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

[blindpig]

The Agony of the West
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 5, 2022
Thierry Meyssan


UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (front left), US President Joe Biden (center) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (front right) and other leaders of the G7 sit at a session during the first day of the G7 Summit at Schloss Elmau, Germany, on June 26, 2022. Photo: AFP

Sergey Lavrov used to compare the West to a wounded predator. According to him, it should not be provoked because it would be taken by madness and could break everything. It is better to accompany it to the graveyard. The West does not see it that way. Washington and London are leading a crusade against Moscow and Beijing. They roar and are ready for anything. But what can they really do?

The G7 summit in Bavaria and the Nato summit in Madrid were supposed to announce the West’s punishment of the Kremlin for its “special military operation in Ukraine”. But, if the image given was that of Western unity, the reality attests to their disconnection from reality, their loss of audience in the world and ultimately the end of their supremacy.

While the West is convinced that what is at stake is in Ukraine, the world sees it facing the “Thucydides trap” [1]. Will international relations continue to be organized around them or will they become multipolar? Will the peoples who have been subjugated until now break free and gain sovereignty? Will it be possible to think differently than in terms of global domination and to devote themselves to the development of each individual?

The West has devised a narrative of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine that overlooks their own actions since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They have forgotten their signing of the Charter for European Security (also known as the OSCE Istanbul Declaration) and the way they violated it by making almost all the former members of the Warsaw Pact and some of the new post-Soviet states join one by one. They have forgotten the way they changed the Ukrainian government in 2004 and the coup d’état by which they put Banderist nationalists in power in Kiev in 2014. Having made a clean sweep of the past, they blame Russia for all the ills. They refuse to question their own actions and consider, at the time, they were forced into power. For them, their victories make the Law.

To preserve this imaginary narrative, they have already silenced the Russian media at home.
No matter how much they claim to be “democrats”, it is better to censor dissenting voices before lying.
So they approach the Ukrainian conflict, without contradiction, by convincing themselves that they have the duty to judge alone, to condemn and sanction Russia. By blackmailing small states, they managed to obtain a text from the UN General Assembly that seems to prove them right. They now plan to dismantle Russia as they did in Yugoslavia and tried to do in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen (Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy).

To do this, they began to isolate Russia from world finance and trade. They cut off its access to the SWIFT system and Lloyds, preventing it from buying and selling as well as transferring goods. They thought this would cause its economic collapse. In fact, on June 27, 2022, Russia was unable to pay a debt of $100 million and the rating agency Mody’s declared it in default [2].

But this did not have the desired effect: everyone knows that the reserves of the Russian Central Bank are full of foreign currency and gold. The Kremlin paid the 100 million, but could not transfer it to the West because of Western sanctions. It has placed them in an escrow account where they await their debtors.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin, which is no longer paid by the West, has begun to sell its production, especially its hydrocarbons, to other buyers, particularly China. The exchanges that can no longer be made in dollars are made in other currencies. As a result, the dollars that their customers used to use are flowing back to the United States. This process had already begun several years ago. But Western unilateral sanctions have accelerated it sharply. The huge amount of dollars accumulating in the US is causing a massive price increase. The Federal Reserve is doing everything it can to share it with the eurozone. The price increase is spreading at high speed across the entire Western European continent.

The European Central Bank is not an economic development agency. Its main task is to manage inflation within the Union. it cannot slow down the sudden rise in prices at all, so it tries to use it to reduce its debt. The Member States of the Union are therefore invited to compensate for the drop in purchasing power of their “citizens” by lowering taxes and providing benefits. But this is a never-ending circle: by helping their citizens, they tie their hands and feet to the European Central Bank, they chain themselves a little more to the US debts and become even poorer.

There is no remedy for this inflation. This is the first time that the West has had to mop up the dollars that Washington has recklessly printed for years. The rise in prices in the West corresponds to the cost of imperial spending over the last thirty years. Today and only today is the West paying for its wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Until now, the United States killed anyone who threatened the supremacy of the dollar. It hanged President Saddam Hussein for refusing it and looted the Iraqi Central Bank. They tortured and lynched the leader Muamar el-Gaddafi who was preparing a new pan-African currency and looted the Libyan Central Bank. The gigantic sums amassed by these oil states disappeared without a trace. The only thing we saw was GI’s taking tens of billions of dollars wrapped in large garbage bags. By excluding Russia from dollar trade, Washington itself has brought about what it so feared: the dollar is no longer the international reference currency.

The majority of the rest of the world is not blind. It has understood what is happening and has rushed to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, then tried to register for the virtual Brics summit. They realize -a little late- that Russia launched the “Partnership of Greater Eurasia”, in 2016 and that its Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, had solemnly announced it at the UN General Assembly, in September 2018 [3]. During four years, quantities of roads and railroads were built to integrate Russia into the networks of the new “Silk Roads”, land and sea, imagined by China. It was thus possible to shift the flow of goods within a few months.

The fall in the value of the dollar and the shift in the flow of goods are causing an even greater rise in energy prices. Russia, which is one of the world’s leading exporters of hydrocarbons, has seen its revenues increase considerably. Its currency, the ruble, has never been in better shape. In response, the G7 has set a price ceiling for Russian oil and gas. It ordered the “international community” not to pay more.

But Russia is obviously not going to let the West set the prices of its products. Those who do not want to pay market prices will not be able to buy them, and no customer intends to go without to please the West.

The G7 tries to organize, at least intellectually, its supremacy [4].. This no longer works. The wind has changed. The four centuries of Western domination are over.

In desperation, the G7 has committed itself to solving the global food crisis that its policies have caused. The countries concerned know what the G7 commitments mean. They are still waiting for the great African development plan and other smoke and mirrors. They know that the West cannot produce nitrogen fertilizers and that they prevent Russia from selling theirs. The G7 aid is only a band-aid to keep them waiting and not to question the sacred principles of free trade.

The only possible option for the rescue of Western domination is war. Nato must succeed in destroying Russia militarily as Rome once razed Carthage. But it’s too late: the Russian army has much more sophisticated weapons than the West. It has already experimented with them since 2014 in Syria. It can crush its enemies at any time. President Vladimir Putin exposed the staggering progress of its arsenal to his parliamentarians in 2018 [5].

The Nato summit in Madrid was a nice communication operation [6]. But it was only a swan song. The 32 member states proclaimed their unity with the despair of those who fear to die. As if nothing had happened, they first adopted a strategy to dominate the world for the next ten years, naming China’s “growth” as a concern [7]. In doing so, they admitted that their goal is not to ensure their own security, but to dominate the world. They then opened the accession process for Sweden and Finland and considered approaching China with, as a first step, the possible accession of Japan.

The only incident, which was quickly brought under control, was the Turkish pressure that forced Finland and Sweden to condemn the PKK [8]. Unable to resist, the United States dropped its allies, the Kurdish mercenaries in Syria and their leaders abroad.

With this, they decided to increase the NATO Rapid Reaction Force from 40,000 to 300,000 men, 7.5 times, and station it on the Russian border. In doing so, they have once again violated their own signature, that of the Charter for Security in Europe, by directly threatening Russia. Russia has no possibility to defend its huge borders and can only ensure its security by ensuring that no foreign force sets up a military base on its borders (scorched earth strategy). Already, the Pentagon is circulating prospective maps of the dismantling of Russia that it hopes to implement.

The former Russian ambassador to NATO and current director of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, has responded by publishing on his Telegram account the coordinates of the NATO decision-making centers, including the Madrid summit room [9]. Russia has hypersonic launchers, for the moment impossible to intercept, which can carry a nuclear warhead in a few minutes to the NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Pentagon in Washington. To avoid any misunderstanding, Sergei Lavrov specified, alluding to the Straussians, that the martial decisions of the West were not taken by the military, but by the US State Department. It would be the first target.

So the question is: will the West play for all it’s worth? Will they take the risk of a Third World War, even though it has already been lost, just to avoid dying alone?​

Translation by Roger Lagassé

This article is a follow-up to :
1. “Russia wants to force the US to respect the UN Charter,” January 4, 2022.
2. “Washington pursues RAND plan in Kazakhstan, then Transnistria,” January 11, 2022.
3. “Washington refuses to hear Russia and China,” January 18, 2022.
4. “Washington and London, deafened“, February 1, 2022.
5. “Washington and London try to preserve their domination over Europe“, February 8, 2022.
6. “Two interpretations of the Ukrainian affair”, 16 February 2022.
7. “Washington sounds the alarm, while its allies withdraw”, 22 February 2022.
8. “Russia declares war on the Straussians”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 5 March 2022.
9. “A gang of drug addicts and neo-nazis”, 5 March 2022.
10 “Israel stunned by Ukrainian neo-Nazis”, 8 March 2022.
11. “Ukraine: the great manipulation“, March 22, 2022.
12. “The New World Order being prepared under the pretext of war in Ukraine“, 29 March 2022.
13. “The war propaganda changes its shape”, 5 April 2022.
14. “The alliance of MI6, the CIA and the Banderites“, 12 April 2022.
15. “The end of Western domination“, April 19, 2022.
16. “Ukraine: the Second World War never ended“, April 26, 2022.
17. “Washington hopes to restore its hyper-power through war in Ukraine” May 3, 2022.
18. “Canada and the Banderites“, 10 May 2022.
19. “New war brewing for post-defeat against Russia,” May 24, 2022.
20. “Ukrainian secret military programs“, May 31, 2022.
21. “Ukraine: misunderstandings, misunderstandings and misunderstandings“, 7 June 2022.
22. “Poland and Ukraine“, June 14, 2022,
23. “The ideology of Ukrainian banditry“, 21 June 2022.
24. “The Scuttling of Peace in Europe,” June 28, 2022.

Notes:

[1] Destined For War: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s Trap?, Graham T. Allison, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2017).

[2] « Government of Russia : Missed coupon payment constitutes a default », Moody’s, June 27, 2022.

[3] “Remarks by Sergey Lavrov to the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly”, by Sergey Lavrov, Voltaire Network, 28 September 2018. “UNO : birth of the post-Western world”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 2 October 2018.

[4] « Communiqué des chefs d’Etat et de gouvernement du G7 d’Elmau », Réseau Voltaire, 28 juin 2022.

[5] “Vladimir Putin Address to the Russian Federal Assembly” by Vladimir Putin, Voltaire Network, 1 March 2018. “The new Russian nuclear arsenal restores world bipolarity”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 6 March 2018.

[6] “What to remember from the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid”, Voltaire Network, 29 June 2022.

[7] 2022 NATO’s Strategic Concept.

[8] “Turkiye, Sweden, Finland Memorandum”, Voltaire Network, 28 June 2022.

[9] “Russia threatens Western decision-making centers”, Voltaire Network, 29 June 2022.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... -the-west/

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Permanent mobilization
July 5, 21:33



Permanent mobilization

In recent days, the topic of permanent mobilization has intensified in Ukraine, which is associated with the already quite obvious spillover of hostilities to 2023 and the need to compensate for the growing losses in manpower.
Hence the statements that the majority of Ukrainians "will go through the front" (including women), as well as the binding of citizens to the military registration and enlistment offices and the announcement of mobilization through the Diya application follow.

All this is, of course, the implementation of the US and NATO strategy of "war to the last Ukrainians", where Zelensky's gang must ensure the corral of cannon fodder to the front, no longer paying attention to readiness for service and even gender. The front needs meat and it needs to be provided. Obviously, this activates various schemes for evading service and fleeing abroad, which has been observed since the beginning of the NWO. Catching gaping citizens on the street solves the problem only partially, and in conditions where a battalion of reservists can come to a non-combat-ready state after 1-2 weeks of fighting, a lot of such battalions are required.

Ironically, this is happening in a country where for another 3 years the majority voted for Zelensky and the slogan of stopping the war. But Zelensky's gang of the expected tore up the Minsk agreements and headed for war, where they are now driving their voters who wanted peace. Such is the bloody retribution for the choice "if only not Poroshenko." Now, instead of the desired peace, we have to go to rot in the trenches near Izyum or Kharkov. And there is no end in sight, because for the owners of the Zelensky gang, the population of Ukraine is a waste resource in the global struggle for dominance.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7720870.html

How the mayor of Mariupol led the inhabitants of the city to the slaughter
July 5, 21:49



How the mayor of Mariupol led the inhabitants of the city to the slaughter

Today there was a small, but in our opinion an important event. For the first time, a representative of the authorities in Ukraine, People's Deputy Serhiy Taruta, confirmed:

the evacuation from Mariupol, which was NOT announced by the authorities;
Lack of notification of Mariupol residents about the need for evacuation;
That there was an opportunity to leave the city;
That the lack of evacuation of people is always on the conscience of local authorities;
That the leadership of the city left, but the people did not know about it, and were sure that everything was under control;
That Boychenko's betrayal greatly influenced people's attitude to power.

On our own behalf, we add that Boychenko not only organized NOTHING and fled the city. He also inspired the townspeople through social networks that the city would stand.

We wrote about it here ( https://t.me/ZeRada1/8135), here ( https://t.me/ZeRada1/8386 ) and here ( https://t.me/ZeRada1/9114 ). Finally, there were people's deputies ready to support this topic.

Today's recognition of Boychenko's criminal actions should be the first step towards bringing him to justice. Every mer who abandoned his city and his voters for the sake of "work" in social networks should know that he will have to answer for this!

https://t.me/ZeRada1/9374 - zinc

Boychenko solved the problem of providing a human shield for the group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which planned to defend Mariupol. It is quite obvious that without a human shield, the assault on Mariupol would have gone faster, since the army of the DPR and the RF Armed Forces would have to spend less effort on rescuing civilians who were taken hostage by Ukrainian terrorists. This is a conscious and coordinated step, which was implemented not only in Severodonetsk.

Since Boychenko himself did not plan to become a human shield and knew perfectly well what fate was in store for Mariupol, he almost immediately fled the city to Zaporozhye and from there he deceived the inhabitants, urging them to stay in the city, where street fighting was soon to begin.
Of course, no one in Ukraine will bring Boychenko to justice, because such actions are not his private initiative, but are a continuation of the strategy of state terrorism.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7721145.html

about stolen money
July 5, 22:32



about stolen money

Regarding Russian assets stolen in the West.

1. Of course, Russia compensates for a significant part of what is stolen in the West by confiscating Western assets in Russia, which is already happening when Western companies are forced to sell their assets in Russia at half price. When transferring blocked assets to Ukraine, we will most likely see a net confiscation

as well . . Hence the warnings of some financiers and Western politicians that these 300 billion could cost the West much more.

3. As noted earlier, even now Ukraine needs 1 trillion. dollars. After 4 months of a war that will not end this year. Accordingly, even all Russian assets stolen in the West will not save the "father of Ukrainian democracy." We can rather talk about the banal embezzlement of money, as happened with the Venezuelan and Libyan assets stolen by the West.

4. Nevertheless, despite all of the above, one should not forget about the stolen. In my opinion, it is necessary to legislate the topic of stolen assets as a "historical" debt of countries that have stolen certain assets, and in the future to use this topic in any contacts with such a country. Not excluding the topic of accruing debt interest on the fact of the inability to use the stolen funds. Now, of course, this will be just a demarche and no one will return anything to Russia now. But history knows many examples when the issues of such historical debts are passed on to the next generations and who knows how the millstones of history will turn further. So, in my opinion, it should be within the framework of the paradigm "Russians always come for their money", and not be limited to lamentations "oh, the West stole our money from us, we have already written it off",

https://cdn.ren.tv/cache/960x540/media/ ... daccc9.jpg

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of July 5

The situation on the fronts over the past day:

There was no movement of troops on the Kharkov front . Artillery carries out "processing" of enemy positions. Of the significant successes for the day - a Russian fighter shot down a Su-25 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force in the Kharkiv region during an air battle;

On the Slavic sector of the front, Russian troops approach Seversk . The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine recognized the loss of the village of Spornoe .
In addition, Russian troops carry out strikes on Zvanovka and Verkhnekamenskoe . The quick capture of Zvanovka will allow the Russian Army to cut off Seversk from the south and go to the rear of the defensive line of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Seversk - Soledar - Bakhmut (Artemovsk). And the liberation of Verkhnekamensky opens the way to Seversk . Read our article for a detailed analysis and forecast on this front .

On the Donetsk front , according to people's deputy Gonarenko, the Armed Forces of Ukraine returned control of the village of Sladkoe near Volnovakha . Russian troops are conducting a stubborn counter-battery fight in the direction of Bakhmut ( Artemovsk ). Also , a Ukrainian fighter jet was shot down in the area of ​​Vuhledar today .

On the southern flank - no change. There is a regrouping of troops, as well as special operations forces are conducting raids to destroy the enemy's nomadic DRGs.

"Arrivals" from the APU. Strong shelling of Donbass cities is going on again. It should be noted that the Ukrainian army attacked the center of Donetsk , a 10-year-old girl died . Kuibyshevsky and Petrovsky districts of Donetsk were also fired upon . In the latter, a civilian was killed. Arrivals were reported in Gorlovka , Stakhanov and Maryinka .

🛡Borderlands . Today Roman Starovoit reported that in the morning the settlements of the Kursk region were under artillery fire. Also this morning, the village of Zernovo in the Bryansk region was under artillery fire. Closer to dinner, it became known that three unknown people with weapons in their hands today tried to break into the territory of military unit 12721 in the city of Klintsy . The attack was repulsed by sentries who opened fire on the attackers.

Calibration. The Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed the location of the 79th separate air assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Nikolaev .

In the world. The Foreign Ministers of Finland and Sweden signed protocols on joining NATO. Both countries have officially confirmed their willingness and ability to meet the political, legal and military obligations of NATO membership.

👁Interesting. The Armed Forces of Ukraine in Lysichansk used prohibited mines "Petal" (PFM-1). Before retreating, they scattered "petals" in the central districts of the city - local residents neutralized them on their own. Military correspondents of Readovka followed in the footsteps of Ukrainian nationalists - in those areas that were badly damaged by strikes, mines, "petals" and looting.



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forwarded from
Open Ukraine | Open Ukraine
The Daily Telegraph: if Kiev does not turn the tide before autumn, then the West will start curtailing aid The difficulty lies in the fact that in this case the West will curtail its assistance to Ukraine.

Western politicians are not at all romantics who fight for the freedom of other peoples and selflessly defend them. If the project does not bring benefits, it is curtailed, which will happen to Kyiv, because its military and financial support during the further retreat of the Ukrainian army under the pressure of the Russians loses all meaning.

The publication notes that the collective West is already beginning to guess the senselessness of its attempts to help Kyiv, because the Armed Forces of Ukraine are suffering huge losses, they are running out of easy-to-use Soviet-style weapons, and the Ukrainians mobilized “from the plow” deftly wield only a shovel, so the development of high-tech Western weapons will take them months. And without trained personnel, arms deliveries are useless.

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Сolonelcassad
Offensive on Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 5, 2022

The Armed Forces of Ukraine fired at the areas of Kursk and Bryansk regions bordering Ukraine . As a result of the artillery attack, there were no casualties, but there was significant damage to civilian buildings.

Russian forces carried out artillery and rocket strikes on enemy positions in Belopolsky, Yunakovsky, Seredina-Budsky and Shostsky districts of Sumy Oblast . In the city of Shostka , the stationing point of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at one of the local industrial enterprises was hit.

In the Chernihiv region , the Russian Armed Forces inflicted a fire defeat on the concentrations of Ukrainian forces in the settlement. Iron Bridge and Mosses.

In the north of the Kharkiv region , Ukrainian troops are actively preparing for the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces: enemy military personnel are equipping positions and mining the approaches to Petrovka , Zolochev and Odnorobovka .

A missile strike hit one of the locations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the north-east of Kharkov .

In Donbass , the opposing sides continue to prepare for a new round of hostilities.
In Lysychansk , the cleansing of the remnants of Ukrainian units in the southern outskirts of the city continues.
The RF Armed Forces are advancing on the right bank of the Seversky Donets towards Grigorovka and Serebryanka . Grigorovka is fighting .
Allied forces are advancing in the vicinity of the village of Disputed southwest of Lisichansk.
As a result of massive artillery and rocket attacks by Ukrainian formations on the territory of the DPR and LPR, at least 3 civilians were killed. A ten-year-old girl died after the attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Voroshilovsky district of Donetsk .
Russian artillery continues to suppress enemy positions in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk .

In the morning hours, the Russian Armed Forces carried out rocket attacks on the Dnepropetrovsk region : several shells were shot down over Sinelnikovo and Dnepropetrovsk. The positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the settlement were struck. Cover in the south of the region.

On the territory of the Zaporozhye region , the parties continue to conduct artillery duels in the area of ​​Gulyaipol and Vasylivka.

In the Krivoy Rog direction, the parties regularly carry out artillery attacks on each other's positions along the entire demarcation line. There are episodic battles in the area.



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forwarded from
Denazification UA
Ukraine has acknowledged that military products coming from the West are being sold.

“Even military goods are sold for cash. We have established such facts,” the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine reported.

The wild "African" corruption of the Kiev regime certainly plays into the hands of the Liberation Forces - after all, a significant amount of weapons, ammunition and ammunition simply did not reach the front line.

The same is with the plundering of funds collected by Ukrainians "for the war." For example, an all-Ukrainian fundraiser for the Bayraktar UAV was announced, then it became known about the gratuitous transfer of several drones, but the money had already disappeared without a trace

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Сolonelcassad
The situation in the Nikolaevsko-Krivoy Rog direction
as of 19.00 July 5, 2022

In the Nikolaev-Kryvyi Rih direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are preparing to conduct a counteroffensive in certain sectors of the front.

In the area of ​​Kirovo , Blagodatny , Novoegorovka , Novoaleksandrovka and Bereznogovaty , four car columns arrived with military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries deployed from the northern regions of the country.

Construction of engineering structures continues in the vicinity of Kirovo and Mirny . The positions of two ATGM crews are also posted.

Artillery and mortar crews of the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired using 155-mm M777 howitzers and 60-mm M224 mortars in areas in Novopetrovka , Petrovsky , Vasilki , Lyubimovka , Kreshchenovka, Chernobaevka .

