forced part of the inhabitants to leave and go to the cellars, while keeping others in the flats on purpose. They have placed weapons into civilian flats–in clear violence of international law of warfare. On the rooftops, they have placed snipers.

The local population says that the Azov Battalions have starting bombing some of the buildings even before the Russian arrived. A woman points with her fingers her own flat. “My mothers ashes are still there. The Russian were not around yet back then, it was March 10, and they bombarded our house.”

An old woman tells what happened to her:

“On the very first day of the squirmishes, the Azov have occupied my backyard and placed weapons there. We have become homeless. We lived in an elevator. It was a building with 9 floors, they broke the doors of each apartment and have entered them all. My neighbor had a door made of steel. They used a hand grenade to blow up the door.”

Revenge for the 2014 referendum

“For me, Ukraine as a state is over. I am a citizen of the Ukraine, but for the, that state has ceased to exist.” These are words frequently heard in the streets of Mariupol. A lot of them have not been informed about the humanitarian corridors opened during the clashes. The Azov Battalions stopped those who heard about these corridors and wanted the escape clashes.

There is a specific reason, why the Azov Battalions hate the inhabitants of Mariupol. In 2014, following the Maidan events, Donetsk declared independence and a referendum was also held in Mariupol. The city back then decided in majority to join the Donetsk People’s Republic. But the forces from Donetsk were not able to hold the city and Mariupol returned back to Ukrainian control.

An older man points to the city lying in ruins and says: “They now wanted to take revenge for that from us”, describing how badly the Azov Battalion treated the population.

We are speaking to a young couple. They tell us that, during clashes, the Azovs have not established any communication with the population, have not helped the inhabitants at all. The Russian soldiers on the other side were all the time helping the population, they tell.

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A grave in the park: authorities say these temporary graves will soon be transferred to graveyards.

Graves by the roadside

Another important problem in the city is communication. Cell phones or normal lines are not working at all. The people are not able to establish any communication with their relatives who had left city before. Gas, electricity and water supply has also stopped. Mounting waste is another issue. It said that, once the heat increases, this may turn into a serious problem.

Burying the dead causes another pain. A woman that came to the school complains that the remains of her mother are in her backyard since days. Officials promise her to solve the problem. There are even improvised and temporary graveyards by the roadside–for some the only solution right now. We are told that these graves will be transferred later on.

Transition to Rubles has begun

Once it has lost Mariupol, the Ukrainian side also stopped paying and transferring the pensions. Therefore, the city suffers a lack of cash money. It seems that slowly, the Ruble is going to replace the Grivna. The according infrastructure is being prepared currently.

In spite of all the problems: with the end of clashes, people have started to return to Mariupol. Others we have spoken to said, with tears in their eyes: “This is our home, we will not leave what ever happens.”

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Leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin and UWI expert Mehmet Perinçek

“Keeping on till the territorial integrity is achieved”

When the humanitarian aid’s distribution begins, the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin comes to the school. He has no helmet or body armor, but he carries a pistol on his belly. Pushilin says:

“The Western and Ukrainian press is diffusing constantly lies. We are not only fighting against Ukrainian bombs but also against Ukrainian lies.

The Azov Battalions have tried to turn Mariupol into a heroic city in their perspective, they tried to turn the city into a symbol. But it did not work out. They have committed lots of war crimes, which we are all documenting. The population of Mariupol has been under strong pressure during the last 8 years, before the military operation.

Now, we are facing new tasks that cannot be delayed. We will reconstruct Mariupol and solve the problem of infrastructure. As a first step, we have cleaned the mines in the city.

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Ukraine is by the way attacking also areas where there are no military units. We will continue our work until the territorial integrity of Donetsk is achieved. Our goal is to eliminate the maximum number of enemies while minimizing the civilian casualties.”

Will Donetsk join Russia?

We ask Pushilin about the future of Donetsk, and remind him of the referendum to unite with Russia. He emphasizes that the people voted in the referendum in favor of the unification with Russia, but adds that their first goal is to ensure territorial integrity. Pushilin says the process of unification with Russia will begin after that.

There is also mosque in Mariupol. The Azov Brigades have held more than 150 Turkish people hostage there, which were liberated by Russian Special Forces upon President Erdoğan’s request. We cannot visit the mosque because it is located in a different part of the city.

Burned out tanks, fired missile parts

We are leaving the city center of Mariupol. Our next stop is another spot of intense clashes: the harbor of Mariupol. We are taking quite a detour in order not to get too close to current Ukrainian positions.

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Ukrainian Tochka missile

We see lots of civilian cars on the road, almost half of them has the windows broken. A hand-written paper note sticks on some cars, saying “Children inside”. On the road we also observe lots of destroyed Ukrainian armored vehicles and missile parts. Several Russian check-points provide security.

The Hitler portrait found in the headquarters
The road is quite long, and not to waste time, we immediately begin the asking and talking. Mariupol was one of the main centers of the Azov Battalion, we are told. All its members, without exception, were educated with Nazi ideology. The Russian have discovered recently the Azov’s secret headquarters in Mariupol. An official shows photo he has taken there. From Hitler portraits to Nazi symbols … all kinds of decoration representing fascist ideology was there.

I suddenly remember the famous Soviet documentary ‘Ordinary Fascism’ from 1965.

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Hitler portrait and symbols found in the Azov Battalion’s headquarters.

‘Hitler: a Democrat’

Though I had hears a lot about these Azovs, the posters on their walls are still shocking. The walls are full of slogans and posters of hatred against the Russian state, against the Kremlin, against basically everything that is Russian, and claiming to eliminate all of that from the earth. There is even a book with the title: ‘Hitler: a Democrat’.

Drugs in the Ukrainian army

Some videos filmed by the Azovs themselves were also captured. They show ceremonies originating from medieval times. They gather around the totems placed in a garden, cut their arms and let blood flood into the earth, while collectively swearing in. I tell to myself that this ceremony is probably impossible to stand without using drugs. And I am confirmed that drug use was very common in the Azov Battalion and the Ukrainian army. We are shown the testimony of a Ukrainian captive: He says that, upon command from the high-level officers, drugs were distributed called “pain-killers” among soldiers.

No difference left between the Ukrainian military and the Azov Battalion
Then I ask: “Is there no difference between the Ukrainian army and the Azov Battalion? He army is coming from the Soviet tradition, and although the enemy, they still have a military tradition and culture, don’t they?” I receive the following answer:

“We try to lay emphasize on this in the very beginning. We told to the Ukrainian army: ‘You are true soldiers, come and lets talk’.” They have tried to support them in a way. I also remember elements in Putin’s operation announcing speech, which were directed at the Ukrainian Military’s command.

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Commercial vessel taken as hostage and shield by the Azovs.

But it soon became obvious that there was no difference left between the Ukrainian military and the Azov Battalions. A very serious purge had taken place within the army, in which the NATO took part with its full force and influence. Neo-fascism, already the official ideology of the Kyiv Regime, has taken over the army as well.

Khrushchev’s faults

Meanwhile, there is also a certain criticism among Russian officials against Khrushchev in that context. He leaves the Crimea to Ukraine. But more over, it was him who provided amnesty and released the Baderistas, who in the Second World War had collaborated with Hitler Germany. There is the thought that Khrushchev had his part in things getting where they are today. Let us remind that the Soviet leader was of Ukrainian origin.

The ships taken hostage in the port of Mariupol.

And we finally arrive at the harbor of Mariupol. The intensity of the clashes is visible at the very first glance. The port is like a ghost town. We see mines at the port entrance that have not exploded yet. The same tactics as in the city center or the Azovstal was applied in the harbor too. The Azovs have not permitted the exit of the civilian commercial vessels and instead, have deployed mines into the sea around the harbor. This time, they have used ships as civilian shields. The crews were meanwhile not permitted to leave ship and go on land.

Minesweeping

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The port was the last part of Mariupol that the Russian forces gained control over. The activities of sweeping mines at the sea and land are still continuing. We are witnessing them personally. The responsible official from the Donetsk People’s Republic provides information about the work going on. He says that until now, more than 10 thousand explosives have been secured in the territories of Donetsk liberated from the control of Ukrainian forces.

One can see from the port the Azovstal. Artillery and shelling is heard again, followed by dark smoke rising.

In Moscow the NATO expansion, in Donetsk the danger of fascism

We are heading towards Donetsk to spend the night. This is the main message that the people of Donetsk tell us: “The war here has not started yesterday. It has been going on in the last 8 years. Kyiv has never fulfilled the Minsk Agreements. The West has never said a word to them. We are humans too, we deserve to have a life too! The Russian military operation is a result of this process, not the beginning of a war. Quite the opposite: This operation will put an end to a 8-year-war.

And truly: from the hotel that we stay at that night, we hear the sound of the missile attacks to neighborhoods of Donetsk. Next morning we learn that some civilians have lost their lives.

In Moscow, the Ukraine crisis is discussed in the framework of the NATO enlargement and U.S. aggression. In Donetsk, the context is the Kyiv Regime and the danger of fascism.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/14/the-don ... s-part-ii/

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Biden’s ‘Holodomor’ Policies to Hurt Ukrainians, Americans & Backfire on Whole World
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 14, 2022
Ekaterina Blinova

On 11 May, President Joe Biden announced that the US and its allies are planning to ship over 20 million tonnes of grain out of Ukraine to tackle the global food crisis. However, Biden’s policy could cause a famine in Ukraine, according to Russian Federation State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin.

Since the beginning of the Russian special operation, the US and its NATO allies have stepped up lethal arms deliveries to Ukraine, with the Biden administration vowing to bleed Russia white.

In exchange for foreign weapons and ammo, the Ukrainian authorities have increased exports of grain, corn, oil crops and farm animals from the country on a daily basis by road and rail, even though Ukrainians are facing shortage of foodstuffs and a lack of crops for the spring sowing campaign in many of Ukraine’s regions, as Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Centre, told reporters on 30 April.

“The US is essentially recolonising Ukraine to get a financial return from its arms investment in the country, which produces much of the world’s exports in wheat and grain (which the gold half of its bicolour flag symbolizes), all while instigating and dragging out needless death and destruction,” says US independent journalist and geopolitical analyst Max Parry.

According to the journalist, Biden’s new lend-lease agreement aimed at streamlining weapons to Kiev not only unnecessarily prolongs a proxy war where NATO is using Ukrainians as cannon fodder, but economically shackles Kiev in debt slavery to the West for many years to come while the US depletes it of its resources, including grain and rare earth minerals.

Meanwhile, on 27 April, the European Union announced that it was planning to suspend all tariffs and quotas on Ukrainian exports coming into the bloc for one year thus further encouraging Ukrainian food exports.

Joe Biden’s latest call for shipping out a whopping 20 million tonnes of grain from Ukraine may lead to a hunger inside Ukraine, warned Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Volodin in a Wednesday Telegram post.

“Ukrainians need their grain reserves to live until the new harvest,” wrote Volodin. “Washington does not believe in the victory of Kiev. They think about how to get a return on their money as soon as possible, arranging a ‘holodomor’ in Ukraine.”

“Holodomor” (“death by hunger”) is a term used by Ukrainian and Western historians, including Robert Conquest and Timothy Snyder, to argue that a 1933 famine in Ukraine was man-made and artificial. Other Western historians, including Mark B. Tauger, conclude that the 1933 famine, which engulfed a considerable part of the USSR at that time, had natural causes, adding that there is no evidence that the Kremlin deliberately starved the Soviet people.

The Holodomor narrative has long been used by Ukrainian nationalists and Western authors such as Snyder to vilify the USSR and later Russia, according to Parry. He forecasts that while creating the conditions for a genuine “holodomor” in Ukraine by sucking its food reserves dry, the US and EU will try to shift the blame to Moscow for food shortages in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.

“[As the US] is deliberately extending the conflict, Ukraine will not be able to produce as much wheat which will have enormous consequences for the global wheat market,” says Parry. “While it is true Kiev’s grain exports go mostly to North Africa and the Middle East, it will cause the price of wheat to soar internationally. The lowering of the wheat supply from one its chief sources will drive its price up everywhere, including in the US.”

‘American Holodomor’

Meanwhile, American conservative observers have raised the alarm over Joe Biden’s military spending spree. American journalist and Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec slammed the US president for historic $40 billion commitment for Ukraine.

“We can’t feed our children, we can’t prevent foreign incursion in our own land, and yet $40 billion for a war that’s 5,000 miles away that has nothing to do with the United States of America,” Posobiec said on 12 May.

According to Parry, many have noted “the callous hypocrisy of the Biden administration to continue to send billions in aid to Ukraine as food scarcity is on the rise here in the US with worsening rates of inflation not seen since the 1970s”.

“If this continues there could very well be an ‘American Holodomor’, so to speak, here domestically,” says the journalist. “Biden’s policies toward Russia and in Ukraine are going to result in surging food prices, rationing and greater food insecurity which only hurts lower and middle income families and the lower half of people in income distribution.”

On a global scale, the consequences of the West’s sweeping anti-Russian sanctions and closure of Western ports to Russian vessels, have already led to soaring food prices, according to Parry. Most of Russia’s economic sectors, including banking, logistics, trade and energy have been sanctioned by the West over Moscow’s special operation in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine together account for roughly 30% of global wheat exports and 20% of corn exports.

In mid-March, Moscow temporarily halted grain shipments, including the export of wheat, rye, barley and corn to the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) until June 30 to protect its own supply amid the West’s sanctions spree. Grain is still allowed to be exported for humanitarian purposes and as part of international transit traffic.

Furthermore, Russia had been forced to reduce exports of grain by the end of January 2022 to stabilise the internal market amid the emerging post-COVID food crisis and global inflation, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestia. Nevertheless, between July 2021 and January 2022, Russia had exported 25 million tonnes of the commodity, according to the newspaper. For comparison’s sake, in the 2020/2021 season Russia exported a total of 34 million tonnes of grain.

Under these circumstances, Biden’s incentive to drag Moscow and Kiev into a continuous fight “to exhaust Russia” would inevitable backfire on the world, according to the American journalist.

“Rising costs of wheat for the third world could mean a ‘worldwide Holodomor’, all as a result of Biden’s disastrous policies,” says Parry. “The billions being sent to Ukraine could alleviate the financial hardships of Americans but lining the pockets of defense contractors is a bigger priority to the Biden administration, which could care less about the plight of ordinary people.”

US Conservative Intellectuals Against Escalation: “Not in My Name”

Meanwhile, a group of American intellectuals, including conservative pundits, political advisers, scholars, and pastors, who don’t buy into Biden’s “Putin prices hike” narrative, wrote an open letter entitled “Not in my name” to the US president. Apart from the unfolding food crisis, they are highly concerned about Biden’s escalation in Ukraine which, according to them, could lead not just to hunger but to an all-out nuclear disaster.

“At this dangerous moment in history, the US must exert its power to become a force for just peace, urging Russia and Ukraine to come to the negotiation table in order to agree on compromises that would enable and ensure peace in the region,” they wrote. “The US should not engage in a policy of intensification of conflict with Russia that could lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people. There are grave consequences of cumulative provocations.”

According to Parry, this letter is an interesting political phenomenon: while traditionally it was the Left who struggled for peace, now it’s Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rand Paul, rather than the Democrats, who are opposing US militarism.

“There has been a complete failure on the part of the so-called ‘progressives’ in Washington, including Bernie Sanders and ‘The Squad’, and the American left generally when it comes to Ukraine,” says the journalist. “Not only have they all fallen in line behind the anti-Russian narrative and foreign policy consensus, AOC and her cohorts collectively approved this latest aid package to Kiev, with no questions asked.”

At a time when the left should be leading the charge against fueling a proxy war which is driving up the price of goods and services and worsening the US economic downturn, the left has totally missed an opportunity to connect the dots between American foreign policy and economic inequality, according to Parry.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... ole-world/

'red' added.

And so again we ask, "which side are they on?"
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Mon May 16, 2022 3:11 pm

The Subtleties of Anti-Russia Leftist Rhetoric
May 13, 2022 ejcurtin

While the so-called liberal and conservative corporate mainstream media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.

A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them. This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.

Nevertheless, out of respect for her judgment and knowing how deeply she feels for all suffering people, I read the article. Written by Alice Speri, its title sounded ambiguous – “The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” – until I saw the subtitle that begins with these words: “Russia’s brutal invasion complicates…” But I read on. By the fourth paragraph, it became clear where this article was going. Speri writes that “In Ukraine, by contrast [with Iraq], it was Russia that had staged an illegal, unprovoked invasion, and U.S.-led support to Ukraine was understood by many as crucial to stave off even worse atrocities than those the Russian military had already committed.” [my emphasis]

While ostensibly about European anti-war and anti-NATO activists caught on the horns of a dilemma, the piece goes on to assert that although US/NATO was guilty of wrongful expansion over many years, Russia has been an aggressor in Ukraine and Georgia and is guilty of terrible war crimes, etc.

There is not a word about the U.S. engineered coup in 2014, the CIA and Pentagon backed mercenaries in Ukraine, or its support for the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Ukraine’s years of attacks on the Donbass where many thousands have been killed. It is assumed these actions are not criminal or provocative. And there is this:

The uncertain response of Europe’s peace activists is both a reflection of a brutal, unprovoked invasion that stunned the world and of an anti-war movement that has grown smaller and more marginalized over the years. The left in both Europe and the U.S. have struggled to respond to a wave of support for Ukraine that is at cross purposes with a decades long effort to untangle Europe from a U.S.-led military alliance. [my emphasis]

In other words, the article, couched in anti-war rhetoric, was anti-Russia propaganda. When I told my friend my analysis, she refused to discuss it and got angry with me, as if I therefore were a proponent of war. I have found this is a common response.

This got me thinking again about why people so often miss the untruths lying within articles that are in many parts truthful and accurate. I notice this constantly. They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously. Few do notice them, for they are often imperceptible. But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them. This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful or not. It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly schooled people.

For example, in a recent printed interview, Noam Chomsky, after being introduced as a modern day Galileo, Newton, and Descartes rolled into one, talks about propaganda, its history, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, etc. What he says is historically accurate and informative for anyone not knowing this history. He speaks wisely of U.S. media propaganda concerning its unprovoked war against Iraq and he accurately calls the war in Ukraine “provoked.” And then, concerning the war in Ukraine, he drops this startling statement:

I don’t think there are ‘significant lies’ in war reporting. The U.S. media are generally doing a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine. That’s valuable, just as it’s valuable that international investigations are underway in preparation for possible war crimes trials.

In the blink of an eye, Chomsky says something so incredibly untrue that unless one thinks of him as a modern day Galileo, which many do, it may pass as true and you will smoothly move on to the next paragraph. Yet it is a statement so false as to be laughable. The media propaganda concerning events in Ukraine has been so blatantly false and ridiculous that a careful reader will stop suddenly and think: Did he just say that?

So now Chomsky views the media, such as The New York Times and its ilk, that he has correctly castigated for propagandizing for the U.S. in Iraq and East Timor, to use two examples, is doing “a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine,” as if suddenly they were no longer spokespeople for the CIA and U.S. disinformation. And he says this when we are in the midst of the greatest propaganda blitz since WW I, with its censorship, Disinformation Governance Board, de-platforming of dissidents, etc., that border on a parody of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Even slicker is his casual assertion that the media are doing a good job reporting Russia’s war crimes after he earlier has said this about propaganda:

So it continues. Particularly in the more free societies, where means of state violence have been constrained by popular activism, it is of great importance to devise methods of manufacturing consent, and to ensure that they are internalized, becoming as invisible as the air we breathe, particularly in articulate educated circles. Imposing war-myths is a regular feature of these enterprises.

This is simply masterful. Explain what propaganda is at its best and how you oppose it and then drop a soupçon of it into your analysis. And while he is at it, Chomsky makes sure to praise Chris Hedges, one of his followers, who has himself recently wrote an article – The Age of Self-Delusion – that also contains valid points appealing to those sick of wars, but which also contains the following words:

Putin’s revanchism is matched by our own.

The disorganization, ineptitude, and low morale of the Russian army conscripts, along with the repeated intelligence failures by the Russian high command, apparently convinced Russia would roll over Ukraine in a few days, exposes the lie that Russia is a global menace.

‘The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself,’ historian Andrew Bacevich writes.

But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public. Russia must be inflated to become a global menace, despite nine weeks of humiliating military failures. [my emphasis]


Russia’s revanchism? Where? Revanchism? What lost territory has the U.S. ever waged war to recover? Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, etc.? The U.S.’s history is a history not of revanchism but of imperial conquest, of seizing or controlling territory, while Russia’s war in Ukraine is clearly an act of self-defense after years of U.S./NATO/Ukraine provocations and threats, which Hedges recognizes. “Nine weeks of humiliating military failures”? – when they control a large section of eastern and southern Ukraine, including the Donbass. But his false message is subtly woven, like Chomsky’s, into sentences that are true.

“But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public.” No, it is exactly what the media spokespeople for the war makers – i.e. The New York Times (Hedges former employer, which he never fails to mention and for whom he covered the Clinton administration’s savage destruction of Yugoslavia), CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, the New York Post, etc. impart to the public every day for their masters. Headlines that read how Russia, while allegedly committing daily war crimes, is failing in its war aims and that the mythic hero Zelensky is leading Ukrainians to victory. Words to the effect that “The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself” presented as fact.

Yes, they do inflate the Russian monster myth, only to then puncture it with the myth of David defeating Goliath.

But being in the business of mind games (too much consistency leads to clarity and gives the game away), one can expect them to scramble their messages on an ongoing basis to serve the U.S. agenda in Ukraine and further NATO expansion in the undeclared war with Russia, for which the Ukrainian people will be sacrificed.

Orwell called it “doublethink”:

Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary….with the lie always one step ahead of the truth.

Revealing while concealing and interjecting inoculating shots of untruths that will only get cursory attention from their readers, the writers mentioned here and others have great appeal for the left intelligentsia. For people who basically worship those they have imbued with infallibility and genius, it is very hard to read all sentences carefully and smell a skunk. The subterfuge is often very adroit and appeals to readers’ sense of outrage at what happened in the past – e.g. the George W. Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Chomsky, of course, is the leader of the pack, and his followers are legion, including Hedges. For decades they have been either avoiding or supporting the official versions of the assassinations of JFK and RFK, the attacks of September 11, 2001 that led directly to the war on terror and so many wars of aggression,and the recent Covid-19 propaganda with its devastating lockdowns and crackdowns on civil liberties. They are far from historical amnesiacs, of course, but obviously consider these foundational events of no importance, for otherwise they would have addressed them. If you expect them to explain, you will be waiting a long time.

In a recent article – How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy – Christian Parenti writes this about Chomsky:

Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit.

Parenti’s critique of the left’s response (not just Chomsky’s and Hedges’) to Covid also applies to those foundational events mentioned above, which raises deeper questions about the CIA’s and NSA’s penetration of the media in general, a subject beyond the scope of this analysis.

For those, like the liberal woman who referred me to The Intercept article, who would no doubt say of what I have written here: Why are you picking on leftists? my reply is quite simple.

The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.

Smelling skunks is not as obvious as it might seem. Being nocturnal, they come forth when most are sleeping.

http://edwardcurtin.com/the-subtleties- ... -rhetoric/

Bolding added.

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Putin tells Finnish president: Joining NATO would be ‘mistake’
The warning from Kremlin comes as Moscow cuts off its electricity supply to Finland following Helsinki’s plan to join NATO.

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Niinisto, who has communicated regularly with Putin in recent years, said the Nordic country and eurozone member "wants to take care of the practical questions arising from being a neighbour of Russia in a correct and professional manner" [Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP]
Published On 14 May 2022

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has told his Finnish counterpart that joining NATO would be “a mistake”, as Moscow cut off its electricity supply to the Nordic country earlier – in what is seen as retaliation for Helsinki’s moves.

“Putin stressed that the end of the traditional policy of military neutrality would be a mistake since there is no threat to Finland’s security,” the Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday.

“Such a change in the country’s political orientation can have a negative impact on Russian-Finnish relations developed over years in a spirit of good neighbourliness and cooperation between partners,” it said.

The phone call, which was “initiated by Finland … was direct and straightforward and it was conducted without aggravations. Avoiding tensions was considered important,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto was quoted as saying in a statement by his office.

Moscow’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine has swung political and public opinion in Finland and neighbouring Sweden in favour of NATO membership as a deterrent against Russian aggression.

Niinisto, who has communicated regularly with Putin in recent years, said the Nordic country and eurozone member “wants to take care of the practical questions arising from being a neighbour of Russia in a correct and professional manner”.


Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto underlined that it was “very important that we communicate with our neighbour”, even if “we don’t ask any permission for our political steps”.

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On Saturday, the Finnish grid operator said that Russia has suspended electricity supplies to Finland overnight after its energy firm RAO Nordic threatened to cut off supplies over payment arrears [File: Martin Meissner/AP Photo]

Moscow has said that it would “definitely” see Finnish membership as a threat, warning that it would be “forced to take reciprocal steps, military-technical and other, to address the resulting threats”.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Saturday that her country was “prepared for different types of action” from Moscow. “But there is no information indicating Russia will initiate military action against Finland,” she said.

Russia suspends electricity supply to Finland
On Saturday, the Finnish grid operator said that Russia has suspended electricity supplies to Finland overnight after its energy firm RAO Nordic threatened to cut off supplies over payment arrears.

“It is at zero at the moment, and that started from midnight as planned,” Timo Kaukonen, manager for operational planning at Fingrid, said on Saturday.

Nevertheless, Finland – which only imports about 10 percent of its power from Russia – said the shortfall was being made up by imports from Sweden.

RAO Nordic said it has not been paid for electricity since May 6 but has not spelled out if this was linked to European sanctions against Russia.

After Finland’s NATO membership bid is officially announced on Sunday, it will be discussed by parliament on Monday.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/1 ... h-operator

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Why Ukraine war has no winners

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Russia expects grain harvest of 130 million tonnes of grain, including 87 million tonnes of wheat – “an all-time high in Russian history,” says President Vladimir Putin, Moscow, May 12, 2022

The war in Ukraine is quintessentially Clausewitzean. And to understand it, we need to return to Carl von Clausewitz, the doyen of modern war, who recognised that war is practically limitless in variety, “complex and changeable,” and noting that every age has its particular kind of war with “its own limiting conditions and its own particular preconceptions.”

Clausewitz’s contemporaneous observations of the character of nineteenth-century warfare are often misinterpreted confusingly as an advocacy of the unchanging nature of war itself. This paradigmatic complacency has engendered the Western narrative of the Ukraine conflict.

Evidently, the Russian side did not conform to the Western narrative. The ensuing bewilderment threatens to fragment western unity. Not all NATO countries are anymore speaking in one voice.

The US President Joe Biden and Britain’s Boris Johnson vow that they will be satisfied with nothing less than a Russian defeat. The New Europeans — Poland and the Baltic States principally — also demand an apocalyptic end to Russia’s history. Somewhat aloof stands Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz who merely says he doesn’t want Russia to “win.” France’s Emmanuel Macron keeps saying that without engaging Russia, European security architecture cannot be built. Then, there are outright sceptics like Greece, Turkey and Hungary.

Biden and Johnson have the upper hand since they manipulate the current set-up in Kiev and leverage the war. But even these two hardened politicians seem to realise lately that things are more complicated. The Joint Vision Statement issued in Washington yesterday following the US-ASEAN special summit completely eschews the usual American rhetoric and hyperbole over Russian “aggression.”

It omits any references to Russia or the Western sanctions and instead underlines “the importance of an immediate cessation of hostilities and creating an enabling environment for peaceful resolution.” (See my blog Indo-Pacific strategy adrift in an illusion.)

Nonetheless, incredible as it may seem, the fact remains that the US Congress is offering Biden a massive war budget to help Ukraine, which exceeds the state department’s annual budget and is more than what he proposes to spend on green energy projects in the US.

Equally, the EU, which imposed such harsh sanctions on Russia, are realising belatedly that the sanctions are hurting European economies more than the Russian economy. In some European countries, the annual rate of inflation is approaching 20%, while prices in the eurozone increased by over 11%, on average. During a videoconference in Moscow on Thursday, President Putin highlighted that:

*Russian companies are steadily replacing Western partners who left due to sanctions;
*130 million tonnes of grain expected in Russia’s harvest this year, including 87 million tonnes of wheat — “an all-time high in Russian history”;
*Inflation rates in Russia have fallen several-fold on March levels;
*Budget surplus have reached 2.7 trillion rubles;
*There has been a record-breaking foreign trade surplus;
*The ruble is posting “better results than all other foreign currencies” since early 2022.

Critical voices are heard lately that anti-Russia sanctions are only exacerbating the US inflation crisis, and that prioritising aid to Ukraine is distracting Biden from more important domestic issues. Senator Rand Paul has demanded auditing of the gravy train to Ukraine, citing the analogy of Afghan war. He noted that the latest spending package will bring total US aid to Ukraine to $60 billion since the conflict began in February, which is nearly as much as Russia earmarks annually for its entire defence budget!

Yet, Russia has no timeline for this war. It is taking its own time to systematically destroy Ukraine’s military capabilities, industrial base and infrastructure comprehensively. Biden and Johnson thought attrition would set in, as Russia is fighting the “collective West,” after all.

But Putin reminded them on Thursday that Russia won World War II “not only by fighting on the frontlines, but also because of its economic might. At the time, it [Russia] had to confront not only Germany’s industrial potential, but Europe as a whole, enslaved as it was by the Nazis.” Putin deliberately shot off a stark reminder that will resonate in Europe.

An EU consensus on oil embargo against Russia already seems elusive. Twenty European companies have so far complied with Moscow’s end-May deadline to make payments for gas purchases in ruble currency. And they include Germany, Europe’s powerhouse.

The EU’s top executives, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, two ardent Atlanticists and hardcore Russophobes, pushed the envelope too far. Will EU unity survive these cracks? Scholz’s call to Putin Friday, which reopened a line of communication after several weeks, needs to be understood against this backdrop. Interestingly, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin also spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu on Friday — their first conversation since Russian operations began in February.

Indeed, it is entirely conceivable that the time may be approaching to revisit the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. The closure of all Russian pipelines passing through Poland and Ukraine’s pipeline shutdown leaves Germany tantalisingly close to electricity shortage interrupting industrial production. (here and here)

Bloomberg reports, citing data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that despite Western sanctions, Russia’s oil export revenue jumped some 50% in 2022. Russian shipments have increased by some 620,000 barrels per day in April, returning to their pre-sanctions average. Due to increased demand, more shipments were directed toward Asia. Ironically, the EU, despite the executive’s hardline stance, has so far remained the largest market for Russian fuel with 43% of the country’s oil exports going to the bloc in April, the IEA estimated.

Paradigms, to be relevant, must accurately reflect the reality. When that is no longer possible, the paradigms must be replaced, or the leaderships that rely upon them will inevitably fail. Politicians like Biden and Johnson are used to thinking in terms of a Westphalian world, and are taking time to come to terms with anomalies in the existing paradigm when new powerful trends are dramatically altering the concept of war.

Karl Marx called it the “annihilation of space by time.” The phenomenon of regional conflict has become extinct, and localised violence has global implications thanks to advancement of transportation and communication and technologies. The paradigm-shifting present period is caused by a military-industrial revolution, which makes it a period of sharp, discontinuous change where existing military regimes are being upended by new more dominant ones, leaving old ways of warfare behind.

One would have thought that on a Clausewitzian battlefield, ancient armies arrayed against one another would fire and manoeuver according to the commander’s directions. But in Ukraine, by contrast, these have been replaced with ambient forms of physical and nonphysical violence—sniping, lethal drones, hypersonic missiles, electronic attack, spoofing, disinformation on the other and so on. Russia is practising a warfare that the West is not used to — where wars aren’t won anymore. It is highly unlikely that there will be a ceremonial occasion bringing the Ukraine war to an end.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/why-ukr ... o-winners/

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How a century of political violence in Ukraine is linked to the atrocities of today
May 15, 2022 Olga Sukharevskaya

Troops shot in the legs screaming in pain. Others dying from blood loss and shock. With no one around to provide medical assistance. A Russian soldier crucified on an anti-tank barrier, chained to a metal ‘hedgehog’ and then burned alive…

For many, graphic footage of Russian servicemen tortured and killed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and nationalist battalions, came as a real shock. But this did not surprise those who are familiar with the ‘traditions’ of Ukraine’s ‘fighters for national freedom’, as they have more than a century of history in this sort of thing.

Europe’s First Concentration Camps

The first concentration camps in Europe – Terezin and Thalerhof – were established in Austria-Hungary in the fall of 1914, not to hold prisoners of war, but the empire’s own citizens. This is how Vienna, then the ‘sick man of Europe’, tried to protect its eastern border areas from members of its population which sympathized with neighboring Russia. Fighting between the two countries had broken out just before the beginning of the First World War. Austria-Hungary’s last emperor, Charles I, confessed in his edict of May 7, 1917, “All the arrested Russians are innocent, but they were detained to prevent them becoming guilty.”