In turn, the RF Armed Forces attacked the areas of concentration of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kirovo, Chervona Dolina , Bereznogovat, Belaya Krinitsa , Nikolaev , Limanakh , Luparevo , Shevchenkovo , Mirny, Kobzartsy , Partizanskoye , Zarechny , Bashtanka , Shirokiy Lana , Ivanovka , Potemkino , Knyazevka , Dobryanka , Trudolyubovka , Osokorovka , Topolino .

Reconnaissance UAVs, including at least one Bayraktar UAV, operated in the areas of Davydov Brod and Mirny.



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forwarded from
INTERNATIONAL FAN


The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed the " propiska " for conscripts in Ukraine This was reported on the official Facebook page of the General Staff (Meta Corporation, which owns Facebook, is recognized as an extremist organization in Russia).

“The norm of the Law of Ukraine “On military duty and military service”, which has been in force since 1992, provides that in wartime it is forbidden to leave the place of residence for conscripts, conscripts and reservists without the permission of the head of the relevant territorial recruitment and social support center,” the General Staff of Ukraine says. .

The statement of the General Staff provoked strong criticism among experts and the general public. Thus, lawyer Rostislav Kravets emphasized that the requirement to obtain permission from the military registration and enlistment office to travel outside the place of residence will lead to the spread of corruption on the ground and bring down the economy due to legal and logical inconsistencies in the order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Political expert Yuriy Romanenko called the decree of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "stupid". In his opinion, the only explanation for the initiative is the creation of a "giant feeder" that will bring millions to any employee of the military registration and enlistment office.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster
JULY 5, 2022


A large crater is visible in a school yard from overnight shelling as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on June 27. Photo: Leah Millis/Reuters.

By Jeffrey D. Sachs – Jun 27, 2022

The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle. If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these US foreign policy debacles.

The neocon movement emerged in the 1970s around a group of public intellectuals, several of whom were influenced by University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University classicist Donald Kagan. Neocon leaders included Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Cohen, Elliott Abrams, and Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).
The main message of the neocons is that the US must predominate in military power in every region of the world, and must confront rising regional powers that could someday challenge US global or regional dominance, most important Russia and China. For this purpose, US military force should be pre-positioned in hundreds of military bases around the world and the US should be prepared to lead wars of choice as necessary. The United Nations is to be used by the US only when useful for US purposes.

This approach was spelled out first by Paul Wolfowitz in his draft Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) written for the Department of Defense in 2002. The draft called for extending the US-led security network to the Central and Eastern Europe despite the explicit promise by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1990 that German unification would not be followed by NATO’s eastward enlargement. Wolfowitz also made the case for American wars of choice, defending America’s right to act independently, even alone, in response to crises of concern to the US. According to General Wesley Clark, Wolfowitz already made clear to Clark in May 1991 that the US would lead regime-change operations in Iraq, Syria, and other former Soviet allies.

The neocons championed NATO enlargement to Ukraine even before that became official US policy under George W. Bush, Jr. in 2008. They viewed Ukraine’s NATO membership as key to US regional and global dominance. Robert Kagan spelled out the neocon case for NATO enlargement in April 2006:

[T]he Russians and Chinese see nothing natural in [the “color revolutions” of the former Soviet Union], only Western-backed coups designed to advance Western influence in strategically vital parts of the world. Are they so wrong? Might not the successful liberalization of Ukraine, urged and supported by the Western democracies, be but the prelude to the incorporation of that nation into NATO and the European Union — in short, the expansion of Western liberal hegemony?

Kagan acknowledged the dire implication of NATO enlargement. He quotes one expert as saying, “the Kremlin is getting ready for the ‘battle for Ukraine’ in all seriousness.” After the fall of the Soviet Union, both the US and Russia should have sought a neutral Ukraine, as a prudent buffer and safety valve. Instead, the neocons wanted US “hegemony” while the Russians took up the battle partly in defense and partly out of their own imperial pretentions as well. Shades of the Crimean War (1853-6), when Britain and France sought to weaken Russia in the Black Sea following Russian pressures on the Ottoman empire.

Kagan penned the article as a private citizen while his wife Victoria Nuland was the US Ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush, Jr. Nuland has been the neocon operative par excellence. In addition to serving as Bush’s Ambassador to NATO, Nuland was Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs during 2013-17, where she participated in the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, and now serves as Biden’s Undersecretary of State guiding US policy vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine.

The neocon outlook is based on an overriding false premise: that the US military, financial, technological, and economic superiority enables it to dictate terms in all regions of the world. It is a position of both remarkable hubris and remarkable disdain of evidence. Since the 1950s, the US has been stymied or defeated in nearly every regional conflict in which it has participated. Yet in the “battle for Ukraine,” the neocons were ready to provoke a military confrontation with Russia by expanding NATO over Russia’s vehement objections because they fervently believe that Russia will be defeated by US financial sanctions and NATO weaponry.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a neocon think-tank led by Kimberley Allen Kagan (and backed by a who’s who of defense contractors such as General Dynamics and Raytheon), continues to promise a Ukrainian victory. Regarding Russia’s advances, the ISW offered a typical comment: “[R]egardless of which side holds the city [of Sievierodonetsk], the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will probably have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back.”

The facts on the ground, however, suggest otherwise. The West’s economic sanctions have had little adverse impact on Russia, while their “boomerang” effect on the rest of the world has been large. Moreover, the US capacity to resupply Ukraine with ammunition and weaponry is seriously hamstrung by America’s limited production capacity and broken supply chains. Russia’s industrial capacity of course dwarfs that of Ukraine’s. Russia’s GDP was roughly 10X that of Ukraine before war, and Ukraine has now lost much of its industrial capacity in the war.

The most likely outcome of the current fighting is that Russia will conquer a large swath of Ukraine, perhaps leaving Ukraine landlocked or nearly so. Frustration will rise in Europe and the US with the military losses and the stagflationary consequences of war and sanctions. The knock-on effects could be devastating, if a right-wing demagogue in the US rises to power (or in the case of Trump, returns to power) promising to restore America’s faded military glory through dangerous escalation.

Instead of risking this disaster, the real solution is to end the neocon fantasies of the past 30 years and for Ukraine and Russia to return to the negotiating table, with NATO committing to end its commitment to the eastward enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia in return for a viable peace that respects and protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

https://orinocotribune.com/ukraine-is-t ... -disaster/

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Ukraine’s Economy To Shrink by at Least 35 Pct This Year: PM


Photo taken on May 31, 2022 shows a train at a railway station in Irpin, Ukraine. | Photo: Roman Petushkov/Xinhua

According to the State Statistics Service, Ukraine's GDP contracted 15.1 percent year on year in January-March 2022.

Ukraine's gross domestic product (GDP) will shrink at least 35 percent this year due to the conflict with Russia, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported on Tuesday, citing Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

While addressing the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Switzerland, Shmyhal said that the Ukrainian economy has started recovering from the "shock coma" of the first weeks of the conflict.

The government carried out a "relatively successful" grain sowing campaign and resumed logistics across the western border, Shmyhal said, noting that the economy still faces many challenges.

According to the State Statistics Service, Ukraine's GDP contracted 15.1 percent year on year in January-March 2022.

According to the estimates of the National Bank of Ukraine, in the second half of the year the rate of economic contraction will be lower, but in general, Ukraine's real GDP will decrease by more than 30 percent over the course of the year.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ukr ... -0017.html

Russia Calls on the OHCHR To Dismiss Politicized Approaches


Russian FM Spokeswomen asked the OHCHR to drop politized actions towards the country. July 5, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@cardinales1

Published 5 July 2022

On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman called on the OHCHR, requesting the organization to dismiss politicized approaches in light of the report issued by the UN on Ukraine.

Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman demanded on Tuesday to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and her office dismiss all politicized approaches to the country, in the face of the recent report released by the UN in relation to Ukraine's conflict.

"The subject and content of the latest report from the OHCHR finally put everything in its place," reads the statement released by Zakharova responding to the regular report of the UN on human rights in Ukraine.

"It's already obvious that its experts actually serve the interests of their financial and political donors and, therefore, are not interested in establishing the true causes of gross and massive violations of human rights in Ukraine," she continued to say.

"In this regard, we again demand from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the office she leads to abandoning biased and politicized approaches in their activities, honestly and impartially fulfill the existing mandate, clearly following the spirit and letter of the Charter UN," added Zakharova.


The Russian spokeswoman highlighted that specialists are not interested in revealing the real causes of gross and massive human rights violations in Ukraine.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0015.html

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"DECOLONIZE RUSSIA"

Diego Sequera

Jul 5, 2022 , 12:20 p.m.


The United States wants to balkanize Russia (Photo: Maxim Blinov / Sputnik)

On June 23 in Washington (and via Zoom) there was a debate focused on the subject that gives title to this note and the conference itself.

The host, the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) or the Helsinki Commission, is, according to its own page , an independent agency of the United States federal government created in 1976 under the Final Act of Helsinki , the formalization of the discussions and commitments that took place in the Council on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the international council that gave way to the creation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ( OSCE ), which was responsible for outlining a series of agreements on the inviolability of borders, cooperation between the countries of the region, the promotion and defense of human rights and the classic etcetera of these enumerations.

As can be seen, this is another body and a series of declarations created within the framework of the bipolar world and the Cold War of the last century. However, the CSCE continues to exist and, according to its objectives, is in charge of monitoring, elaborating and establishing policies for the different instances of the federal government of the United States with respect to Europe.

The commission is made up of nine senators, nine congressmen and a representative from the departments of State, Defense and Commerce. The CSCE's perspective "sometimes becomes evident in the foreign policy work" of these legislative and executive bodies, codified in laws or decisions. It is currently chaired by Senator Ben Cardin (Democrat) and its co-chair is Congressman Stephen Cohen (also Democrat). Cardin, some will remember, was a promoter and another active signatory of the regime of unilateral coercive measures (the "sanctions") against Venezuela. Therefore, this description can save us a lot of ground regarding the current nature and spirit of the CSCE, and how we can gradually understand that "

If the above is not enough, there is also what he says at the beginning of the review of the event:

"Russia's barbaric war against Ukraine - and before that against Syria, Libya, Georgia and Chechnya - has exposed to the whole world the aggressively imperial character of the Russian Federation. This aggression is also catalyzing a long overdue conversation about the Russia's inner empire, a product of Moscow's dominance over the numerous indigenous non-Russian nations, and the brutal extent to which the Kremlin has gone to suppress their self-expressions and self-determinations."

Of course, the panel ends up framing the context, and it is as predictable as it is tedious, since it is made up of "four women and one man, all of whom have circulated through the regime change black complex, whether it be the International Crisis Group, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the German Marshall Fund, the Soros octopus and so on," portrays Niccolo Soldo. "Typical 'swamp creatures' who profit off the misery of those the United States makes targets for regime change. Their perspectives always coincide with State Department policies, no matter how they wrap their words. Mere coincidence , of course".

As it is also pure chance that for a thick hour and a half this group of "witnesses" (Fatima Tlis, Botakoz Kassymbekova, Erica Marat, Hanna Hopko and Casey Michel) develop with their super innovative theses, on the basis that Russia never stopped of being an empire and that the republics that make up the Federation are oppressed colonies that need to be liberated in order, once and for all, to get out here, in the collective West (the Russians would say), of that problem without control that is the regime of Moscow, reinvigorated these years by the Stalinist tsar (it is never clear which of the two) Vladimir Putin, his political henchmen, his oligarchs and, in general, everything that comes from that geography.

A list of what was discussed (the panel harmoniously agrees on everything) would look something like this:

*The United States made a mistake by not going far enough in the territorial disintegration of the Soviet Union, and today we are seeing the results.
*The "narrative" with which the Soviet Union presented itself as the socialist force, equivalent to liberation, facing the Third World and in opposition to North American and European neo-colonialism, was always false.
*The West (as the panelists called Europe and the United States) must support the different civil societies within the Federation and outside it, in the post-Soviet space, where it is necessary to remove Moscow from the center of influence.
*The war in Ukraine is one of aggression perpetrated by Russia in its process of restitution of the Soviet Union/tsarist empire (depending on who says it) and nothing it does there is less than war crimes and genocide.
*That Central Asia and Eastern Europe are going through a decolonial awakening, and it is urgent to support civil societies there and in the different republics within the Russian Federation.
*That it is a serious mistake not to do so and to ignore, within Russia, the different movements of "democratic federalism", "anti-colonialist, pro-sovereignty or anti-imperialist" in the "last European empire that never went through a process of decolonization" (sic), something that, they maintain, is now imminent as a result of the special military operation in Ukraine, since the economic recession is just around the corner along with military defeat, they affirm in unison.
^For all of the above, the United States government should begin to produce legislation in this sense so as "not to make the same mistake" as in 1991 and, now, to get rid of that "village prison" once and for all. This is a moral imperative because otherwise we will be at this same point in history later.

It seems that reviewing what is always, absolutely always, said in these councils within the perpetual washing machine of Official Washington ends up being a waste of time and centimeters, until we put into consideration the key and unconfessed element during the briefing of the commission: the only way to solve this "problem" is through the territorial dissolution of the Federation.

READ THE FINE PRINT ALOUD

No statement about balkanization has been heard from any official voice in the White House, but the event at the CSCE elevates it to a semi-official level. Congressman Cohen, vice of the commission, was present and said his (the same thing) in the brief minutes of his participation.

With the hysterical drive to physically and spiritually cancel everything related to the Russian world in this 2022, the idea of ​​a decolonized and territorially fragmented Russia as a master task of the West has been gaining strength and focus. From expelling conductors to banning Dostyevsky, from ukrainizing a painting by Degas to removing the last name from the salad, the meme that this represents, a liberal custom, is accompanied by a desire for physical, real, concrete and material suppression. None of this should hurt because the population of that (vast) territory is simply subhuman.

Along with the public exchange in the Helsinki Commission, the most recurrent appearances in mainstream transatlantic networks and media are on the rise. Differences can be found in how an alleged map of a Russian partition is imagined, but the premises of why it would occur persist.

It doesn't matter if it comes from some Eastern European Otanistoid "thinker" or is published by the Washington Post or The Atlantic in the center of power of Official Washington, "decolonial" balkanization is a logical, automatic and guaranteed consequence of irredentist imperialism, the tension between the different regions against Moscow (ethnic, economic), the policies of "Russification", the collapse of the country as a result of both the "sanctions" and the imminent Russian military defeat.

But before dealing with the strident dissonance of these points with the concrete reality of today - these lines are written when Lugansk declares its liberation - the notions of Russia as a "prison of peoples" and as an empire under the domination of sub -Slavic human being to be decolonized will sound novel to some people.

But they are not, and they have quite a specific traditional matrix, at least in the basic version wielded by the "Collective West", regardless of its updates or variations.

THE BAD SEED

The Ukrainian "race" was to be protected "from the communist vision, against internationalism and capitalism, and against all ideas and structures that weaken the vital forces of the nation." The "Ukrainian national revolution" would seek to build a state that will fight "for the destruction of slavery, for the decline of Moscow, prison of nations; for the decline of the entire communist system," says the statement with which Stepan 's faction Flag of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), among other resolutions, made its launch official in 1939 (Rossolínki-Liebe; 2014, p.162).

It is worth the summary digression of a much longer and more complex story.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN, by its acronym in Ukrainian and as it is conventionally known) was one of several political formations that were formed in the interwar period of the 20th century, within the framework of the complex process of changing borders in Europe between the first and second world wars. But it was, without a doubt, the most radical and aggressive. Cultivated in the 1930s by Germany and the United Kingdom, it was among the first to preach radical fundamentalists, ultra-nationalists and anti-Jews throughout Europe. Not only did he unrestrictedly support Hitler, but he also tried to conform ideologically to the national-socialist canon.

Bandera's faction, the OUN-B, made up of the new, more belligerent generation, split from the original, led by Andrej Melnyk, and became official almost at the same time as the German invasion of Poland in 1939. The only difference was one of method. , the OUN-B promoting direct violent action over political readjustment and the "strategic patience" of the OUN-M, that of Melnyk. Otherwise, they shared the anti-Russian fury of the Germans, they would believe with Hitler that the Soviet Union - ruled by Jews and savage Slavs - would collapse immediately in the face of a military offensive by the Reich, and they considered themselves racially apart (and above) from other Slavs, be they Russians or Poles, Communists or Gypsies.

It was essentially made up of Western Ukrainians (Galicia, Volhynia). With the invasion of Poland, in the midst of chaos, they considered the opportunity to "cleanse" the occupied areas of Jews and Soviets auspicious.

An example:

"Between 1941 and 1944, almost all the Jews of western Ukraine were annihilated by the Germans, with the help of the Ukrainian police and local population, the OUN and the UPA [the armed wing of the OUN]. In June In 1941, before the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, around 250,000 Jews lived in Volhynia and almost 570,000 in eastern Galicia ( Distrikt Galizien .) Of these, around 1.5 percent survived the German occupation of Volhynia, and barely two to three percent in eastern Galicia" (Rossolinki-Liebe; 2014, p.256).

They were leading players in what was called the "holocaust of bullets" from 1939 to 1941. With Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, in different ways and times they joined the different "initiatives" that required support from the local collaborationist population. Whether in Wermacht (the army) formations in the Naghtingall or Roland battalions, as occupation police or as numbers in the Einzatsgruppen : the SS paramilitary mobile units that operated in the rear of the advancing German "cleaning up the "of partisans, Jews or other collaborators, or as larger units of the Waffen-SS, such as the Galicia Battalion .

In those days, Jews and Bolsheviks were almost synonymous, and therefore the extermination of both justifiable and necessary. "The Jew himself is not an element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition. The colossus of the East is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish domination in Russia will be, at the same time, the end of Russia as a State. We are predestined to to witness a catastrophe that will constitute the most formidable proof for the truth of our racist theory", Hitler wrote in My Struggle (p.289, 1923).

The German invasion, in addition to having that colonial and "civilizing" character, had an economic and existential one: the construction of the vital space, the Lebensraum , the expansion that would allow giving a material basis to the pan-Germanism of the "Reich of a thousand years". This implied various reflexive efforts on what to do, how to bring the Nazi doctrine of the promise to effective exercise. In this sense, the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (the Ostministerium ) that Hitler created to develop the General Plan for the East and that he placed under the tutelage of Alfred Rosenberg, the "philosopher" of the Nazism tried and executed in Nuremberg in 1946.

For the National Socialists, the Soviet territorial question was also a problem. Beyond the oil of the Caucasus and the arable land of the Ukraine (the jewel in the crown of the Lebensraum ), the Ostministerium also used the "people's jail" trope for propaganda purposes: the Third Reich was coming to liberate peoples oppressed by the slavic empire.

The different "plans for the east" varied according to the situation and the clash of interests between the ministry for the east, the German army, the SS and Hitler himself.

It is worth mentioning that the armed resistance in the Ukraine, Belarus and other countries under occupation was also an objective factor that led to the Wannsee Conference and the formulation of a "final solution" to the Jewish problem (Mayer, 1998). In return, this made them redouble themselves in other initiatives that aimed at territorial fragmentation, shaking up the ethnic card.

In this Gehrard Von Mende , Rosenberg's Ostministerium official in charge of the Caucasus Division within the ministry, had a prominent role in the creation of military formations composed of Caucasians, Tatars, or other Muslim peoples of Central Asia. He was also at times the link between the Germans and the Ukrainian nationalists (Rossolinki-Liebe; 2014).

This idea contradicted the idea that a Soviet Union balkanized into different ethnic units could solve the problem of political-military opposition and make it more controllable. In this way, balkanization projects were conceived -with questionable political and historical bases. A partition took shape from which other countries would rise: Siberia, the Caucasus, Turkestan, the Scandinavian-Black Sea Unity, Free Karelia, the Baltic countries, White Ruthenia, Cosakia and the Idel-Ural.


In the final years of the war, with the Nazi war machine in retreat from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, collaborationist forces increasingly in disarray when not stopped by agents of the NKVD or the Red Army, sought sanctuary in the concentration camps. refugees controlled by the United States or England. With the defeat of the Third Reich, many army and SS officers and officials found protection at the hands of factions within the government of the United States, England, Canada, and West Germany.

With the Cold War in the making, another chapter began where perhaps many of the main exponents of Nazism had died or were tried in Nuremberg, while others joined the different scientific, intelligence or military plans in the following decade, and from then on in Washington, London, Toronto or Bonn.

If in Nuremberg part of the leaders of Nazism were tried, the Croatian, Baltic, Romanian, Hungarian, Ukrainian or Belarusian collaborators (openly fascist) did not suffer that fate, and their ideas combined with the Nazi conceptual body survived with them with little difficulty. , either openly and legally or incognito in South American countries or nations under white supremacist control in Africa, such as Rhodesia or South Africa.

This is how characters like Yaroslav Stetsko, Nycola Lebed or Roman Surkyevitch (all leaders of the OUN-B) found themselves useful in the new transatlantic battle against the Soviet Union. Von Mende also survived under the auspices of the newly founded CIA (Simpson, 1988).

In the first hour of the Cold War in the 1950s, the doctrine of "liberationism" was in vogue in the United States and England as the way to sustain the conflict within the Soviet space: it had to be the Balts, the Ukrainians, the Belarusians or the Residual groups of Russians who joined the Nazi effort (such as the NTS or General Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army ) would be in charge of freeing themselves from the yoke, while the Western powers would support said effort logistically (with a voluminous financing) and militarily (training). , provision of weapons, intelligence). Something similar would also happen on the political, propaganda, academic and cultural fronts.

"Liberationist" fever with various efforts to infiltrate activists behind enemy lines (in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) deflated with the failure of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Executing that idea were figures such as the Dulles brothers (from the CIA and the State Department), George Kennan himself in charge of the infiltration program, and the Gehlen Organization, under the direction of former General Reinhard Gehlen, the head of military intelligence in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, now turned ally and founder of the West German intelligence service, the BND.

But if in that first hour of the Cold War the various clandestine and military efforts failed (the overwhelming majority of these initiatives were dismantled by the KGB), it was not the same with the "battle of ideas".