People from Galicia who did not want to call themselves Ukrainians, as the Austrian authorities insisted, and continued to use the name ‘Rusyns’, were arrested and incarcerated in two places – in a garrison fortress in Terezin and in a valley near Graz, the capital of Styria. While the prisoners in Terezin were held in the vaults and dungeons of the fortress, with the support of local Czechs, the concentration camp later known as Thalerhof was little more than a bare field fenced in with barbed wire.

Today, most of Galicia is in Western Ukraine and the largest city is Lviv, which was known as Lemberg by the Austrians and Lvov by the Soviets and Polish.

The initial prisoners were brought there in September of 1915, and the first barracks began to be built only at the beginning of the following year. Prior to that, the people were forced to lie in the open in the rain and cold. According to US Congressman Joseph McCormick, the prisoners were often beaten and tortured. (Terrorism in Bohemia; Medill McCormick Gets Details of Austrian Cruelty. ‘New York Times’, December 16, 1917)

According to the memoirs of those who survived the inhumane conditions (about 20,000 prisoners passed through the camp), 3,800 people were executed in the first half of 1915 alone, and 3,000 people died from the horrific conditions and diseases in a year and a half. Vasily Varvik, a writer, poet, literary critic, and historian who endured Thalerhof’s hell describes the atrocities in the internment camp as follows: “In order to intimidate people, to prove their power over us, the prison authorities drove poles into the ground all over Thalerhof Square, on which brutally beaten martyrs often hung in unspoken torment.”

What do the Ukrainians have to do with it? The fact is that Ukrainian nationalists were specially recruited to guard the Thalerhof camp. According to numerous testimonies, the arrested, which comprised nearly the entire Russian intelligentsia of Galicia and thousands of peasants, were also escorted to the camp by the Ukrainians.

Indeed, descriptions given in the Thalerhof Almanac detail how Ukrainian Sichoviki in the Carpathian village of Lavochnoye tried to bayonet the prisoners, among whom there was not a single Russian, but only their fellow Galicians.

It was the Ukrainian nationalists who were the concentration camp guards’ cruelest torturers and murderers. “In the end, the atrocities committed by the Germans do not equate to the victimization of your own people. A soulless German could not get his iron boots so deeply into the soul of a Slavonic Rusyn as well as a Rusyn who called himself a Ukrainian,” wrote Vasily Varvik.

From the Volyn Massacre to 1954

At the end of February 1943, the ‘revolutionary’ wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUP), headed by the current idol of many Ukrainians, Stepan Bandera, decided to create the so-called ‘Ukrainian Insurgent Army’ (UPA) to ‘fight the advancing Red Army’, which was driving the Nazis from the country. But the first detachments that emerged in March and April, of the same year, began to fight not the Soviets, whose troops were still waiting for the Nazis to strike near Kursk, but Polish peasants in territory that had belonged to Warsaw up until 1939. These events, which lasted for more than six months, were called the ‘Volyn Massacre’. UPA detachments and units from the SS Galicia division, which was made up of locals from the eponymous area, killed from 40,000 to 200,000 people, according to various estimates. The Polish Sejm and Senate put the number of victims at approximately 100,000 people, and July 11 is recognized as a ‘National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of Polish Citizens by Ukrainian Nationalists’

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Corpses of Polish victims of the massacre brought for identification and burial, March 26, 1943. Photo: Wikipedia

The Polish ‘Association of Memory of Victims of Crimes of Ukrainian Nationalists’ (Stowarzyszenie Upamiętnienia Ofiar Zbrodni Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów (SUOZUN)) is engaged in reconstructing the course of events surrounding the Volyn Massacre. The materials collected by SUOZUN reveal shocking details with respect to the cruelty with which Ukrainian nationalists dealt with even babies and pregnant women. Polish researchers have uncovered 135 methods of torture and murder practiced by Ukrainian nationalists. Among them are:

*Running children through with stakes
*Cutting a person’s throat and pulling their tongue out through the hole
*Sawing a person’s torso in half with a carpenter’s saw
*Cutting open the belly of a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy, removing the fetus, and replacing it with a live cat, before sewing up her abdomen.
*Cutting open a pregnant women’s abdomen and pouring in broken glass
*Nailing a small child to a door.

According to Polish historians, it came to the point that even the German butchers, having been shocked by these atrocities, began to protect the Poles from the Ukrainian Sokirniki (from the Ukrainian word sokira, meaning ‘axe’).

All this, including the ingenuity employed in conducting torture and executions, continued after the Nazis had been expelled from Ukraine. Only now the victims of the nationalists were citizens of Soviet Ukraine – specialists like agronomists, engineers, doctors, and teachers who had been sent from the eastern part of the republic to restore western Ukraine after the war. Though the vast majority of these were ethnic Ukrainians, the nationalists killed not only them, but even their own fellow villagers who had cooperated with the Soviets.

These acts were carried out in accordance with instructions given by the head of the UPA and former Wehrmacht hauptman Roman Shukhevich, who is now an idol for many Ukrainians: “The OUN should act so that all those who recognized the Soviet government are destroyed. Not intimidated, but physically destroyed! Do not be afraid that people will curse us for cruelty. Let half of the 40 million Ukrainian population remain – there is nothing terrible in this,” he wrote. (Tchaikovsky A., Nevidoma viina, K., 1994, p. 224). According to the KGB of the USSR, in 1944–1953, the irretrievable losses of the Soviet side were 30,676 people. Among them are 697 employees of state security agencies, 1,864 employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 3,199 military personnel, 2,590 fighters of destruction battalions; 2,732 – representatives of authorities, 251 communists, 207 Komsomol workers, 314 – chairmen of collective farms, 15,355 collective farmers and peasants, 676 workers, 1,931 – representatives of the intelligentsia, 860 – children, old people and housewives.

Maidan of Hate

With the return of the nationalists to Ukraine’s political scene, after the Soviet collapse, the violence resumed as well. The existence of torture rooms in Kiev City Hall, which was seized by ‘peaceful protesters’ at the end of 2013, has been reported.

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Anti-government protesters clash with police in Independence Square on February 19, 2014 in Kiev, Ukraine.

A lot of video footage from the ‘Revolution of Dignity’ has been preserved showing the bullying captured police officers suffered at the hands of ‘peaceful protesters’. Some doctors working on the Maidan had to protect wounded officers that had been captured from being massacred. Shots from the Hromadske.tv TV channel also captured a Maidan medic categorically prohibiting people from calling an ambulance for a policeman who had lost an eye on the grounds that he served in the Berkut special unit, which was trying to suppress the uprising.

Here is how Kiev journalist Sergey Rulev describes his experience in the torture chamber: “Four people beat me. There was a woman in a headscarf with them, who kicked me in the groin without saying a word. Then they dragged me to the occupied Ministry of Agriculture, where they searched me, took away my documents, a press pass, accreditation to the Verkhovna Rada, business cards, two phones, and two cameras. When they dragged me back to Khreshchatyk, I started screaming and calling for help. I fell to the ground and was kicked again, but no one reacted. At about 12:00, I was dragged into the burned-out House of Trade Unions. In the lobby, I was immediately beaten up. In the courtyard, unknown people in camouflage fatigues bound my hands, stripped me to my underwear, and continued to beat me… After that, the four of them pinned me to the floor, injected something into my arm again, and said, ‘Now you’re going to talk to us, bitch! Which special services do you work for?’”

Once he was tied up, an unknown woman began to rip out Sergey’s nails with pliers. Subsequently, he identified this sadist as Amina Okuyeva, a medic in the ‘8th hundred’ Maidan Self-Defense unit, who later fought in the ‘ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation) Zone’ as part of the neo-Nazi Kiev-2 and Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalions. She was awarded the title People’s Hero of Ukraine for her efforts.

The Ukrainian State and the Nazis

It would be surprising if the Ukrainian nationalists, who were part of the troops operating in the so-called ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ (ATO) in the east of Ukraine, were to abandon their propensity for violence and stop bullying, torturing, and murdering their enemies, as this is the legacy of the totalitarian ideologies they have inherited from the last century. Andrei Ilyenko, a member of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party who is one of Ukrainian nationalism’s modern ideologists, admits, “Italian fascism, German nationalism, Croatian Ustashism, authentic Ukrainian nationalism, Spanish Falangism, and other integral movements doubtlessly share a single ideological basis.” (Patriot of Ukraine organization, Ukrainian Social Nationalism: a collection of ideological works and program documents, Kharkov – 2007).

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Young participants in a nationalist march marking Stepan Bandera’s 109th birthday, in Lviv. Photo: Sputnik

And this has not happened. Literally from the first days of the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’, information began to arrive about atrocities committed by nationalist battalions in the Donbass. After all, in addition to radical nationalists brought up to hate everything Russian, many of the participants were criminals convicted of violent crimes. Usurper Oleksandr Turchynov, who does not hide the fact that he threatened MPs with physical violence if they did not vote for his appointment as acting president, recalled: “I remember one meeting at the front with volunteer units where one of those present, who was covered in tattoos, asked: ‘Boss, will there be amnesty or not? The guys are interested in us there.’ I asked, ‘What do they want with you?’ ‘Well, for stuff like… murder, robbery…’”

The crimes committed by nationalist battalion members went ‘unnoticed’ by the authorities for a long time, but when international human rights organizations began to scream about the most egregious cases, some facts regarding their atrocities finally reached the courts. Several leaders from the nationalist Aidar Battalion were convicted. For example, they created a prison in a sausage shop’s smokehouse and placed prisoners there in unheated cells measuring 80×150 cm, where people had to crouch for several months.

A lot of people got away with serious crimes on the grounds that they were ‘Patriots of Ukraine’, and this was shown to be a government policy in practice. For example, Sergey Sternenko, a nationalist from Maidan’s Right Sector, escaped punishment for protecting drug trafficking and murder on the basis of ‘patriotism’. Though Sternenko was sentenced to a prison term of 7 years and 3 months for abducting a pro-Russian deputy from Odessa named Sergey Shcherbich, his punishment was reduced to one year of probation after just three months. Given this policy, it is not surprising that none of the participants in burning 49 people alive in the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, have yet been brought to justice.

Criminal cases have been initiated against Ukrainian nationalist Nikolay Kokhanovsky more than once. This ATO participant and OUN battalion commander is also a member of the Azov Regiment, which has been recognized by the US Congress as a neo-Nazi organization. He has been accused of attacking opposition TV channels, Moscow Patriarchate churches, Russian diplomatic missions, and Russian banks, as well as committing an armed assault on a nationalist like himself without a weapons permit. After his supporters smashed up the court, Kokhanovsky was set free.

Perhaps the most horrific crime committed by Ukrainian nationalists was the creation of a prison in the refrigerator at the airport in Mariupol in June of 2014, which the jailers called the ‘library’. There, Mariupol residents were subjected to beatings, death by torture, and rape for even the suspicion of harboring sympathies for Russia or the unrecognized eastern republics. The ‘library’ was headed by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), whose chief, Valentin Nalivaichenko, was a friend of the leader of the Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh. And Nalivaichenko’s assistant, Yuri Mikhalchishin, a member of the nationalist Svoboda party who goes by the pseudonym ‘Nahtigal88’ (in honor of a sabotage battalion that was part of the Third Reich’s counterintelligence division and the letters ‘NN’ denoting Heil Hitler), was responsible for the ideology of the special service. Mikhalchishin openly asserts that Mein Kampf has been his guidebook since the age of 16. After being dismissed from the SBU, he went to fight as part of the Azov Regiment.

***

The ideology of racial superiority has a long criminal history grounded in hate. When its bearers get their hands on power, national pride invariably turns into ruthless violence, and the radicals reveal their willingness to employ bestial cruelty and exterminate ‘outsiders’. The true foundations of their worldview will be seen more than once until this lesson in history is finally learned.

Olga Sukharevskaya is an ex-Ukrainian diplomat

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... -of-today/

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

***

forwarded from
Older than Edda
Fighting in the cities resumes again. Severodonetsk, ahead, obviously, Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and others. And if the experience of Mariupol speaks of something, then one of the main conclusions is the need for the troops to have specialized heavy engineering assault units designed to operate in fortified areas, in particular in urban areas.

They must have special weapons, including heavy infantry fighting vehicles and tanks for urban combat, obstacle and demining vehicles, heavy bulldozers and tractors, and, of course, infantry specially trained for operations in these conditions - with appropriate support, including a large number of drones that allow you to look and behind the house, and inside the house.

Such units would be useful in Mariupol, and in Severodnetsk-Lysichansk and in many other places. Of course, we must be aware that even if we start creating them now, they most likely will not have time for this operation. But the experience of urban battles that our army is now receiving at a high price should not disappear without a trace - especially since no one promised the absence of new wars in the future.

And yes, there have already been such units in our history. They were called ShISBR - assault engineer-sapper brigades. They fought in Stalingrad, broke through the German fortifications on the Dnieper and in Belarus, stormed the forts and fortresses of Posen, Breslau, Koenigsberg, Budapest, and finally Berlin. After the war, these units were disbanded, but now, apparently, it is time to remember them. All the banners are in place, the regalia as a choice: the 6th assault engineer-sapper Rivne, or the 11th assault engineer-sapper Zaporozhye-Budapest that liberated Odessa, or the 12th assault engineer-sapper Melitopol, which fought in the Donbass, and others, others , others.

***

forwarded from
Rybar
🇵🇱🇺🇦The Logistics Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine collects data on the trucks that are in service with the RAV units.

The chiefs of arsenals, artillery depots and fuel and lubricant bases must urgently send information about the available equipment on the move.

▪️ List of military bases that transferred equipment:

➖434 missile base ( Lesovoe );
➖62 Arsenal ( Bogdanovka );
➖20 arsenal ( Olshanitsa );
➖303 arsenal ( Gorodok );
➖47 artillery depot ( Tsvetokha );
➖1631 artillery base ( Shepetovka );
➖732 artillery base ( Sarny ).

It is curious that the transferred vehicles are planned to be used not only for the transport of weapons and ammunition, but also for civilian products. Including grains . At the same time, some cars are already on the territory of Poland .

The reason for the use of military trucks for such uncharacteristic purposes is prosaic: for the supply of NATO weapons in Kyiv, they pay with agricultural products. Against the background of talks about the coming food crisis in Europe, they are trying to intensify the export of Ukrainian grain , for which it is necessary to use transport opportunities to the maximum.

The use of trucks also makes it possible not only to secure supplies from missile strikes, but also to hide the fact that valuable crops are being sent abroad from their own population , which is seriously afraid of a potential food shortage and even starvation.

***

forwarded from
Readovka explains
Delivery of Israeli missiles to Ukraine - a response to the defeat at Zmeiny or a long-term strategy for Israel?

Yesterday, we mentioned in passing that Israel agreed to supply Ukraine with Blue Spear 5G SSM anti-ship missiles, which are a deep modernization of the Gabriel 5 missile. This is a subsonic missile that in all respects corresponds to the Ukrainian Neptune . The question arises, why, in this case, does Ukraine need Israeli anti-ship systems? The answer is simple: the Ukrainian "Neptune", like the "Ghost of Kiev" - propaganda fakes, and the cruiser "Moskva", contrary to the statements of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, could be hit by anything, but not by "Neptune" .

The large-scale defeat of the square near Zmeiny Island, which has become a mass grave for Ukrainian paratroopers and Turkish drones , also shows that Ukraine does not have anti-ship missile weapons. Interestingly, the deliveries of Blue Spear 5G SSM missiles will not be carried out directly from Israel, but from among the complexes previously delivered to Estonia. Israel only allowed the transfer of missiles to a third country. The contract with the Estonians was signed in 2021, and here the question arises: were the missiles really intended for Estonia, or was such a multi-way move carried out in preparation for a hybrid war with Russia?

***

forwarded from
Readovka
The map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of May 15

It seems that a turning point is beginning at the front. It seems that now nothing will stop the Russian military skating rink. While Ukraine is trying to win informationally, waging senseless battles for Fr. Serpentine and the villages bordering the Russian Federation in the north of the Kharkiv region, in order to show at least some “victories”, they have big problems in a real war. From Izyum to Hulyaipol, in the so-called “ATO zone”, the best part of the Ukrainian army is dying right now. And if earlier it seemed that Western weapons or replenishment would be able to grind the forces of the Russian Federation, now it is clear that the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has cracked.

⚔️Along the fronts. In the north of the Kharkiv region , the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not leave attempts to break through to the border. Arrived in the Belgorod region , a person was injured. The enemy has no other real results on this part of the front.

◽️On the Izyum part of the front , ours have advances and successes in almost all directions. In the Barvenkovsky direction, battles are now being fought near the settlement. Gusarovka. And we assume so, they are about to spread to Barvenkovo ​​itself. Long ours, the fighting moved south. It is reported that in the vicinity of the Krasny Liman, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are pouring in, ours have occupied Drobyshevo and Aleksandrovka, there are battles near the Liman itself. From Yampol the line moved to the village of Dibrovo.

◽️In the Luhansk-Donetsk part of the front, there is a similar picture, ours are pressing hard. Near Belogorovka , the battles for the bridgehead continue with fierceness, ours have drawn conclusions and changed tactics. Fighting is going on on the outskirts of Severodonetsk , the Armed Forces of Ukraine blew up the railway bridge here towards Rubizhne. There are also fights south of Luhansk . An assault is underway in Toshkovka and Zolote. To the north of Popasnaya , a successful advance, the safe zone around the city is expanding. In the north they advanced beyond Kamyshevakha . Near Donetsk , there are battles along the entire line, there is an advance in two places, there is an assault on the outskirts of New York (how does it sound, right?) And the Avdiivka-Konstantinovka highway. By myselfDonetsk again arrivals , this time went to the Petrovsky district.

◽️On the Zaporozhye part of the front, no changes. But there are details of yesterday's attempt to counterattack in the Gulyaipole area . “The enemy had no tactical success. Enemy losses confirmed: 30 tanks, 11 infantry fighting vehicles, 2 armored personnel carriers, 2 MLRS "Grad", irretrievable losses of the enemy - more than 300 " .

◽️The same is true on the Southern Front . New details of the battle for Fr. Serpentine , the whole puzzle has developed, although we still have questions.

◽️At Azovstal , everything is still the same. The militants who can only be asked for salvation. While all kinds of things continue to fall on their heads, and this is sometimes a scary-beautiful sight . In Mariupol itself , work is underway to return the city to normal life, mine clearance is being carried out in the port .

🌐Of the important in the world . Sweden decided to apply to NATO , followed by Finland. And threats began to come to Kaliningrad from Poland .

Image

***

forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin with a brief summary of the results of the operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine at 15.00 on May 16, 2022, specially for the Voenkor Kotenok Z
@voenkorKotenok channel :
1.
Mariupol.
After the last stage of the assault on Azovstal, the fighting moved directly to the territory of the plant. Today, the enemy entered into negotiations on the surrender of one of the groups that wants to hand over their wounded in order to save their lives. The plant itself continues to be subjected to active bombardment.
2.
Zaporozhye.
On the line Kamenskoye-Orekhov-Gulyaipole without changes. An attempt by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to attack in the Malinovka area ended in failure and heavy losses. The battles here are of a positional nature all the way from Gulyaipole to Velikaya Novoselovka. The enemy is transferring part of the reserves from the Zaporozhye direction to the Donbass, where the situation for the Severodonetsk grouping is deteriorating sharply.
3.
Carbon.
Heavy fighting continues in the area of ​​Novomikhailovka and Ugledar. The enemy continues to hold the defenses and key points covering the Maryinka-Kurakhovo highway.
4.
Marinka.
There are no major developments in the village. The battles here are purely positional in nature.
5.
Avdiivka.
A rather successful pushing through of the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the north of Avdiivka continues. Taken Novoselovka-2. The Avdiivka-Konstantinovka highway has been cut. The supply of Avdiivka now goes through Orlivka. Also, after the cleansing of Troitsky, battles began to take over New York.
6.
LPR.
Fighting continues in the Kamyshevakhi area north of Popasnaya. There are also battles for Toshkovka. There are attempts to enter the flank and rear of the fortified area in Gorsky and Zolote. Fighting continues on the outskirts of Severodonetsk, as well as to the west of Lisichansk in the region of Privolye and Belogorovka. For political reasons, the enemy does not want to retreat from Severodonetsk, so the transfer of reserves from Artemovsk in the direction of Soledar continues to hold the main supply route for the Severodonetsk grouping.
7.
Raisin.
Fighting continues in the area of ​​Kamyshevakhi, Kurulka and Dolgenkiy. The enemy continues to try to strain the flank of our grouping to the north-west of Izyum, forcing the Seversky Donets. On the Slavic direction, the troops took Drobyshevo and took Krasny Liman in a semicircle. Also, the front approached Svyatogorsk. The enemy may soon withdraw behind the Seversky Donets in order to strengthen the front north of Slavyansk. The transfer of reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is also noted in this direction.
8.
Kharkov.
The fighting in the area of ​​Cossack Lopan and the village of Liptsy are positional in nature. The enemy in the Ternovka region reached the border with the Russian Federation. He also probes the positions of the RF Armed Forces in the Volchansk region. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are not conducting active offensive operations in the Kharkov direction. In the Belgorod region, reserves are being accumulated for future operations. Also, attacks on the objects of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions have intensified. The enemy transferred part of the forces from the Kharkov direction to the Izyum direction and to the Donbass.
9.
Nikolaev.
Positional battles continue in the Nikolaevsky direction. In the Nikopol and Kryvyi Rih directions, the enemy is accumulating forces in order to try to probe the defense of the RF Armed Forces after a while and move the front closer to Kherson.
10.
Odessa.
The enemy believes that the probability of landing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is increasing. The group covering Odessa is being strengthened again against the backdrop of ongoing provocations in Transnistria. After an unsuccessful attempt to capture Zmeiny Island on May 7-8, attempts by aviation and UAVs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to attack Russian positions and ships in the area of ​​the island resumed. Further intensification of sea and air battles in the area of ​​the island is expected. Ukraine's Western curators are clearly determined to challenge Russian control of the northwestern Black Sea.

@voenkorKotenok

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Tue May 17, 2022 11:53 am

The capitulation of Azovstal began
May 16, 23:06

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After 51 surrendered in the late afternoon, 300 more surrendered, 50 of them wounded.
The wounded were taken under guard to Novoazovsk, 250 people were sent to the Yelenovskaya colony, where a large number of prisoners of war are already being held.
Interrogations will start tomorrow.
According to correspondent Kuksenkova, the next batch of prisoners will begin to surrender at 4 am.
A total of 2,227 people are still blocked at Azovstal.

A denouement is coming for the remnants of the Mariupol grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (according to our estimates, it initially numbered up to 20,000 soldiers and officers, according to Ukrainian - up to 14,500 soldiers and officers).
It is not yet clear whether any of these prisoners will be exchanged, rumors are circulating in social networks that the wounded APU officers can be exchanged for Russian prisoners of war. "Azov" does not seem to be going to change. Waiting for official.

Surrounded by cities, buses ... All within the framework of the Syrianization of Ukraine. It remains to find out where the characters will be taken in buses.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7619409.html

Buses for those who surrendered at Azovstal
May 17, 0:04 am

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Photos from the first stage of the surrender of the remnants of the Mariupol grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at Azovstal.
The wounded are taken to the Novoazovsk hospital (where, according to plans that have become known, "Azov" was supposed to attack in the spring of this year).
The prisoners are taken to the colony in Yelenovka, where a large number of Ukrainian prisoners of war are kept, including those who capitulated at the plant named after Ilyich.

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https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7619825.html

Backstab
May 16, 20:49

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Turkey cannot say "yes" to the membership of Finland and Sweden in NATO, it is impossible, let them not be offended.
The delegations of Sweden and Finland should not bother to travel to Turkey to convince Ankara to approve their applications to join NATO

. Since Sweden and Finland refused to extradite Kurds and Gulenists to Turkey, Erdogan said that Turkey could not agree to Sweden and Finland joining NATO. It is worth recalling that the admission of new members in accordance with the rules of the organization is carried out by a unanimous decision of all existing members of the bloc.
Erdogan has broken his price and is waiting to be offered. If not offered, he is ready to put a spoke in the wheel.
Agree, it's nice to watch when Erdogan sticks his scimitar in the back not to you, but to your opponents.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7619044.html

Figures from Azovstal
May 17, 1:42 p.m.

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Figures from Azovstal

Sladkov on figures from Azovstal.

1. In total, over 2,500 people were there at the time the commissioning began.
2. Of these, "Azov" 804 people.
3. Of the total number of 404 wounded, of which 55 are severe.
4. Over 200 frozen corpses.
5. Three of our prisoners (1 officer, 2 soldiers)

Video here https://t.me/boris_rozhin/49000

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, 265 people surrendered yesterday, 55 of them were wounded. The wounded are all in Novoazovsk. The rest are in the Yelenovskaya colony.

Below, footage of "Zelensky's special operation" to surrender.

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https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7620378.html

Video of yesterday's delivery:

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/48999
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/48992
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/48977

Other photos at link.

Ukraine is expendable in a hybrid total war with Russia
May 17, 11:58

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From recent statements by Lavrov.

Ukraine is expendable in a hybrid total war with Russia
( Collapse )

NATO already takes into account the territories of Finland and Sweden when moving east

. Moscow will look at what territory of Sweden and Finland will be used by NATO, based on this and will draw conclusions.

Nobody needs Ukraine, Ukraine is a consumable in a hybrid total war with Russia;

Ukraine is not independent, even if they think so in Kyiv;

Our priorities are not anti-Western, they are in favor of accelerated development with those countries that respect the principles and charters of the UN;

Russian diplomats who returned from unfriendly countries are now finding jobs in other areas;

Russia, after the expulsion of its diplomats from the West, will increase the composition of diplomatic missions in Africa and Asia, reformat the central apparatus of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs;

Germany, with the advent of Scholz, lost the last signs of independence;

Russia has evidence that the Ukrainian negotiators are being "led" by Washington and London.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/48964

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7620288.html

Google Translator

***************************************************

Ukraine - For Laughs
'Western' media are nothing but Zelenski regime megaphones.

Liveuamap @Liveuamap - 21:30 UTC · May 16, 2022
Zelensky confirms Azovstal troops evacuation: «Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive. This has been our principle»
https://liveuamap.com/en/2022/16-may... via @myroslavapetsa
---
The New York Times @nytimes - 22:59 UTC · May 16, 2022
Breaking News: Ukraine ended its “combat mission” in Mariupol and said fighters were being evacuated, signaling that the battle at a steel plant was over.
link
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CNN International @cnni - 23:39 UTC · May 16, 2022
Ukrainian forces say they have ended their "combat mission" in besieged Mariupol, as hundreds are evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant. https://cnn.it/3FQALcV
---
Reuters @Reuters - 3:35 AM · May 17, 2022
Ukraine's military said it was working to evacuate all remaining troops from their last stronghold in the besieged port of Mariupol, ceding control of the city to Russia after months of bombardment https://reut.rs/3wlYbUG


From the false headline down the Washington Post report on the issue is a master piece of propaganda:

Ukraine ends bloody battle for Mariupol, evacuates Azovstal fighters

Ukrainian fighters have ended their weeks-long defense of a besieged steel plant in the strategic port city of Mariupol, as hundreds of combatants — dozens of them seriously wounded — were evacuated from the complex Monday.


One has to read beyond 323 words of falsehood to find out, down in paragraph 7, what really has happened.

Moscow hasn’t yet publicly responded to the developments in Mariupol, which were described by Russian state media as an order from Ukrainian military command for its troops to “surrender.”
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, said 53 seriously wounded soldiers were taken to a hospital in Novoazovsk, a nearby town which is controlled by Russian-backed separatists. Another 211 were transported to another Russian-aligned village, Olenivka, she said. Moscow and Kyiv are brokering a prisoner swap to secure their release.

Malyar said officials were still working to rescue the remaining soldiers, though it is unclear how many are still inside. Ukrainian authorities said last week there were nearly 1,000 holdout fighters in the plant.


The f***ers finally gave up and surrendered unconditionally to the Russian forces as their only alternative was to decease within the next hours or days.

I am sure that the Russian authorities will apply a fine filter to determine who of those prisoners of war are allegeable for war crime prosecutions, de-nazification and a long stay in some north Siberian road builder camp.

There are also rumors of NATO personnel presence in the Azovstal catacombs. They will likely get to know the cellars of the famous Lubyanka building in Moscow before being exchanged in this or that deal with their home countries.

The rest will eventually be exchanged for Russian soldiers who are unfortunately held by the Ukrainian military.

________________________________________________

A post at Defense Politics Asia YouTube channel reports the following process is being utilized"

The thing to remember about ANY/EVERY single person who leaves Azovstal previously, presently or in the future is this:
1. The Russians are not stupid or sloppy.
2. First they are taken under guard to a processing place. Wounded are under guard during treatment until fit for normal processing.
3. They are scrupulously checked for real identity by their papers and every civil database the Russians have access to. Local Mariupol LDPR investigators are also there to use their local knowledge to verify all claims of civilian neutrality.
4. They are stripped to look for any fascist sympathetic tattoos, men and women alike, it has been reported by one woman evacuee.
5. They are FINGERPRINTED AND PHOTOGRAPHED and their future intended residential address documented as they may be called as witnesses to war crimes in future criminal trials. The LDPR and Russians are fkn serious about legal retributions for the 8 year war and about making sure that not a single nazi sympathiser ever gets back into social circulation.
6. They are interrogated about all personal matters and all knowledge about what is going in inside Azovstal. Obviously, anyone NOT completely forthcoming is held for future interrogation.
7. Only after all the above tests, they are sorted into:
* free civilians to go home, their choice of Uk or LD or RF territory or to refugee camps;
* harmless Ukrainian Regular soldiers who go to LDPR POW camps awaiting exchange for Regular Russian POWs as per Geneva Convention;
* foreign low level mercenary fighters who go to LDPR POW camps awaiting criminal prosecution;
* high level foreigner (eg NATO staff), who most probably go to FSB Headquarters in Moscow for future intel and political purposes;
* Azov fighters who will all get kept as non-swapable POWs to be prosecuted by the LDPF for war crimes. The LDPR Public Prosecutors have publically clearly stated their guilty punishments may be as high as the death penalty.

So that's the strict filtering regime. So have no fear that any of the "Rats of Azovstal" will escape their rightful fates. Even after another 1000-2000 surrenders, the exact same processing will be done to each and every one. The LDPR and Russian military jails are gunna be real full, real soon.
-30-

The poster apparently gathered this information from a range of participants in the conflict. He has been following the Azovstal / Mariopul conflict for the past two months collecting information for a possible book.

Posted by: Sushi | May 17 2022 9:27 utc | 2

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/u ... l#comments

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Whether the World Supports NATO War Against Russia?
May 16, 2022
By Vyacheslav Tetekin – Apr 11, 2022

The Western press actively imposes on the international community the idea that allegedly the whole world stands for tough measures against Russia in connection with its military operation in Ukraine. This is not surprising. Major American and European TV companies and newspapers have long become weapons of the US and the EU information war against their geopolitical rivals. The same as aircraft carriers and Marines. The “world press” is a cheaper, but no less destructive weapon than aircraft carriers. So there is no faith in these “zealots of democratic values”. In particular, after the fake about the “Bucha massacre”, which was eagerly picked up by a number of Western publications.

Now about the world community’s real position. A vote at the UN General Assembly on a resolution condemning Russia for its actions in Ukraine gives some, albeit incomplete, idea of the balance of forces. The result of the vote is as follows: 141 countries “for”, 5 countries “against”, 35 abstained. 15 countries did not vote. In general, 55 UN members did not support the resolution in one way or another. That is, there is at least no universal condemnation. In fact, the Americans – the authors of the resolution – were shocked. They did not expect that over a quarter of the UN members would refuse to support them.

When assessing the results of voting, one needs to apply not only arithmetic, but also physics – to count not only the number of countries, but also their weight in world affairs. And here the picture is very different. To begin with, the resolution was not supported by China (1.4 billion people) and India (1.4 billion) – the two largest countries by population. And the first and third economies in the world in terms of GDP. Pakistan (230 million), Bangladesh (180 million), of course, Russia itself (149 million), Ethiopia (118 million), Vietnam (98), Iran (87 million) also did not participate in this venture.

The most unpleasant surprise for the US and its allies was Africa’s position. Of the 55 countries that did not support the anti-Russian resolution, 26 were African states. These are Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, CAR, Equatorial Guinea, South Africa, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Morocco, Togo, Eswatini, Ethiopia.

In Africa, they remember perfectly well how the European colonial powers plundered them for many decades. Hence they do not regard US-EU unholy alliance as genuine “defender of civilized values”. Whereas Russia (the USSR), is known for its decades-long support of the liberation of the continent. Therefore, representatives of even those African countries that voted for the anti-Russian resolution admitted in private that they did it only under strong economic and political pressure from the US, UK and France. Only Ghana, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria have officially condemned Russia’s actions. Not too much!

Of Russia’s closest neighbors, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Uzbekistan and Mongolia did not vote for this resolution. In Latin America, it was not supported by Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and El Salvador. By the way, many of those who voted for the UN political resolution refused to impose economic sanctions against Russia. For example, such big countries as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and Egypt. And where are the anti-Russian feelings in the whole world?

Meanwhile, only 91 states voted for another UN resolution, this time on Russia’s temporary exclusion from the Human Rights Council. 84 countries were against or abstained. That is, the composition of the anti-Russian forces turned out to be even less convincing. In general, according to the British Economist magazine, which is hard to suspect of sympathizing with Russia, over 60% of the world’s population lives in countries friendly or neutral towards Russia.

In reality, only 48 countries are openly unfriendly. These are the “big five” states of the Anglo-Saxon world that consider themselves the true masters of the planet: the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Then there are 27 EU members plus 10 non-EU European countries. Judging by the way they are all being driven into sanctions against Russia and against their own interests, they are just vassals of the United States and its allies. And the most remarkable thing is that in the huge Pacific region only 5 countries are unfriendly to Russia: Japan and South Korea (with their US military bases), Taiwan, Singapore and… Micronesia.

But even in Europe there is no complete unity. Serbia and Hungary refused to join sanctions. Bulgaria and Hungary have not allowed weapons sent to Ukraine to pass via their territories. Trade unions of a number of countries have prevented the supply of weapons to the combat zone. In particular, the Greek railway workers refused to transport weapons to Ukraine. The airport workers in Italy, having discovered that instead of humanitarian aid, the weapons were being sent, refused to load them.

In some cases, the reluctance to support the United States and its allies is less public, but more effective. The leaders of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, seemingly countries closely linked to the United States, did not even talk to Joe Biden about increasing oil production in order to compensate for the volumes falling out due to the attempt to boycott Russia.

A separate issue is the behavior of Western companies. In theory, a total boycott has been declared against Russia. However, the desire to preserve their profits in the huge and solvent Russian market outweighs loyalty to their governments. Coca-Cola, Ritter Sport, Danone, Samsung, Phillips, Lacosta, Benetton, Ashan, Lerua Merlen, Globus, Metro, Burger King, KFC, Mitsubishi, Colgate-Palmovil, Proctor & Gamble, AstraZenik are just some of the companies who continue to work in Russia. Many companies, having announced their departure, do not go anywhere, declaring only the suspension of activities or new investments.

The European public is even more rigid. Powerful demonstrations are taking place in almost all EU countries to protest against the sharp deterioration of life caused by rising gas and gasoline prices. And this rise is associated with a reduction in Russian oil and gas supplies due to sanctions. Ordinary Europeans do not care about Pres. Zelensky’s feelings. They realize that their government’s game on the side of the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine is the root cause of their troubles.

More advanced citizens understand that in fact this is a US dirty game against Europe. The goal is to deprive European industry of a reliable source of energy from Russia, force them to buy expensive American liquefied gas, thereby reduce the competitiveness of the European economy, and redirect the investments to the United States. Smart people understand that in fact, the blow is being dealt not so much to Russia as to Europe.

Meanwhile, it is important to assess not only who does not participate in anti-Russian actions, but also who supports the neo-Nazi government in Ukraine. As a matter of fact it is the same coalition of European states, which invaded the USSR as part of Hitler’s Werhmacht in 1941 or supplied the fascists with weapons. Troops and SS legions from France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Estonia and Latvia (as well as Bandera “Galicia” division from Western Ukraine) fought against the Soviet Union. 25% of the armored vehicles and weapons of the Fascist army were produced in the Czech Republic. So the neo-Nazis in Ukraine today are helped by exactly those who supported the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany.

Even the United Kingdom and the United States, which in 1941 were on the side of the anti-Hitler coalition, in the 1930s invested a lot of money in the revival of the German military machine, which then rolled through Europe like a monstrous roller. There were powerful Nazi parties in England and the USA before the war. Churchill was the only major British politician who warned about the danger of Nazism in Germany. And Joseph Kennedy, the US ambassador to the UK (and father of Pres. John F. Kennedy) was recalled back in 1940 for sympathizing with Hitler.

By the way, it would be useful to remind the West of another failed attempt of a total boycott. As is known, Napoleon waged wars of conquest in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and invaded Russia in 1812, primarily to ensure the continental blockade of Britain, France’s main enemy. Nothing came of the then “sanctions” against UK, and Napoleon’s ambitions of world domination ended up with his overthrow. Put Russia in the place of UK, and Joe Biden in the place of Napoleon, and you will see a repetition of events 200 years ago. Only now the attempt of the Russia’s boycott has a much less chance of success than Napoleon’s sanctions against UK. And Mr. Biden is nowhere close to Napoleon.

The events in and around Ukraine are perceived by many as a NATO war against Russia. Therefore, there are fewer and fewer people willing to side with America in its geopolitical ambitions. And the world has changed. The workshop of the world today is not the UK or the USA, but China and other Asian countries. Most countries think in terms of national interests, not Washington’s interests. So the attempt to boycott-blockade Russia is initially doomed to failure. It is high time for the USA and Britain to forget about their former colonial rule over the world. Otherwise they might lose far more than they hope to achieve by starting their dirty game against Russia and Europe.

https://orinocotribune.com/whether-the- ... st-russia/

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Massive NATO Military Exercises Begin in Estonia

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NATO's "Hedgehog 2022" exercise started in Estonia on Monday. May. 16, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@BlogUkraine

Published 16 May 2022

The U.S., Sweden, Finland and Ukraine are among the 14 nations conducting major exercises in Estonia.

According to NATO, "Hedgehog 2022" is one of the largest exercises in Estonia's history. Some 15 000 soldiers from 14 countries, including members of the U.S.-led military bloc as well as their partners, will take part in the drills.

As reported by the Finnish public broadcaster Yle, all branches of the armed forces will be involved in the drills, including air, sea and land exercises and cyber warfare training. A NATO statement said that the U.S. Navy's Wasp-class landing ship "Kearsarge" will also partake in these exercises.

The military bloc and the deputy commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, Major General Veiko-Vello Palm, have rejected that the drills conducted just over 60 km from the Russian border are linked to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Western officials, for their part, said that the drills began just a day after Finland and Sweden made official announcements of their plans to become NATO members, noting that they were planned well before the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine.

In addition to NATO's "Hedgehog 2022" maneuvers in Estonia, the military bloc also conducts major military activities in Lithuania, another Baltic state close to the Russian border. The territory of Lithuania hosts the "Iron Wolf" maneuvers, in which 3 000 NATO troops and 1 000 pieces of military equipment, including German Leopard 2 tanks, are participating.

Moreover, with eight other countries, Poland is hosting "Defender Europe" and "Swift Response," two of NATO's largest exercises. According to NATO's Friday statement, 18 000 soldiers from 20 countries are taking part. Otherwise, the NATO Response Force has now engaged in the 7 500-strong "Wettiner Heide" exercises in Germany.

NATO's spokesperson Oana Lungescu said that "exercises like these show that NATO stands strong and ready to protect our nations and defend against any threat" and added that the drills "help to remove any room for miscalculation or misunderstanding about our resolve to protect and defend every inch of allied territory."

These large-scale military activities come at a time when tensions between Russia, NATO, and some of NATO's partners are running high. Following Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden announced their intention to join the military bloc. Moscow has said it would respond accordingly, considering NATO expansion an outright threat to Russia's national security.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mas ... -0022.html

CSTO Summit in Moscow on Military Cooperation and Biosecurity

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The Kremlin hosted a CSTO summit at which Russian President Vladimir Putin said that strengthening the CSTO effectively contributes to regional defense as a body ensuring security and stability in the Eurasian space. May. 16, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/zerkalo_io

Published 16 May 2022 (9 hours 8 minutes ago)

Military cooperation and biosecurity topped the agenda of the CSTO summit held on Monday in Russia's capital, Moscow.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit marking the 20th anniversary of the organization, aimed to discuss deepening military cooperation and biosecurity to effectively address traditional and emerging challenges and threats, including the ones stemming from the Afghan territory.

Multilateral documents signed by the heads of the member states of the Collective Security Treaty on this occasion include a statement of the Collective Security Council in honor of the 30th anniversary of the treaty and the 20th anniversary of the organization.

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier said that a joint declaration is planned to be signed, among other things, which, considering the experience of the peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan, will confirm the determination of the CSTO countries to further cooperate as partners in different fields of military and defense development and to increase coordinated action in the international arena.

Attending the meeting were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kyrgyzstan President Sadyr Japarov and Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon.


The CSTO is an international security organization formed by six former Soviet states: Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The Collective Security Treaty was signed on May 15, 1992, in Tashkent, thereby supporting the stabilization and development of these nations' Armed Forces.



https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/CST ... -0025.html

China Remains Against Restrictive Measures Targeting Russia

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian says that "China always decides its own position and policy." May.16, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@ocinotas

Published 16 May 2022

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that restrictive measures against Russia will not settle the problem but will rather hasten the spread of the Ukrainian crisis.

The Chinese official's statements came on Monday in response to G7 countries' foreign ministers, urging Beijing two days earlier to adhere to sanctions imposed against Russia following the launch of its special military operation in Ukraine.

"China always decides its own position and policy," Zhao Lijian said, and added: "We have always opposed the imposition of unilateral sanctions on other countries beyond the authorization of international law and the United Nations."

According to Zhao, sanctions against Russia "are not an effective means to solve the problem, but will accelerate the spread of the Ukraine crisis and generate new and complex problems." In this respect, the spokesman said that "China calls on all parties to do more to encourage and promote peace talks."

Speaking along these lines, Zhao also warned "relevant countries" not to "in any way harm China's legitimate interests in handling the Ukraine problem and relations with Russia."


On Saturday, foreign ministers of G7 member countries called on China to "support, in accordance with international law, Ukraine's sovereignty and independence along with the integrity of its internationally recognized borders, and to resolutely urge Russia to stop its military aggression against Ukraine."

"We call on China not to assist Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine, not to undermine the sanctions imposed on Russia for its attack on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, not to justify Russian actions in Ukraine, and to desist from engaging in information, manipulation, disinformation and other means to legitimize Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine," a joint statement of the foreign ministers says.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0024.html
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Tue May 17, 2022 2:52 pm

CPRF, International Department of the CC CPRF: In Ukraine Russia is Fighting Neo-Nazism
5/16/22 11:31 AM

Comments on the Article of the International Department of the CC KKE “On the Imperialist War in Ukraine and the Stance of the CPRF”


On April 23, 2022 the newspaper Rizospastis, the organ of the Communist Party of Greece, carried an article by the International Department of the CC KKE “On the Imperialist War in Ukraine and the Stance of the CPRF.”

The article assesses the actions of the CPRF in connection with the special operation Russia is conducting in Ukraine openly accusing the party of having a pro-government, i.e. pro-imperialist position. We categorically disagree with this utilitarian assessment.

The gist of the article is that in the opinion of the Greek comrades, what is taking place in Ukraine is an imperialist war in the interests of the Russian bourgeoisie, and therefore, by supporting the special operation the CPRF is advocating a policy that is “in line with the ruling United Russia party and President V.Putin.”

In insisting on the “imperialist” character of this war, the Greek comrades proceed from Lenin’s well-known thesis that “A struggle for markets and for freedom to loot foreign countries, a striving to suppress the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and democracy in the individual countries, a desire to deceive, disunite, and slaughter the proletarians of all countries by setting the wage slaves of one nation against those of another so as to benefit the bourgeoisie; these are the only real content and significance of the war.”However, the comrades did not mention that this statement is contained in Lenin’s work War.1914-1918.It specifically refers to the First World War, which was indeed a purely imperialistic war of conquest. However, leaving dogma aside, we have to admit that any war has its own specific characteristics.

The Marxist’s task in determining one’s position with regard to the war is to determine its character. For in addition to imperialist wars, there are national liberation and anti-Fascist wars which have become widespread in the mid-20th century when Fascism and Nazism emerged as political phenomena and national liberation struggles intensified under the impact of the October Revolution.



What guided the CPRF in determining its stand.

In working out its political position on the issue of the conduct of the special operation the party analyzed the concrete historical conditions which objectively led to the crisis in Ukraine.

Before the October Revolution in Russia Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire, was a typical agrarian country. To strengthen its industry, six industrial areas of the RSFSR in the east and south, which had never been parts of Ukraine, were included in Ukraine. Among them were the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. In 1939 Galicia (Western Ukraine), previously part of Poland, was added to Ukraine. Thus, the present territory of Ukraine is the result of it becoming part of the USSR. It has been “sewn together” from disparate patches from Galicia (Lvov), which were under heavy influence of Poland, Austria and Hungary, to East Ukraine, which gravitated toward Russia.

Socialist Ukraine’s industry burgeoned. Added to the production of metal and coal were aviation and rocketry, petro-chemistry and power generation (4 nuclear power plants), and defense sectors. It was as part of the USSR that Ukraine obtained not only the bulk of its present territory, but also its economic potential to become one of the top ten European economies.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991simultaneously destroyed the centuries-old economic integration of Ukraine and Russia, severing all economic, political and cultural ties.

Today it is one of the poorest countries in Europe. Its manufacturing industry, with the exception of metallurgy, has been practically destroyed. Ukraine’s economy stays afloat due to Western loans and remittances from people who have left for Europe and Russia in search of some kind of a job. Living standards plummeted and emigration rocketed. About 10 million people (out of 45 million) have left, the most highly qualified specialists.

Ukraine has some of the highest levels of corruption and social differentiation. The country is on the brink of a national catastrophe.



The government coup in Kiev as the basis of fomenting conflict

In February 2014, with direct assistance of the USA and other NATO countries, a government coup took place in Ukraine. The legitimate government was overthrown. Neo-Nazis came to power. Subsequently, the USA admitted publicly that it had invested about 5 billion dollars in preparing the change of regime in the country and in “the development of democracy.” Needless to say, no one would spend such a gigantic sum just like that.

As a result of the government coup power was seized by people from Western Ukraine, from Galicia where extreme nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-Polish, Russophobic and anti-communist sentiments have traditionally been strong.

Forcible assimilation of the Russian-speaking population began. A ban on the Russian language and the decision to switch school education from Russian to Ukrainian met with powerful resistance in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. People rose up in arms.

In the May 11, 2014 national referendum 87% of the citizens voted for independence. Thus, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics were formed on the initiative of the popular mases, and not on directions from the Kremlin.

After several unsuccessful attempts to seize DPR/LPR the Kiev Nazis resorted to terror. During eight years of continuing bombardment by heavy artillery almost 14,000 civilians were killed and tens of thousands were maimed. The infrastructure was severely damaged.

Throughout the long eight years the European countries and the USA looked on the genocide of the Russian people in Donbass with extreme equanimity, thus effectively justifying the actions of the Kiev regime.

Today, the EU and the USA are displaying unheard-of hypocrisy describing people’s suffering in the course of battles, but ignoring the fact that the use of civilians as human shields has become the standard practice of those whom they call “freedom fighters.”



Development of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine

Our comrades, in considering the situation in Ukraine, only reluctantly mention the danger of its Fascization. Andyet one of the main goals of Russia’s military operation in that country is its de-Nazification. Even American congress people and special services admit that Ukraine has become the center of international Neo-Nazism.

Here are just some facts. After Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, as we have noted above, extreme nationalistic, anti-Semitic, Russophobic and anti-communist sentiments in Western Ukraine were running high. SS divisions that were formed there fought the Red Army. Local nationalists, led by Semyon Bandera, an ardent Hitler fan, set about exterminating Jews. In Ukraine Banderaites slaughtered about 1.5 million Jews, one fourth of all the Holocaust victims. During the 1944 “Volyn massacre” in Western Ukraine about 100,000 Poles were slaughtered. Banderaites killed partisans and burned alive civilians in hundreds of Byelorussian villages.

After the war, anti-communist and anti-Soviet rebels in Western Ukraine, backed by the USA and Great Britain, launched terror against civilians in the period between 1945 and 1953. During those years Banderaites killed about 50,000 citizens. The descendants and successors of these thugs came to power after the 2014 coup. The tradition of anti-Polish, anti-Semitic and anti-Russian terror is very strong among the Neo-Nazis who practically run Ukraine today.

Nazi ideology is being inculcated in Ukraine. Ukrainian Fascists who organized and committed atrocities during the Second World War have been officially proclaimed national heroes. Their symbols have been adopted by the state. Marches in honor of Fascist criminals are held every year. Streets and squares are being named after them. The Communist Party of Ukraine has been driven underground. Intimidation and assassinations of politicians and journalists have become the order of the day. Monuments to Lenin and everything reminiscent of life in the USSR are being destroyed.

Today Banderaites, like the SD storm troops in Germany, are the shock brigade of Big Business. They control every move of the government constantly blackmailing it with the threat of a government coup.

The nature of the present-day Ukrainian state is the alliance of big capital and the government bureaucracy backed by Fascist elements under total political and financial control of the USA.


The causes and character of the special military operation

In terms of the Marxist theory the military conflict in Ukraine cannot be described as an imperialist war, as our comrades would argue. It is essentially a national liberation war of the people of Donbass. From Russia’s point of view it is a struggle against an external threat to national security and against Fascism.

It is no secret that the Donbass militia was unable to resist the many-thousand-strong foreign-armed Ukrainian armed forces. A defeat of the militias would have led to the annihilation of the Russian-speaking population, a large proportion of which are citizens of Russia. Under the Constitution of the RF, Russia took legitimate action to protect its citizens and ensure its national security because it could not have been done by other means.

With US and EU support Kiev deliberately sabotages the negotiating process in the framework of the Minsk Agreements.

By that point in time Ukraine had concentrated 150,000 servicemen and Nazi battalions in Donbass. Kiev, with US support, was getting set to regain control over Donbass by military means.

With the blessing of its American principals Ukraine was preparing to launch a military operation to seize Donbass and then Crimea in early March of this year. There is a solid body of evidence to confirm the existence of these plans.

The Banderaite regime has been preparing for this war for eight years. Servicemen were subjected to relentless ideological brainwashing in the spirit of rank Russophobia. Powerful strongholds were being created and the army was provided with the latest weaponry.

In line with its imperialist geopolitical goals the US was gradually drawing Ukraine into the sphere of its military interests turning the country into a NATO spearhead determined to fight Russia “up to the last Ukrainian soldier.”

As early as December 2021 Russia made a proposal to the US to hold talks on non-enlargement of NATO to the east. The Americans evaded giving a direct answer. So in January 2022 Russia warned that in this situation it would have to take additional measures to protect its national security.

Simultaneously, there was talk about deploying US tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Ukraine, which has four nuclear power plants and a considerable scientific-technical potential, started preparations for creating its own nuclear weapon.

Under the Pentagon’s patronage Ukraine set up more than 30 laboratories to develop bacteriological weapons. There are documents to prove that these laboratories were working with particularly dangerous bacteria of deadly diseases and were investigating methods of spreading them to target people of different races.

All this poses a threat not only to Russia, but to the whole humankind.

It is claimed that this is all about inter-imperialist contradictions or the struggle over markets and subsoil resources. Inability to see the national component of class issues and the class component in national issues leads into the territory of dogmatism.





Interest of the Russian oligarchy in Ukraine or lack of the same?

Seeking to prove that the war is being waged in the interests of the Russian bourgeoisie, in order to seize Ukraine’s natural resources and industrial potential, our comrades pluck Lenin’s words about the nature of wars out of their historical context.

However, the claim that the Russian leadership was preparing to seize Ukraine in advance contradicts facts.

From the outset, the Russian leadership did not support the idea of a referendum on the formation of Donbass people’s republics.

Following the Minsk-2 agreements, Russia a priori assumed that Donbass would remain part of Ukraine, albeit with a measure of autonomy.

Until the beginning of the military operation the Russian leadership insisted on compliance with Minsk-2, which would leave Donbass as part of Ukraine.

So where is preparation for imperialist seizure?

Since 1991 Ukraine, its industry and resources were objects of super-exploitation by US and EU monopolies. The Russian oligarchy did not take part in“dividing the pie” which was in the sphere of Western interests.

Moreover, the Russian oligarchy was against the military operation in Ukraine. It was striving to become integrated in the world oligarchy and was already under massive pressure from the West which urged it to exert pressure on the government to induce it to preserve Russia’s pro-Western orientation.

Besides, the Russian oligarchs suffered considerably from the Russian military operation in Ukraine. They were put under sanctions, and are seeing their palaces and yachts taken away form them and their bank accounts frozen.

We do not have the slightest sympathy for those who have been plundering Russia for three decades and are now being deprived of their loot. We merely want to stress that the Russian oligarchy was not only not interested in the military operation, but has suffered from it. By refusing to back this operation, big business has lost not only its property and money, but its influence within the Russian ruling elite.

Note which class forces were the fiercest opponents of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. These were above all big monopoly capital, its political representatives in the liberal milieu and their “creative” lackeys among the so-called intelligentsia.

Of course we recognize the existence of inter-imperialist contradictions. The desire of imperialist predators to seize the natural and energy resources of other countries. Russia is a victim of the West’s plans to turn our country into a source of cheap raw materials. We have been opposing these plans for decades. But we do not believe that Russia, for all the flaws of its current political system, based on the power of big capital, has overnight turned into such a predator. The struggle in Ukraine has a fundamentally different character which defies dogmas.



The position of the CPRF

The CPRF was the first to define the nature of the regime which seized power in Ukraine during the Maidan protests in 2014. Thenceforth, all the party’s activities have been based on the class essence of the ongoing political processes.

We have always been critical of the Russian leadership’s external policy, which effectively ignored the interests of the peoples which until recently were part of the single Soviet state.

Those who attentively follow our actions (and we assumed that the Greek comrades are thoroughly conversant with our documents) will know that it was the CPRF that has since 2014 consistently called for the recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. No otherpolitical party in Russia has done as much to support the population of Donbass. From the start, we supported the return of Donbass to Russia. It is not the CPRF that follows “the line of the ruling United Russia party and President Putin” but they, under the pressure of historical imperatives, have to follow the route which the CPRF has advocated for three decades.

In this situation, is it fair to say that we almost blindly support Putin’s policy in Ukraine?

The Russian communists take the most active part in protecting the LPR/DPR. Hundreds of communist party members are fighting the Nazis as members of the armed forces of these republics. Dozens of communists have died in this struggle. The CPRF has, during the past eight years, sent to these republics 93 convoys carrying 13,000 tons of humanitarian aid and hosted thousands of children who came to Russia for rest and medical treatment.

All these past years the CPRF has been urging the Russian leadership to recognize the independence of Donbass.

Frankly, we are not pleased to hear our Greek comrades speak with a touch of disdain about ”so-called people’s republics” of Donbassbecause these are precisely people’s republicswhich came into beingas a result of expressed will of the people.

The citizens of LPR/DPR have defended them at the cost of thousands of civilian and military lives over the eight grim years of resistance to the creeping aggression of Banderaite Nazis.

It is a matter of signal importance that fighting the Banderaites are not only the Russian army, but also the militia units of Donbass itself among whom communists and mining workers form a large stratum.

Where do you see “protection of the interests of the oligarchy?” Are our comrades who daily expose their lives to mortal danger also defending the interests of the Russian oligarchs? Or do they defend the interests of common people who have become victims of the Neo-Nazis who have seized power in Ukraine?

One has to be very reluctant to see the real state of affairs to claim that the CPRF is acting in line with the ruling group.

The pitch of class political struggle in Russia is as high as ever. Persecution of communists and party supporters, even after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, shows that there is no class harmony between the CPRF and the present ruling elite. One can cite many examples of our comrades being subjected to repressions. Our response to the persecution of our comrades is robust.

By the same token, we are vehement critics of the government’s socio-economic policy. No other party in Russia can claim that it has been a more active critic of the authorities.

Over the thirty-odd years since the anti-communist coup of 1991 we have provided ample proof of our resolute struggle against the ruling elite. That is why our party enjoys such broad support of the masses.

In the September 2021 elections for the State Duma the CPRF won almost 19% of the votes. And this in spite of the well-oiled and long-established machine of vote-rigging. We are confident that the actual level of popular support is substantially higher. This is because, in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, we seek to study the interests and mood of the people. Incidentally, by supporting the Russian special operation in Ukraine, the CPRF has expressed the will of the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens.

As for claims about “courting| nationalist approaches and nationalist forces,” we are proud to declare that the CPRF is the leading patriotic left force in Russia.

We deem it to be our internationalist duty to protect the interests of the Russian people and the other peoples who have lived for centuries together with the Russians, above all the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians. Denying the historical significance of “the Russian world” or the Russian civilization is, in our view, as absurd as denying the great significance of the ancient Greek civilization. When Manolis Glezos tore down the Nazi flag atop the Acropolis he was not guided only by class interests, but also by the national pride of the Greeks who had launched a resolute struggle against the German occupation.



Attitude of the world community to events in Ukraine

While the Western politicians and the media, who arrogantly claim to represent “the world community,” openly take the side of the Neo-Nazis, major countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America which have first-hand experience of European and American neo-colonialism, quite rightly see the events in Ukraine as Russia’s struggle against the US-led unipolar world.

The countries that are home to 60% of the planet’s population either support the Russian operation or take a neutral stance.

Only those who in 1941 brought war to our country as members of the Hitler coalition take an aggressive stand. These are the countries of Europe, as well as the USA and Great Britain which have contributed a great deal to the revival of the Nazi military machine after its defeat in the First World War. Today Russia is again fighting Fascism and those who support it in Europe and the USA.



*****

Remembering the heroic deeds of the Communist Party of Greece in the struggle against Nazism and against the military dictatorship, we categorically brush aside the idea that our comrades could have consciously joined the camp of those who today try to crush Russia with Ukraine’s hands.We reiterate our profound respect for the KKE as a party which has made an immense contribution to the revival of the international communist and workers’ movement after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. However, the words of our comrades sometimes sound like the statement of the ultimate truth. We are for a comradely dialog which has always helped communists all over the world to understand the essence of events and work out their correct, genuinely Marxist approach to their assessment.



International Department of the CC CPRF

http://solidnet.org/article/CPRF-Intern ... eo-Nazism/

CPRF, The cynical revelations of the Polish Prime Minister mean an example of disgusting Russophobia
5/16/22 1:35 PM

The cynical revelations of the Polish Prime Minister mean an example of disgusting Russophobia

Statement by the Chairman of the CC CPRF G.A.Zyuganov


In an interview to the British newspaper the “Telegraph” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated that: "The Russian world is a cancer which not only devours a majority of the Russian society but poses a deadly threat to Europe as well. It’s not sufficient for us to support Ukraine in its military struggle against Russia, we have to uproot this terrible ideology completely."

This is an absolutely disgusting statement demonstrating the depth of hatred the current Polish elite has to Russia. It’s clear that uprooting the ideology of the "Russian World" will be implemented together with Russian nation as the ideology bearer. Actually it sounds like a call for destruction of our civilization. This is in full correspondence with what Hitler tried to do, while destroying the Soviet people under the pretext of fighting against communism.

It is well known that the Russian world is based on the principles of justice, collectivism and mutual assistance, respect for the culture and religion of other peoples. Definitely, this is the reason of hatred towards us in Europe submerging deeper and deeper into lack of spirituality, degradation, rejection of traditional values.

All above mentioned is multiplied by historical hatred of the Polish elite towards Russia. In the army of Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and counted 600,000 troops, there were about 100,000 polish noblemen. In 1922, the Poles executed tens of thousands of captured Red Army soldiers in concentration camps. And in the mid-1930s, Poland was actually considered as a fascist state and the primary opponent of the young Soviet country.

The contribution of Poles to the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust has yet to be studied in detail. Apparently, there was a reason for Fascists to build the most terrible concentration camps, including Auschwitz, on the territory of Poland. During the Second World War, the Home Army squads, subordinated to the Polish puppet government based in London, killed thousands of Red Army soldiers.

Nothing surprising is available in statements made by Moravetsky. Over the past three decades, Poland has purposefully claimed for the role of a NATO spear pointed against Russia. In its aggressive Russophobia, the Polish elite has far surpasses all the West European countries, striving to become the main conductor of US interests on the continent. It is more and more being transformed into an American military base.

An unprecedented attack against the Russian Ambassador on the holy Victory Day on May 9 this year belongs to the same category.

In all times the violent actions against the Ambassador of any country has been considered as a very serious crime. The Polish authorities did it quite intentionally.

In their hatred of Russia, polish extreme nationalists are linked with the followers of Bandera, who are well known not only for Russophobia and anti-Semitism, but also for crimes against Polish.

Most likely the memories of "Massacre in Volyn" of 1944, when the predecessors of the current Nazis violently exterminated about 100 thousand Polish women, children and elderly people in Western Ukraine has evaporated from his mind.

The vile appeal of the Polish Prime Minister confirms our conviction that neo-Nazism is not only become an ideology of Bandera regime in Kiev, but as well it is actively spreading throughout Europe. Recently, the German Chancellor stated that the Russian military operation in Ukraine ”makes Germany free from a historical guilt."

This is an extremely worrying trend. Apparently, Europe has forgotten about the terrible consequences followed by emergence and strengthening of Nazism in Germany.

Humanity has paid high tribute of 71 million lives. Our country lost 27 million of its best sons and daughters in the fight against German Nazism and Japanese militarism. We haven't forgotten that. That is why Russia's military operation in Ukraine is of clearly anti-fascist nature.

We do not transfer our attitude to the actions and statements of the current Polish gentlemen to all citizens of this country. Poles are a Slavic people. Ordinary people welcomed the Red Army, that liberated them from fascists, with bread and salt. Our mutually beneficial cooperation within the socialist camp contributed to the restoration and development of Polish industry and science. Hitlers and Banderas, Pilsudski and Morawiecki come and go. And the commonwealth of Slavic peoples, who have been living side by side for many centuries, revives every time against all odds, because it corresponds to their fundamental interests.

The Communist Party strongly condemns the disgusting, Russophobic statement by the Polish Prime Minister and addresses the following words to him: "Hands are short, Mr. Morawiecki. Our history has seen many eager of putting an end to the Russian world, including your like-minded Adolf Hitler. Their place has long been in the dustbin of history. The same fate will be yours."

Chairman of the CC CPRF G.A.Zyuganov

http://solidnet.org/article/CPRF-The-cy ... ssophobia/

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Self-Determination – But not in the service of imperialism
May 16, 2022

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The classic Marxist analysis of the principle of self-determination.
By David Sole

The right of oppressed nations to self-determination was a concept argued for and implemented by the great Russian revolutionary V. I. Lenin. Some socialist contemporaries of Lenin in the early 1900s argued that no special demands needed to be raised in regard to nations suffering subjugation from larger or more powerful nationalities. They believed that the coming socialist revolution would solve those inequalities.

Lenin, however, understood that historical oppression of one nation over another could not be ignored. To build the strongest movement against a powerful oppressor nation, like the Russian Empire before 1917, the socialists, champions of the whole working class, had to recognize the rights of the oppressed nations to self-determination, even if this meant separation. Only then could unity be feasible when oppressed people saw that socialists from the oppressor nation were committed to getting the boot heel off the necks of the oppressed.

The great Russian Revolution of 1917 overthrew the hated Tsar and placed the working class into power. Many of the nations that had been held captive in the Russian Empire’s “prison house of nations” opted to federate into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. A feature of the revolutionary government formed after 1917 was to establish one of the two houses making up their congress with equal representation of each and every nationality in the USSR.

At the very same time all the western imperialist powers waged a war to overthrow the new revolution. Starting in 1918, over 250,000 troops from over 12 different foreign nations surrounded the budding workers’ state, including U.S. troops. They remained and fought for several years, finally to all be defeated and withdrawn.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson took up the slogan of “self-determination” toward the end of the First World War (1914-1918). This was taken straight from Lenin in a cynical effort to influence oppressed nations and nationalities as a wartime strategy. There was no serious consideration among the western colonial and imperialist powers to implement the principle.

Self-determination for oppressed nations cannot be viewed as an absolute rule. It is a duty of socialists to respect that right. But it makes no sense to apply it to situations where a nation has enlisted itself into the service of imperialist aggression and expansion.

Today Ukraine has become the pawn of United States imperialism and militarism. It is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the U.S. and its European allies. Washington’s goal is to dominate and occupy all of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia with NATO bases, troops and missiles. This includes the aim of regime change in the Russian Federation, which, while no longer socialist, still maintains its own economic independence.

The U.S. government has approved sending another $40 billion in weaponry to Ukraine on top of the estimated $10 billion previously approved in the past few months, enriching the U.S. war industry. European Union nations are funneling billions more of armaments.

It should also be recalled that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engineered the 2014 coup d’etat that overthrew the elected neutral leaning president in Kyiv, Ukraine and installed an anti-Russian, pro-U.S. right-wing regime. That regime was given military training and weapons with the aim to make it part of NATO for the past 8 years.

Ukraine’s government, which some phony “progressives” in the U.S. argue must be given “self-determination,” also has waged internal war against ethnic Russian Ukrainians in the Donbas region, causing over 14,000 deaths.