Surkyevich (as much claimed in Ukraine today as Stepan Bandera) died in arms somewhere in Transcarpathia (Bandera was assassinated by a KGB agent in 1956), but Stetsko begins to rise to prominence with lobby-formations like the Bloc. Anti-Bolshevik Nations (BNA).

Originally containing Croatian, Romanian, Hungarian, Baltic, and Belarusian fascists, the BNA was firmly controlled by Ukrainians (all OUN-B) now residing in the United States, Canada, England, and West Germany; enjoying unrestricted access to Western anticommunist circles, in many government entities.

In fact, the BNA was one of the central founders of the World Anti-Communist League (LAM) and was the inaugurator of the United States Congress Captive Nations Week, keeping alive the concept of Russia as a "people's prison" and the territorial balkanization. Through the LAM, in fact, figures like Stestko gave continuity to Nazi ideas and could sustain academic fallacies that were later inserted into the anti-communist propaganda circuit, such as the Holodomor, the alleged planned famine against the Ukrainian population during the years 1930.

( Spoiler alert : the great famine was an indisputable historical fact, undoubtedly the product of a combination of poor planning decisions, drought, plant diseases and pest infestation, affecting two consecutive years of harvest.

It affected not only Ukraine, but also Western Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Volga. Any serious study can confirm this, putting in serious doubt the idea of ​​an organized genocide to discipline the nationalist population of Ukraine.

The use and abuse of this quasi-mythological concept offers the basis for establishing false equivalences between Stalin and Hitler and reducing attention to the conscious and voluntary actions of the Ukrainian ultranationalists in the Jewish and Gypsy holocausts, and their collaborationist role in the war in general.)

In 1986, Jon and Scott Lee Anderson wrote that with the birth of the LAM "a worldwide network of fascism came into existence. Today [1986], the League's conventions provide the opportunity for the old guard of war criminals to find, advise and support the new guard fascists, so that a man like [the Romanian Iron Guard] Chirila Ciuntu, who helped massacre 'Jewish-communists' forty-five years ago, can sit on the same room with an Italian fascist who killed 'reds' ten years ago and with a Salvadoran killing 'subversives' today" (Anderson; 1986, p.45).

The Anderson brothers published their book, Inside the League , in the midst of the Reagan-era anticommunist rage. In fact, Stetsko and the then American president even met publicly, with a moved Reagan telling the Ukrainian that "his dream of him is our dream, his hope our hope."

With the fall, a few years later, of the Soviet Union, with its hectic and turbulent events, today's decolonial experts remind us how the idea of ​​dismantling the Russian "people's jail" did not reach its peak with figures like George Bush Sr. opposing, although by that time, his Secretary of Defense, a certain Dick Cheney, brandished the "proposal" of total dismemberment: the promoters of the Russian "decolonization" of the liberal spectrum today shake hands with the neoconservative figure who has more power has reached in recent history, on a Nazi conceptual background.

Ukrainian independence was accompanied from the 2000s by the process of rehabilitation of the Ukrainian fascists and their ideas, first with the Orange Revolution of 2004 and then, ten years later, reaching power and apogee with the Maidan, in 2014... and now we know what came next.



In January 2022 (a month before the war in Ukraine), Moss Robeson, a researcher who has followed in the footsteps of the OUN-B in its various front organizations in the United States and Canada, wondered if there would be a return of the BNA , beyond the depressing state of the "Captive Nations Week" (which in one of its last editions was attended by Carlos Vecchio and Luis Almagro ), pointing to the Ukrainian exile groups that overlap each other and continue assuming themselves as custodians of the OUN-B doctrine.

Robeson pointed out that formations such as the Ukrainian World Congress, the International Council in Support of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Institute for National Memory or the Stepan Bandera Center for National Resurgence continue to discuss and establish different study programs or discussion circles that reach to schools in majority-Ukrainian districts in cities like Toronto, and that also harmonize with the various "cultural centers" that "flourished" in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities after Maidan.

To round off the starting point of this note, it should be noted that a very active person within those circles and networks, in the Maidan cycle itself, then in the Ukrainian parliament and now as an "academician" is Hanna Hopko, one of the panelists at the Helsinki Commission event on June 23.

As this short tour demonstrates, it is within this conceptual framework that the discourse of the territorial dissolution of the Russian Federation must be understood, now, years after being a Nazi heritage, packed with decolonial slang and all the liberal signs of political correctness.

THE UPDATED APPLICATION OR THE DIALECT OF POWER

The (renewed) speech of Russian dissolution under a new branding and a woke aestheticization obviously points to the places from which it is enunciated: the brokerage of the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academy- think tanks complex (MICIMATT, in English ), as formulated by former CIA agent Ray McGovern.

The inclusive language and its categories in opposition to the imponderables of humanity, its cynical and corporate instrumentalization in today's world, no matter its degree of elaboration and abstraction, has its credibility pointing to the state of nakedness where it is found. the crisis of political imagination of this moment, favoring moral and emotional impulses over concrete data.

In the disorder and in the use and abuse of this construct that today permeates the globalized professional class in opposition to the historical impulses in the West, in the lower classes and in the countries that we suffer from, the North-South dialogue becomes more garish the stridency

The imbalance between these agendas and how they have collided to justify the worst regime change expeditions in recent decades, be it Libya, Syria or Bolivia -to name a few-, have been accompanied in an almost unrestricted manner by these justifications, which incidentally geographies like that of the country where I live obscure more than they clarify, since it is, it has already been said, a discourse of the increasingly globalized professional class to the detriment of the "lower" strata of commerce and the economy, incidentally who are judged for rejecting or not understanding these gibberish of the social sciences, Californian universities and the hereditary drift of the so-called new left.

Because now the biggest amplifications and the ones that matter are made from instances like the Helsinki Commission, with articles and human garments from the washing machine cycle of common sense from that part of the world. And this is because that language is not even "appropriation" of a successful system of concepts; it was and has been produced and shaped by the same agencies as always, with the same purposes as always.

It is the new dialect of power , it covers with that discursive mantle with the moral character of proposing said mission and, as they believe, effectively "mobilizing" their own towards that legitimacy. Even more so when on the other side of that sentimental story Russia is designated by NATO as the main "adversary" and China as "a challenge to security", and aspired to the next step in its crusade against the Eurasian bet. The bonitist packaging of "decolonization" conceals actions of hybrid warfare and harsh geopolitical decisions.


In one way or another, more with a Democratic administration in the White House and its European expressions, this is certainly the language of liberalism that so many point to its crisis, and the quintessential agency of aristocratic liberalism first and today's woke and deconstructed liberalism it is the CIA, which far from selective assassinations or the training of extermination groups, in its aseptic corridors, this is the language that speaks on one side, and on the other, it maintains that order of things as a spearhead.

It is Stalin 's that liberalism is the moderate wing of fascism, and the event of the Helsinki Commission brings both extremes of the same "party" (to continue with Stalin), promoting on the one hand that tradition and on the other, with the same end, its updated linguistic system.

It seems like a simulacrum, but at this point it also seems that what Niccolo Saldo commented on is more than speculation: it is something that all those speakers and the devices that promote their "discussion" alike do not pretend, but rather they really believe it.

Which brings us, now, to the meme of living more from the narrative than from the ugly, hard and concrete truth of this time in the world and its zeitgeist . Because each and every consensual presupposition about why "the time has come" to balkanize Russia as something real and soon to happen collides directly with recent battlefield news that, in a slightly less stunted brain for the revolving door's sense of reality and the bubble of "the narrative," I should put off, if not ideas like these themselves, then at least the elements to examine them.

Elements to take into account, especially if new "conflicts" or colored mobilizations in the post-Soviet space or within the Russian Federation itself begin to appear on the Atlantic media poster.

BIBLIOGRAPHY CONSULTED

*Anderson, Jon Lee and Scott. Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League . Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986.
*Hitler, Adolf. My fight . Editorial Titivus, translation of Alberto Saldívar. Digital edition, 1923.
*Mayer, Arno. Why the Heavens are not Darken: The "Final Solution" in History . Pantheon Books. New York, 1988.
*Rossolinki-Liebe, Grzegorz. Stephen Bandera. The life and afterlife of the Ukrainian Nationalist Fascism, Genocide and Cult . Ibid. Stuttgart, 2014.
*Simpson, Christopher. Blowback: The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Disastrous Effect on the Cold War, Our Domestic and Foreign Policy. Open Road Integrated Media. New York, 1989.

https://misionverdad.com/investigacione ... izar-rusia

Hmmm, mebbe the USA should be 'de-colonized'....

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On the prospects for the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
July 6, 10:34



Regarding the questions about the prospects for more or less large-scale offensives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the summer of 2022.
Given the current trends, the Armed Forces of Ukraine seem to have 2 realistic options.

1. Krivoy Rog-Nikopol direction. The task is to squeeze out a piece of the bridgehead of the RF Armed Forces on the right bank, remove the threat to Krivoy Rog and Nikopol, and push the RF Armed Forces directly to Kherson. Of course, the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not have the strength to storm, just as the attack on Kherson from Nikolaev does not promise success. But you can already try to sell the reduction of the foothold on the right bank as a victory.

2. Zaporozhye direction. They may try to take Vasilievka, advance to the Pologi and, with a successful development of events, to Tokmak.
Relying on Zaporozhye, the accumulation of forces can be carried out on the Orekhov-Gulyaipole front. Such an offensive would show a willingness to challenge the claims of the Russian Federation for control of the Zaporozhye region.

3. Local counterattacks are possible in the Kharkov, Izyum or Donetsk directions, but the Armed Forces of Ukraine can hardly count on significant successes there due to the serious superiority of the RF Armed Forces in artillery and aviation. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation may benefit from such counter-offensives if they are detected in a timely manner, since in this case it is possible to inflict serious losses in people and equipment on the most combat-ready units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in a short time.

The main difficulties for any counteroffensive attempts by the Armed Forces of Ukraine are that most of the aid from the West and the available units are sent to the Donbass to hold the front, which makes it difficult to accumulate reserves that could be used for counterattacks. However, work is underway in this direction, and the stated dates - the second half of July - August, are quite realistic, so you should not underestimate the readiness of the enemy for such actions, especially since, for political reasons, the United States needs at least some kind of military victory before the midterm elections this fall. of the year. The lack of victories will have consequences not only and not so much for the Zelensky gang, but also for the Biden administration, which will be criticized, including for the lack of effectiveness of military support for the Zelensky gang, and this is already a domestic political factor. Therefore, there will certainly be a Ukrainian offensive in the summer, regardless of whether the Armed Forces of Ukraine are ready for it or not. Therefore, reconnaissance plays an important role, which should uncover preparations for such an offensive in advance and provide the necessary time to stop such enemy efforts.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7722251.html

Personal data of employees of the GUR MOU
July 6, 9:32 am



The hacker group RaHDit has published a large array of personal data on employees of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The data of 1000 employees are posted and the continuation of publications is promised.
As the hackers write, the computer networks of the Main Intelligence Directorate in Kyiv were hacked, which turned out to be insufficiently protected, as a result of which the personal data of employees of the department working both in Ukraine and abroad under diplomatic cover got into the public domain. According to the GUR, this is one of the largest leaks since 2014 - earlier, of course, information leaked from there, but not in such volumes and not with such consequences.

Link to materials https://nemez1da.ru/voennye-prestupniki/gur/

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7721767.html

Hahaha, fuck'em all.

Google Translator

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The price of sanctions
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/06/2022



Although more prominence has been given to the gas issue, which directly and significantly affects many countries in the European Union, especially Germany, Western countries are also seeking to reduce the market share of Russian oil. The European Union, partly at the behest of the United States, has wanted to portray the weight of Russian oil and gas imports as a drag, a dependency on a partner that Brussels and Washington have decided is unreliable. However, this relationship between the EU and Moscow and the availability of energy at affordable prices has been one of the bases of the competitiveness of countries as important to the bloc as Germany. Determined to replace Russian fuel with others that are more ideologically correct - gas from Qatar or the United States or oil from Saudi Arabia -,

Inflation data from European countries is already reflecting the worsening of a situation that had started before the Russian intervention, but whose effects are being felt due to the sanctions against Russia. This collateral damage from the measures imposed by European countries against their main energy partner, which proves that any sanction on Russian energy is, in fact, a way of sanctioning European countries, could worsen in the event of imposition, just as new measures are expected.

If Russia reduces oil production, the price will reach $380
Original Article: Colonel Cassad

Analysts suggest that if the G7 countries impose a price cap on Russian oil, Moscow will respond by cutting its production. A drop of 5 million barrels per day would not do much damage to the Russian economy, but it would cause a substantial increase in prices.

According to Bloomberg , citing analysts from JPMorgan Chase, the price of a barrel of oil can reach $380 if Russia reduces its production volume in response to the sanctions of the United States and the European Union. Currently the price of a barrel of Brent is $119. In a warning to clients, experts have indicated that Moscow could reduce its production by five million barrels a day. According to JPMorgan Chase, that would not significantly affect the Russian economy, although it would affect the rest of the world. If Russia cuts production by three million barrels a day instead of five, prices could hit $190 a barrel.

According to analysts, the Russian authorities may respond to a possible price restriction with a reduction in their exports. “There is a possibility that the [Russian] government will respond by cutting production to hurt the West,” the note writes.

The possibility of imposing a price cap on Russian oil was discussed during last week's G7 summit in Germany. Bloomberg reported that participants plan to introduce a price ceiling for oil guarantees and transportation. A source told Reuters that the group of seven is "on the right track to reach an agreement" on the issue. According to the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, the countries of the European Union are ready to make such a decision if it becomes clear that the measure will negatively affect Russia and not themselves.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that Washington has asked Seoul to support the price cap proposal. The finance ministers of the two countries discussed the idea and Chancellor Choo Kyung-ho called for a concrete plan of action.

At the beginning of June, the European Union imposed the sixth package of sanctions against Russia with the embargo on the supply of oil by sea. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned then that, by the end of the year, the price of oil will exceed 150 dollars per barrel.

– RBC.ru

Meanwhile, the United States is already using its strategic oil reserves on a daily basis to prevent prices from rising in the country.

If the price of oil continues to rise, those strategic reserves are expected to run out in a couple of months, after which rising fuel prices will drag everything else up and current inflation (the highest since of Carter) will seem like a joke.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/06/el-pr ... more-24983

Google Translator

[blindpig]

EU economies are down on their knees


Russian President Vladimir Putin (L), at a meeting with Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, revealed proposals of army commanders in Ukraine “for the development of offensive operations”, Moscow, July 4, 2022

On July 1 at the White House, US President Joe Biden made a startling disclosure that “the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term.”

American gas exporters have positioned themselves accordingly to fill the gap as Europe turns away from Russian imports. FT reported recently that “US liquefied natural gas producers have announced a string of deals to boost exports as the industry capitalises on shortages that have left Europe with a mounting energy crisis.”

The deals are so lucrative that Cheniere, America’s leading gas exporter, has taken an investment decision to push ahead with a project that will boost its capacity more than 20 per cent by late 2025, anticipating long-term supply deals and locked in purchases of US gas over the coming decades. The US producers of gas are reportedly running plants flat-out to increase supplies to the EU.

The US has overtaken Russia for the first time as Europe’s top gas supplier. Although LNG from the US is sold to Europe at much higher costs than pipeline gas from Russia, EU countries have no choice.

With Russian supply via Nord Stream at just 40% of capacity, and deliveries to be halted completely for annual maintenance on July 11-21, the outlook for near-term Russian gas supply to Europe appears bleak.

Germany has warned of the risk that Nord Stream gas may not return at all following the maintenance. At any rate, Russian supply to Europe is at record lows and is “set to remain constrained through the third quarter,” per S&P Global.

Germany is heading for a major economic crisis. The head of the German Federation of Trade Unions has been quoted as saying in the weekend, “Entire industries are in danger of collapsing forever because of the gas bottlenecks — especially, chemicals, glass-making, and aluminium industries, which are major suppliers to key automotive sector.” Massive unemployment is likely. When Germany sneezes, of course, Europe catches cold — not only the Eurozone but even post-Brexit Britain.

Welcome to the European Union’s “sanctions from hell.” The US literally hustled the Europeans into the Ukraine crisis. How many times did Secretary of State Antony Blinken travel to Europe in those critical months in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to ensure that the door to any meaningful talks with the Kremlin remained shut! And American energy companies are today making windfall profits selling gas to Europeans. Won’t Europeans have the common intelligence to realise they have been had?

Now, Biden has washed his hands off the gas crisis. He brusquely stated at a press conference in Madrid on June 30 that such premium on oil prices will continue “as long as it takes, so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine. This is a critical, critical position for the world. Here we are. Why do we have NATO?”

Biden’s counterfactual narrative is that the sanctions against Russia are going to work eventually and a long war in Ukraine would be Russia’s undoing. The US narrative is that if you look under the hood of the Russian economy, it may not be flexible and resourceful enough to develop an entrepreneurial bunker spirit and adopt new business models to neutralise the sanctions. Biden is convinced that Russian economy is in the grip of industrial mafias that are not very innovative and, therefore, there aren’t many options for Russia under the western sanctions.

Biden said in Madrid: “Look at the impact that the war on Ukraine has had on Russia… They’ve (Russians) lost 15 years of the gains they made in terms of their economy… They can’t even — you know, they’re having — they’re going to have trouble maintaining oil production because they don’t have the technology to do it. They need American technology. And they’re also in a simi- — similar situation in terms of their weapons systems and some of their military systems. So they’re paying a very, very heavy price for this.”

But even if that’s the case, how does all that help the Europeans? On the other hand, President Putin’s strategic calculations with respect to the war remain very much on track. Russian forces made indisputable progress in establishing full control over Luhansk. On Monday, Putin gave the green signal to a proposal from the army commanders to launch “offensive operations.” Five months into the war, Ukrainians are staring at defeat and Russian army generals know it.

Russia didn’t wander into Ukraine unprepared, either. Evidently, it took precautionary steps both before and since the war to shield its economy. And this enables the Russian economy to settle down to a “new normal”. Washington’s options are quite limited under the circumstances. Fundamentally, western sanctions do not address the causes of the Russian behaviour, and therefore, they are doomed to fail to solve the problem at hand.

To be sure, Putin has some nasty surprises in store for Biden closer to the November mid-term elections. Biden blithely assumes that he controls all the variables in the situation. Schadenfreude is never a rational basis for statecraft.

Yesterday, the strategically important Kherson region bordering Crimea formed a new government with the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia’s Kaliningrad region heading the cabinet and Russian nationals among his deputies. Now that HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, contrary to Biden’s promise, is blasting Russian cities, expect some major Russian retaliation.

The pathway of Russia’s offensive operations is being relaid to include Kharkov and Odessa as well, apart from Donbass. The influential Kremlin politician and chairman of Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said on Tuesday,

“Some people are asking what our goal is and when all this will end. It will end when our peaceful cities and towns no longer come under shelling attacks. What they are doing is forcing our troops not to stop on the borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics (Donbass) because strikes (on Russian regions) are coming from the Kharkov regions and other regions of Ukraine.”

How long does Biden think the Europeans will want to be involved in a protracted proxy war with Russia? Bild reported on Sunday that 75% of German respondents see recent price hikes as a heavy burden, while 50% said they feel their economic conditions are worsening; every second German fears a lack of heating this coming winter due to reduced Russian gas supplies and rising inflation in the European Union.

Yet, Biden says war will go on “for as long as it takes” and fuel shortage will continue “for as long as it takes.” The European economy is expected to start contracting over the course of the second half of 2022 and the recession may continue until the summer of 2023 at least.

Analysts at JP Morgan Chase, the US investment bank, said last week that Russia could also cause “stratospheric” oil price increases if it used output cuts to retaliate. It said, “The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.” Analysts wrote that prices could more than triple to $380 a barrel if Russia cut production by 5m barrels a day.

Putin’s decree last week is ominous — the Kremlin taking full control of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia’s Far East. State-owned Gazprom held a 50% plus one share stake in the project and its foreign partners included Shell (27.5%), Mitsui (12.5%), and Mitsubishi (10%). The decree stipulates that Gazprom will keep its majority stake, but foreign investors must ask the Russian government for a stake in the newly created firm within one month or be dispossessed. The government will decide whether to approve any request.


An aerial view of the liquefaction plant, part of the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas project in Sakhalin, Russia, described as one of the world’s largest integrated oil & gas project.

This will unsettle energy markets further and put more strain on the LNG market, and can be seen as a move to put more pressure on the West by concurrently restricting gas supplies to Europe and creating more demand for LNG in Asia that will draw off supplies currently going to Europe. Sakhalin-2 supplies circa 4% of the global LNG market!

The only part of the US agenda that is going well seems to be the unspoken part of it: the very same Anglo-American objectives that Lord Ismay once predicted as the rationale behind the NATO’s existence —”to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

https://www.indianpunchline.com/eu-econ ... eir-knees/

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Entire industries in Germany could collapse due to Russian natural-gas supply cuts: union head
Huileng Tan Jul 4, 2022, 1:38 AM


Germany's Economic Minister Robert Habeck speaks to press in Dusseldorf, Germany. Roberto Pfeil - Pool/Getty Images

*Germany's top union official said entire industries could collapse due to Russia's natural-gas cuts.
*Europe's largest economy is heavily reliant on natural gas piped in from Russia.
*A key gas pipeline will shut from July 11-21 for maintenance amid fears supplies will not resume after that.


Entire industries in Germany could collapse due to natural-gas supply cuts from Russia, said Yasmin Fahimi, the country's top union official.

"Entire industries are in danger of collapsing permanently because of the gas bottlenecks: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry," Fahimi, the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions, told Bild am Sonntag. "Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germany."

The chemical industry, which employs about 346,000 people, is the third-largest industry in Germany, according to Germany Trade & Invest, the country's investment promotion agency.

Germany — Europe's largest economy — is reliant on piped natural gas from Russia, which accounts for 35% of its imports of the fuel. The industrial powerhouse imports almost all of the natural gas it uses, which accounts for about a quarter of the country's total energy mix, according to the economy ministry.


The country's energy crisis is already driving inflation to record highs, which threatens social stability, Fahimi told Bild am Sonntag.