The right of self-determination of oppressed nations must not be twisted to become a slogan to cover up the crimes of U.S. imperialism in its unrelenting fight to dominate and exploit the people and resources of the entire world.

https://fighting-words.net/2022/05/16/s ... perialism/

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Death by a Thousand Cuts: Where is the West’s Ukraine Strategy?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 16, 2022
Pepe Escobar

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Wars are not won with tactics and narratives – they require a Grand Strategy. Russia has a master plan behind its Ukraine military operations, but does the west have one?

The pounding, daily western narratives on ‘Ukrainian wins’ and ‘Russian losses’ underpins the lack of an actual, cohesive Grand Strategy against Moscow.


While we are all familiar with Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher who penned the incomparable Art of War, less known is the Strategikon, the Byzantium equivalent on warfare.

Sixth century Byzantium really needed a manual, threatened as it was from the east, successively by Sassanid Persia, Arabs and Turks, and from the north, by waves of steppe invaders, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, semi-nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and Magyars.

Byzantium could not prevail just by following the classic pattern of Roman Empire raw power – they simply didn’t have the means for it.

So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin and his diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov.

But when military means became necessary for Byzantium – as in Russia’s Operation Z – it was preferable to use weaponry to contain or punish adversaries, instead of attacking with full force.

Strategic primacy, for Byzantium, more than diplomatic or military, was a psychological affair. The word Strategia itself is derived from the Greek strategos – which does not mean “General” in military terms, as the west believes, but historically corresponds to a managerial politico-military function.

It all starts with si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace prepare for war.” Confrontation must develop simultaneously on multiple levels: grand strategy, military strategy, operative, tactical.

But brilliant tactics, excellent operative intel and even massive victories in a larger war theater cannot compensate for a lethal mistake in terms of grand strategy. Just look at the Nazis in WWII.

Those who built up an empire such as the Romans, or maintained one for centuries like the Byzantines, never succeeded without following this logic.

Those clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘experts’

On Operation Z, the Russians revel in total strategic ambiguity, which has the collective west completely discombobulated. The Pentagon does not have the necessary intellectual firepower to out-smart the Russian General Staff. Only a few outliers understand that this is not a war – since the Ukraine Armed Forces have been irretrievably routed – but actually what Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov calls a “combined arms police operation,” a work-in-progress on demilitarization and denazification.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is even more abysmal in terms of getting everything wrong, as recently demonstrated by its chief Avril Haines during her questioning on Capitol Hill. History shows that the CIA strategically blew it all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Ukraine is no different.

Ukraine was never about a military win. What is being accomplished is the slow, painful destruction of the European Union (EU) economy, coupled with extraordinary weapons profits for the western military-industrial complex and creeping security rule by those nations’ political elites.

The latter, in turn, have been totally baffled by Russia’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities, coupled with the stunning inefficiency of their own constellation of Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers and Turkish Bayraktar drones.

This ignorance reaches way beyond tactics and the operational and strategic realm. As Martyanov delightfully points out, they “wouldn’t know what hit them on the modern battlefield with near-peer, forget about peer.”

The caliber of ‘strategic’ advice from the NATO realm was self-evident in the Serpent Island fiasco – a direct order issued by British ‘consultants’ to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, thought the whole thing was suicidal. He was proven right.

All the Russians had to do was launch a few choice anti-ship and surface Onyx missiles from bastions stationed in Crimea on airports south of Odessa. In no time, Serpent Island was back under Russian control – even as high-ranking British and American marine officers ‘disappeared’ during the Ukrainian landing on the island. They were the ‘strategic’ NATO actors on the spot, doling out the lousy advice.

Extra evidence that the Ukraine debacle is predominantly about money laundering – not competent military strategy – is Capitol Hill approving a hefty extra $40 billion in ‘aid’ to Kiev. It’s just another western military-industrial complex bonanza, duly noted by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.

Russian forces, meanwhile, have brought diplomacy to the battlefield, handing over 10 tons of humanitarian assistance to the people of liberated Kherson – with the deputy head of the military-civil administration of the region, Kirill Stremousov, announcing that Kherson wants to become part of the Russian Federation.

In parallel, Georgy Muradov, deputy prime minister of the government of Crimea, has “no doubts that the liberated territories of the south of the former Ukraine will become another region of Russia. This, as we assess from our communication with the inhabitants of the region, is the will of the people themselves, most of whom lived for eight years under conditions of repression and bullying by the Ukronazis.”

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, is adamant that the DPR is on the verge of liberating “its territories within constitutional borders,” and then a referendum on joining Russia will take place. When it comes to the Luhansk People’s Republic, the integration process may even come earlier: the only area left to be liberated is the urban region of Lysychansk-Severodonetsk.

The ‘Stalingrad of Donbass’

As much as there’s an energetic debate among the best Russian analysts about the pace of Operation Z, Russian military planning proceeds methodically, as if taking all the time it needs to solidify facts on the ground.

Arguably the best example is the fate of Azov neo-Nazis at Azovstal in Mariupol – the best-equipped unit of the Ukrainians, hands down. In the end they were totally outmatched by anumerically inferior Russian/Chechen Spetsnaz contingent, and in record time for such a big city.

Another example is the advance on Izyum, in the Kharkov region – a key bridgehead in the frontline. The Russian Ministry of Defense follows the pattern of grinding the enemy while slowly advancing; if they face serious resistance, they stop and smash the Ukrainian defensive lines with non-stop missile and artillery strikes.

Popasnaya in Luhansk, dubbed by many Russian analysts as “Mariupol on steroids”, or “the Stalingrad of Donbass,” is now under total control of the Luhansk People’s Republic, after they managed to breach a de facto fortress with linked underground trenches between most civilian houses. Popasnaya is extremely important strategically, as its capture breaks the first, most powerful line of defense of the Ukrainians in Donbass.

That will probably lead to the next stage, with an offensive on Bakhmut along the H-32 highway. The frontline will be aligned, north to south. Bakhmut will be the key to taking control of the M-03 highway, the main route to Slavyansk from the south.

This is just an illustration of the Russian General Staff applying its trademark, methodical, painstaking strategy, where the main imperative could be defined as a personnel-preserving forward drive. With the added benefit of committing just a fraction of overall Russian firepower.

Russian strategy on the battlefield stands in stark contrast with the EU’s obstinacy in being reduced to the status of an American dog’s lunch, with Brussels leading entire national economies to varying degrees of certified collapse and chaos.

Once again it was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – a diplomatic master – to encapsulate it.

Question: “What do you think of Josep Borrell’s (Lavrov’s EU counterpart) initiative to give Ukraine frozen Russian assets as ‘reparations?’ Can we say that the masks have come off and the west is moving on to open robbery?”

Lavrov: “You could say it is theft, which they are not trying to hide … This is becoming a habit for the west … We may soon see the post of the EU chief diplomat abolished because the EU has virtually no foreign policy of its own and acts entirely in solidarity with the approaches imposed by the United States.”

The EU cannot even come up with a strategy to defend its own economic battlefield – just watching as its energy supply is de facto, incrementally turned off by the US. Here we are at the realm where the US tactically excels: economic/financial blackmail. We can’t call these ‘strategic’ moves because they almost always backfire against US hegemonic interests.

Compare it with Russia reaching its biggest surplus in history, with the rise and rise of commodity prices and the upcoming role of the stronger and stronger ruble as a resource-based currency also backed by gold.

Moscow is spending way less than the NATO contingent in the Ukrainian theater. NATO has already wasted $50 billion – and counting – while the Russians spent $4 billion, give or take, and already conquered Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kherson and Melitopol, created a land corridor to Crimea (and secured its water supply), controls the Sea of Azov and its major port city, and liberated strategically vital Volnovakha and Popasnaya in Donbass, as well as Izyum near Kharkov.

That doesn’t even include Russia hurling the entire, collective west into a level of recession not seen since the 1970s.

The Russian strategic victory, as it stands, is military, economic, and may even coalesce geopolitically. Centuries after the Byzantine Strategikon was penned, the Global South would be very much interested in getting acquainted with the 21st century Russian version of the Art of War.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... -strategy/

Scott Ritter on Ukraine: “Why I Radically Changed My Overall Assessment”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 16, 2022
MIKE WHITNEY

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On Sunday, the foreign policy blogs were abuzz with the news that Scott Ritter had done “an about-face in his assessment of the war”. It appears that the ex-Marine had examined recent developments in Ukraine and concluded that it’s going to be much harder for Russia to win than he had originally thought..

Naturally, the news of Ritter’s reversal sent shockwaves across the internet, especially among the people who follow events in Ukraine closely and who greatly admire his even-handed analysis. Some of these people clearly felt betrayed by Ritter’s comments and blasted him as a “concern troll” which refers to a person who feigns sympathy while actually feeling the opposite. This is a terrible way to treat a guy who’s devoted so much of his time to informing people about an issue of which they might know very little without his research. Besides, Ritter is no hypocrite. Quite the contrary.

It’s fair to say, however, that Ritter has probably been the most outspoken proponent of the “Russia is winning” theory, a hypothesis that runs counter to everything we read in the legacy media or see on the cable news channels. Unfortunately, Ritter’s views on the matter have changed dramatically, and that’s due almost entirely to developments on the ground. As Ritter candidly admits, “The military aid the west is providing to Ukraine is changing the dynamic and if Russia doesn’t find a way to address this meaningfully… the conflict will never end.”

That’s quite a turnaround from a statement he made just weeks earlier that, “Russia is winning the war, and winning it decisively.”

So, what changed? What are the so-called developments that led to Ritter’s volte-face?

Here are a few excerpts from the interview that triggered the fracas. Ritter was joined by Ray McGovern and host Garland Nixon on Saturday Morning Live. (The quotes are copied from video. I accept blame for any mistakes.)

Scott Ritter (start at 47:50 minute mark) — “The thing that frustrates me… is that, it was my assessment that it would be very hard for Ukraine to absorb this new equipment and material (Material– the additional lethal weapons that have recently been shipped to Ukraine) but the howitzers are already operating against Russia. (And) They are having an effect in the Kharkov region. Not all 90 of them, but they have several batteries in place that are being used.

How did this happen?

And this is why I have radically changed my overall assessment, because I had been operating on the assumption that Russia would be able to interdict the vast majority of this equipment, but Russia has shown itself unable or unwilling to do this and– as a result– the Ukrainians are having meaningful impact on the battlefield. Not in the areas of main contention, like the Donbass, but on the periphery. This is why Russia has carried out tactical withdrawals north of Kharkov, because in order to match Ukraine’s best capabilities, Russia would have to divert resources from its main effort which Russia has decided not to do. So, they are re-configuring the battlefield. (trading land in different areas)…(“Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, You Tube)



So, while Ritter’s sympathies have not changed in the slightest, it’s clear that his analysis has. At first, he didn’t think that the deluge of lethal weaponry would affect the outcome of the war. Now he’s not so sure. It’s a honest mistake but, still, he needed to ‘come clean’ and explain the factors that contributed to his U-turn. Here’s more from the same interview:

Scott Ritter– This is a transformative moment in the war, because what it means is that demilitarization is not taking place. For all the forces Russia is destroying in the east, Ukraine is rebuilding significant capability (in the west) I liken this to Moscow in December 1941, when the Germans were moving towards Moscow and the Russians just started throwing things at them., sacrificing everything to slow the German offensive. until General Winter and the combination of Siberian divisions gave them the ability to counterattack. The Germans were bled white and they were stopped and turned back. If Russia doesn’t change the calculation, then that is the trajectory we are heading on., because 200,000 troops–however capable they may be, are only capable of doing so much. And the fighting that’s taking place right now –even though it is slaughtering Ukrainians– it isn’t cost free to the Russians. They’re losing equipment, they’re losing men, they’re losing material, and unless Putin mobilizes or transfers forces in, those aren’t being replaced. So, instead of having 200,000 online, Russia might have 180,000 men. And if you don’t think removing 20,000 men doesn’t change the options available to the Russian leadership, then you don’t know anything about war.”

So, I believe Russia is going to win in the east, they are grinding them down as we speak, they are slaughtering them; the amount of death and destruction that is being dealt to the Ukrainians is unimaginable, but I believe the Ukrainians are willing to take these losses in order to buy time to reconstitute a military that will challenge Russia Because unless Russia is willing to jump across the Dnieper River and head into western Ukraine where it can eliminate the strategic depth that the Ukrainians are being gifted by the Russians, then demilitarization of Ukraine is not going to take place. It can’t take place when tens of billions of dollars of equipment is pouring in and Russia is not able to interdict it. The fact that these advanced howitzers are operating on the front lines right now, shows there’s something wrong with the Russian methodology. And–unless they alter that methodology– I think we’re in for a very long summer.” (“Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, You Tube)


It’s hard to grasp what Ritter is saying here. Is he actually suggesting that Putin expand the current “special operation” into a full-blown World War? At one point, he casually opines that Russia will have to mobilize 1 and a half million men (Note: Russia currently only has 200,000 in Ukraine) if they want to prevail in Ukraine and then move on to Finland. It’s impossible to tell by Ritter’s tone whether he is simply making an objective observation of ‘what is needed’ to succeed or if he is making an explicit recommendation that he thinks Russia’s High Command should consider. I can’t answer that. Here’s more from the interview:

Scott Ritter(5:20 mark)– “The idea that the Ukrainian military has been eliminated as an effective fighting force is a flawed concept, and unless Russia broadens its special military operation– probably to the point of changing it form a special military operation to a war which includes the totality of Ukrainian battle-space–(then) this is a conflict that is dangerously close to becoming unwinnable by Russia which means that while they can complete their objectives in the east with 200,000 troops, they aren’t able to prevent Ukraine from rearming and reequipping when Ukraine is being provided with tens of billions of dollars of equipment by NATO —Whenever you provide your enemy with “safe space” to rebuild military capability, you’re never going to win. …

Yes, Russia is winning in the east which is what they said their objective was all along. And they are accomplishing that. That is the special Military Operation. But now we’re talking about “war”, and I don’t think Russia has made that transition yet. This is a defacto proxy war between the west and Russia using Ukrainian forces as NATO’s sword. The object of this is to “bleed Russia dry”. And if Russia doesn’t change the dynamic, Russia will be bled dry.” Zelensky has indicated that he’s willing to mobilize a million people, at a time when the west is ready to provide the funding and equipment to turn those million men into a real military threat.

So, I see what has been happening in the last few weeks as being decisive.

The military aid the west is providing is changing the dynamic and if Russia doesn’t find a way to address this meaningfully, and to eliminate it as a military capability… then the conflict will never end.” (“Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, You Tube)


There it is from the horse’s mouth. Readers will have to draw their own conclusions.

IMHO, Scott Ritter is gradually adjusting to the idea that the conflict in Ukraine is not a just regional skirmish between two quarrelsome neighbors, nor is it a proxy-war between NATO and Russia. No. Ukraine is the first phase of a broader plan for crushing Russia, collapsing its economy, removing its leaders, seizing its natural resources, splintering its territory, and projecting US power across Central Asia to the Pacific Rim. Ukraine is about hegemony, empire, and pure, unalloyed power. Most important, Ukraine is the first battle in a Third World War, a war that was concocted and launched by Washington to ensure another unchallenged century of American primacy.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... ssessment/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Tue May 17, 2022 10:51 pm

Cargo 1488
May 17, 8:03 p.m.

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There is a load of 200. There is a load of 300. And there is a load of 1488, which goes from Azovstal to the colony in Yelenovka (the wounded are taken to Novoazovsk)

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Today, the capitulation of the enemy at Azovstal continued. According to the Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Polyansky, the surrender took place without preconditions.
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has already announced that it will conduct interrogations of captured Natsiks.
Earlier, at the suggestion of Wasserman, the Duma announced the need to issue a decree banning the exchange of Nazi war criminals.
Fully agree with these statements. VSUshnikov on ours can and should be changed. Nazis and war criminals - judged on the territory of the DPR.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7621334.html

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

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Forwarded from
istanbul wolf
🇹🇷As we have stated , Turkey intends to bargain not only with Finland and Sweden, but also with the United States. According to Bloomberg, in exchange for the approval of new NATO members, the Turkish authorities will demand the re- inclusion of F-35 fighters in the supply program and the lifting of sanctions for the purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems. The requirements for candidates to join NATO have increased: Sweden and Finland, among other things, need to lift the embargo on arms exports.

It is quite possible that Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to pull off the same trick as Greece with North Macedonia. Due to disputes over the name of the country, the Greeks blocked its entry into NATO for several years.Indeed, until the republic began to be called "Northern", it was not accepted into the alliance. However, today's situation is fundamentally different, since for NATO the bill is months or even: the strengthening of the eastern flank in the Baltic and Arctic is urgently needed. Especially if we are talking about Finland, which has a long border with Russia.

The states, as expected, went to Turkey in an informational counterattack. CNN readers today began to be convinced that NATO would suffer little from the loss of such an intractable ally. Erdogan is well aware that Turkey will not be expelled from the alliance for such tricks, but the Greek-Macedonian precedent looks promising for him.

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Forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts in the evening of May 17

Well, that's all! Apparently, the last stronghold of Nazism in Mariupol has fallen! Today has pleased with a whole bunch of good news, among which, of course, the main news is the surrender of the "defenders" of the infamous plant to the whole world. All of us today watched the unceasing flow of surrendering militants from Azovstal, who could not stand the "cast iron" rain, and capitulated under the onslaught of Russian weapons ! Tactical ultras and military hipsters are the lost youth of Ukraine with littered brains, who were ruined by Russophobia and their own country. Now they don't look at all.like tough killers and thugs, more like a local airsoft team after a week of playing on the range. Don't let the appearance deceive you - the investigation will figure out which of them is actually a "mother's warrior", and which is a war criminal with blood on his hands, because there are, presumably, quite a few of them. The main thing is that instead of a stupid death for invented ideals , the lost brethren chose life. We hope that other soldiers of Ukraine will follow this example , thereby saving lives not only for themselves, but also for civilians who involuntarily become their hostages.

🎯As we said, the good news didn't end there for us. In parallel with the surrender of the "Azovites", in different parts of the "non-Reich" our VKS conducted a new calibration session. It should be noted that our Armed Forces of Ukraine threw a lot today. Again there were strikes on the sad bridge across the Dniester Liman . How many times have already been thrown at him, we have already lost count. Then they threw missiles at training centers, barracks and warehouses in several areas at once. In the morning, the RF Armed Forces attacked the settlement of Akhtyrka in the Sumy region. At night, greetings were received in Lvov, massive missile strikes were already in two waves. The Chernihiv region also suffered heavily, on the Desna, the training center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was accurately unwound. According to rumors, at least 200 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and mercenaries died, a lot of wounded, they are clearing the rubble, the picture resembles arrivals at the barracks in Nikolaev.

⚔️ On the fronts , our artillery and aviation did not lag behind, massive arrivals along the entire front, from Kharkov to Odessa , in places precipitation from Russian bombs. We don’t even see the point in listing all the settlements, such is the “Russian cyclone” over Ukraine today.

▫️Another good news is that the People's Militia of the LPR announced the liberation of the village of Orekhovo . This is between Popasna and Lisichansk . In Popasna itself , the bridgehead is expanding, in the north of it, Kamyshevakha is being assaulted . In general, the battles are going on along the entire front line, somewhere positional, somewhere we beat the enemy. For example, there are successes in the Donetsk direction, in the Avdiivka area .

▫️The Headquarters of the DPR Terodefense announces the liberation of the village of Novoselovka Vtoraya , Yasinovatsky District of the Republic. The distance from this village to Avdiivka in a straight line is less than eight kilometers. Fire control is established over the Avdiivka-Orlivka road . The assault on New York continues .

▫️It is quieter on the Zaporozhye part of the front than the day before yesterday. As we wrote, the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to launch a counteroffensive, but suffered a big collapse. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the failed counterattack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Gulyaipol area and posted a detailed video with footage of strikes against the advancing enemy forces.

❕Arrivals again passed through our territory. The Armed Forces of Ukraine fired at the village of Bezymeno in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine. Well, traditionally got a peaceful area of ​​Donetsk.

🧿From interesting. We recommend watching a short kind video about the military everyday life of the 100th artillery regiment of the DPR.

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Сolonelcassad
For those who were waiting for the official proof. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the failed counterattack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Gulyaipol area and posted a detailed video with footage of strikes against the advancing enemy forces.

▪️The Kyiv regime made an attempt to attack the units of the Russian Armed Forces with the help of two Ukrainian mechanized battalions on tanks and infantry fighting vehicles on May 14;

▪️The advancing of enemy armored vehicles and preparations for the attack were discovered by UAV crews and technical intelligence equipment of the Russian formation;

▪️The enemy’s armored vehicles were hit by drones and artillery, after which the enemy’s attack was repulsed by oncoming fire from tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, as well as modern anti-tank weapons;

▪️The idea of ​​the Kyiv authorities turned out to be a hopeless adventure, during which 26 Ukrainian tanks and 12 infantry fighting vehicles were destroyed. The irretrievable losses of the enemy in manpower amounted to about 100 militants.

https://t.me/zvezdanews/80072

The source did not disappoint - 38 pieces of equipment and about 100 killed, according to the RF Ministry of Defense. A source from the field reported 40 pieces of equipment destroyed and up to 300 killed and wounded.

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Forwarded from
Kotsnews
Darwin Award. One of the surrendering Nazis wears the chevron of the SS division "Galicia" on his right hand. The other is a stylization of the emblem of the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf". Denazification as it is. Well, fascism, which is not in Ukraine.

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Сolonelcassad
In the LPR today they are announcing the formation of the Severodonetsk pocket, where about 15,000 people were surrounded.
So far, this is somewhat ahead of events - the Soledar-Lysichansk highway can indeed be exposed to fire, but there is no complete control over it. So there is still work to be done on the creation of an operational boiler.
It should be taken into account that in theory there is still a road through Seversk, but it is also within the reach of our artillery and it is unlikely that it will be possible to supply the entire Severodonetsk group along it.

The transfer of reinforcements to Soledar reflects the enemy's understanding of the growing threat and is aimed at keeping the key communications of the Severodonetsk grouping.
Accordingly, after the capture of Popasnaya, our troops are engaged in resolving the issue of direct access to the Soledar-Lysichansk highway.

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Forwarded from
News aggregator LNR DNR
(
Anatoly
)
Surrender under media laws

✅captivity is not called captivity , this is "saving the lives of personnel."

✅how many soldiers did not live up to this "preservation" does not say b, but the plan to delay the enemy forces was carried out.

✅despite the critical condition of some of the wounded, do not give up until May 9 . The enemy cannot be given a victory symbol for the holiday.

✅despite the critical condition of some of the wounded , do not give up until the Eurovision final . The people of Azov at the same time ensured both a head start in the competition and popularization of the theme of the war in Ukraine among Europeans.

✅as stated by the DPR: one of the conditions for surrender is the absence of photo / video recording of this process. The people of Azov cannot look broken. So there is hope for their speedy exchange. And they have yet to travel the world with their heads held high and become a symbol of resistance.

Dry conclusions: the media component remains key for the Ukrainian side and largely influences the adoption of military decisions. No strategic decisions are made without coordination with the CIPSO. In the information age, this is effective☝🏻

***

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Wed May 18, 2022 1:46 pm

There are already 969 prisoners at Azovstal
May 18, 11:28

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In total, since May 16, 969 soldiers and officers have surrendered at Azovstal (694 surrendered yesterday), 80 of them were wounded, 55 of them seriously. It is already obvious that today the capitulation at Azovstal will surpass the capitulation at the plant named after Ilyich, as well as the Ilovaisky cauldron. This is how the biggest military defeat of Ukraine since 2014 ends on a routine basis.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7621801.html

Those who surrendered at Azovstal face trial
May 18, 12:22

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Pushilin said that those who surrendered at Azovstal would face trial, and the Nazis would face a tribunal.
Today the State Duma is to consider a resolution banning exchanges of Nazis from Azov.

Plus a video of yesterday's delivery at Azovstal.

(Video at link)

Exit from Azovstal

(Video at link)

Buses with prisoners in Yelenovka.

Today is a continuation.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7621934.html

Google Translator

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Ukraine not to exchange territories for peace with Russia: negotiator
Xinhua | Updated: 2022-05-18 10:13

KYIV - Ukraine will not exchange its territories for a peace deal with Russia, the government-run Ukrinform news agency reported on Tuesday, citing Mykhailo Podolyak, a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the peace talks with Russia.

"It is ideologically unacceptable for us to give something to the Russian Federation and pretend that it was some kind of easy war," Podolyak said.

He noted that many Ukrainian civilians were either killed or assaulted in the conflict, making it impossible for Ukraine to make concessions to Russia.

Ukraine will not agree on a ceasefire with Russia without troop withdrawal as Russia will control part of Ukrainian territory, Podolyak said.

He also ruled out the signing of a deal with Russia similar to the Minsk peace agreements, saying it would only lead to a frozen conflict, but not sustainable peace.

Earlier in the day, Podolyak said that the negotiation process within the delegations between Ukraine and Russia has been suspended. At the same time, he voiced the belief that peace talks will resume.

Ukraine and Russia held the latest round of their face-to-face peace talks in Istanbul of Turkey on March 29.

The Minsk agreements, reached in September 2014 and February 2015 respectively, outlined the steps needed to end the conflict in Ukraine's eastern region of Donbass that started in April 2014.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202205/ ... 5d6f9.html

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NDP onboard with Cons, Liberals in warmongering over Ukraine
Posted May 18, 2022 by Yves Engler

Originally published: Yves Engler Blog on May15, 2022 (more by Yves Engler Blog)

Canada’s “left wing” party is openly opposed to negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.

In “Feds must do more to support Ukraine, say experts, Ukrainians, opposition MPs” NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson repeats the party’s call to send more weapons to fight Russia and suggests the NDP formally opposes negotiations. The Monday Hill Times article reported, “McPherson said while the NDP will always look at non-violent means of conflict resolution by diplomatic and humanitarian means, Russia’s war against Ukraine is not a case when it can be done.”

| tweet | MR OnlineMP Charlie Angus is more forthright in his opposition to negotiations. Asked on Twitter last week “Do you agree that what is needed concerning Russia/Ukraine war is negotiations not more weapons?” Angus responded, “We will negotiate when Putin pulls his war machine out of Ukraine and the international war crimes unit is allowed to fully investigate his crimes.” (While they trend in different directions, one can support sending weapons and seeking to negotiate.)

Angus’ statement is a call to prolong and escalate the war. When I tweeted as much, Angus blocked me. Apparently, Angus talks tough about Ukrainians fighting until the end but is sensitive to being challenged on Twitter.

As part of their three-year pact with the Liberals the NDP agreed to a budget that allocated half a billion dollars for arms to fight Russia (on top of more than $100 million in arms delivered to Ukraine in previous weeks). McPherson and Angus’ statements on negotiations suggests the party also agrees with the Liberals’ hostility to seeking diplomatic pathways to end the violence in Ukraine.

On Monday foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly told CBC Radio, “at this point, like I said, the goal is not to be negotiating.” Two weeks into Russia’s illegal invasion Joly said “right now, it’s not about a diplomatic solution.” Prior to February 24 Canadian officials weren’t keen on negotiating either.

In word and deed Canada has sought to escalate tensions and extend the fighting. It is echoing evermore open calls by British and U.S. officials to prolong the fighting and turn Ukraine into a proxy conflict. During an April 9 visit to Kyiv Boris Johnson reportedly pressured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ditch peace talks and after the British PM met French President Emmanuel Macron last week his office released a statement saying “he urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin’s false narrative for the invasion.”

Hinting at what’s long been U.S. policy in Ukraine, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin declared recently, “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” In explaining his support for a $40 billion U.S. arms and aid package to Ukraine, Congressman Dan Crenshaw tweeted, “Yeah, because investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea.” Previously, Congressman Adam Schiff told the House of Representatives that the “United States aids Ukraine and her people so we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

While less crass with their declarations, the NDP is aligned with this thinking. As I detailed here, the NDP has been pressing conflict with Russia for years and has consistently supported measures that escalate tensions in Ukraine.

This reflects the party’s tradition of belligerence that I detail in Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada. The NDP/CCF supported Canada fighting in Korea, Yugoslavia and Libya. To give but one example after Moammar Gaddafi was savagely killed in 2011 NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel released a statement noting, “the future of Libya now belongs to all Libyans. Our troops have done a wonderful job in Libya over the past few months.”

The NDP’s public opposition to negotiations that might end the horrors in Ukraine exposes the depth of the party’s warmongering.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/18/ndp-onb ... r-ukraine/

Some people believe that Canada is a kinder and gentler place than the USA but it just ain't so. Besides, that's a really low bar...

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The war against food–who is to blame
Originally published: Dances with Bears on May 13, 2022 by ikolai Storozhenko (more by Dances with Bears) (Posted May 18, 2022)

This week President Joseph Biden stopped at an Illinois farm to say he’s going to help the Ukraine ship 20 million tonnes of wheat and corn out of storage into export, thereby relieving grain shortages in the international markets and lowering bread prices around the world. Biden was trying to play a hand in which his cards have already been clipped. By Biden.

The first Washington-Kiev war plan for eastern Ukraine has already lost about 40% of the Ukrainian wheat fields, 50% of the barley, and all of the grain export ports. Their second war plan to hold the western region defence lines with mobile armour, tanks, and artillery now risks the loss of the corn and rapeseed crop as well as the export route for trucks to Romania and Moldova. What will be saved in western Ukraine will be unable to grow enough to feed its own people. They will be forced to import U.S. wheat, as well as U.S. guns and the money to pay for both.

Biden told his audience that on the Delaware farms he used to represent in the U.S. Senate “there are more chickens than there are Americans.” Blaming the Russians is the other card Biden has left.

Five maps published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) display the location of the main Ukrainian grain and oilseed crops–wheat, corn, barley, sunflower, rapeseed–for the period 2016 to 2020. The percentage of the total crop contributed by each region as a five-year average is also displayed. As of 2020, the leading Ukrainian exports were sunflower and rapeseed oils ($5.32 billion), corn ($4.89 billion), and wheat ($4.61 billion), followed by iron ore ($4.27 billion) and semi-finished iron ($3.03 billion). These last two are entirely concentrated in the east–Dniepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, and the Donbass.

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Source: https://ipad.fas.usda.gov

Just how cut off and dependent on imports the western region of the Ukraine is already, here are maps of the country’s main sources of energy and fuel:

UKRAINE’S OIL, GAS AND COAL

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Source: https://geoawesomeness.com/
For the figures for each energy source, see the U.S. Energy Information Administration summary: https://www.eia.gov/

UKRAINE’S NUCLEAR POWER CENTRES

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Source: https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/

A report just published in Vzglyad, the best of the Moscow news analyses in publication, spells out the Russian assessment of the impact of war and U.S. sanctions on the Ukraine’s position in the grain markets. The reporter is Nikolai Storozhenko; read the original here. A verbatim translation follows between opening and closing quotes; illustrations, captions, links, and sources have been added to amplify the Russian text.

“HOW THE U.S. CREATED THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS
Grain is the key export commodity of Ukraine today
By Nikolai Storozhenko

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Tens of millions of tons of Ukrainian grain are the most important condition for reducing world food prices–at least this is what U.S. President Joe Biden assures everyone. In addition, Biden blames Russia for the price increase.

There is indeed a commotion on the world grain market, but who is really to blame for this?

‘Ukraine has 20 million tons of grain in its storages. We are studying ways to return this grain to the world market and thereby achieve lower prices,’ is Joe Biden’s simple strategy to curb inflation. Moreover, it relies on an even more fail-safe technique known as blame Russia: ‘We noticed that fuel prices rose in March, it’s because of Putin. Because of him, food prices have also risen in our country.’

Putin was not spared

However, we will correct Mr Biden–firstly, it’s not ‘here’ in the USA, but all over the world except for those countries and regions that promptly imposed restrictions on grain exports. Secondly, the U.S. and its blame-Russia campaign have allowed time for the U.S. to trade its own grain. In the 2021/22 marketing year, the United States exported 18.9 million tons of grain (data at the end of March). On the one hand, this is the lowest figure in the last twenty years. On the other hand, if the Americans are still trading, it means that everything is not as bad as they claim.

Something else is interesting. One of the peaks of world grain prices occurred in the early 1970s. Then the USSR began to buy large quantities of grain in the U.S. and Canada, thereby inflating global prices. Since then and until recently, the United States has remained the largest player in the global grain export market (95 million tons in 2021/22).

If we take wheat separately, then back in 2014 the U.S. also ranked first (25.6 million tons). But Russia’s wheat exports were not so rosy: 1.6 million tons in 2001, a jump to 10 million in 2002, down again, up again. In general, we reached stable volumes only by the end of the 2010s, and comparable to the U.S.–in the same 2014 (22.1 million tons, third place). If you know this, it’s hard to believe that for several years in a row, not the U.S., but Russia has been ranked first in the world in wheat exports (39.5 million tons in 2020/2021).

GLOBAL WHEAT PRODUCTION, 2010-2022

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Source: International Grain Council (IGC) data reported by the European Commission. Note that supply has fallen short of consumption three times–in 2012, 2018, and this year. As the following wheat price chart shows, when that happens the price of wheat rises sharply.