Russian state gas giant Gazprom has already cut gas flows to Germany via the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 60% from last month, citing an equipment hold-up in Canada as a result of sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Berlin fears the situation may get worse after the pipeline's scheduled shutdown for maintenance from July 11 to July 21. Germany's economy minister Robert Habeck said last week natural-gas flows may not resume after the scheduled works, which would in turn impact fuel storage ahead of winter, when demand spikes.

"We aren't dealing with erratic decisions but with economic warfare, completely rational and very clear," Habeck said at an event on Saturday, Bloomberg reported.


Germany — Europe's largest economy — moved into the second stage of its three-stage emergency gas plan last month after Russia slowed supplies to the country. If the situation worsens, the country may start rationing natural gas in the last of the three-stage plan, as outlined by Germany's economy ministry.

Under the country's emergency plan, industry would be first in line for supply cuts. The move could devastate the economy and lead to job losses, Germany business leaders and unions have said.

Habeck said natural-gas rationing would likely hit factories not connected to the residential networks first, per Bloomberg.

Benchmark Dutch natural-gas futures have more than doubled year-to-date.

https://www.businessinsider.com/germany ... uts-2022-7

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CNBC calls for ‘cyber terrorism’ against Russia and ‘blank check’ for US weapons corporations

CNBC pundit Jim Cramer called for “cyber terrorism” against Russia and a “blank check” for US weapons corporations – including the same companies he encourages his viewers to invest in.

ByAmar AhmadPublished17 hours ago

b]
CNBC pundit Jim Cramer used his platform on network TV to call for “cyber terrorism” against Russia and a “blank check” for US weapons corporations – including the same companies he constantly encourages his viewers to invest in.

Cramer, a former hedge fund manager who got his start working at the infamous bank Goldman Sachs, runs CNBC’s “Investing Club.”

In a June 27 segment titled “Jim Cramer explains why he thinks every Russian sanction has failed,” the pundit complained that the heavy Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its war in Ukraine have “failed” to destroy the nation’s economy.

“As long as India and as long as China buy their [Russia’s] oil, it doesn’t matter. They’re exporting more oil now then they did before this,” Cramer noted.

He lamented that the Russian currency “the ruble is strong,” although he did boast that “there is a huge part of the GDP that has been eliminated because of our pull-out.”

Given the failure of the West’s economic war on Moscow, Cramer proposed turning to “cyber terrorism.”

“If you want to find a way to create a sanction, find a way to be able to reprogram their [Russia’s] missiles through cyber terrorism,” he insisted.

Cramer called on the US military to “reprogram” Moscow’s missiles to reverse or malfunction, in order to hurt Russia.

“We should have everybody who is in the army working, anybody who has potential to do cyber, to reprogram those [Russian] missiles,” the CNBC pundit declared.

The segment showed how major corporate media networks are actively fanning the flames of war, aggressively pushing for the US government to escalate the proxy war in Ukraine.

Cramer calls for ‘blank check to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’ (after encouraging viewers to invest in them)
When asked if any other sanctions could be imposed to hurt Russia’s economy, Jim Cramer responded emphatically, “The only sanction is to send every single piece of artillery that they [Ukraine] need, that Zelensky would tell you that they need!”

“Where are the new Javelins? Why isn’t the United States sending them thousands of Javelins?” he roared, referring to an anti-tank missile system built by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Cramer proposed that Washington should give a “blank check” to private for-profit weapons corporations to arm Ukraine with whatever it requests.

“Why don’t we give a blank check to Raytheon and to Lockheed Martin?” Cramer asked.

The CNBC pundit may have a vested financial interest in calling for endless US government contracts for the military-industrial complex.

Cramer constantly encourages his viewers to buy stocks in Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Back in May, CNBC published a segment titled “Jim Cramer says investors should have these four defense stocks on their shopping lists,” which recommended Raytheon and Lockheed Martin as numbers one and two, respectively.


“There’s at least one industry that’s booming right now,” Cramer said excitedly in May. “I’m talking about the defense industry, which is on fire.”

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a game-changer for the defense industry,” he added, salivating over the potential profits.

In November 2021, Cramer even did a friendly softball interview with the CEO of Lockheed Martin.

Cramer attacks peace talks
While the former hedge fund called for further escalating the US proxy war on Russia, with taxpayers subsidizing blank checks to the arms industry, he also went out of his way to attack those who want a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

“There’s another school of thought which says there is a peace deal being worked on,” Cramer said dismissively. He complained that this type of diplomatic solution would be a “sell-out of Zelensky.”

“If you don’t give Zelensky what he needs, he will lose,” the CNBC pundit stressed.

When asked about NATO’s proposal to put 300,000 troops in high readiness positions, he cheered it on: “They better! They better! They better protect Poland.”

Apparently unconcerned about the possibility of escalating into nuclear war, Cramer fearmongered, “I do believe that if the West lets them [Russia] get away with this, then anyone who goes nuclear has a silver barrel.”

“I mean, if we decide that we have to be fearful of every nuclear nation, well, we’re going to be feel fearful of Pakistan; we’ll be fearful of Iran. This has to stop!” he warned.

Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and its government has repeatedly insisted it does not want them. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, arguing they are incompatible with Islam.

Military experts say Russia will win war; West is simply prolonging needless suffering
Warmongers like Jim Cramer are ignoring the analysis of actual military experts like Scott Ritter, a former UN arms inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer.

“No matter what the U.S. and NATO do in terms of serving as Ukraine’s arsenal, Russia is going to win the war,” Ritter cautioned.

“The longer the war continues, the more Ukrainians will die,” he added ominously.

This is a price that Cramer is willing to pay, along with further financial hardship for the global poor, for the sake of intensifying the war on Russia.

It does help that the CNBC pundit may financially benefit from these policies, given that he frequently encourages his viewers to invest in the stocks of the very same US weapons corporations that are arming Ukraine.

https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/05/c ... sm-russia/

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Transcript of speech by Spanish lawmaker Gerardo Pisarello denouncing NATO militarism

Multipolarista translated Gerardo Pisarello’s speech into English. A full transcript follows below:

Gentlemen of the right wing, as you will come to understand, if we join the warmongering fervor that has come to show itself here today [at NATO’s Madrid summit], in the middle of a dire social and energy emergency, it would truly be the act of a pyromaniac.

Because we are going to say it clearly: what you all are proposing here does not guarantee any calm, or any security to working families and to the citizenry in general, among other reasons, because from the start it would involve dedicating millions of euros to enrichen the weapons trade, when neither inflation nor unemployment is going to be resolved by filling Europe with more nuclear warheads or with more warships.

After NATO’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is evident that Europe needs a new model of security.

But if we have learned something from all of this, we must at least have two things clear: first of all, that that security model has to be an autonomous model, a European model, not a model subordinated to the United States, or to any other power; and secondly, that that autonomous security model should not be used for escalation without end, but rather for a foundational value of Europe and the United Nations: peace as a condition for shared prosperity.

I understand that the Partido Popular [Spain’s major right-wing party] which already involved us in the Iraq War, with Blair and George Bush, does not clearly see this goal, but at least you could listen to conservative people, of your own ideology, who remember that every single day of war means thousands of civilian victims, with mass displacement, with economic devastation, with mothers crying to their children, dead soldiers.

We, for example, would have hoped for a summit in which it is remembered that the principal security threat are not the Ukrainian refugees, or Syrian refugees, or Africans; that the principal security threat are the imperial disputes for energy resources, the concentration of wealth, the inequalities that creates, the migrations.

We would have wanted a summit in which it is explained that increasing military spending when there are urgent needs and when just France, Germany, Italy, and Spain spend four times more on the military than Russia, that it makes absolutely no sense.

We would have liked a summit in which it were said that the main challenge for Europe is not trying to pressure people with fear, but rather persuade them, that is to say, to be a credible promoter of peace and of negotiated resolutions of the conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen, Palestine, or the Sahara.

But that is not going to happen, because the NATO summit was not organized to strengthen the cause of peace, which was championed by people like Altiero Spinelli, Petra Kelly, or Olof Palme. This summit was organized basically to reinforce the geostrategic priorities of the United States, which are not about Ukraine or Europe, but above all about weakening China.

That, gentlemen, is why Mr. Marshall [the United States] has not come to this summit with a pack of social and green investments under his arm. He has not come with a Green New Deal under his arm.

He has come to sell us, at a high price, his polluting shale gas, his GMO grains, and above all, the weapons of Lockheed Martin and his war industry. And he has come to tell us that, more than ending the war, what we need to do is feed it.

And let’s be honest, that can be the project of an irresponsible warmonger like Boris Johnson; it can be the project of the Polish ultra-right-wing; it can be the project of the Latvian ultra-right-wing; but it cannot be the project of a Europe that respects itself, a Europe that wants to be autonomous, and that aspires to build a civilizational alternative based on the deepening of democracy, of peace, of social and environmental justice.

That other, autonomous European model not only is it what is better for the countries in the south of Europe; it is the only one with which we can earn the respect of the rest of the peoples of the world, beginning with Africa and Latin America.

Because what Africa hopes of us, gentlemen, not is that we go to pillage its resources, to later militarize the southern border, and shoot those who try to cross it [a reference to the Melilla massacre on June 24].

What Africa hopes for is a serious commitment, not just rhetoric, with a codevelopment that allows its boys and girls to eat every day, and not see themselves pushed to immigrate when they are teenagers.

Because what Latin America hopes for us is not what [Spain’s King] Felipe VI proposed, after receiving Biden at the foot of his airplane, that we surrender ourselves in vassalage to NATO.

What they hope for, which was told to us by [Brazil’s] ex President Lula, what was told to us by [Mexico’s] President López Obrador is that we seek peace and shared prosperity, starting from a respectful relation between free and equal peoples.

That respectful, not arrogant, Iberoamericanism is also what was just demanded by Colombia’s President-elect Gustavo Petro.

Gentlemen of the right-wing, don’t allow the neocolonial ravings of of the marquesses [feudal royals] of Vargas Llosa ruin this opportunity.

Because if that happens, I can assure you that Africa and Latin America will rebel.

They already did it with [King] Fernando VII. They already did it in Cuba and the Philippines, supported by Pi y Margall and by Unamuno.

And it will happen again if we don’t understand that there is a new multilateral world order that is emerging, which is irreversible, and which no empire, neither old or new, is going to be able to stop.

Thank you.

https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/04/s ... war-china/

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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forwarded from
Readovka
A scheme of corruption in a Ukrainian military hospital in 2020 was revealed - the story was hushed up, and the main persons continue to work in other

hospitals Officials wrote off medicines and sold them to Mariupol pharmacies and markets. The scheme was built by the head of the hospital, Perestyuk, in collusion with the head of the food warehouse, Gorak, the head of the control and technical point, Oleinik, and a couple of other people during the execution.

The lawlessness of their own was revealed - Gurtova, an agent of the SBU VKR, got a job at the hospital. In the report, he also indicated that Oleinik, in addition to medicines, wrote off fuel and sold it to " his" farmer - a certain Mrs. Zub, a relative of the head of the hospital, Perestyuk.

The agent checked the warehouse in November 2020. A criminal case was initiated, according to which the damage amounted to more than 600 thousand hryvnias. They imprisoned a couple of people, but the key character Perestyuk with his brilliant ideas remained at large and went to work in another hospital, and the story was hushed up.

***

forwarded from
Operation Z: Military Correspondents of the Russian Spring
Where are NATO weapons going? Near Odessa, the SBU detained smugglers during the sale of weapons purchased from the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the combat zone.

During the operation, 3 NAT anti-tank systems and Kalashnikov assault rifles with ammunition were seized. The attackers have prepared a cache in an abandoned outbuilding on the territory of the port in Izmail and have already received money for the deal.
t.me/RVvoenkor

***

Сolonelcassad
Offensive on Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 6, 2022

Ukrainian sabotage group attacked Russian border guards near the village. Staroselie of the Belgorod region . One soldier was killed , three of them were wounded.

The RF Armed Forces delivered strikes on enemy positions in the Esman village and with. Shalygino , Sumy region.

In the northern part of the Kharkiv region , positional battles are going on in the area of ​​​​the settlement. Sosnovka, Svetlichnoye and Nursery.

In Kharkov , Russian troops launched a missile attack on the deployment point of the 22nd motorized infantry battalion of the 92nd OMBR, as a result of which several dozen servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were killed.

In the Donbass , allied forces are advancing in the Bakhmut direction.
In Lisichansk , a cleansing of the remnants of the Ukrainian garrison is underway.
Allied forces are fighting in Grigorovka and breaking through to the outskirts of Serebryanka.
As a result of heavy fighting, the RF Armed Forces were able to occupy the village of Spornoye on the border of the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics.
The units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to strengthen the defense on the line Seversk - Soledar - Bakhmut .
The allied forces are holding Klinovoe , fighting is underway for Pokrovskoye . Self-propelled guns were transferred to the area from the Lisichansk direction.
An attack is being prepared on the positions of the Ukrainian army in Novolugansk and on the territory of the Uglegorsk TPP .
As a result of shelling by Ukrainian formations of the Donetsk agglomeration , local residents were killed, among them at least two children.

Artillery duels continue on the territory of the Zaporozhye region .

In the Krivoy Rog direction, the parties are firing at each other. The RF Armed Forces attacked enemy positions in Zelenodolsk , as well as with. Pinion, Knyazevka and Trudolyubovka.



***

forwarded from
Russian Spring Z: special operation in Ukraine and Donbass
Summary of the crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Kyiv regime:

The Armed Forces of Ukraine installed portable air defense systems on the roof of the building of the Odessa Regional Organization of the Red Cross Society, placed armored vehicles nearby;

Since the beginning of the special operation, the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia have checked more than 3.7 thousand hectares of the territory of the DPR and LPR and neutralized 48,694 explosive objects;

The militants use the medical facilities of Ugledar, Bakhmut and Konstantinovka DPR for military purposes;

More than 24 thousand people were evacuated per day from the territories of the DPR, LPR and Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

***

Сolonelcassad
The situation in the Kharkiv direction
as of 17.00 July 6, 2022

Ukrainian units are expecting an active offensive by the RF Armed Forces in various sectors of the front in the Kharkov region. Clashes are going on in the area west of Sosnovka and in the vicinity of Svetlichny and Pitomnik .

To uncover the activities of the RF Armed Forces along the entire line of contact, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine use reconnaissance drones of various types. In particular, small-sized UAVs operated in the areas of the settlements of Udy , Konstantinovka , Russian Tishki , Verkhniy Saltov and Petrovka .

According to the results of the work of the UAV calculations, artillery and air strikes (at least 6 MiG-29 and Su-25 aircraft from the Mirgorod airfield) were inflicted on the positions of the RF Armed Forces in the areas of Kazachya Lopan , Liptsov , Malye Prokhody , Goptovka , Veseloe , Sosnovka .

The RF Armed Forces carried out strikes against the strongholds and observation posts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Russkiye Tishki, Udy, Petrovka , Tsirkuny, Pitomnik, Prudyanka , Svetlichny, Kharkov , Slatino , Cherkasskiye Tishki, Peremoga , Kutuzovka , Gusarovka , Mospanovo , Chepel , Malaya Danilovka , Novaya Nikolaevka .

According to the RF Ministry of Defense, up to 100 Ukrainian nationalists and four units of military equipment were destroyed by the Russian Aerospace Forces strike at the temporary deployment point of the 22nd motorized infantry battalion of the 92nd mechanized brigade in Kharkov .



***

forwarded from
Nemesis
1:05
The RaHDit team sends warm regards to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and publishes the first thousand persons included in this structure, as well as directly reporting to it.

We believe that the Ukrainian military intelligence is directly involved in the development of nationalism, and their saboteurs threaten our country.

The data was obtained thanks to the crooked handles of the admins of the Rybalsky Island networks (well, where the power steering is located).

On the basis of the obtained staffing tables of military units, by analyzing big data, they threw (and then checked and confirmed) those who fit into the selected model of digital behavior and tinkered a little with pension contributions.

In the coming days, we will cover in detail those who work under the cover of embassies and weave spy networks in various countries around the world.

***

forwarded from
INTERNATIONAL FAN
Experts exposed a Canadian blogger who boasted of "exploits in the Donbass"

As it turned out, the Canadian who boasted of his military successes in the Kherson region had never been to Ukraine . He was exposed by military experts, leading thematic blogs on Twitter dedicated to the conflict. Some time ago, the @CanadianUkrain1

account appeared on Twitter . An unknown Canadian posted photos there and talked about allegedly joining the Ukrainian Foreign Legion and fighting on the side of Ukraine against Russian troops.

The blogger, endowed with rich imagination, described how he acted as part of the sabotage and reconnaissance groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, evaded Russian patrols in the Kherson region, and once even posted chevrons allegedly belonging to Wagner PMC fighters, which he “obtained in battle.”

However, when weapons experts drew attention to his photographs, the “exploits” of the anonymous blogger were quickly debunked.

It turned out that the man had never been to Ukraine, but had been writing all this time from Canada, passing off airsoft equipment as combat equipment. This is what allowed him to unmask. User Kung Flu Panda said, for example, that the Canadian helmet is an airsoft copy of the Mk7 helmet. Also, according to the drawing on the horn, he determined that his Kalashnikov assault rifle was a fake.

The Ukraine Weapons Tracker account, which fact-checks combat casualties in Ukraine, also confirmed that the publications are false.

“We diligently walked past all the scandals, but it becomes just ridiculous. The famous @CanadianUkrain1 , who claims to be fighting on the side of Ukraine, is a liar,” the authors of the project announced.

The @CanadianUkrain1 account has now been deleted.

***

forwarded from
BELARUS CUISINE
Business in Ukrainian. Ukrainian military sold two CAESAR self-propelled guns to the Russians –

Bulgarian

Military Military, citing informed sources in the command of the French Armed Forces and Interpol. They claim that a certain military dealer acted as an intermediary in the deal for the sale of howitzers.

Journalists claim that French self-propelled guns are currently at Uralvagonzavod. According to analysts, this indicates the intention of the Russian side "to disassemble them and study the technologies in detail."

***

Сolonelcassad
Analysis by military expert Boris Rozhin of the most important point of the front at the moment

A few days after the complete liberation of the LNR, the euphoria subsided, and more and more of those who follow the development of events on the fronts of the special operation are asking the question “where now?”. The Luhansk region was liberated, military tension finally concentrated mainly on the territory of the former Donetsk region. Despite the fact that the Kharkiv, Zaporozhye, and Southern Fronts are still important, the main events in the coming days will develop precisely in the Donbass and specifically on the so-called “second” line of defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – Seversk-Soledar-Artemovsk. Military expert Boris Rozhin told Readovka about it in detail .

“Naturally, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, when they try to defend Seversk, will rely on the terrain. The city is partially covered by the Seversky Donets, there are certain dominant heights on which there will be positions, and the Slavic group will certainly support artillery and MLRS, which, in principle, even before the encirclement of Lisichansk were advanced to this area.

A group of the 25th Air Assault Brigade was transferred there, there was at least one fresh Volkssturm battalion, which was planted there on the heights. Naturally, they will pull artillery. That is, if there is no simultaneous strong pressure on the Slavic direction, then they, of course, will work to hold the Seversk-Soledar line.

If ours press hard from the north, in the direction of Mayakov, in the area of ​​​​the Valley, Krasnopolye, that is, they will somehow be forced to pull part of their forces in directions, of course, it will be much more difficult to defend Seversk. It is clear that we would like Seversk to be taken in a hurry, that is, we see that the enemy was preparing in advance, a week before leaving Lisichansk, the strengthening of positions began there, the troops that left Lisichansk were partially transferred to rest in the direction of the rear areas of Slavyansk, but some, who retained their combat ability remained at Seversk for cover.

The problem there is not only Seversk, they need to hold the chain of villages between Seversk and Soledar, because if ours advance there, they can destroy the integrity of the line and not storm Seversk head-on, but bypass it from the south, try to take fire control of the roads, which lead to Seversk, and simply force the enemy to retreat not by a frontal assault, but as it was in Gorskoye and Zolotoy - not to storm, but to create, bypassing, a threat to the flanks and rear of the enemy. It is not necessary that this assault on Zakotny will be needed - they will process it with artillery, and they will try to bypass it from the south. It will depend on how much the enemy has strengthened his positions precisely between Seversk and Soledar. The value will be not so much Seversk itself, but, as well as under Gorsky and Zoloty, the surrounding villages.

It is clear that if such a situation develops near Seversk, then the Armed Forces of Ukraine will either have to counterattack, or simply pull their forces there and concentrate on the defense of the Slavyansk-Artemovsk road. After Seversk and Soledar, the next line is a chain of settlements that covers this road. Our task is to go out to this road after Seversk somewhere in one or two places and, accordingly, violate the line of defense so that the grouping in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration and the grouping in the Artemovsk region have problems with the transfer of resources, it is trite to force them to maneuver those reserves that there is.

This does not cancel the assault operations in the area of ​​​​Artemovsk itself, when the Wagners take Pokrovskoye. Now they have taken Klinovoye, they will clean up Pokrovskoye and go to strain the outskirts of Artemovsk. They will gradually turn the front from the north, in the direction of Soledar. There are strong fortifications in Soledar, but they are turned mainly to the east. Naturally, if you attack from the north, that is, in fact, going to the flank of these fortifications, then it will be more difficult for the enemy to defend. Soledar is not an easy city to storm, but it is obvious that the next cities to be taken are Seversk, Soledar and Artemovsk.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Russia: Ukraine Uses Medical Facilities for Military Purposes


Ukraine does not consider the residents of Mariupol its citizens and allows the nationalists to use them as a human shield, Oleksandr Marunchenko, chief physician of Novoazovsk city hospital said. | Photo: Twitter @TongTji789

Published 7 July 2022 (2 hours 17 minutes ago)
.
Russia criticized the lack of attention paid to such events by the international community, pointing out that the UAF have occupied the roof of the building of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society in the city of Odessa and placed transportable missile systems there.



The head of Russia's National Center for Defense Management, Colonel General Mikhail Maizintsev, said on Wednesday that Ukrainian nationalists use medical facilities in the towns of Ugledar, Bakhmut and Konstantinovka, located in the Donbas region, for military purposes.

In particular, he explained that in Ugledar, Ukrainian nationalists have installed shooting positions and sniper nests in a dental clinic, while local residents were not informed about it.

He further stated that in Bajmut, the wounded Ukrainian nationalists were accommodated in a hospital and all civilian patients, regardless of their condition, were expelled from the medical facility.

Similarly, nationalists deployed heavy weapons firing positions in a hospital in Konstantinovka, with residents of nearby buildings held captive in the basement of the hospital.


"We again call on the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other international organizations to influence Kiev and take effective measures to prevent Ukraine's armed formations from using medical infrastructure facilities for military purposes," Maizintsev said.


The Russian official criticized the lack of attention paid to such events by the international community, pointing out that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have occupied the roof of the building of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society in the city of Odessa and placed transportable missile systems there.

Moscow launched its "special military operation" in Ukraine on February 24. Russian authorities have repeatedly made it clear that their operation poses no threat to the civilian population of Ukraine.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0002.html

Zelensky Cancels Restriction of Citizens’ Movement


Zelensky canceled the order issued by the Ukrainian Armed Forces which restricted the movement of the citizens. Jul. 6, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@Alejand53670811

Published 6 July 2022 (9 hours 7 minutes ago)

The Ukrainian President said that the military restriction conditioning the movement of citizens had to be canceled.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the cancellation of the order emitted Tuesday by Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhny which restricted the movement of the citizens in the registered area, having to obtain permission from the local recruitment office if they wanted to leave.

Zelensky’ anoucement about the cancellation of such an order came in light of the widespread criticism; he said that “mistakes should be corrected.” The ”resident continued by saying: “We sorted it out and reviewed the details of yesterday’ decision. The decision must be reversed,” he added, “the details show that the decision was wrong.”

The ”resident made emphasis by saying that there was “no misunderstanding” between him and the military. “There is a war on. We must work as one team. This is how we work. If there is any inconsistency, then these mistakes must be corrected. They are small compared to the strength which our state, the Ukrainian people, and the Armed Forces demonstrate,” he said during Wednesday’s briefing.

Yevgenia Ryabeka, the coordinator of the movement of lawyers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that the reading of the document could be “a little incomprehensible,” soon after the document was released. She explained that the permission was only needed by the men who wanted to change their place of residence and their registration.


Zelensky back down

The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, called the decision announced by the Ministry of Defense to prevent men of military age from leaving their town without permission a “mistake” and ”thus suspended the ...

The order once released became the target of heavy criticism, condemned as well by a member of parliament Roksolana Pidlasa, who said via Facebook that this law was “nonsense,” as she considers that this could have severe consequences.

“The decision that without the permission of the military commission men (and soon women) cannot leave their city of residence is nonsense that will cause a social explosion and the collapse of the economy,” explained Pidlasa.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Zel ... -0024.html

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Union of Communists of Ukraine, Statement 6,7,2022
7/7/22 9:32 AM

Dear comrades, on July 6, 2022, the Joint Statement of the Communist and Workers' Parties "Clarification of the diagnosis after the start of the operation" was published on the website of the RCWP-CPSU . Under this Statement is the signature of the Union of Communists of Ukraine, which appeared there, apparently, as a result of a technical error. The position of the UCU has been repeatedly expressed publicly, including, and above all, in support of the Statement "No to the imperialist war in Ukraine" on 03.03.2022.

Union of Communists of Ukraine

http://solidnet.org/article/Union-of-Co ... nt-672022/

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Ukrainian Court Upholds Ban of Communist Party
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 6, 2022
Muhammed Shabeer


Members of WFDY held a protest in Madrid, Spain during the NATO Summit to demand the release of the Kononovich brothers. Photo: WFDY

The Communist Party of Ukraine has been targeted by successive governments through decommunization laws, smear campaigns, and repression.

The Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal in Lviv, Ukraine ruled on July 5 to uphold the ban on the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) and ordered the state to seize the properties of the party.

The Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal stated that in their decision: “We inform you that the court has complied with the requests of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine: the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine are prohibited; the property, funds and other assets of the party, its regional, municipal, district organizations, primary organizations and other structural entities have been transferred to the ownership of the State.”

The move is part of a longer campaign of suppression of the party and its views that intensified following the Euromaidan coup in 2014.

In December 2015, the District Administrative Court in Kiev had banned the KPU on the basis of the decommunization laws passed by Ukrainian parliament and over the charges of promoting pro-Russian separatist activities in the country. The KPU had filed an appeal against the ban in higher courts in the county and the European Court of Human Rights, but the ongoing war in Ukraine has worsened the conditions for KPU and other left-wing parties in the country. In March this year, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called for the ban of several opposition parties including left-wing, socialist, and pro-Russian regionalist parties in the country.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1991, the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) was revived in 1993, and it emerged as a major political force in the county with a strong representation in parliament until the 2014 Euromaidan coup. The KPU was vocally opposed to the anti-Russian, pro-EU Euromaidan protests in Ukraine and its cadres were brutally targeted by the pro-maidan protesters at places like Odessa.

The persecution of Ukrainian communists intensified following the annexation of Crimea by Russia and Russia’s support to the secessionist war in the Donbass region. The pro-EU government led by Petro Poroshenko accused KPU of supporting the pro-Russian secessionist groups in the Donbass region. In succession, the Ukrainian parliament passed decommunization laws in 2015 and banned the public display of communist symbols and dissemination of communist propaganda. The KPU led by Petro Symonenko was banned from contesting elections, its publication Rabochaya Gazeta was also banned, and many of its cadres including the leadership faced police repression and assaults from far-right groups.

Braving all those difficulties, Ukrainian communists continued to organize protests against decommunization, pro-corporate land reforms, government’s support to the neo-nazi groups, rise in electiricty, water prices and NATO expansionsim and organized campaigns urging to peacefully resolve Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

Communist youth in prison

On March 6, following the onset of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, the Ukrainian security services arrested Mikhail Kononovich and his brother Aleksandr Kononovich, the leaders of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine (LKSMU). They have been accused as propagandists with pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views with the goal of destabilizing the internal situation in Ukraine.

Their trial in the Solomensky District Court of Kiev began on July 1. In the court, the Kononovich brothers stated that “our case is completely fabricated from start to finish. What are we charged with? Pro-Belarussian views are being charged. We are being tried for our views. What kind of democracy can we talk about?”

Following their arrest in March, the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) launched an international campaign demanding their release. The brothers acknowledged in court the importance of this campaign, “We want to appeal to the European left, to the Federation of Democratic Youth. Thank you, comrades. You are holding actions in Europe near the Ukrainian embassies in support of us so that they let us go, thank you very much. Together we will win!”

#YESToPeaceNOToNATO | Todo listo para comenzar las acciones de la FMJD en el marco de la Contracumbre contra la OTAN.

No olvidamos a los camaradas Mikhail y Aleksander #FreeKononovich, quienes no podrán acompañarnos por haber sido secuestrados por el régimen ucraniano. pic.twitter.com/IbtK7fAzz9

— WFDY-FMJD (@wfdy1945fmjd) June 24, 2022

In an interview in February 2021, regarding the ban of KPU in 2015, Mykhail Kononovich told Peoples Dispatch that “I emphasize that the communist ideology, the idea cannot be banned by any laws, so it is impossible to ban common sense and science. It is simply impossible to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), because we are a party with more than a hundred years of history, a party that has an experience of subterranean struggles. We communists have fought and will continue to fight for the benefit of our people!”.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... ist-party/

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about counterattacks
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/07/2022



Practically since the consolidation of the Russian advance in Donbass, mainly in Lugansk, but especially in southern Ukraine, kyiv has repeatedly affirmed that its counterattack is yet to come. More interested in recovering Kherson and the part of Zaporozhie controlled by Russian troops than the destroyed and pro -Russian Donbass, the expected counterattack has always depended on the supply of Western weapons. These prospects of victory and recovery of lost territories have been, and will continue to be, kyiv's main argument for demanding a constant supply of increasingly heavy weapons. Although the promised counterattack was supposed to yield results in June, that month passed without much progress and some Ukrainian officers are already beginning to promise future successes next August.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/07/sobre ... more-24988

Google Translator

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The second echelon of the Polish occupation group of troops in Ukraine
July 7, 10:44



The second echelon of the Polish occupation group of troops in Ukraine

In one of our previous articles https://www.belvpo.com/129780.html/ we considered the probable nature of the actions and the composition of the occupying group of Polish troops when they enter the territory of Ukraine. Today we will briefly consider who, what role is assigned to this Polish-Ukrainian military campaign.

As we noted earlier, the 11th armored cavalry division is deployed in the western part of Poland and it is most logical to assume that the military units of this division will perform tasks in the second echelon of the operational formation of Polish troops. Most likely, with the advancement of the 18th mechanized division towards the Ukrainian border, military units and subunits of the 11th brigade will begin moving to the point of permanent deployment (PPD) of the 18th MD to the already prepared park and barracks funds. By the way, during the Defender Europe - 2022 exercises, military units and subunits were already marching from the western to the eastern borders of Poland.

Thus, it is quite likely that the 1st Tank Brigade 18 MD (Vesola settlement) will remain at the disposal of two armored cavalry brigades of the 11th Brigade, as well as a park fund equipped for maintenance and current repair of tanks, in including the Leopard-2, which is in service with one of the brigades.

The 17th Mechanized Brigade will occupy the permanent deployment point of the 19th MBR of the 18th MD.

Thus, the 11th brigade will be deployed at the deployment points already prepared in all one-offices, with the possibility of continuing understaffing and conducting operational and combat training activities at the Novaya Demba training ground (n. Rzeszow) under the guidance of American instructors.

This course of action seems the most logical, if we recall the statements of the Minister of Defense of Poland Blashak about the beginning of the formation of two new divisions. Of course, this is best done on the already deployed barracks and park funds in the PPD of the 11th division in western Poland. This will allow the Polish military leadership to form new military units as soon as possible, equip them with personnel, weapons and military equipment, and after they are formed and equipped with everything necessary, begin operational and combat training activities.

The task of the military units and subunits of the 11th brigade in this development of events will probably be to continue improving their professional skills and building up their combat potential, as well as, if necessary, to advance in the second echelon of the operational formation of troops in order to strengthen and support military units 18 -th MD in the event of a threat of a collision with Russian troops, the offensive of which is most likely from the Zhytomyr and Khmelnytsky regions.

Most likely, Polish troops will not go to the south-west of Ukrainian territory (Ivano-Frankivsk direction), since it is believed that today there is the most loyal population to Poland and no one expects Russian tanks there.

Nikolai Astrovskiy

https://www.belvpo.com/130017.html/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7723234.html

They should occupy Galacia. That would be 'interesting'...

Monument to Sudoplatov in Melitopol
July 7, 12:24



A monument to Lieutenant General of the NKVD Pavel Sudoplatov, a significant part of whose career was devoted to the extermination of Bandera, was officially unveiled in Melitopol. A good monument to a good man.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7723741.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Russia Says It Destroyed Two US-Supplied HIMARS Rocket Systems In Ukraine
TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JUL 06, 2022 - 01:27 PM

Russia’s defense ministry announced Wednesday that its forces operating in Ukraine have destroyed two US-supplied rocket systems recently transferred to Ukrainian forces under authorization of the Biden administration.

In particular, Moscow is claiming it took out a pair of advanced High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), which have served to greatly expand the targeting range of the Ukrainian army. Earlier in the war, Russia vowed to attack any foreign supplied weapons or convoys it finds on the battlefield, further saying it would hold the supplying nations "responsible".



There's as yet no independent confirmation, and it's unlikely that the Ukrainian side would confirm even if true. Kiev has reportedly denied it. If accurate, it would be a devastating rollback of efforts to give Kiev longer range rockets, given at this point the Ukrainians likely only possess less than half a dozen HIMARS. It also takes time to train the Ukrainians on the complicated mobile systems being transferred.

This could mean the destruction of half of the US-made HIMARS deployed by the Ukrainians. Reuters recounts, "Ukraine had received only four HIMARS systems as of early July, the European Council on Foreign Relations said in a report. The U.S. has pledged to deliver eight by mid-July."

Further according to Reuters, citing the Russian military:

It also said Russian forces destroyed two ammunition depots storing rockets for the HIMARS near the frontline in a village south of Kramatorsk in Ukraine's Donetsk region - the main focus for Russian troops following the capture of Luhansk over the weekend.

The ministry released video footage which it said showed the strike. Reuters could not independently verify the strike.

One war analyst, Samuel Ramani, commented that the Kremlin claim "underscores Russia's desire to specifically target HIMARS shipments from the US to Ukraine."

It also inches Russia and the US closer to potential direct conflict, given the likelihood that Russian forces appear to be actively hunting any foreign-supplied weaponry, especially longer range rocket systems.

Late last month, Ukraine said it destroyed a Russian command center using a HIMARS system...

The Ukrainians have meanwhile been urging Washington to supply systems even longer in range that the 50-mile capable HIMARS. According to CNN last month, "Ukrainian officials have asked for the missile defense system, known as a NASAMS system, given the weapons can hit targets more than 100 miles away, though the Ukrainian forces will likely need to be trained on the systems, a source said."

The White House has been reluctant to increase the range of what it hands over to the Ukrainians, however, based on fears that such munitions could reach deep into Russian territory, which would mark an even greater escalation.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... ms-ukraine

US, G7 Discuss "Capping" Russian Oil Price At $40-60, A Move Which Could Send Oil Soaring Up To $380
BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JUL 06, 2022 - 12:17 PM

Last week we admitted that we hadn't spent much time discussing the timesink idiocy of the Biden/G7 "Russian oil price cap" idea because well, it is idiotic as Rabobank's Michael Every explained...

The ‘oil cap’ is simple in theory: the G7 will refuse to provide insurance to any vessel that carries Russian oil unless the cargo is sold with an agreed price cap. Yet it won’t work and will just push oil prices higher. Russia will never agree. China and India will never agree either. Russia and China may offer their own underwriting services, which would force the West into physically blocking cargoes and confronting China - as a Russian-oil carrying ship is stopped in the US, says the Wall Street Journal. Plus, the G7 are already not taking Russian oil: they are taking Russian oil from India and China that is being on-sold.

... and it appears that finally even the dumbest people on earth, i.e. career politicians and economists, have figured it out. Last Thursday, Reuters reported that according to EU officials, the biggest price cap proponents - the governments of Germany and other European Union countries - voiced "caution" in a closed-door meeting about price caps on Russian oil, a day after the Group of Seven economic powers agreed to urgently start work on the matter.

Here is the truncated timeline for those who missed it: on Tuesday G7 leaders agreed to explore “the feasibility of introducing temporary import price caps” on Russian fossil fuel, including oil, and tasked ministers to evaluate the proposal urgently.

But just one day later, Germany’s envoy to the EU told his counterparts in a restricted meeting that the world should be “realistic” about the proposal, which he said was added to the G7 statement after “intense pressure” from Washington, according to one official who attended the meeting.

And then, the envoy also said an agreement on whether to apply caps was not expected to come anytime soon... or any time for that matter as it is impossible.

Then there are the holdouts: Hungary and Belgium also raised concerns at the meeting about the G7 statement on sanctions, the official said, with Hungary explicitly backing Berlin’s caution on oil price caps. A second EU official familiar with the talks confirmed that Germany and others had expressed wariness about oil price caps.

And while it would have been prudent to quietly let this idea die at this point, Europe being Europe and politicians being politicians, this idiotic proposal refuses to die and according to Bloomberg which cites 'people familiar with the matter', the White House and its G7 allies have discussed trying to cap the price on Russian oil between $40 and about $60 a barrel.

A more specific threshold would depend on market conditions when a cap is agreed and those could change significantly. Before Monday’s mini-rout in headline oil prices, Russian crude was probably trading around the $80-a-barrel mark. Information about transactions in the nation’s barrels has become less visible since the invasion.

The way they would enforce this ridiculous idea (ridiculous for the reasons none other than JPMorgan explained), would be by banning insurance and transportation services needed to ship Russian crude and petroleum products unless the oil is purchased below an agreed price. Of course, all this would do is push India and China to offer their own insurance and transportation services, chipping away some more at US superpower status.

What is remarkable is that the proposed range of $40-60 is far below where oil traded before the Ukraine war broke out in late February, effectively killing the idea before it is even rolled out...



... because not only will Russia never agree to voluntarily curbing its output, but China and India will also throw up all over the proposal. But the simplest reason why Russian oil will not be capped is because Europe itself does not really want this proposal to pass, not least because it will incentivize Russia to simply shutter up to 5 million barrels of output, sending oil prices orders of magnitude higher, to wit:

While oil caps got a mention in the G-7 communique, there is a lot of skepticism that an agreement will be reached in the near future as the idea still needs fleshing out and there are a number of obstacles. Nevertheless, discussions are ongoing to try to nail down a concrete proposal.

Said skepticism is also why the Biden administration has so far steered away from deploying extra-territorial secondary sanctions to enforce restrictions imposed on Russia and such moves are usually seen with concern among some European allies. Their use alongside a price cap is likely a measure of last resort, according to one of the people.

Sadly, since there isn't a terrible energy-related idea that the economically incompetent handlers of the senile US president don't love according to Bloomberg Biden administration officials are having multiple meetings a week on the price cap now, trying to push it into reality, one official said. The effort will only intensify in the coming weeks.

The good news is that, as JPMorgan explained, at least some in Biden's immediate circle realize how catastrophically such a proposal would backfire: according to Bloomberg, "the US is concerned that the European ban as is, which in the EU’s case begins to come into force at the end of the year, could contribute to oil prices spiking even further -- to as high as $185 a barrel according to some estimates -- and potentially could lead to a global recession, the people said."

Another complication: to work, the US-driven idea of an oil cap would need to create enough of an incentive for countries to want to participate. Oil buyers would need access to lower prices and to the key services such as insurance that they need to transport the commodity. The threshold also needs to be set a level at which Russia would continue to export.

And therein lies the rub: as JPMorgan explained, a price threshold set too low would simply result in Russia halting output: in fact, as we explained over the weekend, according to JPM's commodities team (whose full note is available to pro subscribers), given the high levels of stress in the oil market, a cut of 3.0 mbd could cause global Brent price to jump to $190/bbl, while the most extreme scenario of a 5 mbd slash in production could drive oil price to a stratospheric $380/bbl.

In other words, the surest way to ensure oil soars to a record high is for the G7 and Biden to set a price ceiling of "only" $40-60. Judging by the stupidity of global politicians, and how amazingly Russian sanctions have backfired so far, it would not be surprising if this proposal actually were to pass, triggering the biggest surge in oil prices in history.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-g7 ... oaring-380

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THE "AXIS OF EVIL" TO THE RESCUE OF THE "CIVILIZED WORLD"?
THE ENERGY CRISIS PUTS THE US SANCTIONING POLICY IN A DILEMMA

Franco Vielma

Jul 6, 2022 , 7:43 p.m.



The European energy market has entered the alarm phase. This possibility evokes the great crisis of the 1970s when, in the framework of the Yom Kippur War, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East put the West in check for its support of Israel in that conflict.

Such an apparently reckless statement was pointed out at the end of last May by the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, who warned that Europe is facing a summer season in which there are likely to be supply problems for all types of fuels. , due to the current environment of supply problems and high prices.

More than a month after such declarations, the facts have only become more complicated by reaffirming not only the imminence of a crisis, but also its deployment on the ground.

The only common denominator between those events of the seventies and the present is the relevant role of geopolitical movements and war, which produce a turbulence of higher scales in the energy markets.

Birol referred to the backlash generated by the coercive measures against Russia for its military operation in Ukraine as "supply problems."

The energy crisis is comprehensive. It does not have strictly differentiated features between the items subject to turbulence. An item of this crisis unfolded since the European Union (EU) applied measures against Russian gas without mediating consequences.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, has now warned about the need to prepare for a reduction or even a total cut in the supply of Russian gas, which is today partially paralyzed for technical reasons clearly attributable to the blockade. of equipment to Russia.

Currently, the official recalled, there are already 12 countries that suffer from this shortage in full or in part. For this reason, Brussels is preparing an emergency plan, which it will present, along with its still unknown tools, "in mid-July" and which will work together with the national contingency plans.

"We also have to prepare now for additional gas supply disruptions or even a complete cut off of Russian gas supply," he warned.

Skipping Russian gas by pipeline at low transportation costs provided an "unexpected" benefit for the United States, the big winner in Europe's energy debacle. For the first time in history, liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States exceeds that transported by Russian pipelines. In April 2022 alone, five European countries (France, Spain, UK, Netherlands and Poland) accounted for 54.1% of total US LNG exports, according to World Energy Trade.

However, in addition to the already very high price of gas, Europeans must pay 40% more for LNG for processing and transportation reasons.

In the field of crude oil, the measures against Russia are leading to a rearrangement of the market.

Almost four months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian crude from the Urals has seen its traditional market flow shift from Europe to Asia .

Since the beginning of the war, based on the average of March to May 2022, India's imports of crude oil from the Urals have increased by 658% compared to 2021 levels, while for China the increase is 205% and for the whole of Asia of 347%, shows research by Rystad Energy.

Russia is being withdrawn from the European market, and although this is expected in the framework of coercive measures against Russia, in fact it is Europe that is left empty of Russian crude and oil in general.

In theory, an increase in production from Middle Eastern countries could ease the picture. However, in an unusual situation caught on camera , it was seen how French President Enmanuel Macron informed Joe Biden that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia could barely raise production to about 150,000 barrels per day, no more than that, at least in the next six months.


CALL 0-800-AXISOFEVIL

For several months, Washington has exhibited an apparent break in its policy of suffocation against Iran and Venezuela, given the greater disaster that its own policy of suffocation of Russia is generating. Without a doubt, we live in times of contradictions and widespread chaos, courtesy of the so-called "civilized world". Now, in the absence of good guys, "the bad guys" will have to come to the rescue.

Washington has implemented actions to unblock a relaunch of the Nuclear Agreement with Iran, which would allow the Persians to free themselves from the embargo that the Trump Administration imposed on their economy.