TRAJECTORY OF THE GLOBAL WHEAT PRICE, 2000-2021

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Source: https://www.wsj.com/

Global control

However, the U.S. has long been a player for global stakes that are larger than wheat. To the Wall Street Journal and U.S. farmers, of course, that’s a shame, and American prestige suffers. But why fill up the world and your own market with grain, if there are satellite producers you can employ? Control of the food market as a whole is much more important to the U.S. than revenue from grain exports.

Moreover, everything has been calculated as a whole. The U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA] publishes crop forecasts by country at the beginning of the calendar year (by the way, these are quite accurate). And the USDA even publishes forecasts of world trade in this wheat market even for several years ahead. Knowing the expected harvest and the projected volume of trade (and therefore the approximate prices), it is possible to manage the commodity cost and food price inflation in the domestic market, and make more efficient the use of America’s own acreage. Why grow millions of tons of corn or feed wheat if the Ukraine sows and grows it?

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Source: Sowell, Andrew R., Bryn Swearingen, and Claire Hutchins. Wheat Outlook: April 2022, WHS-22d, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, April 12, 2022.

Differences between the grain exports of Ukraine and Russia

The role of the Ukraine here is really difficult to overestimate. Today in publications about the global food crisis, the Ukraine and Russia are constantly placed side by side. They are spoken of as large producers with a large share of the export market of wheat, corn, vegetable oils, etc. Yes, both the Ukraine and Russia sell a lot of food to the foreign market. And yet they display fundamentally different models of agriculture and agricultural exports.

If we take grains, then Russia mainly sells wheat, sending about half of the crop for export. In 2021, Ukraine harvested almost 20 million tons of food wheat, of which only 4-5 million tons the Ukraine needs for its own needs. Of the 13.2 million tons of forage [animal fodder] wheat, it was planned to export almost 10 million tons. As for corn, the main export grain crop, the situation in 2020 is indicative: with a harvest of 30 million tons, 28 million were exported.

In 2021, Ukraine harvested a good harvest: 85-86 million tons of legumes, of which 30 million tons were food and fodder wheat, 40 million tons corn, 10 million tons barley. According to the customs data, as of March 1, 2022, the volume of exports amounted to 43 million tons (it is calculated up to the beginning of the new marketing year–July 1). That is, by the time of the start of the military operation in Ukraine, there should have been about 37 million tons of wheat, barley and corn; 5-6 million tons are needed for sowing, plus their own needs, plus in the current conditions, the government will certainly form some kind of reserve. Thus, even more than the 20 million tons, which Joe Biden said, have been suspended in Ukrainian storage.

UKRAINE GRAIN CROP PRODUCTION PROFILE, 2010-2020

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Source: USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service, annual report April 2020.

By the way, despite the closure of ports through which Ukraine shipped 5-5.5 million tons of grain every month, the exports did not stop. According to the statistics, in March-April the Ukraine was able to send 2.7 million tons of grain to the foreign market (mainly through Moldova and Romania). But there was no trade destination to compensate for more than 8 million tons of supplies which have dropped out of trade during this period.

Not only Ukraine

Now let’s add a few more factors here. Grain exports from Russia in the current marketing year (July 1, 2021–March 10, 2022) amounted to 28.1 million tons, which is 30% lower than last year’s figure. Since mid-March the export of grain and sugar from the Russian Federation has been limited until June 30 (allowed only under licenses within the quota). In general, since the beginning of the special military operation, 20 countries of the world have imposed certain restrictions on food exports. Another one could be India, where a ban on wheat exports is being discussed. Despite the fact that back in mid-March India intended to take advantage of the situation and draw customers from Russia and Ukraine.

This Kommersant publication notes that individual importers are also increasing the panic on the world grain market. Some of them directly refuse to cooperate with Russian suppliers; others are experiencing difficulties due to sanctions. As a result, everyone is looking for an alternative but that does not exist in the current conditions–and this thereby additionally accelerates prices.

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KEY: left red= the major country importers of Russian food products in $ million in 2021; right grey=the Ukraine. 469=supply in million tons of grain to the world market (FAO estimate); 820=million people short of their food requirement (FAO estimate). Source: https://www.kommersant.ru/

Finally, let’s not forget about the increase in the cost of grain production at all stages. The increase in the cost of fuel–from the farm tractor and combine harvester to the grain bulk carrier at sea–together with the jump in fertilizer prices due to the several-magnitude increase in the price of natural gas for fertilizer production.

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Source: https://blogs.worldbank.org/

So to sum up: Putin as the cause of food inflation in the United States and the world–for the purpose of official state declarations, of course this is good enough. But in fact, the root cause of this crisis was the United States itself: its sanctions, its desire to reduce Russia’s export earnings from the energy trade. And all this began long before the start of the hot events in Ukraine. Take the well-known Nord Stream–2: if its launch had not been torpedoed with the active participation of the United States, gas prices in Europe and the world today would be lower, and fertilizers would be cheaper.

They would be even cheaper if Russian ships could transport these fertilizers without facing a ban on entering EU ports. Not to mention the fact that the special military operation might not have happened if the Biden administration had not pumped Ukraine with weapons and political support.

According to Biden and his administration, the key to reducing food inflation is stored in 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain. That’s not so. The key is to realize a simple fact: the global economy does not work well with sanctions and the cutoff of individual countries from this economy.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/18/the-war ... -to-blame/

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Russian Ops in Ukraine: Advances in Donbas, Ukraine Surrenders at Azovstal
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2022



1. Russia continues to make slow and steady progress in Donbas, the primary area of Russia’s focus;
2. Additional Russian salients and encirclements take shape within the much largers Izyum, Lyman, Severodonetsk, Papasnya cauldron area;
3. Ukrainian “offensive” northeast of Kharkov appears to have been a costly photo-op and little more;
4. Ukrainian militants hiding in the Azovstal industrial complex begin to surrender dealing a mostly political blow to Ukraine;
5. Ukrainian militants had long since been out of the fight (since mid to late-April);
6. Pentagon claims most M777 howitzers are already on the front in Kharkov and Donbas;
7. US M777s have yet to make any discernible difference on the battlefield;
8. Pentagon admits Russia still has the majority of its combat power prepared against Ukraine available to it;

References:

US Department of Defense – Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing May 16, 2022: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcri

Guardian – Hundreds of Ukrainian troops evacuated from Azovstal steelworks after 82-day assault: https://www.theguardian.com/world/202

BBC – Mariupol: Hundreds of besieged Ukrainian soldiers evacuated: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe

BBC – Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict (2014): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe

Financial Times – ‘Don’t confuse patriotism and Nazism’: Ukraine’s Azov forces face scrutiny: https://www.ft.com/content/7191ec30-9

Institute for the Study of War – RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 16: https://understandingwar.org/backgrou

Ukrainian General Staff (Facebook) – Operational Update for May 17, 2022: https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... -azovstal/

United States Bioweapons Developments in Ukraine May Prove a Fatal Mistake
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 18, 2022
James ONeill

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What is now emerging into full view is the development of bio weapons in Ukraine by the Americans. This program has been in existence for a number of years, organised by the leadership of the Democratic Party who in turn benefited from company donations from the principal organisers of the program. These companies include Pfizer, Moderna, Merch and Gilead, all of whom have close connections with the Pentagon and all of whom are substantial donors to the Democratic Party.

What the Americans have been doing is testing new drugs in the Ukraine, all of this action being not only in secret, but also in violation of international safety standards. Evidence in support of these allegations has recently been presented by Igor Kirillov in his role as the chief of the Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force. The evidence presented by Kirillov demonstrates that using Ukraine not only provides opportunities for secrecy, but is also of lower cost and therefore provides further competitive advantages.

According to the evidence presented by Kirillov (New Eastern Outlook, 14 May 2022) the United States pharmaceutical companies worked together with the Pentagon “concealing illegal activities, conducting field and clinical trials, and providing the necessary biomaterial”

The purpose of the research was not only in providing military usage for the two technical activities, but also to conduct clinical trials on the use of the bio material. The research, according to Kirillov, gathered information on antibiotic resistance to certain diseases in different regions of the Ukraine, and also enabled the research to be carried out outside the control of the international community which has long-opposed research in this area.

What is also becoming clearer is that the ongoing United States bio weapons program being conducted in Ukraine was one of the principal reasons for the launch of the Russian offensive in February this year against Ukrainian forces gathered in the Donbass. It is clear that the Ukrainian forces were about to launch massive attacks on the Donbass, notwithstanding the protestations to the contrary of Ukraine’s president.

The lies and deceptions of the Ukrainians is a principal reason why the Russians have refused to engage in further talks with them. The parties had reached a level of agreement in the talks that were held in Istanbul earlier this year. Ukrainian agreement lasted only until the president returned to the Ukraine. He had obviously come under pressure from the Americans who are not interested in a peace deal. This was made very clear in statements by the United States defence secretary who expressed his wish to see the Russians broken.

The Americans also made it clear that regime change was a high priority for them, although it is difficult to see the logic of this. If Mr Putin is removed as Russia’s leader there is every likelihood that his successor would be even less tolerant of United States behaviour in the region. The Russians are acutely aware of what happened in the 1990s and have no desire to see any repeat of that period.

The Russians for their part, separate from the offensive launched in the Donbass, have demanded a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to present further evidence of the use of United States bio labs in Ukraine. This evidence will be presented by the Russians irrespective of any United States or British attempts to thwart it.

The Russian unmasking of the United States bio weapons research in Ukraine is unlikely to deter the Americans. This is obvious from the United States orchestrated anti-Russia moves that were introduced following the February 2022 involvement in the war by Russia. The orchestration of the Europeans in the anti-Russia stance just became harder with the Ukraine blocking the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Germany. This may prove to be a massive error of judgement by the Ukrainians. Europe is unable to survive without Russian gas which provides 40% of their needs, including both domestic heating and the running of their factories.

There is little doubt that the Ukrainian move was at the instigation of the Americans. It is difficult to understand the logic of the move. The reduction of Ukrainian gas will have dire effects upon the Europeans who are unlikely to appreciate the United States moves that are obviously to their detriment. The Europeans lack a viable alternative to Russian energy supplies and will be forced to negotiate with the Russians, notwithstanding the appallingly self-destructive proposals by the European Commission, led by the fanatically anti-Russian Ursula van der Leyen.

Ironically, one of the consequences of the Ukrainian move may be further negotiations on the opening of Nord Stream 2, currently in a frozen state thanks to German intransigence. It may be too late. The Russians are obviously tired of European gamesmanship and are making major moves to send the gas Eastwood to the welcoming arms among others of China and India.

It is a classic case of European nations shooting themselves in the foot. Their refineries are designed to treat Russian gas. Even if there were alternative sources of supply, which there are not, their ability to process those supplies are severely limited. The Europeans have only themselves to blame. The reality is finally penetrating the brains of some European national leaders and an increasing number are refusing to abide by the dictates of Brussels.

The war in Ukraine is also not going well for the Ukrainians, notwithstanding the desperate attempts by the Western media to portray tactical Russian retreats as a “defeat”. Russia’s exposure of the United States – Ukraine attempts to introduce bio weapons is also proving a major tactical error. The Europeans are well aware that their proximity equally puts them at grave risk of being contaminated.

The United States attempt to introduce bio weapons to the Donbass is a saga that still has some way to play. It may well prove to be their greatest mistake.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... l-mistake/

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NY Times Blasted For Writing Ukrainian Fighters "Evacuated", Didn't Surrender At Azovstal
BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2022 - 10:16 AM

The New York Times is coming under heavy criticism for announcing the end of the lengthy Russian siege of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol with the below tweet and headline saying Ukraine ended its "combat mission" in Mariupol on Monday. Objectively... they were "evacuated" to Russian-controlled territory, by Russian forces, and the wounded taken to a Russian-controlled hospital.


The "paper of record" managed to completely avoid the reality that some 300 Azov militants surrendered - instead opting to suggest that somehow Ukraine's forces decided to wind down their "combat mission". The headline also emphasized they were "being evacuated".


But then awkwardly, the very first sentence of the Monday Times report indicated after they laid down their arms, the fighters were taken into Russian custody and transferred to pro-Kremlin territory (specifically to Novoazovsk - in the Donestsk People's Republic). So again, they were "evacuated" by their Russian enemies who've captured them.

"Hundreds of Ukrainian fighters were taken by bus to Russian controlled territory," the NYT report said. "Ukraine's president said the combat mission in the city was over, capping some of the longest, fiercest resistance."


By any objective observer's assessment, the surrounded Ukrainians - holed up in the cavernous facility for two months with nowhere to exit - finally surrendered Monday. And yet the "paper of record" along with a slew of other mainstream media presented that somehow it was a Ukrainian "mission accomplished":

"Mariupol’s defenders have fully accomplished all missions assigned by the command," said Hanna Maliar, adding that it was impossible to "unblock Azovstal by military means."


Some social media commenters noted that the NY Times has turned Orwellian newspeak into an art form.


Many others have also long pointed out that Azov battalion's long established unabashed neo-Nazi ideology, which has for years been exhaustively documented, has all but disappeared from acknowledgement in mainstream media.


And journalist Michael Tracy warns of the dangerous pattern concerning such obvious narrative bias when major outlets purport to "present the facts" regarding a complex, rapidly developing war where few correspondents are actually on the ground in battle zones...

"This is why you have to assume that pretty much everything coming out of Western media about the tactical progression of the war is a distortion. They’re operating within an impenetrable superstructure of ideology that prevents the NYT from labeling this a surrender."

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... r-azovstal

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Despite Ukrainian Claims, Russian Navy Support Ship Appears Unharmed
The Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet has released photos appearing to show Vsevolod Bobrov safe at the pier in Sebastopol (Russian Navy / Telegram)
PUBLISHED MAY 15, 2022 8:52 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE


U.S.-backed media outlet Radio Svoboda has confirmed reports that the Russian naval auxiliary Vsevolod Bobrov has returned safely to Sebastopol, without apparent signs of damage.

Last Thursday, two Ukrainian officials claimed that the Bobrov had been hit by a Ukrainian attack in the Black Sea and had caught fire, without providing video or photographic evidence. "As a result of the actions of our Navy, the Vsevolod Bobrov logistics ship, one of the newest in the Russian fleet, set on fire. They say she is limping toward Sevastopol," claimed Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesman for the Odesa Regional Military Administration. Bratchuk acknowledged that the strike still had to be confirmed.

Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, made a similar claim in a social media post Thursday.

However, photos recently uploaded by the Telegram channel of the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet appeared to show the Bobrov from the starboard side, moored securely in Sebastopol and without visible damage. The photos were accompanied by a claim that the Bobrov is intact.


Separately, a timelapse security-camera video uploaded by a Russian-speaking user on May 14 (below) appears to show the Bobrov transiting to her berth. Both sides of the vessel are depicted in the video and there are no apparent signs of damage.

In addition, a local correspondent in Crimea has confirmed to U.S.-backed Radio Svoboda that the Bobrov has indeed returned to port.



Ukrainian officials also recently claimed a successful hit on the Russian frigate Admiral Makarov, the most advanced remaining surface combatant in Russia's Black Sea Fleet. The report has not been confirmed, and photos appearing to show the Makarov in Sebastopol unharmed have circulated online.

In the early days of the invasion, the Ukrainian military also claimed to have hit a Russian patrol ship, the Vasily Bykov, using an unguided rocket artillery system. The strike has not been confirmed, and video footage of the Bykov returning to Sebastopol unharmed has circulated on Russian-language social media.

There may be legitimate grounds to question some of Ukraine's naval-action claims, but the Russian Navy has also suffered serious confirmed losses during the conflict, including the dramatic destruction of an Alligator-class landing ship at Berdyansk (claimed by Ukraine) and the loss of the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet (claimed by Ukraine and confirmed by the United States). The Ukrainian military has also released video footage of aerial attacks on several Raptor-class patrol boats and one smaller landing craft at Snake Island, a strategic outpost in the Black Sea.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/arti ... s-unharmed
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Wed May 18, 2022 4:53 pm

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Fact-Finding Trip to Donbass, Part 1: A Front-Line Shelter in Rubizhneb]
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2022
John Parker

I had just left the Lugansk People’s Republic, making my way to an interview in Moscow, when I saw a May 11 CNN story claiming Russia had targeted civilians in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. This was after the bombing of a hotel and shopping center there. When such structures are bombed, one assumes that they were filled with civilians.

Odessa was also the location of a massacre that took place after the 2014 coup, funded for years prior by the United States. The fascist element that was part of that coup burned the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, killing progressives, socialists, trade unionists and anti-fascists.

My friend and guide during the Lugansk portion of my trip was Alexey Albu, who was inside that burning building and one of the few who escaped. At the time, Alexey was an elected member of the Odessa Regional Council. He was a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and at that time the local coordinator of Union Borotba (Struggle). He and others were working on solving the contradictions created in society by the coup in a peaceful way through the still-existing legislative processes.

However, by May 2, time had run out. The fascists who praised Nazi collaborators and pushed ultra-nationalism against the Russian population turned even more violent against any opposition. Political repression and jailings were on the rise by the coup government, and six days after the massacre, Alexey found out he was to be arrested. He and his family then fled to Crimea where they felt safe. He later went to Lugansk to continue his political work, but had to separate from his family for four years to do so.

As he is from Odessa and still has many connections there, I wanted to ask Alexey about the bombing on May 11. Alexey responded: “Yes, Russia attacked the luxury hotel Grande Pettine, because there were foreign mercenaries operating there. And the big shopping and entertainment center Riviera was attacked because they made it into a warehouse for NATO weapons.

“It’s also important to know that Russia used high-precision missiles, so as not to cause harm to civilians. And it is very interesting that CNN did not pay attention when more than 40 civilians were drowned in blood and burned in fire in the Trade Union building on the second of May 2014,” said Alexey.

Challenging U.S. narrative

The Russian intervention in Ukraine began Feb. 24 at the request of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR). About a month later, unlikely sources – analysts and advisers working for the Pentagon — became whistleblowers in an exposé published by Newsweek, “Putin’s Holding Back.”

The authors, many of whom were military officers, had to remain anonymous in order to be as truthful as possible, since they were still working as advisers. The article challenged the official narrative that Russian President Putin was targeting civilians.

Regarding a similar earlier accusation by the corporate media about a Russian bombing, said to have targeted “peacekeeping facilities” (as if belonging to the U.N.), one of the analysts responded: “And the so-called peacekeeper training ground [in Yavoriv] was hit because it was the place where the ‘international legion’ [Ukrainian military unit, training international mercenaries] was to have trained.”

This quote from one of the advisers sums up their motivation for becoming whistleblowers: “I’m frustrated by the current narrative — that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn’t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster hits or the war spreads to the rest of Europe,” said this Pentagon adviser and U.S. Air Force officer.

It’s interesting that CNN reported that only one person died and five were hospitalized in the May 11 bombing. In a shopping center and hotel filled with people, as they implied, many more likely would have died.

One of the ways to determine whether someone is telling the truth when you have no access to events far away, under media whiteouts and the jailing of journalists, is to either catch the liar at other lies to bring their credibility into question, or find a way to get access to the location of the events.

We did both.

Fact-finding mission

On April 27, I began a trip to the LPR in the Donbass region as part of a fact-finding mission organized by Struggle-La Lucha newspaper in the U.S. to gather eyewitness observations and testimony of Lugansk residents, some of whom I found were living in shelters near the front lines of the war. The loud blasts are a constant reminder for them of the artillery of the Ukrainian military, targeting apartment buildings nearby and hopefully continuing to miss them.

This trip would not have been possible if not for our friends from Borotba, who we’ve been collaborating with for eight years. Borotba was founded in 2011 and in the process of becoming a political party, but the Maidan coup interrupted that process.

While passing through Russia on the way to Lugansk, I spoke to progressive, socialist and communist organizations at the Moscow May Day celebrations and a commemoration of the Odessa Massacre on May 2.

I also interviewed visiting journalists from Belarus who were covering the May 9 Victory Day parade, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany and honoring the 27 million Soviet people who died fighting fascism – a fact which everyone should consider as context in today’s vilification of Russia. Soviet Russia, along with the rest of the USSR, was essential in order to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.

Although Russia is no longer socialist, that doesn’t change the fact that the parents and grandparents of most of the people in the country sacrificed for that victory. That deep understanding of the dangers of fascism did not go away with the counterrevolution. Nor did the targeting of this region by U.S. imperialism end.

The U.S. government says that the current Russian intervention was an uninvited “invasion,” that the justification of self-defense and concern over the growth of fascist forces in the Ukrainian government and military is just a smokescreen designed to facilitate the takeover of that country. They claim the Russian military is targeting civilians and the Ukrainian military is not.

The Biden administration also says that it would be better for all of the people in the region if the Russian military withdrew its troops, with no acknowledgment of the eight-year Ukrainian war against the people of the Donbass region.

Surprisingly, a significant portion of organizations here in the U.S. that consider themselves anti-imperialist and socialist agree with the assessment pushed by the U.S. State Department.

The celebration of victory against the Nazis, by the way, is illegal in Ukraine. President Zelensky will not allow it. I know, the irony is unbelievable, but the fact remains – celebrating Victory Day in Kiev and anywhere controlled by the Ukrainian regime is illegal.

In spite of Zelensky’s recent announcement giving lip service to the day for cover, the fact is that there was a curfew in place that day to discourage it. While in Lugansk, I asked someone what would happen if I were to have a sign celebrating Victory Day in Kiev. The answer was that in five minutes I would no longer be carrying that sign, and probably would be taken to prison.

But perhaps that’s just a quirky policy meant for public safety? Let’s dig deeper.


Rubizhne: Life on the front line

“Don’t step there!” a soldier from the LPR warned me as my foot was about to step into the grass, away from the established path of the soldier walking in front of me.

This trek began in the morning, hitching a ride with the Lugansk People’s Militia to an area in the north of Lugansk, close to the front line of war against the Ukrainian military, where the LPR with the help of Russian soldiers recently liberated a residential area in Rubizhne. This city in Lugansk was previously occupied by Kiev forces.

Here there was a shelter in an abandoned apartment complex. Unexploded armaments and even mines from the Ukrainian military littered the area, the soldier said.

Of course, I obliged and changed my path. I also immediately understood why no children were running around the grounds or using the playground. Instead, they mostly seemed to stay in the shelter or sometimes came out to play soccer in a small patch of land directly in front of it, under the watchful eye of a young LPR soldier.

At that moment my parental feelings kicked in and all I wanted to do was play with them, comfort them. But I had work to do.

This was once a lively apartment complex with a school and a beautiful playground. But now it looked like the backdrop to a “Walking Dead” episode.

Borotba’s Alexey Albu accompanied me and provided translation. The video clips linked here include some of these conversations and contain more footage from this portion of the trip.

We spoke with the woman in charge of the shelter, Larisa. She reluctantly took the position of caretaker for the shelter, voted in by the residents who trusted her. It definitely seemed like the right choice, because she keeps it in the best order that can be expected in these times. With all the work and responsibilities, she still manages to share compassion with those in need of comfort – war makes apparent the devils, but also the angels.

Basic foodstuffs and supplies – grains, water, and diapers – were neatly stored away. Getting food is especially a challenge for people who have nowhere else to go. Some residents who had alternative dwellings and were not disabled left Rubizhne, but the area is still not safe for travel. Many stayed to remain under the protection of the soldiers of both the LPR and Russia.

Russia provides humanitarian aid

Humanitarian aid arrives frequently in Rubizhne, delivered by Russian soldiers. (In the short time I was at the border entering Lugansk from Russia, I saw 10 large trucks full of humanitarian aid entering the LPR.)

While we were at the shelter, two shipments of aid were delivered in a van, which we helped bring into the shelter. The box I was carrying almost broke open, with utensils and napkins barely making it to the bench where other items, especially diapers, were being placed.

Larisa explained that fuel, which is now hard to come by, had been used as their primary source for electricity, refrigeration and water (running the generator and water pump). So the aid is essential in order that people do not starve or die of thirst.

“Because of the war, they had problems getting assistance to the shelter,” Alexey explained. The trade unions in charge of delivering food in Lugansk were not able to, due to the area becoming a war zone, meaning they had to hand over that task to the military.

Despite the danger and the fact that the Ukrainian military still controlled the area, the Russian and Lugansk soldiers, at great risk to their own lives, were able to get some aid to the residents of the shelter even before the area was liberated.

Recalling this moment, and the effect it had on her own child, brought Larisa to tears. She needed a minute to recover.

“Ukrainian soldiers did not help at all,” she said when she returned. “That is unacceptable. No one from the Ukrainian side asked us, visited us. I had supported Ukraine, but after I saw how they left these people I no longer supported them.”

Accompanying us was a journalist from an Italian media organization. He asked why people stayed here at the shelter, and if they were allowed to leave. Although Larisa made the facility as comfortable as possible, the conditions were hard and the constant thunder of bombings was heard during our entire time there.

Alexey explained that the roads here, although dangerous now, were even more dangerous during Ukrainian control, so leaving was not a safe option then. It became more possible after the area came under Russian control. “We tell people it is not safe, but if they want to leave, of course they can. No one will stop them,” explained Larisa.

Another issue Larisa wanted to address was the propaganda that has spread throughout Ukrainian society saying that the Russian soldiers rape and kill the people living in areas they’ve taken control of. She wanted to make it clear that this was not true.

“No, everything was very good, relations were very good and polite with the Russian soldiers. Even when we ask for some special foods like coffee or tea, they give it to us.”

Soldiers and civilians

To get a feel for the character of the relationship between the residents and the Russian and LPR soldiers, here’s one encounter that stuck with me. When we visited the school in the complex, which is now a shelter, I saw a woman reprimanding one of the soldiers for having the humanitarian aid truck remain too long at the entrance.

Alexey said she was complaining that if they had to evacuate the school quickly, the truck would be in the way. The soldier politely nodded and agreed to move it soon, as if she was in charge. From her tone it seemed like that to me, and it definitely didn’t reflect a repressive relationship – not for the residents anyway.

Both in the village of Krymskoye and here in Rubizhne, folks talked about living underground, in their basements, to avoid being hit by bombs. In this shelter we walked down the stairs into a dark hall where we had to use the light from our phones to navigate, leading to the basement. Everyone slept with cots on the concrete floors, with just a few feet of space between each other, to have some semblance of privacy and illusion of personal space. Paint chips were peeling from the green concrete walls. Most of those spaces contained many members of a family.

We interviewed a woman who looked like she was in her 80s. She was alone in her space. Unlike the majority in Lugansk, she spoke Ukrainian. She was bundled in layers of clothing, although the weather was nice around noon, in the 60s°F (18°C). At night temperatures drop into the 40s°F (7°C) this time of year. Given the situation with no heat and her age, the layers made sense.

With a handkerchief hiding her tears, she spoke to us. “I have no relatives, I have no family,” she cried. Right away the caregiver of the shelter answered her: “Don’t worry, don’t worry – we are your family now.” Alexey, knowing Ukrainian, was able to translate her words for us.

“Soldiers shot into my home and burned all my things. Everything that I own is right here,” she said, pointing to the bed she sleeps on. I could see nothing but blankets and pillows. Her age and situation makes leaving an even worse prospect.

After we were done, I tried to give her a hug, forgetting that we were required to wear bulletproof flak jackets and helmets the entire day. I accidentally head-bumped this 80-year-old woman. I panicked, thinking I’d hurt her, but it didn’t affect her a bit. Our compassion and willingness to listen to her story, however, did affect her.

If only the compassion for the images, sometimes real, sometimes manufactured, used to promote support for U.S. war escalation against people in Lugansk and Donetsk, would extend to actual people like this woman, with the added compassion to at least listen to their stories!

Can’t eat Biden’s weapons

We then heard from a family of three – a mother, son and grandson. The son and grandson were both adults. The mother and son were disabled and therefore unable to find any employment in this environment, let alone travel.

They, like many others, were dependent on the humanitarian aid given by Russia. They can’t eat Biden’s high-tech weaponry sent to the Kiev regime. So they remain here.

They shared a similar story of having to leave a building that was being shot at. Although they said they couldn’t say for sure who was shooting at them, they were sure the shells were coming from where the Ukrainian military brigades were stationed.

I then asked them if they felt safe here in the shelter. They all said they did and that they didn’t know what they would do without this place.

I also wanted to know how they felt about the Russian soldiers being at the shelter. Both Russian and Lugansk People’s Republic troops are present in this location, with the greatest number being LPR soldiers. But I wanted to specifically know how they felt about the Russian troops. So I asked them: “If the Russian soldiers left this shelter, how would that affect you?” The son and grandson answered immediately that they would not feel safe, and the mother nodded agreement.

The last interview we did in that basement was more detailed, regarding the circumstances of a family of four (five if you count the big gray cat held protectively by the teenage daughter).

The grandmother spoke to us about how they came to be there. She said that although this family was Russian, their neighbors were Ukrainian. When the Ukrainian soldiers came to their area, they told those soldiers that they didn’t have to worry because there were no Russian troops there. About a half hour later, the Ukrainian tanks came and began shooting into the houses.

“The dogs were very frightened and my neighbors were running out of burning houses,” said the grandmother. “They were shouting, ‘What are you doing, why are you shooting at us? We are Ukrainians.’ When they asked that, the soldiers just laughed and turned their faces away from the burning houses.”

She said: “I had to see who exactly was doing this, so I went outside and found some soldiers standing around and asked them, ‘Why are you shooting at my neighbors’ houses?’ No one answered me. But about 20 minutes later another Ukrainian tank came and shot directly into my house.”

When asked by another journalist how she felt about this situation, she recalled the hardship for her children and grandchildren after the 2014 coup. “They [the Ukrainian government] did not like that we used our native language [Russian]. So all schools, all kindergartens, changed their program to Ukrainian. But they are children who learned their language in homes that speak Russian. So we continued to teach our children in Russian.

“My granddaughter and great-granddaughter both pleaded with me: ‘Please, I want to change schools because I don’t understand.’ But we couldn’t do anything about it. And with exact sciences like mathematics they had bigger difficulties because they couldn’t understand what was written.

“This shows how the Nazis feel about us and why they killed us and harmed our homes and organized shellings against us – they don’t consider us as their people.”

The Italian journalist asked: “So they were not locals, these were western Ukrainians?”

“Yes,” she replied, “I think they were western Ukrainians.”

This is just a small reflection of the Ukrainian nationalist tendencies that grew out of the 2014 regime change and inspired the Donbass regions of Lugansk and Donetsk to become independent republics. Ukraine, instead of honoring Victory Day on May 9, now honors Nazi collaborators — like the notorious Stephan Bandera — with statues and street names.

Under Ukrainian bombs

It happened while we were there! Another apartment nearby got bombed by Ukrainian artillery while we were interviewing the families down in the shelter basement.

Another irony hit me (like the bomb attempted to do): my tax dollars were a portion of the billions spent on weapons like the one that just targeted the area where I and the people I was interviewing stood. Thanks for that, President Biden and all the Republicans and Democrats on board with escalating this proxy war against Russia.

Fortunately, that apartment building close to us was already abandoned, unlike the demolished homes of the 350 people who were using and had used this shelter.

The bombing is so constant that it almost fades away in the background. But reminders like the shelling of the nearby apartment bring them, and the fear, back up to the conscious mind.

The constant threat of bombings also makes cooking a challenge. Right outside the shelter are two areas for cooking. Since there are no gas stoves due to lack of fuel, the cooking has to be done outside in self-made fire pits – and as illustrated by the recent bombing, it has to be done fast so as not to be outside too long.

“We cook bread and a very tasty dessert specific to Lugansk here,” said Larisa. I asked her if she and the others who cook outside get worried about their safety. “Yes, of course we are afraid, but we need to cook because everyone needs to eat something.”

Today we find ourselves once again being sold a war by the U.S. government, this time against Russia. And – as in all U.S. imperialist wars – the corporate media follow along, dutifully reporting and publishing every video and “news story” they become aware of, with sources unknown at best and dubious at worst.

These hidden parts are the other side of that story, the more truthful side.

Next: School’s out for now; take a tour of the after-effects of two opposing camps separated by ideology; and more voices from Lugansk, in the once Ukrainian-occupied village of Krymskoye.

John Parker in the Lugansk People’s Republic. He’s pointing to explosions visible in the distance. SLL photo

John Parker is the Socialist Unity Party candidate for U.S. Senate in California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... -rubizhne/

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Cutting Off Russian Gas Would Be "Catastrophic", German Industry President Warns
BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2022 - 04:15 AM

As we detailed yesterday, almost two months after Europe rushed to declare it would impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine with no regard for how such sanctions would boomerang and cripple its own economies, the old continent which was and still remains hostage to Russian energy exports, is finally grasping the underlying math which was all too clear to Vladimir Putin long ago.

The European Union’s executive arm said yesterday that the currency bloc’s economy would expand about 0.2% this year, with inflation topping 9%, as governments struggled to replace the imports.