US officials have also visited Caracas to negotiate conditions and propose a return of Venezuela to the markets, albeit without further guarantees, in advantageous business areas for some companies that would be favoured, US and European, of course.

Macron recently called for the return of Iran and Venezuela to the oil market.

Similarly, just hours before his unfortunate death, the secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Mohammad Barkindo, asserted that the oil supply shortage could be alleviated by allowing additional flows from Iran and Venezuela, limited by "sanctions".

According to the information, he said it at a conference on energy held in Nigeria. He argued that resources could be unlocked and capacity strengthened allowing Iranian and Venezuelan oil to return to the Western market.

Barkindo indicated that the demand for crude is growing, but investment in productive capacity falls, which causes prices to skyrocket. In addition, he pointed out that the measures imposed on Russia by the West have affected the oil markets.

In the same way, the countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), guided by the uncertainties and costs of the current energy market, but also by their structural vulnerability, agreed to resume the PetroCaribe program for Venezuela to supply them with fuel, while requesting the United States eliminate the "sanctions" against the Bolivarian Republic.

This was announced this Wednesday, July 6, by the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, who explained that this new plan is due to the high cost of fuel worldwide, especially due to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

According to Gonsalves in a statement, this agreement will benefit the independent countries of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), but also other members of CARICOM, whose annual summit ended the day before in Suriname.

In theory, the incorporation of new barrels from Venezuela and Iran could mitigate the already adverse conditions generated in the energy market, but time and crude are running out. The latter is literal.

The United States has released crude oil from its strategic reserve since April, in a six-month plan to supply the market with some 180 million barrels. But the depletion of its strategic reserve is happening faster than expected.

The Americans have already dispatched 115 million barrels of their reserves and since May the figure has already reached the line of 1 million barrels per day. This pace is unsustainable .


According to the US Department of Energy, at the current dispatch rate, that country's strategic crude reserve will reach levels not seen in 40 years in October (Photo: Bloomberg)

The collapse of the energy market has already been sighted like an iceberg in the distance. Avoiding it will be possible when the illegally sanctioned producers resume their activities with force, by opening financing channels and building essential legal and commercial guarantees, issues that are clearly uncertain for Iran and Venezuela.

Despite the announcements and apparent de-escalation movements, four months after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine and the start of an escalation of instability in the oil market, the return of Iran and Venezuela continues to be advocated precisely because it has not materialized or has been formally announced.

There is no loosening up and no set of comprehensive licenses that facilitate the regular activities of the two blocked countries. The delays are due to the fact that Washington, even in these circumstances of global energy urgency, does not give up exercising blackmail and pressure, as is usual in its big stick policy.

The policy of chaos clearly structured by Washington continues to be extended to new and dangerous limits.

The members of the "axis of evil" (we speak clearly Iran and Venezuela) will not save the "civilized world" unless it allows it in the midst of its debauchery and the chaos generated by its erratic policy.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/la-c ... ia-de-eeuu

Google Translator

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

Coin "100 years of the USSR"
July 7, 16:56



By order of the State Bank of the Lugansk People's Republic, a commemorative coin "100 years of the USSR" was made




I want it already. I wonder how they will distribute.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7724743.html

Yes, indeed. In Donbass dwells the heart of the Soviet Union. Gotta aggravate the current Owners and I hope shade of things to come...

The Cossacks' avoidance of the Northern Military District casts doubt on the meaning of their existence
July 7, 16:38



The Cossacks' avoidance of the Northern Military District casts doubt on the meaning of their existence

The All-Russian ataman condemned the passivity of the Cossack commanders, who avoid fulfilling their main mission.

All-Russian Ataman Nikolai Doluda expressed doubts about the advisability of reviving the Cossacks in Russia during a teleconference between the leaders of Cossack societies.

At the meeting, the topic of regular military training was raised, at which combat skills should be improved. Doluda expressed indignation at the fact that the atamans could not bring a satisfactory number of Cossacks to the training grounds, as well as their unwillingness to fulfill the role of "defenders of the Russian land" assigned to them.

According to him, the avoidance of the mission that the Cossacks should initially adhere to casts doubt on the meaning of its revival, which began in the 90s of the 20th century.

“Today, when blood is shed for the independence of Donbass and the sovereignty of Russia, the place of the Cossack is on the battlefields, next to our Cossack brothers, volunteers, in the same ranks with the Cossacks of the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, with the military personnel of the Russian Armed Forces! <...> The honor of every Cossack society is to have its own volunteer detachment on the battlefields of Donbass!” Doluda said.

After the start of the SVO on the territory of Ukraine, the Russian Cossacks significantly increased the number of measures removed from military affairs: for example, fire-fighting mounted patrols appeared on the highways, and there are also reports of record volumes of hemp destroyed.
The number of various festivals has also increased. So, soon after Doluda's condemning speech, the Volga Flash festival will open in the Ulyanovsk region with festivities, dance and singing performances and various competitions.

https://cont.ws/@artemon/2325098 - zinc

Wrote on this topic in the spring. Some fans of the Cossacks then stated that this was a shameless assault and the Cossacks were fighting. Yes, a certain part is fighting, but obviously not on the scale that was expected, given the government spending to support the Cossacks. Well, for those whom my then criticism did not triple, the Cossack ataman pronounces the same thing.
I repeat, to those who are at war, there have never been and never have been questions. There are really heroic men there, starting with the Platov regiment. But in various mummers and role players, for whom the state has allocated significant funds for a long time, there really are questions and they are already being asked by the Cossacks themselves.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7724507.html

Google Translator

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

***

forwarded from
Readovka
The map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts in the evening of July 7

There is a new series of confrontation on Zmeiny Island : the Ukrainian side decided to set up its yellow-Blakit ensign there and sent a special forces group there for this. The Russian side, in response , delivered the expected blow to the island - a lot of 200 and 300 special forces became the price of a symbolic step.

Let's move on to the situation on the fronts:

Izyum-Slavic Front
Ours ran into the area of ​​the Valley and Krasnopolye . Tough battles are going on in the vicinity of these villages, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying at all costs to prevent the Russians from advancing towards Slavyansk from the north. In the area of ​​​​the village of Adamovka , which is in the vicinity of Slavyansk, our Su-35 shot down a Ukrainian Su-25.

Donetsk Front
Reports about the capture of Grigorovka and the detour of Seversk from the north side turned out to be premature - there are severe clashes in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthis village. The pace of our offensive has slowed down, partly due to the tactics of "barriers" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in forest plantations, but the fighters are making their way forward, grinding the enemy.
According to some reports, today the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to make a breakthrough in the area of ​​​​the Uglegorsk TPP , throwing their remaining reserve into the attack, and there was even information that they occupied Vershina . However, this was the end of their counteroffensive, and, according to Yuri Podolyaka, this is the merit of the Wagnerites, who at the cost of their own losses curbed the forces of the breakthrough.

Southern Front
Positional battles, the situation is somewhat tense - the Armed Forces of Ukraine are making attempts to put pressure and advance. Ours, however, give them a rebuff in the normal mode. In the Nikolaev area , our Su-35 fighter shot down an enemy MiG-29.

🛡Borderlands
Today, drones attacked two points of deployment of our border guards in the Kursk region, in the area of ​​Elizavetovka and Andreevka .

Arrivals
Under the fire of the militants was again Donetsk - a woman died in the Petrovsky district . In the Kirovsky district , a fire broke out at an oil depot after arrival. Makiivka and Gorlovka also got it .

Calibrations
With our high-precision weapons, we destroyed the command post of the 107th battalion of the 63rd mechanized brigade of the reserve command in Barmashovo, Nikolaev region . In the same region, the stationing point for foreign mercenaries in Posad-Pokrovsky and the training center for units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Ochakov area were liquidated . They also bombed the warehouses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the areas of Seversk , Artemovsk , Zvanovka .



***

Сolonelcassad
Offensive on Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 7, 2022

Armed Forces of Ukraine Strikes from drones at the points of deployment of border guards near the border villages of Elizavetovka and Andreevka in the Kursk region . Ukrainian formations also shelled the village of Nekislitsa in the Bryansk region .

The RF Armed Forces carried out strikes on enemy positions in the border settlements. Volkovka, Miropolye, Kondratovka, Esman on the territory of the Sumy region .

Positional battles continue in the north of the Kharkiv region . Russian artillery and missile troops hit the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Saltovsky district of the city.

In the Donbass , sluggish fighting continues in the Bakhmut direction . The parties are preparing for a further offensive of the allied forces.
In the southern part of Lisichansk, a search and cleansing of the remaining pockets of resistance of the Ukrainian garrison is underway.
Violent clashes are taking place in the Grigorovka area .
After occupying the Disputed Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, preparations are being made for further offensive operations in Berestovoye, Ivano-Daryevka and the Vyemka station .
The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine strengthens the defensive lines on the line Seversk - Zvanovka - Soledar - Bakhmut . Funds for the creation of fortifications were delivered to Zaitsevo and Krasnaya Gora . To slow down the advance of the RF Armed Forces , HIMARS MLRS have been deployed in the vicinity of Chasov Yar , Soledar and Seversk .
Ukrainian formations continue to shell the Donetsk agglomeration : there are dead and wounded among the civilian population.

In the Zaporozhye region , the RF Armed Forces attacked the location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Stepnogorsk.

In the Krivoy Rog direction, the parties continue to conduct positional battles and artillery duels.



***

forwarded from
AGENT OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT
Mobilized Ukrainian soldiers may lose their salaries at their old place of work.

According to the amendments to law No. 7251 adopted by the Verkhovna Rada, employers will no longer be required to pay salaries to workers mobilized or drafted into the army during martial law. If the bill adopted by the deputies is signed by the president, then only the workplace and position will be retained for those called up for service during mobilization.

The problem for the Ukrainian society lies in the fact that very often the mobilized are listed anywhere, but not in the combat zone. Thus, the total number of casualties is underestimated (the person was not officially sent to the database zone). The mobilized, who are in the zone of the database, often do not receive the promised money, because often this money is stolen by the rear structures.

***

forwarded from
Zvezdanews
The main thing from the statement of the head of the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev :

In Avdiivka of the DPR, militants of Ukrainian nationalist formations, heavy weapons and armored vehicles are stationed in the courtyard of a multi-storey residential building (Tsentralny Avenue) . At the same time, residents under the pretext of ensuring security are prohibited from leaving their apartments;

In Zaporozhye, in the building of gymnasium No. 71 (Mayakovsky Avenue) , units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and nationalist formations are concentrated, firing positions and ammunition depots are equipped ;

In Zmiev, Kharkov region, at school No. 2 (Kharkovskaya St.), neo-Nazis equipped firing positions, an ammunition depot was located in the basement of the building ;

In Seversk of the DPR, in residential buildings (Zarechnaya St., Tikhaya St.) , nationalists of the armed formations of Ukraine are located, who are engaged in robbery . Feeling complete impunity, the militants show particular cruelty and cynicism towards the inhabitants of the city, including the elderly, women and children.

***

Сolonelcassad
Special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, July 7. The main thing according to RIA Novosti :

● Putin held a meeting with the leaders of the factions of the State Duma, where he said that the Russian Federation has not yet started anything in earnest in Ukraine. He also said that Moscow does not refuse peace talks on Ukraine, but the later they start, the more difficult it will be to negotiate

● British Prime Minister Johnson announced his resignation, after which he phoned Zelensky and said that London would continue to support Kiev.

Zelensky said that all Ukrainians are sad because of Johnson's departure

● A mercenary deployment point in the Mykolaiv region and a training center for Ukrainian units in the Ochakov area, as well as 6 command posts and 3 ammunition depots were destroyed by high-precision weapons of the Russian

Aerospace Forces servicemen of the 80th air assault brigade refuse to participate in hostilities and desert en masse to the rear areas

● The Kraken Battalion in Ukraine was ordered to move to Pokrovskoye, but the command of the nationalists and the militants refused to comply with the order



● As a result of Russian air strikes, Ukrainian troops near Soledarsk have already lost 2.5 thousand people, the 79th Airborne Assault Brigade of Ukrainian troops was almost completely destroyed - its losses exceeded 80% of its strength ● The Russian Defense Ministry, in its final report on the US military biological activities in Ukraine, stated that the Americans had removed a national collection of microorganisms from the country, and there was no system for protecting dangerous pathogens there

● According to the report of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the main areas of projects of the medical companies Black & Veatch and Metabiota, funded by the son of the President of the United States, Hunter Biden, were quarantine infections that could damage agriculture in certain countries

● The report of the Russian Ministry of Defense also noted that the collection of ticks by American specialists in the -east of Ukraine coincided with an increase in their number in the border regions of the Russian Federation and an increase in the incidence of tick-borne borreliosis in Ukraine itself

Source: @rian_ru

***

forwarded from
brussels snitch
3:48
Exclusive

The first testimonies of residents of Klinovoe, near Bakhmut, about the attitude of Ukrainian servicemen towards them:

"Starting from 2014, it was a nightmare. It was forbidden to speak Russian. Those who spoke well about Russia were beaten or taken away somewhere. Basically, all fascists The

village was bombed in three days.
They told us so, "if we retreat, we will raze you to the ground." These are such creatures ...

They still tried to convince us that Russian soldiers would rape us, kill us, pull out our nails. But we "We didn't believe. We are glad that you came, we were waiting for you. We want our Donbass. Free. Without Nazism."

People are still very scared and flatly refused to speak to the camera. Many have relatives in Ukraine.

Right during the interview, shelling began, which only confirmed the words of the villagers: the Armed Forces of Ukraine are stubbornly trying to leave behind scorched earth, not really worrying about civilians. They don't consider them human.

***

forwarded from
Readovka
0:36
Azovets spoke about the unsuccessful attempts of the Russian side to exchange anyone except members of his national battalion - Ukraine is ready to exchange only the Nazis, spitting on ordinary soldiers of the Armed Forces

of Ukraine Member of the Azov regiment Alexander Sharko, who surrendered at Azovstal and safely returned to Ukraine, told how Ukrainian the authorities actually refer to the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“They took out everyone except for the Azov people. The first exchange was on June 2. They took it out and turned it back, they said no. Something doesn't fit. Someone doesn't fit. And then twice more lists came, everyone except for the Azov people left and returned [to the DPR, editorial note]. But this time we left and thought: somehow strange, we will return anyway. And they returned , ”Sharko said.

Earlier, Readovka released an interview with Azov Sharko, during which he showed a Baphomet stuffed all over his torso, and also admitted that the majority in Mariupol took the side of the DPR. In a new interview on the official YouTube channel of the Azov Regiment, Sharko says that everyone in Donetsk is zombified, and Mariupol is his land.

From the words of Charcot, it is clear that Ukraine categorically refuses to exchange for ordinary soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Russia was forced to accept the conditions of the Kyiv regime, returning the Nazis to their homeland, since the lives of our fighters are more important than the “picture”. In Ukraine, the situation is reversed: the imaginary "victory" in the information war is put above the fate of its own servicemen .

“Either you give us the Nazis, or no one” - but do the women and mothers who are waiting for their lads know about such a policy? Those without baphomet and swastika.

***

forwarded from
AGENT OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT
The darknet continues to push weapons for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the widest "range" of weapons and equipment supplied for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The price of armor sold by volunteers or servicemen of the Armed Forces starts at $1400. For example, the German Panzerfaust 3 grenade launcher sells for a modest price of $670 apiece.

The scheme for the delivery of weapons in Ukraine is implemented on the principle of selling drugs in the form of "bookmarks" - the goods are delivered to the "cache", and the client receives the appropriate coordinates and a photograph of the place.

Overseas buyers need to pay for the shipping service (about $1000). Payment is made exclusively through the store on the dark web - everything is confidential. Delivery, if desired, can be arranged in Europe.

***

forwarded from
ANNA NEWS
Germany refused to supply Ukraine with old Fuchs armored vehicles.

The refusal was announced by German Defense Minister Christina Lambrecht.

She explained the decision by her unwillingness to "rob the Bundeswehr" and refused to make an "irresponsible decision," writes Bild.

The only thing that Lambrecht forgot to add is that in the near future several hundred cars will be sent idle to storage bases.

“ Let’s cut it into metal, it’s better than sending Ukrainians ,” German Defense Minister Lambrecht forgot to add.

***

Сolonelcassad
Germany continues to try to get Siemens equipment back from Canada, which should be transferred to Russia and ensure the operation of Nord Stream.
As gas prices rise (today already 1,900 per 1,000 cubic meters) in Europe and the date of the shutdown of gas supplies via Nord Stream approaches (should be turned off on July 11 for 10 days), Germany continues to try to solve the problem. If earlier in consultations with Canada the possibility of violating their own sanctions through the transfer of equipment to Russia from Canada was discussed, now Germany proposes first to give equipment from Canada to the Germans, but they will "sort it out themselves."

All these ridiculous gestures are developing against the backdrop of calls to save electricity and admissions that the plan to replace Russian gas with LNG has failed.

***

Сolonelcassad
Border post number 2.

The Russian Ministry of Defense about staged photos with the Ukrainian flag on Zmeiny Island. At the beginning of the week, I wrote that the Armed Forces of Ukraine would try to organize a photo session in the near future).

Against the backdrop of military failures and a massive retreat of Ukrainian troops in the Donbass, the Kyiv regime made an attempt to symbolically deliver the flag to Serpent Island tonight.

At about 5 am, Ukrainian soldiers landed on the island from a motor boat and took pictures with the flag.

A Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft immediately launched a missile attack on the island, as a result, some of the Ukrainian military personnel were destroyed, the rest fled in the direction of the Primorskoye point in the Odessa region.

Let me remind you that during the installation of a border post stolen from the Kharkiv shopping center near the border with the Russian Federation in the Kharkiv region, for the sake of a picture, 3 members of the local Volkssturm were killed and several more were injured of varying severity. Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.

***

forwarded from
BelVestnik
NATO and alliance partners will never transfer certain types of weapons to Kiev, including the American Patriot air defense systems, so as not to provoke Moscow, the Spanish newspaper Vanguardia writes .

“The West is determined to help Ukraine, but not to such an extent that it appears in the eyes of Moscow as a participant in the conflict and provoke a larger or global war,” the newspaper says.

For the same reasons, Kiev has not yet waited for the transfer of modern American-made Predator and Global Hawk UAVs .

The author also noted that the deployment of such complexes requires highly qualified personnel, whose training will take a long time, and to deploy foreign crews on the territory of U

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

[blindpig]

in Lisichansk
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/08/2022

Original Article: Alexander Kots / Komsomolskaya Pravda



“So this is the result of the work of the Tulip ”, I thought, examining the state of the bridge connecting Severodonetsk with Lisichansk, destroyed to its foundations. A little over a month ago, I filmed in Rubezhnoe how the RPL army's 240mm self-propelled artillery was hitting somewhere in the direction of Lisichansk, cutting off the path of the retreat of the enemy garrison in Severodonetsk. In the heat, the river is shallow and some Ukrainian units were able to cross to the other side, albeit without equipment. They were also unable to resist the advancing troops at Lisichansk even though they had seriously prepared the defense. It turns out that they had been prepared for something else.

The news of the complete liberation of the Lugansk People's Republic caught me on my way to Lugansk from Belgorod. He was returning from vacation through the liberated territories, where the signal from the Republican telephone operator is already received without problems, the stores and administrative offices are open and there is even a traffic jam near the capital. A worker dressed in his bright green vest was directing traffic in a road repair zone: construction specialists from Russia ruthlessly remove the traces of eight years of war.

Trains with equipment moved along the tracks to the west. It is a great logistical help. The artillery advanced along the roads following the withdrawal of the troops from kyiv. It is the artillery that, in conditions of equal human resources, decides the outcome of the confrontation. But not only her. The Ukrainian Army was preparing to be attacked head-on.

This is shown by the fortifications that they had erected in the city. There is a whole network of trenches that turn into concrete shelters, at the entrance to Lisichansk. The city is on a hill and that is another advantage for the defenders. You can still find minefields, there are entire streets covered with these antipersonnel petals . And in the industrial zone there are bunkers, although inferior to the dungeons of Azovstal: an unambitious entrance to the basement in the wooded part near the factory, a chain of underground passages that breathe cold and penetrating humidity.

"Were it not for the local population, we would never have found this bunker," admits Leshin , commander of the RPL's Fourth Motorized Brigade. “We have only counted 120 beds. There are two other similar positions in a nearby hotel and in a workshop. There were also positions of the paratroopers of the Ukrainian Army in front of the plant. Lists of officers have been found in the destroyed base. As they fled, they threw away their helmets and vests. When we arrived, they were no longer there. They withdrew from the city, regrouped and tried to withdraw in columns. Not all of them made it. At the departure of a convoy of fifty vehicles, they lost up to twenty units and 300 troops. But that's just one column. There may be more."

"Where did they go?"

“To the Seversk district. They have entrenched themselves there, the city is well fortified, but that is not going to stop us”.

Through the dark corridors we emerged into a large underground barracks the size of about half a football field. All the space that can be seen with the light of our flashlights is littered with litters and the remains of food packages. The residents clearly didn't care about hygiene, the dumpsters are right next to the eating tables.

"Lisichansk was also well prepared for defense," I remember.

“They have had time for it. But our artillery practically did not work in the city, only targets where the enemy had been identified were attacked. It is unrealistic to pretend to identify places like this from the sky. This is where they hid."

"Why didn't they resist?"

“I think because of the experience of Severodonetsk and Mariupol. It was possible to dig in and defend for a month or two, but at what cost. How many casualties would they have had? After all, Mariupol and Severodonetsk have taught us a lot too. We have not gone forward. We have advanced in small groups and from different directions, securing the ground in the evenings, waiting for night and advancing again in the morning, identifying the enemy, striking with artillery and light weapons. They are afraid. His morale is at zero. A resident told me that at five in the morning a paratrooper from the Armed Forces of Ukraine took off the clothes of a 63-year-old woman and put them on, got on his bike and fled. If the paratroopers are like this, what can be said about the infantry?