This severe stagflationary scenario is highlighted by Siegfried Russwurm, president of the Germany’s biggest industry association BDI, warning that the cessation of Russian gas deliveries would have a dire effect on the German economy.

“The consequences of cutting off Russian gas supplies would be catastrophic,” he told tabloid Bild am Sonntag in an interview published at the weekend.

Russwurm added that cutting off Russian gas would deprive businesses of fuel in Germany, forcing businesses to close production lines.

“In this situation many companies will be completely cut off gas supplies. In many cases, affected businesses will be forced to stop production, some businesses may never be able to start again," he warned.

Europe's "sudden realization" of just how destructive pushing through with full-blown sanctions will be, somewhat similar to that of Elon Musk who "learned" about the millions in Twitter spam accounts only after bidding $44 billion - is why over the weekend, Bloomberg reported that the European Union is set to fully water down its so-called sanctions and to offer gas importers a solution to avoid a breach of sanctions when buying fuel from Russia while satisfying President Vladimir Putin’s demands over payment in rubles.

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All of which helps explain why the Ruble is trading at a five-year high against the euro...

And in typical European fashion, the messaging is full of confusion, with guidance for companies is one thing while the propaganda disseminated for public consumption totally different, all the while the biggest winner remains Putin and Russia which yesterday reported a new record high in its current account.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... dent-warns

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NATO Pledges Open-Ended Military Support for Ukraine
US plans to pass the new $40 billion aid package for Ukraine is part of a plan to provide long term assistance
by Dave DeCamp Posted onMay 16, 2022

On Sunday, NATO pledged open-ended military support for Ukraine as member states continue to say they are prepared to back Kyiv in its war against Russia for the long term.

At a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the alliance would give Ukraine military assistance “for as long as Ukraine needs this support for the self-defense of its country.”

While there have been reports of Ukrainian counterattacks, Russia has been making significant territorial gains in the east, but NATO leaders still insist Ukraine can win. “Ukraine can win this war. Ukrainians are bravely defending their homeland,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

Leading the Western charge to arm Ukraine is the US, which is working on an almost $40 billion aid package for Ukraine that includes about $24 billion in military assistance. The package passed through the House but was blocked in the Senate by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), although a vote could be held as soon as Wednesday.

Biden initially asked Congress for $33 billion, but congressional Democrats increased the already massive number. When asking Congress for the new aid package that is intended to last through the 2022 fiscal year, Biden said it “begins the transition to longer-term security assistance.”

Biden administration officials have made clear that the US policy in Ukraine is not only to help Kyiv fight but also to hurt Moscow. At the end of April, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said one of the US goals in Ukraine is to see a “weakened” Russia.

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/05/16/nat ... r-ukraine/

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PRAVY SEKTOR EXECUTED PEOPLE AT MARIUPOL AIRPORT
18/05/2022

We are in Mariupol and on this sunny day we were at the opening of a school in the city. But in this school, accompanied by their children, there were also many parents. We soon started talking to them when Dimtri introduced himself to us. This sturdy 52-year-old man tells us that he was born in the town and has always worked as a taxi driver. He knows his hometown like the back of his hand and has witnessed all the events from the Maidan to the battle and siege of Mariupol. Soon I ask about the SBU repressions, the massacre in the streets of the city (9 May 2014), and the man then develops a testimony that immediately connects me to my 2015-2016 research. The Pravy Sektor was shooting people at the city’s airport in the summer of 2014, he tells me. I had heard about it, but I had never come across a witness. Once again I was going to have to face a terrible reality, that of the murderous Ukraine.

“I am a child of the country, I am from here and when the Maidan started in the capital, I did not understand at first what was going to happen. I thought, like everyone else, that this revolution would be another one of the ones we had experienced in Kiev. I thought that this mess would remain confined to Kiev and the West, but this was not the case. In the city, we were all opposed to what Maidan was proposing, and we saw the worrying rise of extremist groups. When it got out of hand, the city was in total turmoil. I didn’t see the massacre on 9 May in the city, but I was working, there was shooting and gunfire. People were shot by the police and everyone was angry. When on 11 May a referendum was held in the city for joining the Donetsk Republic, you would have seen that!!! Thousands of people rushed to the polling stations, there were queues hundreds of meters long. Everyone wanted to join the DPR, we were from Donbass, we were Russians and the enthusiasm was great. It was unimaginable, everyone was optimistic and we really believed that we could break away from Ukraine, it seemed so obvious. Not a single voice spoke in favor of Ukraine and the regime in Kiev that was completely adrift. But it didn’t happen the way we wanted it to».

I pause for a moment, my concentration at a maximum, trying to memorize everything he says and understand every detail. He then continues without stopping and soon mentions the killings and the arrival of the Azov and Dnieper-1 battalions in the town:

“When they arrived the ultra-violent repression started. I met with friends so that we could defend ourselves, but we hardly had any weapons. Twice I went to see an old friend who was trying to organise the defense, but he soon told me that we shouldn’t go back to his house, that everything was lost. We really thought that it would happen like in Donetsk, or even better like in Crimea. You tell me that officially there were about a hundred dead and probably a few hundred, I don’t know, how do I know? What I do know is that another friend, who was also a taxi driver and in favor of the insurrection, was soon arrested during a check by a Pravy Sektor unit. As we found out later, they took the ‘terrorists’ to the airport and there the Pravy Sektor soldiers, police and fascist units shot the insurgents. Oleg, that’s his name, died like that, shot by these Nazis, without any further trial. They killed many of them, and the others who were judged less guilty, were loaded onto planes and sent to Ukraine, probably to Kiev. We also never heard of them again. We wanted to defend ourselves, but with what weapons? Later I myself escaped death, during a road check I realized that I was in danger, that they could take me away. So, having reacted immediately, I was able to change direction and disappear. ».

The man again confirms the shootings at the airport, but when asked about mass graves and secret prisons, he says he knew nothing about it. As a father and grandfather, his duty was to take care of his family and as he says : « Then we waited for Russia. You can’t imagine how long we waited for it. At first I preferred to send my family to Crimea, where we have relatives. The fascists from Pravy Sektor and Azov started to arrest people all over the city. They had made lists with the help of locals, of the wealthiest people. All those who had money were worried. They were taken to police stations where they were beaten and interrogated for imaginary crimes. And then very quickly they demanded a ransom. All the people who were victims told me that they paid, because it was either that or death. So in order to live, they preferred to pay, those who didn’t were murdered. What happened to the money? I don’t know if it went directly into their pockets, but probably a lot of it did. There was hope, especially in the beginning, that the DPR soldiers would finally be able to retake the city. We prayed in our hearts, especially during the first victories in the winter of 2014-2015, and then we realized that we would have to wait again. As a taxi driver, you know I talk to a lot of people, and you can imagine that in 8 years I have also driven soldiers. There were all kinds of people, but not from our country, that’s for sure. In the regular army, they were often poor guys. They weren’t particularly pro-Ukraine, nor were they fascists. So I said to them, what the hell are you doing here? Go back home, this is my town, we want to live in peace. They replied that they had to understand that the army at the moment offered good opportunities and good wages. Others were against the war, in which case I would tell them to shoot their officers and go to the other side… When there was a fascist in my car, then of course I kept quiet, anyway these guys were perfectly identifiable, with their badges and especially their aggressiveness and the way they moved”.

I didn’t have enough time to ask him to tell me about the whole 8 years of occupation, but he told me again that it had been a long wait: «When Russia intervened, we were so happy! We would have opened the champagne for a moment! But we still had to eat our words. At the beginning of the attack, I would have liked to send my family to the rear, as was the case in 2014. I couldn’t because the Ukrainian army prevented us and the civilians of the whole city from fleeing. I understand, I am a determined man, in the prime of my life, I also served in the army, I was not afraid for myself, but for my people. We understood that they were trying to use us as shields, and we saw them systematically stationed in the schools. For them it was practical, a bit like a barracks. In this school where we are, they only stayed for three days, you see that around there are only residential areas, I leave it to you to conclude what they were doing. I live in a big house that I had built a long time ago. I always wanted my whole family to live with me. So, as I have a well, I was able to buy a generator, I did everything to protect my family. Two shells damaged my house, but it’s nothing, I will repair the damage. And then when the DPR guys arrived, they were very suspicious! We were happy, they checked our papers and then they understood that there was no danger. That was it, we were finally free ! ».

Thus ends the discussion with Dimitri, but it encourages me to return to Marioupol to discover other testimonies that can be added to all those I made in 2015-2016. It is to be hoped that finally, the criminals and those responsible for what was done to this city, will one day appear before a court of law in the face of mankind. Russia has already passed a law so that this will be done in the face of the world. On that day, the truth will be hard to hide in the West.

Laurent Brayard for Donbass Insider

https://www.donbass-insider.com/2022/05 ... l-airport/

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How Europe Was Pushed Towards Economic Suicide
With the active help from Europe's 'leadership' the U.S. is succeeding in ruining Europe.

As Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, wrote in early February, before Russia's intervention in Ukraine:

America no longer has the monetary power and seemingly chronic trade and balance-of-payments surplus that enabled it to draw up the world’s trade and investment rules in 1944-45. The threat to U.S. dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.
The most glaring example is the U.S. drive to block Germany from authorizing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to obtain Russian gas for the coming cold weather. Angela Merkel agreed with Donald Trump to spend $1 billion building a new LNG port to become more dependent on highly priced U.S. LNG. (The plan was cancelled after the U.S. and German elections changed both leaders.) But Germany has no other way of heating many of its houses and office buildings (or supplying its fertilizer companies) than with Russian gas.

The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor.


In mid February OSCE observer noted that the artillery bombardment of Donbas by the Ukrainians increased from a handful to over 2,000 explosions per day. Russia reacted to these attack preparations by recognizing the Donbas republics, signing defense agreements with them and by finally coming to their help.

Shortly after the launch of the Russian military operation Professor Hudson further developed his earlier thoughts:

The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maiden regime aims at forcing a showdown. It comes in response to the fear by U.S. interests that they are losing their economic and political hold on their NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites as these countries have seen their major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia.
...
As President Biden explained, the current military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers.
...
[T]he most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock-market gains for U.S. companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.


In early April Professor Hudson took another look at the situation:

It is now clear that the New Cold War was planned over a year ago, with serious strategy associated with America’s perceived to block Nord Stream 2 as part of its aim of barring Western Europe (“NATO”) from seeking prosperity by mutual trade and investment with China and Russia.
...
So the Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk regions were shelled with increasing intensity, and when Russia still refrained from responding, plans reportedly were drawn up for a great showdown last February – a heavy Western Ukrainian attack organized by U.S. advisors and armed by NATO.
...
European trade and investment prior to the War to Create Sanctions had promised a rising mutual prosperity among Germany, France and other NATO countries vis-à-vis Russia and China. Russia was providing abundant energy at a competitive price, and this energy supply was to make a quantum leap with Nord Stream 2. Europe was to earn the foreign exchange to pay for this rising import trade by a combination of exporting more industrial manufactures to Russia and capital investment in rebuilding the Russian economy, e.g. by German auto companies, aircraft and financial investment. This bilateral trade and investment is now stopped – for many, many years, given NATO’s confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves kept in euros and British sterling.


The European response to the U.S. proxy war against Russia was based on media driven hysteric moralizing or maybe moralizing hysteria. It was and is neither rational nor realistic.

The European 'leadership' decided that nothing but the economic suicide of Europe was sufficient to show Russia that Brussels was seriously miffed. Dimwit national governments, including the German one, followed that program. Should they stay on their course the result will be a complete de-industrialization of western Europe.

In the words of one serious observer:

Today, we see that for purely political reasons, driven by their own ambitions, and under pressure from their US overlord, the European countries are imposing more sanctions on the oil and gas markets which will lead to more inflation. Instead of admitting their mistakes, they are looking for a guilty party elsewhere.
...
One gets the impression that Western politicians and economists simply forget basic economic laws or just choose to ignore them.
...
[S]aying no to Russian energy means that Europe will systemically and for the long term become the world’s most costly region for energy resources. Yes, prices will rise, and resources will go to counter these price hikes, but this will not change the situation significantly. Some analysts are saying that it will seriously or even irrevocably undermine the competitiveness of a significant portion of European industry, which is already losing ground to companies from other parts of the world. Now, these processes will certainly pick up pace. Clearly, the opportunities for economic activity, with its improvements, will leave Europe for other regions, as will Russia’s energy resources.

This economic auto-da-fe… suicide is, of course, the internal affair of the European countries.
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Now our partners’ erratic actions – this is what they are – have resulted in a de facto growth in revenue in the Russian oil-and-gas sector in addition to the damage to the European economy.
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Understanding what steps the West will take in the near future, we must reach conclusions in advance and be proactive, turning the thoughtless chaotic steps of some of our partners to our advantage for the benefit of our country. Naturally, we should not hope for their endless mistakes. We should simply, practically proceed from current realities, as I said.

Vladimir Putin, Meeting on oil industry development, May 17 2020, Kremlin, Moscow


Posted by b on May 18, 2022 at 14:01 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/h ... .html#more

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Sleepwalking Into Fascism: Why CIA/NATO’s Foreign Policy Has Been Consistent for the Past 77 years
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2022

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The West should have the respect to admit the truth in its complicity to much of the world’s woes during this Cold War period.

[This is the final installment to a five-part series. Refer here for Part 1, Part 2 goes over how Ukrainian Nationalism was bought and paid for by the CIA post-WWII, Part 3 goes over NATO’s Operation Gladio, Part 4 goes over the role of the CIA and NATO in the global heroin trade, Miami as the new center of International Fascism and how President Kennedy’s murder is connected to this.]


Thus far in this series we have seen a picture that has painted NATO, the CIA, and fascists including outright Nazis all working for the same apparatus and essentially the same goal: to overthrow democratically elected leaders and replace them with dictators and fascist right-wing governments. In Part 4, it was discussed how the profits of the narcotics trade are used in turn to fund right-wing terrorist activity globally, using the model of NATO’s Gladio. The “great heroin coup” by the CIA and co. was about having complete control over the profits of heroin for this very purpose.

It is here that we will resume our story.

Snow is Now Black

Bertrand Russell discussed in his book “The Impact of Science on Society” (1952) that the subject which “will be of most importance politically is mass psychology,” that is, the lens in which an individual views “reality” and “truth.” Russell is very clear, such “convictions” are not generated by the individual themselves but rather are to be shaped by the State.

Of course, individuals are not encouraged to think about an absolute truth or reality, rather they are encouraged to think on a much smaller scale, on individual “facts,” for this is much easier to control and shape and also limits “problematic” thinking such as the ponderance on cause and effect.

Russell, in his “Impact of Science on Society,” goes on to talk about how one could program a society to think snow is black rather than white:

“First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

This is of course a program for the most ambitious “reframing” of “reality,” however, as we see today, we do not need to start before the age of ten for other sorts of “reframing,” and nowhere does this seem to be the most successful and effective with any age group than the West’s “foreign” policy. For snow is something that we see and experience regularly. It is much more difficult to “reframe” something familiar, however, something that is “foreign” has always been a rather blurred and undefined concept for millennia, and thus is a much easier candidate for the State to “reframe” as our collective “reality,” our collective “existential fear.” And thus, for most of history, our understanding of who is our “friend” and who is our “foe” has rarely been determined by the people themselves but rather their governing structure.

Such a governing structure is free to determine for us what is “truth” vs “falsehood” what is “fact” vs “fiction,” because the people, despite all the abuse and exploitation from such a governing force still look to this very thing to protect and shield them from the frightful “unknown.”

Better the Devil you know? In this case, ignorance is most certainly not bliss…

However, the “facts” emboldened by the State have shown themselves to not be so “fact-based” after all, thus we now commonly see from the angels of justice; the flawless, omnipotent, and anonymous “fact-checkers” that “truth” is becoming increasingly not a matter of “right” or “wrong” but rather, about semantics, priorities and what one chooses to emphasise.

For instance, the very real neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine (refer to Part 1 and Part 2), has now been “reframed” by the media to either 1) acknowledge that there are indeed actual neo-Nazis in Ukraine but that they are also nationalists and thus fighting for all of Ukraine, 2) to claim that they are “reformed” neo-Nazis that have apparently been domesticated and are now respectable defenders of Ukraine, 3) Ukraine has a Jewish President and thus such a thing is somehow fundamentally impossible.

The thing is, we have heard this story before, 77 years ago…

Better the Devil You Know?

In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), at the behest of Congress, launched what became the largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history. As a result, more than 8.5 million pages of records have been opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246) and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (P.L. 106-567). These records include operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA, the FBI and Army intelligence. IWG issued three reports to Congress between 1999 and 2007.

A research group was put together to compile and organise key elements of this massive newly declassified database, the result was the publication of “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” in 2005 published by the National Archives.

Part of the content declassified reveals how the FBI and CIA knowingly worked with Nazi war criminals right after WWII and in several cases before the war was even over.

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (1):

“The U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) shared the CIA’s view that the pursuit of Nazi war criminals was incompatible with meeting the demands of the Cold War…‘At this time, 1952, the apprehension of war criminals is no longer considered a mission of CIC,’ the 430th Detachment wrote to higher headquarters in the U.S. Army in Austria, adding, ‘It is also believed that the prosecution of war criminals is no longer considered of primary interest to U.S. authorities’…” [emphasis added]

What was causing this abrupt turnabout within certain corridors of the United States to shield Nazi war criminals, and in many cases, those that were not even in service to the United States? Why were these Nazi war criminals so quickly pardoned and judged “harmless” to the world now that they had lost the war?

The reason for this decision by the FBI and CIA was because combating Soviet communism had become not only the first priority in a post-WWII world, but it appeared the only priority of these security agencies, who went so far as to publicly declare that their job did not include going after German war criminals, even if they happen to be residing within the United States (2).

And thus, as long as the Nazis were focused on solely the destruction of the Soviet Union, they were now to be considered as indispensable “allies” to the cause of the so-called “free world.”

However, what this series has shown is that that was most certainly not the case and instead terrorism and tyranny, such as Operation Gladio, McCarthyism and COINTELPRO, were unleashed onto the “free world” such that anything that did not fit within the agreed upon narrow script was to be scrubbed and purged. This included human rights activists and political leaders. No one was allowed to challenge the script that had now been chosen for them. What was the script? A gradual move towards fascist right-wing governments, all for our apparent protection against Soviet communism. Those political leaders who would stand in the way of this were summarily executed by the hit-squads of Gladio including Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, Turkey’s Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, President Kennedy, Alfred Herrhausen, and Enrico Mattei.

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (3):

“In 1953, when a congressional request to determine whether Eichmann [one of the leading Nazi organisers of the holocaust] was hiding in the Middle East… the CIA explained to interested U.S. senators that it was no longer responsible for tracking down Nazi fugitives, even the notorious Eichmann. ‘While the CIA has a continuing interest in the whereabouts and activities of individuals such as Eichmann,’ explained a CIA officer with the approval of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, ‘we are not in the business of apprehending war criminals hence in no position to take an active role in this case.’ The senators apparently accepted this mission statement…[and thus with no further information on Eichmann] the inquiry was suspended in 1954.” [emphasis added]

Incredibly, the 430th Detachment added to this “not in the business of apprehending war criminals,” in their note to the higher headquarters in the U.S. Army in Austria that:

“Therefore, it appears the Salzburg police authorities should be advised that the arrest of [Adolf Eichmann] and [his] transfer to CIC is no longer desired.” (4) [emphasis added]

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (5):

“United States commanders did not fully agree with the decision of Detachment 430 to wash its hands of the responsibility for dealing with Eichmann. Nazi war criminals remained on a watch list, and if the Austrians were to pick up Eichmann, he would have to be handed over to the CIC. But there would be no new U.S. efforts to track him down.”

Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust – the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent.

Eichmann was tasked with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during WWII.

Eichmann once lamented to SS colleagues that only 6 million Jews were murdered under his supervision. (6)

On May 23, 1960, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rose in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to make a stunning announcement “Adolf Eichmann, one of the greatest Nazi war criminals, is in Israeli custody.”

Nearly two weeks earlier, Eichmann had been captured by Mossad agents in Argentina on May 11th, 1960. He was living under the alias Richard Klement for a decade after the war.

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (7):

“Eichmann’s abduction came as a complete surprise to the U.S. government. The Israelis had given no warning to the CIA (the principal point of contact between the Israeli intelligence community and Washington since 1951) that they had tracked down the most famous living Nazi war criminal and would summarily bring him to justice.

…the Israeli capture of Eichmann did more than refocus attention on those men who had managed to elude justice in the chaos of the immediate-postwar period; for the CIA, this unexpected event would force a re-examination of some of the former Nazis it had recruited in the rush to produce intelligence results in the 1950s. Some of Eichmann’s associates, it turned out, had worked for the CIA…

Why did the CIA have any postwar relationships at all with individuals who had worked alongside Adolf Eichmann in persecuting and exterminating millions of people? Under what circumstances could individuals with these records be considered acceptable agent material? Leaving aside the moral dimension for a moment, what operational value could these veterans of the war against the Jews have had in the clandestine struggle with the Soviet Union? The organization for which they worked, the SD and later the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), was the intelligence arm of the SS and of the Nazi Party. Like most intelligence services in totalitarian regimes, the SD was more the watchdog of ideology than of truth. The fact that some of these men were in the anti-Jewish office of this already ideological service should have made their intelligence credentials even more suspect.” [emphasis added]


However, this very obvious fact did not deter the U.S. government from sponsoring Reinhard Gehlen, chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service, in a CIA backed surveillance apparatus established in West Germany; called the Gehlen Organisation (1946-1956) which subsequently became the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) from 1956-1968 to which Gehlen was the founding president.

West Germany was told it needed to be kept on a short leash for its Nazi crimes and ambitions during WWII, such that they were occupied for nearly 10 years by British, French and American militaries. Yet, at the same time, a high-ranking “former” Nazi was to be in charge of their security and intelligence?!?

West Germany’s occupation only ended on May 5th, 1955 after West Germany agreed to join NATO in 1954. It was only after West Germany’s agreement to join NATO that they were permitted to have a military force of up to a half-million men and resume the manufacture of arms.

In other words, it was only after West Germany agreed to seal its fate with the rest of the NATO countries in an eternal stand-off with the Soviet Union that they were then granted their crumb of “freedom.”

The rights of Germany were not being restricted because of its Nazi war crimes, as the CIA and NATO clearly showed they were so ready to pardon in its war criminals. The reality was that Germany was being used as the bulwark against the Soviet Union, and the German people were now going to pay the price for the crimes of its Nazi leaders. It would be the German people who would have to bow their heads in subservience while “former” Nazis were given first class treatment by the CIA and co. (much of this paid by the American taxpayer I might add).

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (8):

“Materials released by the CIA and the Defense Department under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 permit a thorough analysis of the origins, implications, and results of the U.S. government’s postwar sponsorship of Reinhard Gehlen and of the organization that became the Bundesnachrichtensdienst (BND), the West German Secret Service, in 1956.

Four broad conclusions emerge…First, despite being the principal source of funding for Gehlen’s activities for close to eleven years, the U.S. government never achieved the control of Gehlen’s operations that it had expected, sought, or should have had. Second, Reinhard Gehlen often acted in bad faith in his dealings with the United States. He deceived a generation of U.S. intelligence officers about the details of his operations and violated the basic agreements that were designed to undergird the system of cooperation. Third, a substantial number of former members of SD Foreign Intelligence, the Gestapo, and the Waffen-SS were recruited into the organization when it was being funded by the U.S. government. Gehlen’s recruitment of these individuals was not done at the behest of the U.S. government; however, after Washington learned about Gehlen’s use of war criminals, it opted to do nothing about it.

Finally, the CIA did not hold Gehlen and his organization in high regard as intelligence assets. The Agency’s major goals in the Gehlen affair were to facilitate U.S. penetration of a future West German intelligence community…” [emphasis added]


As a result, the German people would never be allowed to be sovereign. They were to be the eternal losers of WWII, and they would have no choice but to do the will of their masters at the CIA and NATO headquarters, the latter of which would have its fair share on its staff of “former” Nazis who would go on to become high-ranking commanders in NATO after WWII.

(This very long article continued in following post)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Wed May 18, 2022 5:17 pm

(This article continued from previous post.)

NATO’s Dubious Allegiance

It was not just the CIA who was willing to work with “former” Nazis as part of America’s post-WWII foreign policy; such as the case of Nazi affiliated Unit-B’s Mykola Lebed and the CIA’s AERODYNAMIC (discussed in Part 2), where Stefan Bandera Nazi affiliated-ultra-nationalist propaganda continued to be heavily promoted in Ukraine during the Cold War years with CIA funding. This ultra-nationalist radicalisation of certain groups of Ukrainians was justified for the very plain fact that it encouraged hatred of the Soviet Union. Ukraine would also be a bulwark of sorts but viewed as much more expendable than the Germans.

One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and… there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.” (9)

This philosophy was seen very clearly in NATO’s choice of staff.

Adolf Heusinger, who served as the Operations Chief within the general staff of the High Command of the German Army in the Nazi German Armed Forces from 1938 to 1944. He was then appointed acting Chief of the General Staff for the Nazis.

Heusinger, like Gehlen, would never be tried at the Nuremberg trials. Instead, he was given control over the newly established West German army, as general of the Bundeswehr from 1957 to 1961. He then became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961-1964. This overlapped with the period of heightened assassination attempts against de Gaulle, to which NATO’s Operation Gladio was implicated (see Part 3).

Hans Speidel, a Nazi general, was one of the major military leaders of West Germany during the early Cold War. He was a principal founder of the Bundeswehr. He was a major figure in the German rearmament and oversaw the Bundeswehr’s integration into NATO. (10) He became a military advisor to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the Supreme Commander of NATO’s ground force in Central Europe from 1957-1963.

According to an article in Der Spiegel (11), which cited documents released by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (foreign intelligence agency of Germany) in 2014, Heusinger and Speidel may have been part of the Schnez-Truppe, a secret illegal army that veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS established in Germany in 1949 in order to repel an attack by the Soviet Union.

You would think such a thing were unlikely or even impossible, but the truth was that such a secret illegal army made up of Nazis post-WWII follows NATO’s Operation Gladio to the script.

Johannes Steinhoff, Luftwaffe fighter pilot during WWII and recipient of the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross (the Nazi military’s highest award), became the German Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee in 1960, served as Acting Commander Allied Air Forces Central Europe in NATO from 1965-1966, as Inspector of the Air Force 1966-1970 and as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1971–1974.

Johann von Kielmansegg, General Staff officer to the High Command of the Wehrmacht 1942-1944, was lieutenant general of NATO’s Supreme Command of Allied Land Forces Central Europe in Fontainebleau and NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1967-1968.

Jurgen Bennecke was also a general in the Wehrmacht and was NATO’s Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces Central Europe from 1968-1973.

Ernst Ferber, a Major in the Wehrmacht and group leader of the organizational department of the Supreme Command of the Army (Wehrmacht) from 1943-1945 and recipient of the Iron Cross 1st Class, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1973-1975.

Karl Schnell, battery chief in the Western campaign in 1940, later First General Staff Officer of the LXXVI Panzer Corps in 1944 and recipient of the Iron Cross 2nd Class, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1975-1977.

Franz Joseph Schulze, a Lieutenant in the reserve and Chief of the 3rd Battery of the Flak Storm Regiment 241 and recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross in 1944, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1977-1979.

Ferdinand von Senger und Etterlin, Lieutenant of 24th Panzer Division in the German 6th Army, adjutant to Army High Command, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe 1979-1983.

[Note: This is not a complete list of “former” Nazis who served under NATO.]

Thus, from 1957 to 1983, NATO had at least one if not several high ranking “former” Nazis in full command of multiple departments within NATO.

The position of NATO Commander and Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe (CINCENT Commander in Chief, Allied Forces Central Europe – AFCENT) was a position that was filled SOLELY by “former” Nazis for 18 YEARS STRAIGHT, from 1965-1983.

Can you see a pattern forming yet?

As previously mentioned in this series, in the context of this, NATO’s recent twitter scandal posting the Black Sun Nazi occult symbol this past international women’s day, might not have been a slip-up after all…

Fact Checking the “Fact-Checkers” on Ukraine

Before we go through the situation of Ukraine today, I wanted to share with you a very relevant story of how the CIA buys News.

Udo Ulfkotte was a well-known German journalist and author of numerous books. He worked for 25 years as a journalist, 17 of which were for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), including his role as editor. In his 2014 book “Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News,” Ulfkotte goes over how the CIA along with German Intelligence (BND) were guilty of bribing journalists to write articles that either spun the truth or were completely fictitious in order to promote a pro-western, pro-NATO bent, and that he was one of those bought journalists.


In an interview, Ulfkotte describes how he finally built up the nerve to publish the book, after years of it collecting dust, in response to the erupting 2014 crisis in Ukraine stating:

“I felt that the right time had come to finish it and publish it, because I am deeply worried about the Ukrainian crisis and the possible devastating consequences for all of Europe and all of us…I am not at all pro-Russia, but it is clear that many journalists blindly follow and publish whatever the NATO press office provides. And this type of information and reports are completely one-sided”. [emphasis added]

In another interview Ulfkotte stated:

“it is clear as daylight that the agents of various Services were in the central offices of the FAZ, the place where I worked for 17 years. The articles appeared under my name several times, but they were not my intellectual product. I was once approached by someone from German Intelligence and the CIA, who told me that I should write about Gaddafi and report how he was trying to secretly build a chemical weapons factory in Libya. I had no information on any of this, but they showed me various documents, I just had to put my name on the article. Do you think this can be called journalism? I don’t think so.”

Ulfkotte has publicly stated:

“I am ashamed of it. The people I worked for knew from the get-go everything I did. And the truth must come out. It’s not just about FAZ, this is the whole system that’s corrupt all the way.” [emphasis added]

Udo Ulfkotte has since passed away. He died January 2017, found dead in his home, it is said by a heart attack. His body was quickly after cremated, thus preventing any possibility of an autopsy from occurring. His book has been made pretty much impossible to find available for purchase at this point.

Today’s situation concerning media reporting on Ukraine does not seem to be any different, if anything, it is much much worse.

To bolster support for the Ukrainian military, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public and official support from Western countries.

Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post, “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.” The Post ultimately conceded that “Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.”

Dan Cohen for Mint Press News writes:

“Key to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare. According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firm…

According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.

The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. Ingham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.”


Thus, Ingham who has been a member of the UK government and continues to have very high-level connections within the British government, is playing a leading role in shaping how the Ukraine war is being represented.

Dan Cohen provides a thorough explanation of how these “PR firms” have been responsible for reporting and spreading fabricated news and that even when such reports are found conclusively to be untrue, they continue to use them nonetheless. These PR tools include propaganda graphics, which are created in order to encourage radicalisation and promotion of ultra-nationalist identity; using xenophobic and racist language (not just to Russians), outright praise of Ukrainian neo-Nazis as heroes, the idolisation of Nazi affiliated Unit-B leader Stefan Bandera, and the encouragement of violent acts against other individuals (see Cohen’s article for examples).

Why would someone like Ingham be involved in something like this? Well, if you have already read Part 2 to this series, you will see that this is just a continuation of a several decades-long script.

If you have ever wondered who is behind the omnipotent “fact-checkers”, in the case of StopFake who have self-described themselves as such, they are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) aka the fully-rogue department of the CIA, the Atlantic Council, the International Renaissance Foundation (funded by Open Society Foundation’s billionaire George Soros), the British Embassy in Ukraine, the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the German Marshall Fund, among others.

StopFake was hired by Facebook in March 2020 to “curb the flow of Russian propaganda” but was found to be employing multiple figures closely tied to violent neo-Nazis. This has, however, not deterred Facebook from continuing to work with StopFake.

At the end of the day, it does not seem to matter how many times these arbiters of truth are found to be wrong, for U.S. officials have already admitted that they are literally just lying to the public about what is going on in Ukraine.


So How Serious is Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Romance?

Interestingly, the Atlantic Council itself acknowledges it is quite serious, in an article published in 2018 titled “Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline).”

Josh Cohen for the Atlantic Council writes [links are from the original article]:

“It sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but it’s not. Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects” in the country…”

Yes, you read right, C14 along with the Azov Battalion has been training children, with encouragement and funding by the Ukrainian government via Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports under the title “national patriotic education projects”, including in terror tactics.

Josh Cohen continues [links are from the original article]:

“Since the beginning of 2018, C14 and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector, Karpatska Sich, and others have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists. On March 8, violent groups launched attacks against International Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cases did police do anything to prevent the attacks, and in some they even arrested peaceful demonstrators rather than the actual perpetrators.”

After the March 8 2018 attacks against International Women’s Day marchers, Amnesty International wrote “Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.”

Josh Cohen writes:

“To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of “red herring.” It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity.” [emphasis added]

However, we heard it, straight from Yevhen Karas’s mouth, the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi group C14, what determines who holds power in Ukraine has never really been about polls and elections.

As the famous “f*ck the EU” tape revealed to the dumbfounded world, the Ukrainian people don’t actually have a say in who runs their government. After the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” where Ukrainians literally died for “democracy,” the U.S. went on to “influence” the roster of the newly formed Ukrainian government, specifically around members of Svoboda and Pravyi Sector (Right Sector) who held five senior roles in the new government, including the post of deputy prime minister.

But neo-Nazis have not just been receiving western support in the political sphere.

Just this past October, as a reaction to her failed diplomatic visit to Russia, Victoria Nuland, according to French journalist Thierry Meyssan, went ahead and “imposed” Dmytro Yarosh onto President Zelensky. On Nov. 2, 2021, President Zelensky appointed Dmytro Yarosh (leader of the neo-Nazi affiliated ultra-nationalist paramilitary group Right Sector 2013-2015) as Adviser to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi (for more on this refer to Part 1).

This is the very same Dmytro Yarosh who has been on Interpol’s “wanted list” since 2014.

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Neo-Nazis have also received ongoing training by the CIA, British SAS (Special Air Service) as well as other NATO countries such as Canada since at least 2014. This training has continued despite Russia’s entry into Ukraine, which has been confirmed by The Times, Ottawa Citizen, CTV News, and Radio Canada.

The Canadian government has attempted to deny any knowledge of training neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine and have made the claim that they are not responsible for verifying who they are in fact training, but that this is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government. However, such claims of ignorance fell through when the very neo-Nazis they were training went ahead and posted pictures on their social media accounts, showcasing their neo-Nazis badges identifying them as such, plain for everyone to see.

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On the same day as the untoward NATO tweet on International Women’s Day of a Ukrainian soldier with the Nazi Black Sun occult symbol, photographs appeared on NEXTA’s twitter feed showing the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion receiving training by instructors from “NATO countries” on how to use NLAW grenade launchers.

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The badge on the sidearm is that of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion

The ultra-nationalist Right Sector have also appeared in the field with UK-made NLAW launchers.


UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told the House of Commons on March 9 that “as of today, we have delivered 3,615 NLAWs [to Ukrainian forces] and continue to deliver more. We will shortly be starting the delivery of a small consignment of anti-tank Javelin missiles as well.”

For a full list of all the weapons sent to Ukraine since 2014 by all involved countries, refer here.

For those especially adamant that neo-Nazis are not “officially” a part of the Ukrainian army, you should be informed that the Azov Battalion is part of Ukraine’s National Guard, and thus, yes it is officially part of Ukraine’s military.

Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Battalion’s first commander and later a National Corps parliamentarian previously led the neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation “Patriot of Ukraine,” and once stated in 2010 that it was the Ukrainian nation’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”

In 2019, the Soufan Center, which tracks terrorist and extremist groups around the world, warned:

“The Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist network… [Its] aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov Battalion’s overarching objectives, to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy.”

The Soufan Center described how the Azov Battalion’s “aggressive networking” reaches around the world to recruit fighters and spread its white supremacist ideology. Foreign fighters who train and fight with the Azov Battalion then return to their own countries to apply what they have learned and recruit others.

In 2014, Newsweek published an article titled “Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-Style’ War Crimes.” Is this an indication of how both the Azov and ISIS have received their funding and training from the very same sources? Hmmm.

NATO has recently gone so far as to make a short film honoring the Baltic Nazi collaborators the “Forest Brothers.” The NATO film lionises the “Forest Brothers,” former Waffen SS fighters who voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis, as anti-communist heroes.

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Dovid Katz, a leading historian and anti-Nazi investigator condemned the NATO film for rewriting history:

“By going beyond turning a blind eye to the worship of pro-Hitler forces in Eastern Europe…[NATO] is crossing the line right into offering its moral legitimization of Nazi forces such as the Latvian Waffen SS.” [emphasis added]

David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist and reliable voice of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, noted that even prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “the United States and NATO allies [were] ready to provide weapons and training for a long battle of resistance.”

This is the very same David Ignatius who was once President of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (aka specialists in color revolutions), who arrogantly stated in a 1991 interview that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA…The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection”.

I guess the NED has had a change of heart on “openness is its own protection.”

Jeremy Kuzmarov for Covert Action Magazine writes in an article titled “National Endowment for Democracy Deletes Records of Funding Projects in Ukraine” [links from the original article]:

“The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—a CIA offshoot founded in the early 1980s to advance “democracy promotion” initiatives around the world—has deleted all records of funding projects in Ukraine from their searchable “Awarded Grants Search” database.

The archived webpage captured February 25, 2022 from 14:53 shows that NED granted $22,394,281 in the form of 334 awards to Ukraine between 2014 to the present. The capture at 23:10 the same day shows “No results found” for Ukraine. As of right now, there are still “No results found” for Ukraine…

The erasure of the NED’s records is necessary to validate the Biden administration’s big lie—echoed in the media—that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was ‘unprovoked.’” [emphasis added]


Who will suffer the most in this plan for a long battle of resistance? The Ukrainian people.

If Putin’s top reason for going into Ukraine is to “denazify” the country, and the CIA, NATO and co. are persistently “nazifying” the political and military components of Ukraine, you can see how this is making a situation for peace in Ukraine impossible, and that it is the CIA and NATO that are to blame for this.

You can also understand how Ukraine’s entry into NATO was unacceptable merely by its geographic location (the distance between Ukraine’s border and Moscow is 450 km), however, add in the fact that NATO is involved in the promotion of neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine and that now both Sweden and Finland have also expressed a desire to join NATO (with no referendum since democracy is officially dead in Cold War 2.0) and we have ourselves a real sh*t storm.

However, this is not just a threat to Russia. The reality of the situation is that Ukraine has been in a civil war these past 8 years, though the western media refuses to acknowledge this very important fact.

Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told MintPress:

“People who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its origin… They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent ‘unity marches’ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians, including a grandmother, were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].”

Robert Parry from Consortium News writes [link is from original article]:

“On Sunday, a Times article by Andrew E. Kramer mentioned the emerging neo-Nazi paramilitary role in the final three paragraphs… In other words, the neo-Nazi militias that surged to the front of anti-Yanukovych protests…have now been organized as shock troops dispatched to kill ethnic Russians in the east [of Ukraine] – and they are operating so openly that they hoist a Swastika-like neo-Nazi flag over one conquered village with a population of about 10,000.

Burying this information at the end of a long article is also typical of how the Times and other U.S. mainstream news outlets have dealt with the neo-Nazi problem in the past. When the reality gets mentioned, it usually requires a reader knowing much about Ukraine’s history and reading between the lines of a U.S. news account.” [emphasis added]


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In the above image which outlines the population distribution of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians within Ukraine, you can understand how an ultra-nationalist view that identifies as solely ethnic Ukrainian would be a catalyst for a civil war.

The people of Donbass have understandably asked for independence from Ukraine, yet the Ukrainian government has refused to allow this nor intervene for a peaceful resolution. What does this mean? The war can only end when one side is fully dead.

Not only is it publicly known that the U.S. and NATO have been funding and training neo-Nazis, but they have also been supplying a massive supply of arms (as previously mentioned). It got to such a point where in 2018, Congress had to ban the United States from sending further arms to Ukraine militia linked to neo-Nazis, specifically mentioning the Azov Battalion. For some reason this ban was to only last for three years thus it is apparently fair game now?

But you may say, what about Russia’s crimes against the Ukrainian people, aren’t they far worse than even vicious neo-Nazis? Namely the bombing of the Mariupol theater and the Bucha massacre. Thorough journalistic investigations have already been done on the former, which can be found here, that conclusively shows the bombing of the Mariupol theater was a false-flag.

As for the Bucha massacre, there has been no evidence presented as of yet that conclusively proves who committed this atrocity, there have only been assertions. Recall that the chemical attacks in Syria were also full of assertions, to which investigative journalist Seymour Hersch wrote a report titled “Whose Sarin,” which conclusively proved that the popular assertions being pushed by the Obama government in their attempt to incriminate the Syrian government, were in fact false. Rather, it was pointing to the fact that the actual terrorists were the ones using sarin on the Syrian civilians, who were receiving American and co. funding and arms.

Unfortunately, time is of the essence in investigating crimes such as these, and despite the outcries of the inhumanity of such events, there is always heavy foot-dragging if not outright dismissal over an official and neutral investigation of such crime scenes. Why is this?

Russia has asked the UN Security Council for an investigation and to discuss the Bucha massacre. China has also called for an official investigation into this and has received backlash for withholding blame until all facts are known. However, an official investigation has been repeatedly refused. Why? This should be the official protocol for such matters.

Instead, the response to this was for the UN to suspend Russia from its human rights body. Thus, not only denying an official investigation, but denying Russia a voice in responding to the matter.

The disturbing elephant in the room in all of this, is that the Azov Battalion has already been found guilty of similar atrocities against its own Ukrainian people, which has been thoroughly investigated by Max Blumenthal and Esha Krishnaswamy and which can be found here (warning there is graphic content).

The Azov Battalion has also been found guilty of purposefully putting Ukrainian citizens in jeopardy by positioning their artillery and military in residential areas and buildings, including daycares and hospitals, to which even the Washington Post had to acknowledge in their misleadingly titled article “Russia has killed civilians in Ukraine. Kyiv’s defense tactics add to the danger.”

However, these are not simply “defense tactics,” they are blatant war crimes that are recognised as such by international law. These war crimes are publicly acknowledged to be going on, causing the deaths of a significant number of Ukrainians. Just to be clear here, during times of war, to which the Washington Post also acknowledges, Ukrainian soldiers and weaponry are legitimate targets for the Russian military. It is not Russia that is committing the war crime here, it is the Ukrainian government. They have literally been caught using their own people as human shields.

Does this still sound like a patriotic nationalist movement for the welfare and sovereignty of the Ukrainian people?

According to an interview with Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer, the Russian military have made it clear that they are using “Syrian tactics” in Ukraine.

Scott Ritter explains, the Russian military’s tactic in Syria was:

“…to surround urban areas where these jihadists had been gathered, terrorizing the population, surround them and give them the opportunity to evacuate on buses with their security guaranteed by Russian military police. A soft approach that protected civilians, that protected civilian areas.”

It was this tactic that allowed the Russians along with the Syrian army to defeat ISIS and other terrorist affiliates. Today they only occupy the Idlib province. These terrorists who remain would not have been possible without Turkish support. This initiative to rid Syria of ISIS was something that the United States has clearly never been interested in supporting.

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In the image on the left the red and largely the blue represent the region controlled by terrorists, or as Obama liked to call them “moderate rebels” in the year 2017, in the image to the right the purple and grey represent the region controlled by terrorists in the year 2021. The green is the United States and co.’s illegal presence in the country.

Interestingly, when the Russians entered Syria to combat the terrorists at the behest of the Syrian government, this was also called a “Russian invasion” by certain quarters of western media. However, it was not the Russians who bombed Syrian cities to the ground, that was the good ol’ U.S. of A.

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In the same interview, Scott Ritter stated that these very terrorists who have been stationed in Idlib are now being brought into Ukraine:

“…[Zelensky] has opened the door for illegal warriors, the mercenaries from Europe…the exploiters of conflict…[and] they brought in the jihadists…they brought in the people..[who] ostensibly want to kill Russians…It’s a poison pill…now we are going to have these jihadists, who are being armed by the way with javelin missiles and stinger missiles. Imagine what happens when a bunch of bloodthirsty jihadists take these weapons into Europe. Would you like to be the German Chancellor driving on a highway knowing that up in the hills could be a jihadist hit-team armed with javelins?…This is literally the worst kind of decision-making ever to put that much weaponry into Ukraine in an uncontrolled fashion. Even before the jihadist came in you were giving it to neo-Nazis who can’t surrender. They can’t surrender because they will be killed, rightfully so. So what do desperate people do when they can’t surrender and they don’t die? They run away with the weaponry they have. They’ll be burying it, making caches, falling back on it, continuing the futile resistance and in their anger to the West they’ll lash out at the West…that is how global terrorism is born.”

How is this in the best interest of anyone’s welfare in Europe, let alone Ukraine? It isn’t.

In November 2015, a UN resolution was brought forward condemning the glorification of Nazism. Of the total 126 member states, 53 countries including member nations of the European Union abstained from voting, four countries voted against the resolution: Canada, Palau, the United States, and Ukraine.

Why do you think that is?

Zelensky: the Enigma

Many have been especially confused as to how Ukraine can have such a serious neo-Nazi problem, when they have a Jewish President.

There is something you should know about the position of “President” of Ukraine since 2014, in a country where neo-Nazis have been made more confident than the mafia ever was, that they literally cannot be touched since they have the direct backing and protection of the United States and NATO.

When President Poroshenko (June 2014 – May 2019) negotiated the Minsk agreements in September 2014, he agreed, with Germany and France, to the special autonomous status of Donetsk and Lugansk, and that under this special condition, they would stay part of Ukraine.

According to an interview (12) with Scott Ritter, this was unacceptable to the neo-Nazis who threatened Poroshenko’s life, if such a thing were to be implemented.

The Minsk agreements were never put into action. Instead, Ukraine entered a civil war that has gone on for 8 years and continues to this day. The Minsk agreements were officially expired on February 21st, 2022, the same day that the State Duma of Russia passed a bill officially recognizing Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states. This ultimate rejection by the Ukrainian government was a clear indication that their war against Donbass would be escalated.

The situation with President Zelensky is no different.

In October 2019, President Zelensky (who assumed office in May 2019), had a recorded face-to-face confrontation with the militants from the Azov Battalion, who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation.”

Kyiv Post translated the conversation as such:

“’Listen, Denys [Yantar], I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons. Don’t shift the conversation to some protests,’ Zelensky said, videos of the exchange show. As he said this, Zelensky aggressively approached Yantar, who heads the National Corps, a political offshoot of the far-right Azov volunteer battalion, in Mykolaiv city.

‘But we’ve discussed that,’ Yantar said.

‘I wanted to see understanding in your eyes. But, instead, I saw a guy who’s decided that this is some loser standing in front of him,’ Zelensky said.”


The Kyiv Post continues in their article, that this reaction by President Zelensky received a strong backlash from certain quarters of Ukraine:

“Andriy Biletsky, head of National Corps and the Azov Battalion, threatened Zelensky on his YouTube channel that more veterans would head to Zolote if the president tried to evict them from the town. ‘There will be thousands there instead of several dozen,’ he said…

Singer Sofia Fedyna, who is a lawmaker with the European Solidarity party of former President Petro Poroshenko, which has 27 seats in parliament, was particularly aggressive in her response. She issued physical threats against Zelensky.

‘Mr. President thinks he is immortal,’ she said in a video shared on Facebook. ‘A grenade may explode there, by chance. And it would be the nicest if this happened during Moscow’s shelling when someone comes to the front line wearing a white or blue shirt.’

Zelensky has previously visited the front line dressed in civilian clothing, rather than military fatigues.”

Thus, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion publicly threatened Zelensky if he were to intervene on attempting to negotiate peace and end Ukraine’s civil war.

However, this is not the full story.

President Zelensky is also backed by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who sponsored Zelensky’s rise to presidency, not just with his presidential campaign, but also in the tv show “Servant of the People,” that Zelensky literally “play-acted” as President for three seasons, which ran from November 16th, 2015 to March 28th, 2019. Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine less than two months after the last episode, on May 20th, 2019.

Former President Poroshenko even publicly called Zelensky “Kolomoisky’s puppet” during the presidential campaign. (13)

Kyiv Post reports:

“For years, Zelensky’s company has produced shows for Kolomoisky’s biggest TV channel, 1 + 1. In 2019, Kolomoisky’s media channels gave a big boost to Zelensky’s presidential campaign. After, Zelensky’s victory, Kolomoisky kept up his relationship with the president, nominating over 30 lawmakers to Zelensky’s newly established party, and maintaining influence with many of them in parliament.”

Since Zelensky’s presidency, Kolomoisky has been able to secure control over a significant portion of Ukraine’s energy sector, including Ukrnafta and Centrenergo, as well as Burisma Holdings.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC) found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Kolomoisky.

Recall the Joe and Hunter Biden scandal over Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company. The Bidens ties with Kolomoisky and the situation of Ukraine today is not a coincidence.

In the 1990s, Kolomoisky set up PrivatBank, which quickly grew to be one of the biggest financial institutions in Ukraine.

In 2016, Ukraine nationalized PrivatBank from Kolomoisky and his business partner, Gennadiy Boholiubov. A U.S. Justice Department civil forfeiture complaint from December 2020, said the two men “embezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars.” [emphasis added]

There is also the matter of the Pandora Papers, which has confirmed that Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoisky was funneling millions of dollars in concealed assets offshore. Zelensky was also implicated in this. And what this of course also means, is that the City of London is tied into all of this.

Kolomoisky has a notorious history of being a literal “raider” of Ukrainian companies, as confirmed by Harper’s Magazine, and Forbes.

Forbes reports:

“Bogolyubov and Kolomoisky fostered strong reputations as corporate raiders in the mid-2000s, becoming notorious for a series of hostile takeovers. Hostile takeovers Ukrainian style, that is, which often included the active involvement of Privat’s quasi-military teams.”

Kolomoisky, who is Jewish, is also a funder of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion since it was formed in 2014, which has been confirmed by Reuters, Newsweek, and Aljazeera.

He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions and has personally deployed them to protect his financial interests.

In other words, Kolomoisky is funding the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who have been fighting Eastern Ukrainians for these past 8 years, and thus has been directly fueling the civil war in Ukraine. One of the reasons for this, is that Donbass is a region with many natural resources, especially for the energy sector, to which Kolomoisky would very much like to be in possession of. This could only occur with the extermination or occupation of the people of Donbass.

Interestingly, this past Victory Day (May 8th), First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky’s interview was cut short on Sky News when he brought up that Zelensky shared on his Twitter account for Victory Day the insignia of the Nazi 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf.

After years of civil war, the city of Mariupol has now been liberated. An editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation writes:

“But perhaps the clearest test case of lies from facts surely is the liberation of Mariupol by Russia. The city is returning to normal after weeks of heavy fighting. Humanitarian aid is being provided by Russian forces in coordination with the UN and Red Cross. As with other parts of liberated Donbass, civilians are expressing relief and gratitude for having gotten rid of militants who had been holding them under siege with their hateful Nazi ideology.”

Do you think the people in the West will ever hear about this?

Where do We go from Here?

Well, let me put it this way. The United States and NATO know they cannot defeat Russia or China in a direct war, hence all of these proxy wars these past several years under the guise of “War on Terror.” As David Ignatius honestly expressed, their desire is for a long-drawn war. This is because they believe that they can bankrupt Russia and/or set the stage for internal unrest and eventual coup. However, things are clearly not going as planned.

What has been greatly underestimated in this situation is 1) China’s solid alliance with Russia, 2) that Russia is the most resource abundant country in the world to which Europe is dependant on, and 3) the economic brilliance of Sergey Glazyev.

Russia’s rouble has also not tanked as expected. In fact, it has actually grown stronger than ever.

Alasdair Macleod for Goldmoney writes:

“Keynesians in the West have misread this situation. They think that the Russian economy is weak and will be destabilised by sanctions. That is not true. Furthermore, they would argue that a currency strengthened by insisting that oil and natural gas are paid for in roubles will push the Russian economy into a depression. But that is only a statistical effect and does not capture true economic progress or the lack of it, which cannot be measured. The fact is that the shops in Russia are well stocked, and fuel is freely available, which is not necessarily the case in the West.

The advantages for Russia are that as the West’s currencies sink into crisis, the rouble will be protected. Russia will not suffer from the West’s currency crisis, she will still get inflation compensation in commodity prices, and her interest rates will decline while those in the West are soaring. Her balance of trade surplus is already hitting new records.”


It is the West who has miscalculated in all of this, and it is their economy that will utterly tank from this “long-drawn” war these oligarchs have been having wet dreams about for God knows how many years.

We have done this to ourselves. And if we truly want to correct the matter, we should first have the respect to admit the truth in our complicity to much of the world’s woes during this Cold War period. Those of us who have lived in abundance, in comfort, and security, should take the first step to speak out and say no more to the rest of the world living in starved war-torn agony.

We must stop caring for ourselves first at the expense of all else. We must start caring for others first and foremost and acknowledge the crimes that have been committed in our name. Only then can we truly have the humility to see that the solution has been in front of our face the whole time.

If we fail in this, the western world will not be able to sustain itself for much longer economically. And when it falls, what sort of people do you think you will be surrounded by after all these years of supporting fascism under your very nose?

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com See also

Notes:

(1) Timothy Naftali et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 338
(2) Ibid. pg. 338
(3) Ibid. pg. 337
(4) Ibid. pg 338
(5) Ibid. pg. 338
(6) Ibid. pg. 337
(7) Ibid. pg. 337
(8) Ibid. pg. 376
(9) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 89
(10) David Clay Large. (1996). Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era.
(11) Klaus Wiegrefe, “Files Uncovered: Nazi veterans Created Illegal Army”, Spiegel Online, 14 May 2014.
(12) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYm8pDrIXBg minute 19:33
(13) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXgli7TpINw Minute 0:49

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Thu May 19, 2022 2:35 pm

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Disbelief as Mainstream Media Alleges Defeated Ukrainians Were ‘Evacuated’
May 19, 2022

On May 16, the commander of the Azov regiment entrenched in the Azovstal plant, Denís Prokópenko, announced the surrender of the troops under his command in the face of the Russian siege. However, the headlines of international mainstream media outlets presented the news not as a surrender, but as an “evacuation.”

For example, the following headlines appeared in Spanish-language outlets:

• “Ukraine evacuates 264 soldiers from the Azovstal steel mill” (RTVE, Spain’s publicly owned media)

• “Ukraine abandons the fight in the Mariupol steelworks and evacuates 250 soldiers” (Spain’s El País)

• “Ukraine evacuates 264 soldiers from the Azovstal steel mill” (Spain’s El Mundo)

• “The agreement between Ukraine and Russia to evacuate soldiers from Azovstal anticipates the end of the battle of Mariúpol” (Spain’s El Diario)

• “Ukraine evacuates 260 soldiers from Azovstal, symbol of resistance against Russia” (Spain’s Expansión)

These headlines that dominated the Spanish media landscape space in the last 24 hours echoed the spin provided by US outlets, which refused to acknowledge the surrender:

• “Ukraine strikes deal to evacuate around 50 wounded fighters from Mariupol Azovstal factory (US outlet Fox News)

• “The battle for Mariupol nears end as Ukraine declares ‘combat mission’ over” (US outlet CNN)

These outlets continue to promote the narrative that the Ukrainian authorities have “concluded” the resistance of their troops at the Azovstal plant, in the city of Mariupol, and have reached an agreement with Russia to “evacuate” their soldiers.

Two points cast doubt on such a view of the facts:

First, when leaving the Azovstal plant unarmed to be “evacuated,” Ukrainian soldiers were met, searched, and interrogated by the Russian military. The injured were treated by Russian medical personnel, and the most seriously injured were sent to nearby hospitals under the control of the Donetsk People’s Republic, respecting the principles of humanitarian treatment of war prisoners that Russia has observed since Soviet times.

Secondly, the soldiers were “evacuated” not to Ukrainian territory or to neutral territory, but to the areas controlled by Russia and its allies of the Donetsk People’s Republic, more specifically to the penitentiary prison No. 97, in the city of Makeyevka.

Russian sources report that this procedure can in no way be called an “evacuation,” because it is a total and unconditional surrender of the Ukrainian troops who were holed up in Azovstal. Soldiers who have not been linked to war crimes could be exchanged for Russian prisoners in the future. The criminals, members of Nazi groups, and their sympathizers, will be prosecuted by Justice.

Internet users have not missed the opportunity to mock mainstream media’s attempted play on words:


“Ukraine evacuates, with the Russian army, Ukrainian soldiers to detention centers in PRD, denying reality,” wrote @ambakaroo on Twitter.

“Ukraine ‘evacuates’ its heroes to Russian territory,” wrote @Wilkersin_TERR on the social media platform. “Honestly, I thought it would take longer for them to surrender, but the Nazis couldn’t stand it.”

“‘Ukraine evacuates,’ what impudence,” wrote @argenispirela, commenting on El Mundo’s headline.

“LOL, ‘Ukraine evacuates,’ they could not be more brazen, making up and misrepresenting the facts of what was a surrender,” wrote @gato_andino.

“Ukraine evacuates, the Z is to throw us off,” wrote @nsanzo sa ironically.

“Ukraine evacuates Ukrainians to Russia! LOL,” wrote @pepillo818, commenting on El Mundo’s headline.

“Incredible: ‘Ukraine evacuates.’ They don’t know how to call this defeat,” wrote @iunemiliomas1, and attached tweets from nine mainstream media outlets referring to an “evacuation.”

“Everyday is more disgusting, how they inform us about Ukraine,” wrote @CComesto. “Planetary hero Zelensky, in a special mission, has evacuated soldiers from Azovstal. He evacuates them to Russian-controlled territory! Either the actor has lost his bearings, or the Azov Nazis have surrendered.”

“Ukraine evacuates its heroes and delivers them to Russia,” wrote @koskita on Twitter. “Lies is what western mainstream media sells. That is how they have colonized the minds of their faithful readers. Traitorous press!”

“Ukraine evacuates? To the PRD? Yeah right. They call it western free press…” wrote @pedrogrilloroja.

https://orinocotribune.com/disbelief-as ... evacuated/

Screen shots at link.

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Ukrainian aid America’s way to fund capitalism
By Cai Meng | China Daily | Updated: 2022-05-19 09:32

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http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 5daa4.html

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G7 discuss financial aid to Ukraine

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Christian Lindner, did not inform in his previous appearance the precise figure of the amount that is expected to be granted to Ukraine. | Photo: EFE
Published May 19, 2022 (4 hours 37 minutes ago)

The German Finance Minister stated that the amount will help "ensure Ukraine's ability to pay."

Finance Minister and German Federal President of the Free Democrats Christian Lindner said Thursday that the G7 countries will discuss offering financial assistance to Ukraine.

"Ukraine defends our values ​​and that is why we have a responsibility to help it financially," said Minister Lindner in a statement prior to the meeting between the G7 representatives.

Although the German financier did not confirm the precise figure, he stated that the funds will be aimed at "ensuring Ukraine's payment capacity."


The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) are also involved in talks with the German Finance Ministry.

During the next Thursday and Friday, this meeting of the G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA - will take place in the town of Königswinter, in western Germany.

Regarding the main lines of the meeting, the minister referred to the need to “ensure financial stability, especially in times of high inflation. Our concern is developing and emerging countries with a very high debt ratio”.

The meeting gains special relevance due to the political, economic and military power of the members of the Group, and due to the sanctions that are intended to be imposed on Russia for the military operation that it is carrying out in Ukraine.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out in February of the current year. It has modified the agenda of priorities at a global level due to its impact, above all, on the economy and politics of the countries that maintain commercial ties with both countries.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/ocidente ... -0008.html

Ukrainian president extends martial law for 90 days

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Zelenski argued that the measure was taken due to the possibility that Russia would prolong its military operation in the east of the country. | Photo: @nexta_tv
Published May 19, 2022 (3 hours 21 minutes ago)

Zelenski commented that the Ukrainian cities that are under the control of Russia will be recovered by the military forces of his country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree to extend martial law for 90 days and the period of general mobilization in the country in force since the beginning of the Russian military operation in eastern Ukraine.

Zelenski argued that the measure was taken in view of the possibility that Russia will prolong its operation to protect the civilian population of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

The president indicated that he expects the support of the Ukrainian Parliament (Supreme Rada) so that the Army and all those who defend the territory have legal tools to act.


According to the Ukrainian media, Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia is still looking for a weapon that will achieve its objectives, something that shows "the total failure of this operation and the fear (of Moscow) to admit mistakes."

Zelenski commented that the cities of the Ukrainian east that are under the control of Russia, will be recovered by the military forces of his country.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/ucrania- ... -0006.html

771 Ukrainians surrender to Russian troops in Azovstal, Mariupol

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Ukrainian fighters surrender to Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. | Photo: Sputnik Novosti
Posted May 19, 2022 (4 hours 19 minutes ago)

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, around 1,730 Ukrainian fighters have surrendered to Russian forces surrounding the Azovstal plant.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday that 771 fighters of the Ukrainian nationalist Azov battalion and Ukrainian soldiers who were at the Azovstal metallurgical plant in the city of Mariupol surrendered and handed over their weapons to Russian troops.

According to Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, around 1,730 Ukrainian nationalist fighters have surrendered to the Russian forces surrounding the Azovstal plant.

For his part, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, said that more than half of the Ukrainian military besieged at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol have handed over their weapons to Russian forces.


"Today more than half of them, this is absolutely correct, they have already left there with a white flag," Pushilin told the Telegram television channel "Soloviev live".


In his usual press conference, the military Igor Konashénkov commented that the air forces eliminated more than 340 nationalists and disabled 62 units of military equipment in the last 24 hours.

He also announced that missile troops and artillery attacked six command posts, 295 assembly areas of troops and military equipment, as well as 43 artillery and howitzer units and 2 electronic warfare stations.

Since February 24, Russian troops have destroyed 172 planes, 125 helicopters, 942 unmanned aerial vehicles, 3,158 tanks and other armored vehicles, 395 multiple rocket launchers, as well as 3,026 special military vehicles.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-co ... -0009.html

Google Translator

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16 Lies the U.S. Government Tells America About the Ukraine War
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 18, 2022
Richard Ochs

In any war, the first casualty is truth. Here are the biggest lies:

1. “Ukraine is a democracy”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky banned all opposition parties and banned the use of Russian as a second state language. Why did he violate his 2019 campaign promise to stop the genocidal killing of thousands in Donbas, even though they voted for him? Did he lie because neo-Nazis threatened to kill him if he did not do what they wanted? [1] Or is he afraid of the CIA, which has assassinated other leaders, making him their puppet? Are we to trust the judgment of a man who demands a no-fly zone which could cause a global nuclear holocaust? Zelensky oversees torture and assassination of political dissenters.[2]

2. “National sovereignty is sacred”
When Idi Amin perpetrated genocide in Uganda, the UN violated Ugandan sovereignty to stop it. When Ukraine perpetrated genocide in Donbas and planned to escalate, Russia stopped it. [3] The U.S. violated Cuba’s sovereignty to take the planet to the edge of nuclear holocaust. The U.S. has violated lots of sovereignties in recent wars, killing millions. Given Ukraine’s genocide of a national minority, Ukraine’s sovereignty should not be respected.

3. “Putin is a war criminal”
If he is a war criminal for causing the deaths of civilians, what do we call Ukraine killing 10,000 civilians in Donbas since 2014? [4] Is anyone calling Zelensky a war criminal? Millions killed by the U.S. in other recent wars is hundreds of times worse. Calling Putin a war criminal stops Biden from negotiating with him with the excuse “one cannot talk to war criminals.” That makes it very difficult to stop this war. Evidently, the U.S. wants this war to continue to the last Ukrainian. The plan of the Rand Corporation is to “quagmire” Russia just like the U.S. bankrupted the USSR by starting the al-Qaeda opposition in Afghanistan.

4. “The world condemns Russia’s invasion”
Actually most of the world does not, including China, India, most of Africa, Israel, half of Latin America and many other countries. The two largest political parties in Russia do not oppose Russia’s intervention, the second largest party being the Communist Party.

5. “Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons”
Russia has the same policy as the U.S. On March 22, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would only use nuclear weapons if its very existence were threatened, Tass news agency reported. [5] Russia had a “no first use” policy until the U.S. refused to do the same, so Russia dropped it. U.S. presidents have threatened to use nuclear weapons several times since the end of WWII against countries not a threat to the U.S. [6]

6. “With his back against the wall, Putin will resort to chemical warfare, just like in Syria”
Russia did not use chemical weapons in Syria. Russia negotiated Syrian stockpiles to be destroyed or removed. The chemical attacks in Syria were done by rebels supported by Saudi Arabia and the U.S. [7] If anyone has their back against the wall, it is the Ukrainians and neo-Nazis who are trained in false-flag tactics by the CIA. Like in Syria, the U.S. media are falsely blaming the Russians with no evidence whatsoever. Like in Syria, any chemicals released in Ukraine will probably be the work of opponents of Russia to blame Russia.

The U.S. gave Iraq chemical weapons which were used to kill thousands of Kurds and Iranians in 1982-83 before stockpiles were destroyed by Iraq. The U.S. is the chemical killer, not Russia which prevented it. History is full of U.S. false flags. [8]

7. “Putin may resort to biological warfare”
While this charge was propagated by media during the second week of March, since the embarrassing revelation that the Pentagon funded labs in Ukraine, nothing more has been said about it in the media. It was first reported by the U.S. that hazardous specimens had to be destroyed lest they fall into the hands of Russians; later, it was reported that specimens were not dangerous at all, so as not to incriminate the U.S. Which was it? Any false-flag release of pathogens by Ukraine to blame Russia is now probably precluded. The Pentagon is guilty of funding gain-of-function virus research in China after it was banned in the U.S., posing a possible lab release of COVID-19. The U.S. is the bio-killer using a U.S. Army strain of anthrax in October 2001, not Russia.