It is true, but there is a detail that will surely be included in the story. It is no accident what is said: in war, the most important thing is the maneuvers. And the allied forces were able to maneuver in a way that kyiv did not expect. Within a short time, units of the Central Military District under the command of Colonel General Alexander Lapin were moved to Lisichansk undetected by enemy intelligence. They helped Luhansk troops to virtually besiege the city, expel the Ukrainian Army from nearby towns, and clear the green zone . Even so, the first entrance to Lisichansk was left to the Lugansk troops. It was something symbolic. So Leshin was one of the first to enter the city with his soldiers.

“How did the local population receive you?”

“Well, what if I say that the Ukrainians kidnapped women and released them two days later in a terrible state? We were greeted with a sincere welcome. We arrived at night. At dawn, we saw about 400 local residents in the market. They had gathered there in search of water or humanitarian aid. I sent out a reconnaissance team and it was immediately clear that we were welcome. They hugged us, kissed us and didn't let us leave the market for six hours."

We visited the city together with the battalion commander. I understand that the metaphor “not a single stone is left in its place in Lisichansk” is an embarrassing hyperbole exploited by Ukrainian propaganda. Yes, there is an area of ​​tall buildings that has suffered serious damage in the battle. But there are areas like that in Donetsk, which have been bombed much harder for eight years. By the way, when in conversations with the civilian population and they are asked who fired the shot, they have no doubts. But regardless, Russia will rebuild everything, no matter where the shells were fired from.

We stop at a five-story building where the soldiers have brought modest humanitarian aid from their own pantry: cereals, flour, pasta. One of the women invites us to the basement to see how they have lived these months. The Ukrainian military forced them to hide there and they only came out with the arrival of Russian troops. The woman leads us down a dark, dank hallway with a flashlight that barely illuminates a small space in front of her.

“Here are the beds, we made them with doors. We cooked on the fire. We have been here for four months, we were waiting for you”.

"Did you get along with the Ukrainian defenders ?"

“Lately they had lost their form, they were drunk, they misbehaved. They bothered the girls, they wanted to take us by force to Ukrainian territory.”

"Weren't they from here?"

"No, from the west," the women say in unison. "Even speaking it was evident, they speak in the Western way."

There is no place where the division between east and west is more clearly manifest than here, in a half-dark basement. Those people who came from Ternopil and Lviv regions never considered these people as their own. And when the opportunity arose to impose their nationalist complexes on a defenseless population, they took advantage of it with such enthusiasm that local residents do not have to explain from whom they have been freed. On the street, the residents of a building do not let the volunteers leave: “We have been waiting for you for a long time. 129 days. We will pray for you."

"This part of the building faces an area where there were no Russian troops three days ago," explains a soldier standing next to a five-story building. “And the projectile fell to the east. In the background there is another projectile, also from that side. At some point, they bombed it.”

“This is our flat. A projectile hit on April 24 at half past three in the afternoon. It used to be a four-bedroom flat, now it's a one-bedroom flat,” a woman smiles sadly. The blast wave blew up the interior walls and the comfortable flat became, in a single instant, a mountain of cement mixed with memories that are now out of place in the form of family photo album remnants.

“It was Easter, we left the cellar in the afternoon, we made okroshka with the children, we ate here, and I took my brother to the shelter. Then he exploded. Well, we still have my parents' house. At least we have housing.”

I remember the strange passion of the Ukrainian Army for bloody provocations on religious holidays. The first blood of this war was spilled eight years ago at Easter, it was in Bilbasovka, near Slavyansk. Praviy Sektor militants attacked a picket line of local residents and killed three of them, who were armed with simple sticks. Now, the Ukrainian troops are withdrawing towards Slavyansk itself, building their defense line there in layers. The new front already crosses the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk People's Republic: from Seversk to Bakhmut. Arestovich, Zelensky's adviser known for his grand predictions, claimed that Lisichansk will be the last city the Russians will occupy. Sometimes it is better to keep silent.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/08/24994/#more-24994

Google Translator

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War in Ukraine. Summary 07.07.2022
July 8, 11:18



War in Ukraine. Summary 07.07.2022


1. Lisichansk-Sverodonetsk.
The regrouping of troops to the Seversko-Soledarsk and Artemovsk directions continues. There is a combing of the area, not all the lagging groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have yet been caught. The cities themselves are still being shelled by the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

2. Seversk.
Battles at Grigorovka and Verkhnekamensky. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have indicated their readiness to fight for Seversk and are not going to surrender the city without a fight.
At the same time, the RF Armed Forces are beginning to probe the chain of settlements between Seversk and Soledar for the possibility of bypassing Seversk from the south.

3. Artemovsk.
Fights in the Klinovoye area, as well as for Pokrovskoye.
The enemy is still holding Kodema and Semigorye.

4. Soledar.
Battles for Berestovoe and Belogorovka.
After the capture of the Disputable, one can expect a gradual "folding" of the front from the north towards Soledar.

5. Avdiivka.
No significant changes. Positional battles near the Avdeevka-Konstantinovka highway, there is no advance to Krasnohorivka.
Fighting on the outskirts of New York.
The enemy is intensively shelling Donetsk, Gorlovka, Yasinovataya, Makeyevka.
MLRS and OTRK strikes are underway at ammunition depots, fuel depots and locations of LDNR units deep in the territory of the DPR and LPR.

6. Carbon.
After an unsuccessful offensive attempt by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the front in the area of ​​Pavlovka, Shevchenko and Yegorovka stabilized, and the battles returned to the positional format.
In the area of ​​Marinka and Novomikhailovka - no significant changes.

7. Slavyansk.
Battles at the Valley, Krasnopolye, Bogorodichny and Sidorov.
The front from the northwest is located 8-10 km from the outskirts of Slavyansk. The attacks of the RF Armed Forces on Slavyansk and Kramatorsk intensified.

8. Kharkov.
Positional battles to the north and north-west of the city in the area of ​​the settlement. Udy, Tsupovka, Dementievka, Upper Passages, Upper Saltov.
There are regular strikes on targets in Kharkov, Chuguev and Zolochev. The enemy is waiting for the fresh units of the Russian Armed Forces to be brought into battle and their further advance to the northern outskirts of Kharkov. However, the assault on the city is not yet expected.

9. Nikolaev.
On the Nikolaev, Krivoy Rog and Nikopol directions - positional battles.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to gain a foothold in the area of ​​the settlement. Potemkino and create the preconditions for further offensive actions.
The RF Armed Forces are actively striking targets in Nikolaev and in the Krivoy Rog region.
Despite all attempts, the AFU could not organize a significant attack on Kherson.

10. Odessa.
Against the backdrop of ongoing strikes on targets in the Odessa region, the Armed Forces of Ukraine held the expected photo shoot on about. Serpentine, received several blows on the landing and retreated. The island is still in the gray zone.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/56524 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7725751.html

How to bypass your own sanctions
July 8, 9:45 am



It is reported that Canada and Germany have almost reached a decision on how to circumvent the sanctions against Russia imposed by Canada and Germany.
Canada will return to Germany (or immediately to Russia) Siemens equipment (previously blocked in Canada due to sanctions), which is necessary for the operation of Nord Stream. Germany, in turn, will transfer the equipment to Russia as part of "technical procedures" and "exceptions from the sanctions regime." The threat of Gazprom to stop the work of Nord Stream for "maintenance" from July 11 makes the sanctions clowns hurry up. If you remember, at one time Germany quarreled about the supply of Siemens turbines to Russia. Now Germany itself is trying to find ways to circumvent sanctions and foist Siemens turbines on Russia, so long as it continues to supply gas. 3% of the world economy, they said...

Kyiv is already hysterical, as everyone understands that Gazprom has twisted Germany's arms and forced it to violate its own sanctions regime, which will be perceived as the most obvious victory of the Russian Federation in the economic war with the EU. But Germany does not have much choice, since the rejection of Russian gas in the current conditions means the collapse of some sectors of the German industry (the captains of which are trying to bring the inadequacies from the Scholz government to life), although even in the current conditions, Germany's competitiveness continues to decline, making it one of the main affected by the war in Ukraine.

It will be funny if, after the transfer of equipment to Russia, the "maintenance of the Nord Stream" will continue anyway.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7725061.html

Google Translator

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Peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine to get more difficult with time: Putin
Xinhua | Updated: 2022-07-08 09:00

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with State Duma leaders and party faction heads on July 7, 2022. [Kremlin photo]
MOSCOW, July 7 (Xinhua) -- Russia is open to peace talks, and the negotiations with Ukraine will get more difficult with time passing by, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

"We do not refuse peace negotiations, but those who refuse should know that the more time they waste, the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us," Putin said during a meeting with State Duma leaders and party faction heads.

Putin said that the West led by the United States has been extremely aggressive towards Russia for decades.

"Our proposals to create a system of equal security in Europe were rejected. Initiatives for joint work on the problem of missile defense were rejected. Warnings about the unacceptability of NATO expansion are ignored," he added.

The attempts of Western countries to impose a new order on the world are doomed to fail, said the president.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202207/ ... 6b3bb.html

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Russia: Lithuanian Corridor Could Cancel Retaliatory Measures


Russian Governor to Kaliningrad suggested the creation of a green corridor through Lithuania. Jul. 7, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@UcraniaOtro

Published 7 July 2022 (9 hours 29 minutes ago)

On Thursday, the Russian governor of the Kaliningrad Region said that the creation of a corridor via Lithuania could cancel Russia’s tit-for-tat measures.

The Russian Governor for the region of Kaliningrad, Anton Alikhanov said Thursday that a ‘green corridor’ via Lithuania, would be conditional in the process of negotiation, in light of the prohibition of transit through the Kaliningrad Region.

"This s one of negotiating positions we should maintain. You understand, if they do not return transit now, we will take tit-for-tat measures," said the Governor of Kaliningrad.

"Lifting of such restrictions can be linked with the creation of the corridor," he added.

The Governor suggested negotiating the creation of a corridor in Lithuania, where it will be possible to access the region without invading Lithuanian territory.


Kaliningrad proposes to ban the transit of Russian goods via the Baltic countries: The Kaliningrad region proposes to ban Russian exports and imports via the Baltic countries. This was announced by Governor Anton Alikhanov.

He highlighted the fact that similar examples have been in history.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0027.html

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Russia Steals the Thunder in ‘Wheat War’
JULY 7, 2022


Russian Defense Ministry in Frunzenskaya Embankment, Moscow. File photo.

By M. K. Bhadrakumar – Jun 30, 2022

In a master stroke of military diplomacy, Russian Foreign Ministry announced today that it is “withdrawing” the garrison in Snake Island, the hotly contested Black Sea property from where Ukrainian forces were evicted in March in the early days of Moscow’s special military operation.

This decision comes a day after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres discussed food security amid the situation in Ukraine, in a phone call Wednesday. The Russian readout said Lavrov “underscored that the export of Ukrainian grain is being prevented by Kiev’s mining of the Black Sea.”

Furthermore, Lavrov “reaffirmed readiness to continue fulfilling its obligations on export of food and fertilisers, despite their fulfilment being significantly complicated by the illegal unilateral sanctions of Western states and disruption of global production and retail chains due to the COVID pandemic.”

Importantly, Lavrov conveyed to Guterres Moscow’s “intent for further work on reduction of threats of the food crisis, including in cooperation with the UN.”

The Russian Defence Ministry while announcing the withdrawal from Snake Island, called it a “goodwill gesture” and linked it to the crisis of food security. It added, “The Russian Federation has demonstrated to the international society the absence of any obstacles for the efforts of UN to establish a humanitarian corridor for transporting agricultural products from Ukraine.

“This solution will prevent Kiev from speculating on an impending grocery crisis citing the inability to export grain due to total control of the northwestern part of the Black Sea by Russia.

Now it is up to the Ukrainian side that is still not clearing the Black Sea coastline, including the harbour waters.”

In effect, Russia has challenged Kiev to do its part by removing the mines in the approaches to its ports. But this act of diplomacy is not without serious military implications. Kiev will surely celebrate this as a “military victory”.

However, on the face of it, Moscow is taking a gambit — a clever action that takes the wind out of the sails of Western propaganda blaming Russia for the food shortage as if this situation is the result of its 4-month old operation in February rather than a crisis that had been snowballing through the past four or five years for which the US and the Western countries are to be blamed.

But, as with any gambit, this ploy involves taking a risk insofar as the Russian retreat from Snake Island could be seized by Kiev to retake that strategic piece of real estate in the Black Sea, something that its American and British military advisors have been pressing for. Moscow has taken precautions by stating that it won’t accept wheat cargo ships being accompanied by western warships or drones and that it reserves the right to inspect the ships and ensure they are not carrying military stuff.

So far, two major operations by Kiev with the indirect participation of the Americans and British advisors to seize Snake Island by force were beaten back by the Russian forces. The Western military analysts estimate that the Russian presence on Snake Island would pose threat to NATO’s assets in next-door Romania. (See my blog Southern Ukraine is the priority in NATO’s planing, Indian Punchline, June 22, 2022.)

However, this Russian move also has a certain political resonance insofar as it can be construed as going beyond issues concerning Ukraine’s wheat export. Of course, the facilitation of “humanitarian corridors” in the Black Sea obviates the need for any Western intervention, as implied in the G7 Statement on Global Food Security issued in Elmau, Germany on 28th June backing “UN efforts to unlock a safe maritime corridor through the Black Sea.” This is the first thing.

Indeed, Russia, which accounts for accounted for 16% of global wheat exports, and Ukraine, which accounted for 10%, are not the only key global exporters of wheat — for instance, the US and Canada, which export 26 and 25 million tons of wheat, respectively (or around 25% of global exports) and other major western producers France (19 million tons) and Germany (9.2 million tons) accounting for another 12% of global exports are unwilling to share their grain with those in need, prioritising their own food security in the recent years.

Of course, these rich western countries have their own difficulties related to energy prices, production costs and inflation. They would want to keep their raw materials to shield their economies from further inflation spikes. Simply put, in the event of currency instability, or indeed any form of economic or political instability, it is always more prudent to have raw materials than cash: it does not depreciate as quickly as currency.

The problem with the supply of such a widely produced commodity as wheat will most likely be solved only if the US and EU allow Russia, the largest exporter of wheat in the world, to share supplies in exchange for the removal of sanctions. The western sanctions have forced international companies to sever long-standing business ties and leave Russia, which caused supply disruptions. In one example, the EU last month banned cooperation with the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, through which more than half of the exported grain from Russia is shipped.

What worries the West most is that Africa’s heavy dependence on Russian wheat supplies have a strategic dimension that boosts Moscow’s influence in that continent. The rapidly growing Russian presence in Africa challenges the western neo-colonial projects of European countries. This is already evident in the Sahel region.

At any rate, Russia still retains its dominance over the Black Sea and can not tolerate any threat to Crimea. The goodwill gesture on Snake Island apart, there is no let-up in the Russian special military operation in southern Ukraine, either.

In this context, President Putin’s remarks at Ashgabat yesterday are to the point when he was asked by the media about the “current goal” of the Russian operations. Putin said:

“Nothing has changed, of course. I talked about it in the early morning on February 24. I talked about it directly and publicly for the entire country and the world to hear. I have nothing to add. Nothing has changed… I trust professionals. They are doing what they consider necessary to attain the overall goal. I have formulated the overall goal, which is to liberate Donbass, protect its people and create conditions that will guarantee the security of Russia itself. That is all. We are working calmly and steadily. As you can see, our forces are moving forward and attaining the objectives that have been set for the particular period of the engagement. We are proceeding according to plan. [Emphasis added.]

“We are not speaking about any deadlines. I never speak about them, because this is life, this is reality. It would be wrong to make things fit any framework, because, as I have already said, the issue concerns combat intensity, which is directly connected with possible losses. And we must think above all about saving our guys’ lives.”

Here, the operative words are: “create conditions that will guarantee the security of Russia itself.” After all, Snake Island is only some 175 miles from Sevastopol, the Russian naval base in Crimea.

(Indian Punchline)

https://orinocotribune.com/russia-steal ... wheat-war/

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Zelensky says Ukraine will not give up territory for peace with Russia: ‘This is our land’
By Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 7:06 PM EDT, Thu July 7, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday that Ukraine is unwilling to cede any of its land to Russia, standing firm that a concession of Ukrainian territory won’t be part of any diplomatic negotiations to end the war.

“Ukrainians are not ready to give away their land, to accept that these territories belong to Russia. This is our land,” Zelensky said in an exclusive interview aired Thursday on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

“We always talk about that, and we are intending to prove it,” he added.

Zelensky spoke to CNN at the same time as one of his top Western allies, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, announced he would be resigning. Speaking in Ukrainian via a translator, Zelensky said he was confident that Britain’s policy toward Ukraine “will not be changing” even if the country’s leadership is in tumult.

“He resigned not because he was in Ukraine. I think on the contrary, what Johnson has been doing for Ukraine was helping us a great deal. I consider him a friend of Ukraine, but I think his society also supported Ukraine in Europe. That’s why I think the UK, it’s on the side of good, on the side of Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

“And I’m sure the UK policy toward Ukraine is not … changing because of Boris Johnson’s resignation. Our relations obviously gained a lot from Boris Johnson’s understanding of things. We went through a lot of dramatic moments quite quickly. The help we needed was delivered rather quickly … if (his resignation) will affect this speed of help I don’t know. I will pray to God it won’t be affecting that help.”

Russia’s war with Ukraine has now lasted for more than four months, with no sign of either side backing down soon. Ukraine’s early successes forced Russia to scale back its initial aims of toppling Kyiv, and Moscow’s forces have now focused on taking territory in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have now occupied most of the Luhansk region, outside of a few pockets of resistance, and are pressing toward cities in Donetsk.

CNN reported last week that White House officials are losing confidence Ukraine will ever be able to take back all of the land it has lost to Russia since the war began, even with the aid of heavier and more sophisticated weaponry that the US and its allies plan to provide Kyiv.

(more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2022/07/07/politics/ ... index.html

This guy makes 'Baghdad Bob' look like a pessimist...

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Life in a Time of Conflict in the Russia-Ukraine Frontier City of Belgorod
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 7, 2022


Employees of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry are seen near the damaged residential buildings in the border town of Belgorod, Russia. © Sputnik / Taisia Liskovets

Mark Bratchikov-Pogrebisskiy reports from а region where an accident of geography has again placed it centre stage.

Belgorod is one of seven Russian regions that border Ukraine. In 2014, it gave refuge to people fleeing from Kharkov, Donetsk, and Lugansk, and in 2022, it did the same all over again.

Recently both the city of Belgorod and nearby towns and villages, on the border, have been the target of regular airstrikes. People were evacuated from several settlements, and access to them has been restricted.

In the early hours of July 3, four people in Belgorod were killed by an unguided Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile almost certainly fired by Kiev’s forces. In a tragic irony, three of the victims were Ukrainians, who had sought refuge in the area to escape the fighting across the frontier.

Belgorod’s history has been defined by its status of a border outpost since its foundation in the late 16th century. A surviving record says that in 1596, Tsar Fyodor I, the son of Ivan the Terrible and the last ruler of the Rurik dynasty, ordered “to have the city of Belgorod built on the Seversky Donets, and the city of Oskol built on the Oskol river.” Since February 2022, the Seversky Donets has made more headlines than any other river. The city of Stary Oskol remains one of the key cultural and religious centers in the area.

In 1719, Peter the Great had Belgorod upgraded in status. It became the capital city of the eponymous province within the Kievan Governorate of the Russian Empire. Sixty years later, Belgorod and the surrounding territories were split between the Kursk and Voronezh Regions. The end of the 18th century saw Catherine the Great take control of Crimea, thus expanding the empire’s territory. Belgorod at the time lost its status of a border fortress.


A list of names of WWII soldiers buried in Shebekino © RT

By the early 20th century, Belgorod had evolved into a major railway hub connecting Sumy and Volchansk (both Ukrainian cities today). In 1918 and 1919, it was occupied by German troops and became part of the Ukrainian State established and ruled by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky who collaborated with Germany and Austria. Later, during WWII, Belgorod was occupied by Nazi Germany twice. The city’s liberation on August 5, 1943, was celebrated with fireworks in Moscow. According to the Russian Statistics Agency, the population of Belgorod Region in 2022 totals about 1.5 million people.

This and other facts are part of the program offered by the museum of local lore. On June 13, 2022, some refugees from Ukraine left these comments in the museum’s guest book: “We are now in this beautiful city because of the special military operation. The museum is so inspiring, like a breath of fresh air we haven’t had in a long while.”

Air flights to and from Belgorod were cancelled on February 24. The same day, reports came in about the first victims of an air attack. A few days later, another assault followed: multiple calls were made reporting fake bomb threats at public buildings.

On March 23, a border village was shelled, leaving three civilians injured. The villages of Zhuravlyovka and Nekhoteyevka were put on high alert. The authorities strongly advised residents to flee. However, about 46 people were still living there as of mid-May 2022 despite the risks, according to Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. The shelling of the two villages continued; the number of damaged houses and wounded residents (mostly elderly) grew. Locals reported at least one incident when they had to spend the night hiding in a basement. On May 11, 2022, Ukrainian shelling took the life of 18-year-old Ruslan Nefedov, from the village of Solokhi.

A veteran reporter from Belgorod, who is native to the region, talked to RT about what he saw after the shelling. He said that the residents who refused to leave their homes cited a belief that warnings first seemed disproportionate to the threat they faced. One person cited a reluctance to part with the handcrafted agricultural tools they owned.

The locals appeared to be equally relaxed about the fire at the oil depot in Belgorod that occurred on April 1. According to Russian officials, it was caused by an attack from a Ukrainian helicopter gunship. The thick black smoke was visible from all parts of the city. People living close to the area were evacuated to other neighborhoods.

There were reports of serious traffic congestion close to the burning depot – due to the high number of people wishing to drive closer and capture the incident on video, the reporter told RT. A printing house in Belgorod was also hit in early April. The mother of one resident who talked to us is an employee there and had a lucky escape on the day of the shelling, since she was working from home at the time.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukraine fired three unguided Tochka-U missiles with cluster warheads at a residential neighborhood in Belgorod in the early hours of July 3. The city of Kursk also came under fire. Tu-143 Reis drones rigged with explosives were used in that attack. The city’s missile defense systems intercepted all the rockets, yet one damaged rocket crashed into a residential building in Belgorod. The governor reported four people killed and four injured, including a child. As mentioned above, three of the deceased were Ukrainian citizens – locals said they were a family from Kharkov waiting for the hostilities to end. Over 60 private houses and apartment buildings were damaged. The Defense Ministry emphasized that there were no military targets close to the damaged area and that “the missile attack was planned and carried out to harm the civilian population of the Russian cities.”