8. “Russia is targeting civilians in Ukraine”
According to Newsweek, “Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians…Over the course of almost four weeks, missiles fired at Kyiv have been scarce…The destruction is only a small fraction of what is possible.” [9] The alleged massacre of civilians in Bucha, prompting Biden to accuse Putin of war crimes, was perpetrated by Ukrainians who were “cleansing” the town of presumed collaborators after Russian troops had left days before. [10]

9. “Russia will make false-flag attacks”
There is no evidence that Russia attacked targets and blamed Ukraine. On the contrary, seven days prior to Russia’s incursion, the OSCE Monitoring Mission gave evidence of a Ukrainian false-flag attack on a kindergarten to blame Donbas separatists. [11] None were killed, but Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk increased 100-fold over the next four days, leading to Russia’s incursion to stop it. [12] The attacks on a maternity ward, apartments and concert hall may have been false-flag attacks, staged events, or situations where civilians were held hostage by combatants. It was reported that one maternity ward had Ukrainian snipers shooting from there. Residents of Mariupol who got out testified that Ukrainian combatants were preventing civilians from escaping through the humanitarian corridor in order to use them as human shields.[13]

10. “If Putin prevails in Ukraine, he will attack NATO countries next”
That is patently ridiculous because Russia is already over-extended and not able to attack anyone else. Russia also does not want a nuclear war. Russia’s goal is to protect Donbas, get recognition of Crimea, de-Nazify Ukraine and prevent nuclear missiles close to Russia’s border. By exaggerating Putin’s goals instead of negotiating these goals, the U.S. is prolonging the war and provoking the destruction of Ukraine.

11. “Russia is threatening nuclear power plants”
Russian soldiers were ordered to “guard and control” these plants to prevent inadvertent or deliberate damage. Photos showed Ukrainians fired the first shot, destroying a Russian tank, whereupon a second tank returned fire. A training building was damaged in the exchange. The fires were not near the reactors. The electricity for cooling was never turned off. But the hype was spun to scare the crap out of Europe so as to get their intervention into the Ukraine war.[14]

12. “Russia’s invasion threatens the whole world”
If Russia succeeds in keeping U.S. nuclear missiles from being positioned in Ukraine seven minutes’ flight to Moscow, Russia will be doing humanity a big favor. Just as U.S. ICBM fixed missiles are on hair-trigger alert with “launch them or lose them” orders with no cancellations after launch possible, missiles in Ukraine would increase the chance of accident or miscalculation with little warning time to verify. Doomsday would be on pins and needles. That should scare the crap out of everyone. India had an accidental missile launch in March that landed in nuclear-armed Pakistan with no warhead. [15] Putin warned in 2019 that any incoming missile would be presumed to be nuclear, requiring a retaliatory launch by Russia before the incoming missile hit so Russia’s deterrent force would not be destroyed. [16]

The U.S. and NATO are threatening the planet, not Russia. Here are the facts:

1.President Reagan rejected President Gorbachev’s offer to give up deployment of a “Star Wars” missile defense system in space as a condition for both countries to eliminate all their nuclear weapons.
2.President Clinton refused President Putin’s offer to cut our massive nuclear arsenals to 1,500 bombs each, and to call on all of the other nuclear-armed states to negotiate the elimination of all nuclear weapons, in exchange for the U.S. not placing missile sites in Romania.
3.President George W. Bush walked out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and put a missile base in Romania. President Trump placed another missile base in Poland.
4.President Bush in 2008 and President Obama in 2014 blocked any discussion of Russian and Chinese proposals for a space weapons ban in the consensus-bound UN Committee for Disarmament in Geneva.
5.President Obama rejected President Putin’s offer to negotiate a treaty to ban cyber war.
6.President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
7.From President Clinton through President Biden, the U.S. has never ratified the 1992 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, while Russia ratified it.

Click to access: “Nuclear Posture Review” by Veterans for Peace. (January 2022) https://www.veteransforpeace.org/files/ ... an2022.pdf

Should there be any question that it is the U.S., not Russia, that is not only threatening the world, but is threatening the entire human race for all eternity?

13. “The U.S. has a ‘free press’ while Russia’s news is controlled”
U.S. news outlets are owned by Wall Street billionaire oligarchs who give so-called journalists the script to report, making TV reporters paid actors who know where their bread is buttered. The U.S. media have proven to be more dangerous and warlike than the Pentagon, as shown in past U.S. wars (Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan). Now these billionaires are censoring social media, so we are censored in doing personal research. The U.S. has shut down Russian media like Tass and Russia Today (RT) to prevent Americans from hearing the other side and making up our own minds who is lying and who is telling the truth. What is the U.S. afraid of if they are telling the truth? According to Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize journalist, the CIA has captured The New York Times and The Washington Post:
https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-a ... 10-20-1977

14. “Russia is planning cyber attacks on the U.S.”
Russia remains open for dialogue and cooperation on information security with all states, and the United States is not an exception,” the Kremlin’s Andrey Krutskikh told Newsweek. “Moscow’s vision of such a multilateral cyber scheme includes a set of obligations not to use ICTs as a weapon.” A potentially key meeting was in April when Krutskikh sought to work with Washington in the digital realm. [17]

15. “Russia is killing children.”
The numbers are being exaggerated like all the other exaggerations by Ukraine to get NATO into the war. Any child deaths are accidental, not like the deliberate murder of children by the U.S. and Israel. When Madeleine Albright was asked if the half million children starved to death in Iraq from U.S. sanctions were worth it, she answered “yes.” [18] During Israel’s 2014 “Operation Protective Edge,” Israeli military forces killed 2,200 Palestinians, more than 80% of whom were civilians, and nearly one-quarter of whom were children.[19]

16. “Russia may use tactical nuclear weapons.”
Russia could have flattened Kyiv with conventional explosives, but did not, so why would they use nuclear weapons?

Notes:

1.Trying to de-Nazify Ukraine, Zelensky knows the biggest threat against him—and from what had always been prohibiting him from complying with the Minsk II accords. “The Nazis had always made clear that they’d kill him if he did any such thing.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-did-v ... fe/5773835
2.https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/17/trai ... pposition/
3.“In recent days, the number and intensity of shelling on the territory of the Republics by the Ukrainian army has sharply increased. The units of the People’s Militia are forced to constantly suppress the firing points of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in order to prevent the death of the civilian population.” Published on February 21, 2022.https://ugetube.com/watch/firefight-ukr ... 334c4999d6
4.The map below shows two-thirds of Donbas was occupied by Kyiv forces before the Russian rescue mission on February 24, 2022. The line of conflict between the blue and brown areas indicates a third of the population of Donbas was in the target zone, suffering 10,000 civilian casualties. ↑
5.President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces to be put on high alert. U.S. nuclear missiles have been on hair-trigger for decades. In line with the order, Russia’s defense ministry said on February 28 that its nuclear missile forces and Northern and Pacific fleets had been placed on enhanced combat duty, the Interfax news agency reported. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on March 14: “The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.” Since most Americans seem to have been oblivious to this existential threat, perhaps Putin did us a favor to remind us of the need for universal nuclear disarmament, which the U.S., not Russia, has been sabotaging. ↑
6.The United States threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea, Vietnam, China, Russia and Afghanistan after dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
when did US consider using nuclear weaons? – Search (bing.com) ↑
7.Weapons inspector refutes U.S. Syria chemical claimsWeapons Inspector Refutes U.S. Syria Chemical Claims – Consortium News ↑
8.History of U.S. false flags for war:
1. Sinking of U.S. battleship Maine in 1898 to start war against Spain for Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and genocide in Philippines.
2. Deliberately sending the Lusitania to be sunk in war zone despite warnings, creating a preext for the U.S. entry into WWI.
3. “Operation Northwoods” conspiracy proposed by U.S. Joint Chiefs to JFK to crash U.S. plane and blame Cuba.
4. Assassination of JFK by deep state cabal, blaming alleged communist despite evidence of the real gunman.
5. Since 9/11, tons of evidence suggest it was an inside job by Dick Cheney and Saudi Royal Bandar bin Sultan.
6. One month after 9/11, anthrax from a U.S. Army lab with letter falsely blaming Islamic zealot stampeded war. ↑
9.Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine but He’s Holding Back. Here’s why – Newsweekhttps://www.newsweek.com/putins-bombers-could-d ... dE24G_q0sE
10.https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/04/q ... -massacre/
11.Ukraine attacked a kindergarten, blaming Donbas separatists.Report of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)The Monitoring Mission’s report on the kindergarten incident:
“On 17 February, the Mission followed up on reports of damage to a working kindergarten in the north-western part of Stanytsia Luhanska (government-controlled, 16km north-east of Luhansk), located about 4.5km north-west of the north-western edge of the disengagement area near Stanytsia Luhanska.”Comment by munitions expert:“So the kindergarten was 4.5 kilometers inside Ukrainian-held territory. The monitors were denied access to the site by Ukrainian authorities and were only able to see it from a distance (very suspicious). Also suspicious is that the mission was told that “20 children had been in the kindergarten at the time of the incident but reported no injuries.” Really? An artillery shell bursts through a classroom wall, and no one was injured? More likely, they had been warned to get out ahead of time and evacuated before the shell was fired.
“But there is no doubt whatsoever about how far away the tank (or artillery piece) was. The impact was dead on, and not from a descending shell. And the surrounding buildings mean that whoever fired at the kindergarten was situated in that very small open space right next to it. And we know it was a dummy shell, because of the unbroken windows. If there had been an explosion, they would have been shattered. Someone took deliberate aim from only a few hundred yards away and carefully fired a single shot on a flat trajectory. They probably weren’t interested in causing “collateral damage,” but just wanted a propaganda photo. How convenient that the damage was to a kindergarten and not to one or another of the anonymous buildings surrounding it.” ↑

12.The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
reports each day on the security situation with daily reports:https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reportsWed., Feb. 16 number of explosions: 5 in Donetsk and 71 in Luhansk = 76Thurs., Feb. 17 Kindergarten hit by Ukraine’s false-flag attackThurs., Feb. 17 number of explosions: 128 in Donetsk and 188 in Luhansk = 316
Fri., Feb. 18 number of explosions: 135 in Donetsk and 519 in Luhansk = 654

Sat., Feb. 19 number of explosions: 553 in Donetsk and 860 in Luhansk = 1,413

(An increase in Kyiv’s shelling of Donbas by a factor of 20 within four days of kindergarten false flag) ↑

13.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... creasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: The military’s understandable impulse to defend against Russian attacks could be putting civilians in the crosshairs. Virtually every neighborhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.“If there is military equipment there and [the Russians] are saying we are launching at this military equipment, it undermines an assertion that they are attacking intentionally civilian objects and civilians,” said Richard Weir, a researcher in Human Rights Watch’s crisis and conflict division, who is working in Ukraine.“Over the past month, Washington Post journalists have witnessed Ukrainian antitank rockets, antiaircraft guns and armored personnel carriers placed near apartment buildings. . . Every day, it’s like this,” said Lubov Bura, 73, standing outside the apartment building where she lived that was destroyed two weeks ago.”The Ukrainian military has “a responsibility under international law” to remove their forces and equipment from civilian-populated areas, and if that is not possible, to move civilians out of those areas, Weir said. “If they don’t do that, that is a violation of the laws of war,” he added. “Because what they are doing is they are putting civilians at risk. Because all that military equipment are legitimate targets.
“Ukraine cannot use civilian neighborhoods as ‘human shields,’” said Schabas, adding that he was not suggesting this is what is happening.

“In other militarized neighborhoods, residents also expressed concern about hearing outgoing rockets and artillery. “It’s scary,” said Ludmila Kramerenko. “It happens three or four times a day.” ↑

14.The caption under the third photo in the link below says that Ukraine forces fired the first shot. Russians retaliated only after one of their tanks was destroyed. Hence, Ukraine forces started a battle at the nuclear power plant, which was not very smart. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/10854273 ... l_daily202
15.https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-c ... le-launch/
16.3https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russia-warns-incoming-missile-nuclear-72232054?msclkid=8fd1c9b6b1e911ecad991b729498b410 ↑
17.See “As Biden Puts U.S. on Alert, Russia Seeks Talks to Help Prevent Cyber War” in Newsweek Magazine. Vladimir Putin had drawn up a four-point proposal for cooperation on cybersecurity in September 2020, one that in many ways echoed the arms control treaties of the Cold War era.
The main tenets of the plan involved creating a “full-scale bilateral and regular interagency dialogue on key questions” of cybersecurity, communicating through existing bodies dealing with nuclear and computer readiness. It also included the establishment of new rules of the road mirroring U.S.-Soviet agreements on avoiding maritime incidents while securing mutual “guarantees of non-intervention into internal affairs of each other.” By Tom O’Connor, March 22, 2022. https://www.newsweek.com/biden-puts-us- ... ar-1690673
18.Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children.
https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
19.Israel’s 2014 “Operation Protective Edge,” when Israeli military forces killed 2,200 Palestinians, nearly one-quarter of them children and more than 80 percent civilians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... raine-war/

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NATO begins military drills near Russian border
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on May 17, 2022 by Agencies (more by Al Mayadeen) (Posted May 18, 2022)

On Monday, large-scale NATO military training began in Estonia. According to the military alliance, the ‘Hedgehog 2022’ exercise is one of the largest in the Baltic nation’s history. The drills will involve 15,000 troops from 14 countries, including members of the military blocs as well as their partners.

Soldiers from Finland, Sweden, Georgia, and Ukraine will take part in the exercise, according to the Finnish public radio Yle. According to the broadcaster, the drills will encompass all branches of the armed forces and will entail air, sea, and land exercises, as well as cyber warfare training.

According to a NATO statement, the drills would also include the participation of the U.S. Navy Wasp-class landing ship ‘Kearsarge.’ Both the military bloc and the deputy commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, Major General Veiko-Vello Palm, have denied that the maneuvers near the Russian border had anything to do with Moscow’s continuing military operation in Ukraine.

The drills began barely a day after Finland and Sweden officially announced their intentions to join NATO, and were planned long before the war in Ukraine erupted, according to Western sources.

However, the drills in Estonia are only one component of NATO’s large-scale military activities near the Russian border. Lithuania, another Baltic state, is hosting the ‘Iron Wolf’ exercise, which includes 3,000 NATO troops and 1,000 pieces of military equipment, including German Leopard 2 tanks.

NATO exercises in Poland

According to a NATO statement issued on Friday, two of NATO’s largest exercises–’Defender Europe’ and ‘Swift Response’–are taking place in Poland and eight other countries, involving 18,000 troops from 20 nations.

“Exercises like these show that NATO stands strong and ready to protect our nations and defend against any threat,” the military bloc’s spokesperson, Oana Lungescu, said, adding that the drills “help to remove any room for miscalculation or misunderstanding about our resolve to protect and defend every inch of allied territory.”

The NATO Response Force is now participating in the ‘Wettiner Heide’ drills in Germany with a force of 7,500 people. The ‘Neptune series’ naval drills featuring the USS ‘Harry S. Truman’ carrier strike group, which will be placed under NATO command, are scheduled to take place in the Mediterranean Sea.

However, according to NATO, this will be only the second time since the Cold War’s conclusion that a U.S. carrier group has been brought under the military bloc’s direction.

In June, the Baltic States and Poland will host what NATO describes as “Europe’s largest integrated air and missile defense exercise,” which would involve 23 nations.

NATO naval drills
Finland held NATO naval drills in late April. It is now also hosting a joint land exercise in which forces from the United States, the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Latvia are taking part.

Massive military drills are taking place amid rising tensions between Russia, NATO, and some of the military alliance’s allies. Finland, which shares a lengthy border with Russia, and Sweden agreed to reexamine their long-standing policy of non-alignment in the aftermath of the war on Ukraine.

The announcement provoked a surge of condemnation from Moscow, which warned that if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, it would have to respond. Moscow also thinks that NATO expansion is a direct danger to national security.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/18/nato-be ... an-border/

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Putin: If Finns, Swedes Get NATO ‘Military Infrastructure’, We’ll Respond
May 18, 2022

By Ray McGovern (14 minutes)

On May 16, just before I was interviewed for The Critical Hour, Putin addressed Finland’s and Sweden’s plans to join NATO, using words far milder than had most expected:

“Russia has no problems with these states. There is no direct threat to Russia in connection with NATO’s expansion to these countries.”

Then, the kicker:

“But the expansion of NATO’s military infrastructure to these territories will certainly evoke a response on our part. We will see what it will be like based on the threats that are created for us.”

So Who’s Already Got ‘NATO’s Military Infrastructure’?

The interview with The Critical Hour, provided an opportunity to underscore what the Russians seems to fear the most — the emplacement of what they call “offensive strike missiles” in sites near Russia’s border. In other words, THAT kind of “military infrastructure”. For several years Putin has complained that so-called “ABM” sites already completed in Romania and almost complete in Poland can be converted overnight into launchers for “offensive strike missiles” — Tomahawk cruise missiles, for example, and, later, hypersonic ones.

A major concern, of course, is warning time; that is, the shrinking minutes from the missile launch to target.

After Presidents Biden and Putin talked by telephone on Dec. 30, 2021, the Kremlin readout included this:

“Joseph Biden emphasized … that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.”

No one challenged that readout at the time. Does anyone know why/how that that key point made by Biden fell into the cracks? We are talking here about one president’s direct personal assurance to the other. The key role played by trust (or distrust) can hardly be exaggerated.

The following short video clip from 2015 provides a sense of how frustrated Putin has been, in trying to get people (in this case Western journalists) to put themselves in his shoes. You may wish to click on the two-and-a-half minute segment — from minute 10:20 to 12:55 — at the following link ( https://raymcgovern.com/2017/02/15/ray- ... rspective/ )

Erdogan Opposed to Finland, Poland in NATO

It takes a unanimous vote by all 30 NATO countries to accept new members. So one big question is whether Turkey’s President Erdogan will relent and acquiesce in Finland and Poland joining the alliance. Hard to predict, but my guess is that NATO will sweeten the pot enough for Erdogan that he will let himself be bought off. I referred the interviewers to a Tweet I had posted earlier in the day, suggesting that, even though Turkey once faced down the U.S. (on Iraq), I would not bet much on Erdogan facing down the immense pressure on this one. But who knows?

https://raymcgovern.com/2022/05/18/puti ... l-respond/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Thu May 19, 2022 10:25 pm

Briefly about Ukraine. 05/19/2022
May 19, 23:22

Image

Briefly about Ukraine. 05/19/2022

1. Mariupol.
The surrender of the remnants of the Mariupol group at Azovstal continues. By the evening of May 19, more than 1,800 enemy soldiers and officers had surrendered. This is the largest loss of prisoners for the Armed Forces of Ukraine since 2014. The process continues. A tribunal is already being prepared for war criminals.

2. Zaporozhye.
On the line Kamenskoye-Orekhov-Gulyaipole-Velikaya Novoselovka without significant changes. Positional fights.

3. Carbon.
Fighting in the area of ​​Novomikhailovka and Ugledar. There is no significant progress in this direction.

4. Marinka.
Positional battles in the village continue. There is no significant progress in the village.

5. Avdiivka.
Fighting in the area of ​​Novoselka-2 and Novobakhmutovka, as well as on the outskirts of New York. The enemy is intensively shelling Yasinovataya.

6. LPR.
The offensive in the area of ​​Popasna is developing successfully. The troops took Troitskoe north of Svetlodarsk. To the west of Popasnaya, battles are being fought for Pilipchatino.
PMC "Wagner" took Trypillya, and the paratroopers - Vladimirovka, coming almost close to Soledar. The villages of Druzhba and part of Novaya Kamenka were also taken. The Soledar-Lysichansk highway is already under fire from this direction.
The threat of the operational encirclement of the entire Severodonetsk grouping is growing. Severodonetsk itself is being stormed from three sides. The capture of the village of Shchedrishchevo on the outskirts of Severodonetsk was confirmed.

7. Raisins.
Fighting in the Krasny Liman area, where up to 1200-1500 enemy soldiers are under the threat of encirclement. There are also heavy battles in the forest near Dolgenkiy. The enemy puts up stubborn resistance in the region of Privolye and Svetlogorsk.

8. Kharkov.
The RF Armed Forces pushed the enemy back from the border near the village of Ternovoe and again brought him back under control. There are reports of battles for the village of Rubizhnoye southwest of Volchansk. Also, attacks on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions intensified as a response to the shelling of border villages in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.

9. Nikolaev.
No significant changes in the Nikolaev, Krivoy Rog and Nikopol directions.

10. Odessa.
No significant changes. The enemy continues to talk about the threat of landing and conducts reconnaissance in the direction of Serpent's Island.
Restoration work is underway on the damaged railway bridge in Zatoka, which is of strategic importance.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/49523 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7625014.html

GFoogle Translator

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The History of NATO's Expansion in a Nutshell

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Flags of the country members of NATO. | Photo: Twitter/ @CumhuriyetDaily

Published 19 May 2022 (10 hours 16 minutes ago)

At the beginning of its establishment, NATO had only 12 members: the U.S., Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal and Britain.

Finland and Sweden on Wednesday formally submitted their applications to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. This military-political alliance was founded in 1949 to contain the Soviet Union after World War II.

Its aim is that through political and military means, member states work together in collective defense and the maintenance of peace and security to promote democracy, the rule of law and welfare in the Euro-Atlantic region and defend the freedom and security of member states.

During the Cold War, NATO's adversary was the Warsaw Pact formed in 1955 by the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. At the beginning of its establishment, NATO had only 12 member states: the United States, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal and Britain. After eight rounds of expansion, there are currently 30 member states.

The first three rounds of expansion occurred during this period: in February 1952, Turkey and Greece joined NATO; in May 1955, the Federal Republic of Germany joined NATO; in May 1982, Spain joined NATO.

With the end of the Cold War, NATO began to implement a "Comprehensive Approach to Crisis Response" strategy, and by intervening in the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, to expand eastward.

Since 1992, Eastern European countries including Poland have successively put forward requirements to join NATO. In 1995, the alliance published the Study on NATO Enlargement. In July 1997, the NATO Summit in Madrid decided to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to NATO. In March 1999, NATO officially accepted the three countries into the alliance, bringing the total number of members to 19.

At the summit held in Prague in Nov. 2002, NATO decided to invite Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria to the negotiations on accession. In March 2004, the above seven countries officially became members of NATO, raising the total to 26.


In April 2008, NATO leaders decided at their summit in Bucharest to encourage Western Balkan countries to join the alliance. After a series of negotiations and corresponding procedures, Albania and Croatia joined NATO in April 2009; Montenegro became a NATO member in June 2017, and North Macedonia officially joined in March 2020.

To apply for NATO membership, certain conditions must be met. According to Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European country in a position to further the principles of this treaty and to contribute to the security of the Euro-Atlantic area to accede to the alliance.

NATO has continuously adjusted its strategy of enlargement. The expansion during the Cold War was mainly for strategic reasons. After the Cold War, NATO enlargement was lively debated. It is in this context that the alliance carried out a Study on NATO Enlargement in 1995.

Countries seeking NATO membership would have to be able to demonstrate that they have fulfilled certain requirements, which include: a functioning democratic political system based on a market economy; the fair treatment of minority populations; a commitment to the peaceful resolution of conflicts; the ability and willingness to make a military contribution to NATO operations; and a commitment to democratic civil-military relations and institutional structures.

The procedure of NATO to accede new members is complicated. The first step is an accession negotiation. Then, the applicant country should formally submit a letter of intent to the NATO Secretary-General, confirming its willingness to undertake membership obligations and fulfilling its commitments, and submit a timetable. NATO will afterward draft an agreement for the applicant country.

All NATO member states must ratify the agreement according to their own domestic procedures and notify the U.S. government after approval, and then the NATO Secretary will issue an invitation to the applicant country. After receiving the invitation, the applicant country will officially become a member of NATO after ratifying the agreement according to its own legislative procedures.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/The ... -0006.html

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

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Forwarded from
Vladislav Coal
Summary of hostilities on May 19, 2022 from Vladislav Coal

Briefly: positional battles north of Kharkov, battles for Severodonetsk, a breakthrough near Popasna.

🎯Kharkiv direction - fighting continues in the area of ​​​​Ternovaya and Staritsa. The Russian army is fighting for the preservation of the buffer zone along the border and for complete control of the left bank of the Seversky Donets in the area of ​​Stary Saltov. Near Chuguev and Balakleya - no changes.

🎯PAVLOGRAD ARCH:

🏹The northern flank of the arc (from Izyum to Popasnaya) - the direction to Grushevakha, south of Izyum and east of Oskol, has intensified without changes. There is preliminary information about the advance south of Yampol to Ozerny. We can state the last preparations for the assault on Severodonetsk : artillery preparation and battles for the suburbs are underway. Shchedrishchevo was liberated and the greenery was cleared in the north-east of the city, in the south-east, fighting in the Voronovo area. On Bakhmutka - control of half of Toshkovka, reconnaissance of positions near Ustinovka and battles between Orekhovo and Gorsky.

🏹The central front (from Popasna to Maryinka) - the situation in Popasna receives the popular name "the flower of Popasna" - after the capture of the Ukrainian fortified area, a further offensive intensified. Trypillya and Vladimirovka were liberated in the direction of Artemovsk , fighting was going on for Novaya Kamenka, Russians in the suburbs of Soledar. In the north, in the direction of Lisichansk , Viktorovka was liberated and advancement was made in Kamyshevakh. To the south, in the Svetlodar direction, the NM of the LPR entered Troitskoye, there is unconfirmed information about his release. In the Avdiivka area , fighting continues to widen the neck of the breakthrough. South of Donetsk, near Maryinka , no change.

🏹The southern flank of the arc (from the Dnieper River to Maryinka) - the front line is unchanged.

🎯Mariupol cauldron - the surrender of the Azovstal garrison continues.

🎯Kherson-Nikolaev direction - the front line is unchanged: the Black Sea - Aleksandrovka - Maksimovka - Snigirevka - Vysokopolie - the Dnieper River.

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Сolonelcassad
Zelensky indirectly acknowledged heavy losses during the strike of the Russian Armed Forces on the Desna training center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, saying that there were "many dead".
Initially, local authorities claimed several dead and wounded civilians and talked about "empty barracks".
However, a couple of days ago, sources in the Sumy region reported that the total number of deaths was from 250 to 300 people, who, like in Nikolaev, died during attacks on the barracks. Now these losses are indirectly recognized.

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Forwarded from
TOGARMA
The story of the capture of the remnants of the Azov regiment and units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Azovstal is gaining more and more interesting details.

Let's start with the fact that Kyiv was absolutely not ready for such a turn of events. If you follow the reaction of official Kyiv over the past two days, their media and various talking heads, carrying the prepared narrative in the form of official propaganda to the masses, then you can see the information chaos from conflicting statements and agendas. In fact, this is the first serious information failure of Kyiv. Judging by the condition of those who surrendered, the units did not have any supplies for at least a month, and for the last week they had already been without food and any normal water supplies. This and the fact that the decision to surrender took Kyiv by surprise suggests that all the statements of the last two months about the existence of a permanent connection between Azov and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the coordination of actions were lies within the framework of internal propaganda,

We have already written many times that it was beneficial for Kyiv to completely destroy the blockaded units, especially the Azov regiment. Let's start with the fact that Azov was essentially an armed opposition that posed a threat to Kyiv even before the start of the conflict in Ukraine, and since it began, this threat has increased many times over. The statement of its leaders was beaten by the official authorities, and the lack of control of the regiment by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine indicated that if they had left the blockade, they would have become a separate force and would have been used in the internal political struggle by opponents of the authorities, having authority among certain circles of the population, which, with the start of propaganda to glorify them, it spread to the general population. Kyiv could evacuate forces from Mariupol even before the complete blockade, which was obvious to everyone and meant the complete destruction of the forces in the city, but did not do so, despite repeated calls for help from the leadership of Azov. In fact, Azov was used as guinea pigs, who were supposed to be sacrificed for the benefit of laboratory research. If the unit were destroyed, an extensive information campaign would immediately begin both within Ukraine and at the global level. Kyiv has been preparing for this development for the past two months. The world would have been presented with a regiment of heroes who held the defense for several months and died. No one would be interested in their crimes, ideology, the fact that they were actually thrown and played out in the best traditions of Hollywood war dramas. If the unit were destroyed, an extensive information campaign would immediately begin both within Ukraine and at the global level. Kyiv has been preparing for this development for the past two months. The world would have been presented with a regiment of heroes who held the defense for several months and died. No one would be interested in their crimes, ideology, the fact that they were actually thrown and played out in the best traditions of Hollywood war dramas. If the unit were destroyed, an extensive information campaign would immediately begin both within Ukraine and at the global level. Kyiv has been preparing for this development for the past two months. The world would have been presented with a regiment of heroes who held the defense for several months and died. No one would be interested in their crimes, ideology, the fact that they were actually thrown and played out in the best traditions of Hollywood war dramas.

And now the fun begins.

First, judging by the video, the condition of the wounded is extremely depressing, the condition of the rest of the military is in no way inferior. All this destroys the overall picture that has been building in the Ukrainian information space for a long time.

Secondly, the captured military from the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to give interviews and are already testifying against the Azov people, telling that the Azov people were essentially held captive, some were tortured and beaten. The same data comes from civilians.

Thirdly, Kyiv's attempts to push through the agenda of a pre-agreed exchange, that there was a plan and everything is going according to it, obviously failed. Judging by the mood of Moscow, Azov is waiting for a demonstrative tribunal with all the ensuing consequences, including extensive media coverage.

Fourth, Kyiv urgently needs a new information win, the case with Azov failed and it will be difficult to revive it. The only hope was an attempt at an exchange, a meeting of prisoners in Kyiv and an attempt to present everything as the salvation of a "heroic unit". Moscow obviously understood that for the first time the information field was left to them and they would have to use it to the maximum.

PS: Judging by the incoming information, there is an imminent blockade of Severodonetsk ahead - one of the strongholds of the defense of the eastern front. And again, familiar signals are coming: calls for help and evacuation, reports of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine about an imminent blockade and destruction of units, Kyiv’s refusal and the construction of a new information screen.

Telegram channel: @togarma301

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Forwarded from
Blue Z Beard
A little about aviation.

I am now on a train with an Air Force colonel.
I received short answers to my questions.

Losses in the air in the early days were indeed many, more than expected.

There are several factors.

Firstly, there have never been conflicts with such a saturation of the enemy with air defense systems, perhaps never before. Dills are pumped up with all kinds of anti-aircraft toys from our S-300s and Bukovs and ending with just the darkness of stingers.

Secondly, the classical methods of war have shown their complete inefficiency. That is, in theory, first, for example, drones and decoys should fly, opening enemy firing points, then counter-battery work goes on and aviation is working out. Here the dill outwitted us at first, pulling their air defense a little further than expected, which we did not take into account. However, now we have already dealt with this by using missiles of a much greater range from a safe distance. But our birds were beaten down really a lot.

Thirdly, the catastrophic shortage of strike UAVs. I emphasize - catastrophic! Yes, we have a couple of successful modifications like "Pacer" and "Forpost-RU". And according to certain characteristics, "Pacer" is even better than Bayraktar. But Baikraktar has been on the stream for a long time and there are a lot of them, and our account goes to dozens at best. Not seriously. There is, of course, the Orlan-10 with small bombs, but in the context of Turkish UAVs, this is a kindergarten. And another point - import substitution. A year ago, our drones were tested on German engines. Whether domestic analogues have appeared is still unclear.

I could not help but ask about the “Ghost of Kyiv” and, in general, about whose air superiority. So attention: the Ukrainian side has not won a single air battle. None. The maximum of their victory is when one fighter managed to escape from us. Everything. Paragraph. Dot. All downed Russian aviation was shot down exclusively by Ukrainian air defense forces. Also, in air victories for dill, you can record two surviving guinea-wings that flew away from Mariupol intact. True, there are two of nine, but that's it.

Summing up: we have the maximum air superiority, work on the mistakes has been carried out, the enemy will be defeated, Victory will be ours.

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Forwarded from
RIA_KotZ
(
Andrew
)
I visited a prisoner of war camp near Yelenovka, together with a delegation from the International Red Cross. The Ukrainians who laid down their arms are kept in more than humane conditions. There are not even bars on the windows of the barracks.

The delegation of inspectors included a representative of the Ukrainian side - the People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the ninth convocation Alexander Kovalev. One of the few people from the “other” side whom the Donetsk people speak with respect. Veteran Afghan, served in the legendary 345th Airborne Regiment.

The delegations showed everything, told everything. The prisoners confirmed that they were treated humanely. Treat, feed, wash. They have such a smell in the prison kitchen that saliva dripped from my fangs, like a sharpei.

Many are indignant at the fact that somehow we treat prisoners too gently. And I will answer this way: there is no other way.

The "picture" of well-fed and healed enemies in captivity will play exclusively in our direction. In other sectors of the front, the enemy will begin to surrender more actively. And fewer of our boys will die in battles.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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