In early March, Russia opened humanitarian corridors to Belgorod for Ukrainians willing to leave Sumy and Kharkov located about 80km away. Prior to the beginning of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, Belgorod had been accepting refugees from Lugansk and Donetsk for some time, due to increased tensions there, much in the same way as back in 2014.


'For the Victory’ banner in Shebekino © RT

Residents of Belgorod told RT that many Russian-speaking people from Kharkov and places around it arrived. One couple said they were stopped by armed Ukrainian police who would only speak Ukrainian. They replied to them in Russian, which prompted a demand to speak Ukrainian. When they obeyed, however, the officers beat them up for faulty pronunciation while bystanders stood and watched. The couple decided to leave the country and now they say they aren’t sure they’d want to return to Kharkov in the future.

Many Belgorod residents have extended family in and around Kharkov, and there are several Ukrainian-speaking settlements there. The Belgorod Region as an administrative entity was established in 1954 by Soviet authorities who at the time weren’t particularly mindful of linguistic or nationality aspects. Until the 2014 Western-backed Maidan, Belgorod residents were in the habit of visiting Kharkov on holiday and for better shopping opportunities.

Yet somehow it happened that Kharkov has become an unsafe place for ethnic Russians in post-Soviet Ukraine. On the one hand, Kharkov was a lot less radical than Lviv or Ivano-Frankovsk, yet on the other hand, the overall mood there was very different from that in Lugansk or Donetsk, where people supported Russia. Kharkov, where contact between all things Russian and Ukrainian became so intense, evolved into a breeding ground for some radical groups. Andrey Biletsky, the former leader of the infamous Azov Battalion (banned in Russia) was born there. In mid-April 2022, when the governor of Belgorod Region visited a refugee center, it sheltered a total of 107 Ukrainians: 58 from Izyum and 49 from Kharkov.

Founded by Tsar Alexis of Russia in the 17th century, Kharkov was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic for a brief period of time, until 1934. The Kharkov Polytechnic Institute was established in 1885 with help of chemist Dmitry Mendeleev. The institute supplied a qualified work force for the Shebekino Chemical Plant, which was established after World War II and manufactured household chemicals and laundry detergents for the entire Soviet Union.

Today, Shebekino is only seven kilometers from the border with Ukraine. The town’s population is estimated at 40,000 people. An elderly man, who has worked as a driver at the chemical plant his entire life, described to RT the dynamics between Shebekino and Volchansk. Just 15 kilometers separates one town from the other. Since February 24, Volchansk has been under Russian control.

“The Volchansk Meat Processing Plant was established before the Revolution. Many Shebekino residents used to take the train to Volchansk, but local shopkeepers weren’t always happy about it. Some even refused to sell their merchandise to anybody from Shebekino. Others went as far as closing their doors. ‘Look, the Chinese are here again,’ they used to say in Volchansk about their neighbors from Shebekino [a reference to a stereotype about Chinese tourists buying everything they can on trips abroad – RT]. Now that the border is open, the tables have turned and people from ravaged Volchansk take trips to Shebekino to shop for groceries and soap.”

When asked about the situation in Shebekino, the man shrugs: “It’s always boom, boom from the other side, time and again. I’ve had quite enough of this.”

Yuri Trofimov, editor-in-chief of the Shebekino newspaper Krasnoye Znamya, told RT: “We even have several Ukrainian-speaking villages, and a lot of people with Ukrainian surnames. We have strong family ties with Kharkov, which is also full of Russian speakers. Of course, everyone wants this to end as soon as possible.”

Reporting on the assistance provided to Kharkov refugees, the region’s governor said in early July that “25 tons of transformer oil have been delivered to restore power supply in the Kupyansk, Izyum, and Balakleya districts of Kharkov Region… Balakleya was especially struggling, since the substation that powered the entire town had been destroyed almost a month ago. Thanks to our joint efforts, more than 20,000 people got power in their homes, and, most importantly, the critical infrastructure is now operational.

“When I came here 18 months ago, I heard people say that Belgorod had always been Kharkov’s backyard. It made me wince every time. I felt like it should be the other way around,” Gladkov said in early June.

People in Belgorod, who are not so much frightened as tired, have also had to put up with attacks on their peace of mind through fake news. For example, at one point, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were reported to have “occupied” Elementary School No. 2 in Sereda, a border town in Belgorod Region. It turned out, however, that there was no elementary school of that number there, only a kindergarten. Another fake report claimed that tap water in Belgorod Region was infected with cholera.

School children in Shebekino initially spent a short time learning remotely, and then continued to study full-time in class. All the students had to take the final Unified State Exam in one school “that was the farthest from the Ukrainian border, while the truth was that it was perhaps a hundred meters farther than the other one,” locals told RT.



“We hear explosions every night. Everyone is used to it by now,” Alina, a student from Belgorod Pedagogical College says. “The college management said that we’ll stop studying full-time only if the building gets hit. But even then, there’s a greenhouse, and if the college is bombed, classes may continue there,” she added.

A military field hospital was once again set up in Shebekino, almost 80 years since WWII, when one functioned here in the summer of 1943. There is a small cemetery in the town for the soldiers who “died of their wounds” in the 1940s. These days, the town has three more memorial plaques honoring those who died “in the line of duty” during the 2022 military offensive. They were installed reverently in one of the town squares and are dedicated to Sergeant Dovydok (born in 1985), Corporal Brazhnik (born in 1999) and Corporal Nemytov (born in 1991).

The local park is full of soldiers. Some say they are from the Amur Region in the Far East. Saleswomen, who sell mineral water to the soldiers, tell us that they have also become used to the whole thing:

“The explosions used to start every night at midnight or a little after. Sometimes, shelling occurred during the day. Yet by mid-June, it got quieter. Before that, planes were circling over the town, flying really low. However, none of that stopped the urban improvement project that had been under way in the town and the surrounding area since February. Some people left when hostilities began. Some went to Belgorod, others went as far as Krasnodar {in the south of Russia}. But there is no point. If it gets you, it will get you anywhere.”

A taxi driver, a veteran of the Second Chechen Campaign who RT was able to talk to on the way from Shebekino to Belgorod, is convinced that the Ukrainian side had been preparing for the conflict for a long time. This view is shared by local journalists and people living near the border. One of them, Nikita Prokopchuk, tells a story that is impossible to corroborate: in early winter, long before February 24, Ukrainian troops that had amassed near the border and were allegedly testing Western-made equipment during the night, including some NATO Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UVA). One of the drones unexpectedly changed its trajectory and crashed. The search in the snow continued for several hours. The soldiers were swearing in perfect Russian.

Long before that, in the fall of 2021, local journalists reported activity on the Ukrainian side of the border, where soldiers provoked Russian border guards, shouted insults from afar, and even ran naked along the border.

Andrey Zhdanov, a Belgorod writer who spoke to RT said:

“To be honest, it surprised me that people in Belgorod were so prepared for all this. Maybe it’s because we live near the border. It’s a fact that people in local villages are very peace loving. But now they have learned to tell an incoming from an outgoing [strike – RT] by the mere sound it makes. They can even tell what exactly it is: Iskander, air-to-surface, or Grad rockets… There is an active volunteer movement in the city and the region: people raise money to buy drones for soldiers, send them food and support them in any way they can. Local social media groups that help the Russian Armed Forces number thousands, and in some cases even tens of thousands, of members from all over Russia.”

Some names have been changed to protect people’s identities.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... -belgorod/

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Ukrainian army terror bombardment of DPR leaves seven civilians dead and 44 injured in 48 hours
Originally published: Donbass Insider on July 6, 2022 by Christelle Néant (more by Donbass Insider) | (Posted Jul 07, 2022)

In two days, the Ukrainian army’s terror bombardment of residential areas in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has left seven civilians dead (including a 10-year-old child) and 44 injured, as well as causing widespread destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure.

Despite frequent counter-battery fire from the Russian army and the DPR People’s Militia, the Ukrainian army’s terror bombardment of civilians in Donbass continues. It seems that Ukrainian soldiers have decided to take revenge against DPR and Russian civilians for the takeover of Lisichansk by the allied forces.

On the night of 2 to 3 July, the Ukrainian army shelled the Russian city of Belgorod, located near the border with Ukraine, killing five civilians and wounding 11 others. A similar attempt against Kursk failed.

The Ukrainian army targeted purely residential areas, not military infrastructure, thus applying against Russian civilians the same terrorist methods it has used against those in the Donbass for the past eight years.

A method that it has again applied massively over the last two days. On 4 July, from 6 a.m., the Ukrainian army began shelling Gorlovka and nearby localities such as Panteleimonovka and Novobakhmutovka with mortar shells and heavy artillery. Then, at around 8 a.m., Yassinovataya, further south, and Yakolevka were shelled with 122 mm heavy artillery by Ukrainian soldiers based near Avdeyevka.

Twenty minutes later, Donetsk (Kievski district) and Makeyevka become the target of the Ukrainian army’s terror bombardments, this time from Peski, with 152 mm heavy artillery. Villages on the outskirts of Donetsk, such as Alexandrovka, are not left out, and are shelled by Ukrainian soldiers from Krasnogorovka, with 122 mm artillery.

Depuis ces mêmes positions, l’armée ukrainienne inflige de nouveaux bombardements de terreur sur le quartier Petrovsky de Donetsk, puis à nouveau sur Alexandrovka, depuis ses positions à Maryinka.

Then Gorlovka and the surrounding area were shelled again by the Ukrainian army with Grad multiple rocket launchers and 122 mm heavy artillery. At around 10 a.m., the Kirovski and Kuibyshevski districts of Donetsk were shelled by Ukrainian soldiers with 152 mm heavy artillery, followed by the Kievski district with Grad multiple rocket launchers.

Throughout the day on 4 July 2022, the terror bombardment continued towards Donetsk, Makeyevka, Alexandrovka, Elenovka, Yassinovataya and Gorlovka.

At around 11.30 a.m., the Ukrainian army again used NATO standard 155 mm guns against Makeyevka from its positions in Avdeyevka, and at around 12.40 p.m. fired eight 220 mm Hurricane rockets at the Kievski district of Donetsk.

At around 3 p.m., the Ukrainian army conducted its terror bombardment against Donetsk with NATO standard artillery from its positions in Pervomaiskoye.

The Ukrainian army’s terror bombardment did not end until 9 p.m. with the firing of 40 Grad rockets against the village of Novoselovka, near Gorlovka.

In total, on 4 July 2022, the Ukrainian army fired 731 munitions against the DPR, including eight 220mm Hurricane rockets, 166 120mm Grad rockets, 144 NATO standard 155mm shells, 183 152mm artillery shells, 157 122mm artillery shells and 73 120mm mortar shells.

The death toll from the Ukrainian army’s terror bombardment of purely residential areas of the DPR (there were no weapons, ammunition, positions or soldiers in the areas targeted by Ukrainian fire) was four civilians killed and 32 wounded, including a Russian journalist.


The market near the Donetsk railway station was completely burnt down by the intensive shelling.

As a result, people living near the railway station spent the night in the cellar of their homes to protect their children from the Ukrainian army’s terror bombing.

Russian and DPR People’s Militia artillery worked actively all day to destroy the regularly changing Ukrainian army firing positions, destroying four platoons of Grad and Hurricane multiple rocket launchers. But this was not enough to calm the Ukrainian soldiers, who continued this tactic of terror bombardment against DPR settlements on 5 July 2022.

The Ukrainian army first fired at Gorlovka and its outskirts at 3.55 a.m. with 122 mm heavy artillery. Then, at 7.45 am, Ukrainian soldiers shelled Yassinovataya with Grad multiple rocket launchers, and 10 minutes later it was again 155 mm artillery offered by NATO countries to Ukraine that was used to shell the Kievski and Kuybyshevski districts of Donetsk.

As on the previous day, the Ukrainian army’s terror bombardment then targeted several localities by changing firing positions: Alexandrovka, the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, Dolomitnoye, Panteleimonovka, and Ozerianovka.

Then at 09:40, the Ukrainian army fired 10 unguided 80 mm aerial rockets at Novobakhmutovka, but without using any aircraft (probably a DIY operation like the ones I saw a few years ago in Zaitsevo, where a mortar shell had been mounted on an RPG-type anti-tank rocket launcher rod).

At 10.45 a.m. and again at 3.30 p.m., the Ukrainian army shelled the Voroshilovsky district of Donetsk (city centre) with standard NATO 155 mm artillery. The shelling hit the beginning of Chelyuskintsev Street, where a 10-year-old girl was playing outside her house. The girl’s body was torn apart by the shrapnel. The video below shows the remains of her body and her mother, who lost her only child.

This is what the weapons that the West (including the United States and France) is sending to Ukraine are for! Not to fight the Russian army, but to shoot at purely residential areas to kill civilians, including children!

On the map below you can see all the districts in and around Donetsk that were hit by the Ukrainian army’s terror bombing on 5 July. To put it simply, only two districts escaped the shelling, which is still going on at the time of writing.


In total, the Ukrainian military fired 508 munitions into the DPR on 5 July 2022, including 98 122mm Grad rockets, 10 80mm airborne rockets, 183 NATO standard 155mm artillery shells, 42 152mm artillery shells, 64 122mm artillery shells, and 111 120mm and 82mm mortar shells.

In addition to the 10-year-old girl, the Ukrainian army fire killed two other civilians in the Kievski and Petrovski districts of Donetsk, and 12 others were injured in the capital and Alexandrovka. As on the previous day, many homes and purely civilian infrastructure were destroyed, including a car garage in Donetsk.

It is to be hoped that counter-battery fire from the Russian army and the DPR people’s militia will eventually bring an end to the Ukrainian army’s terror bombing of civilians.

https://mronline.org/2022/07/07/ukraini ... -48-hours/

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

Reaching the Greater New York audience with common sense on Ukraine
gilbertdoctorow Uncategorized July 7, 2022

When I received an invitation from Elliot Resnick, former editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn, New York-based Jewish Press to record a podcast devoted to the Ukraine-Russia war, I was delighted to have an opportunity to address an audience that, until his untimely death eighteen months ago, my comrade-in-arms and fellow expert on Russia professor Stephen Cohen had been talking to in his weekly radio broadcasts. Of course, Cohen’s radio programs were listened to by a far wider audience than the core Orthodox community reached by The Jewish Press: they numbered in the millions. But getting a foothold in New York was desirable for me since most alternative media outlets in the U.S. reposting my essays seem to be on the West Coast.

Here is the link to the newly released podcast by Resnick: https://open.spotify.com/episode/35r4WT ... um=desktop

Live interviews like this are always a challenge. Inevitably you do not get across every argument you prepared in advance. In my mental review of our chat, I have one regret. Though I had requested to be asked about how the Kiev regime can be fascist when its president, Zelensky, is a Jew, I did not give the most relevant answer to that question when we spoke: namely the celebration of the SS-collaborator Bandera by the ultra-nationalists running the show through Zelensky as their front man.

Bandera’s name is being given to streets throughout Ukraine and statues are raised to him. Tattoos bearing Bandera’s image were found to be worn by the Azovstal defenders when they surrendered to Russian forces.

The whole issue of Bandera and the present day heirs to Ukraine’s collaborationists during WWII was highlighted last week by the scandal over remarks to a German journalist made by the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnyk: he denied that Bandera was anti-Semitic or was in any way responsible for the slaughter of Jews in Ukraine by his followers. Those remarks elicited a storm of criticism from the Israeli government who called it willful disinformation about the Holocaust. Official Poland also entered the fray and with good reason: Poles were slaughtered by Bandera’s warriors as well. From within Scholz’s government, Germans were incensed. Yesterday Melnyk was removed as ambassador and returned to Kiev, where he likely will be promoted to the position of deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. This whole ugly affair is a good demonstration of the fascist nature of a government nominally headed by Zelensky.

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/07/07/ ... n-ukraine/

©Gilbert Doctorow

[blindpig]

Glory to the Heroes: Sidor Kovpak and the War for Ukraine’s Memory
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 8, 2022
Evan Reif

The Ukrainian identity, complex as it is, was shaped by the many groups that inhabited the territories wedged between forces in Moscow and Warsaw. This rich culture that birthed literary geniuses like Taras Schevchenko, Ivan Kotliarevsky, and Nikolai Gogol, has become coopted by those who glorify a narrow, “Galician” view of what it is to be Ukrainian. Bandera and Shukhevych, and their clique of Lwow terrorists held little sway outside of their own domain in their time, but contemporary western backing has given them a historical reach far exceeding their grasp.

The west has internalized and regurgitated the fascist propaganda that the only representative of the Ukrainian people in 1941-1945 was the Nazi collaborationists in the OUN. The same OUN who beat Ukranian Jews to death with hammers in the streets of Lwow, burned Polish worshippers alive in Volhyna and assassinated refugees in the post war camps.

Ironically, it is only because of the Soviet Union that the Galicians are part of the modern Ukraine, Galicia had been Polish or Austrian for six hundred years prior to its annexation by the USSR.

The Galician terrorists, therefore, had no real connection to Ukraine or its people. They wanted a Galician Reich, not a Ukranian nation.


ImageSidor Kovpak, in his homeland of Ukraine

This deprives the actual Ukranian people of their true history, a history of heroic resistance against fascism.

Over 7 million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army, which represented nearly 25% of Ukraine’s pre-war population. Around a quarter million more fought on as partisans, refusing to surrender even in the face of monstrous brutality from the Nazis and their OUN allies. The Lwow bandits, on the other hand, could muster about 40,000 fighters at the height of their power.

Therefore, it is clear that most Ukrainians would have died rather than serve Hitler, and millions of them did just that. The names of these genuine Ukranian heroes and patriots are too numerous to list. Some have been totally erased, their entire existence blotted out by the Nazi regime leaving only holes in history. Others have been forgotten simply with the passage of time.

Some, however, distinguished themselves to such an extent that their flame can never be truly extinguished.

People like Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Bila Tserkva. She served as a sniper in the Red Army, holding the lines against the Nazis at Odessa and Sevastopol. She was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union for her many feats of valor during the defense of the cities and their people.



Pavlichenko, 09 fascists fell by her gun in over a year of nonstop combat. She was seriously wounded several times, once carrying the body of her husband and fellow sniper Leonid Kitsenko from the battlefield after a Nazi mortar killed him.

She survived the war and became active in the Communist Party, continuing to serve the Soviet people as a deputy in the Politburo until her untimely death in 1958. She never truly recovered from the wounds she suffered during the war, and it was this that led to her death.

Another would be Ivan Kozhedub, fighter ace and three-time Hero of the Soviet Union.

In his first air battle over the skies of Voronezh, he was nearly killed after being hit by a cannon burst from a Nazi Focke-Wolfe. While nursing his damaged aircraft back to base, he was mistakenly fired on by his own anti-air gunners, further damaging his aircraft. Somehow, he managed to land, and his first defeat would be his last. He did not lose another plane for the rest of the war.

Over the course of the war, Ivan shot down 64 Nazi aircraft, and he was the first to shoot down a Me-262 jet fighter. His Lavochkin chased the Nazis across the Dnieper all the way to Berlin, where Ivan cleared the skies of fascists for a final time.



Ivan Kozhedub 2.jpgKozhedub

After he helped liberate his homeland from the yoke of fascism, Ivan became an air marshal and Deputy of the Politburo. He died in 1991, shortly before the homeland he fought for was betrayed and dismembered against the will of its people.

Perhaps the most remarkable of all these heroes was Sidor Kovpak, a peasant and longtime Communist who became a venerated hero of the Red Partisans in Ukraine. His legendary detachment crushed both the Nazis and their OUN dogs while carrying out what was perhaps the most audacious commando raid in history.

And the regiments rode across the steppe with a loud glory and sang like nightingales. Our dear native countryside, accept a bow from the Red Horsemen!

-The Cossack’s Song

Sidor Artemevich Kovpak was born in 1887 in Kolteva, today a part of the Poltava oblast, which borders Kharkov to the west. He grew up poor, with 9 siblings in a family of peasant farmers. The Tsarist system was built to ensure he stayed that way, but Kovpak was never a man to submit to oppression.

Kovpak got his first taste of military life in the First World War. He was well suited for the job and rose quickly through the ranks. Sidor was a guardsman, entrusted with the most difficult and dangerous work, and he was awarded a half dozen medals for valor in his years of service.

During the colossal Brusilov offensive of 1916, Imperial Russia’s most glorious victory, Kovpak was an infantry commander and personally led troops on the front lines. Ironically, this offensive took place in Galicia, the same place where Kovpak would once again fight German invaders 20 years later.

In three months of fighting there were about 2 million total causalities, but the battle did very little to change the cardinal situation of the war. The collapse of Imperial Russia was imminent thanks in part to the causalities suffered during this flashy, but ultimately useless offensive.


Russian Cavalry charge during the Brusilov Offensive, 1916

All this Tsarist glory left Kovpak with a burning hatred for the system that wasted the lives of peasants like him to enrich a few inbred monarchs. In 1919, Kovpak joined the Bolsheviks, and fought against German occupiers of Ukraine for the second time as he helped repel the Central Powers from the new USSR.

Kovpak distinguished himself as a partisan just as he had a guardsman. He led a partisan detachment alongside legendary commander Alexander Yakovlevich Parkhomenko, and Kovpak very quickly proved a legend in his own right.


Alexander Yakovlevich Parkhomenko.jpgParkhomenko

As true sons of Ukraine Parkhomenko and Kovpak fought as Cossacks, the same way their ancestors had for thousands of years. Their forces were a mix of light infantry and cavalry, with as much of the latter as they could support. Their lightning-fast cavalry raids sowed devastation in the enemy rear, then vanished as quickly as they came.

The Red Cossacks moved constantly, wearing the enemy down and making them almost impossible to catch. If an enemy could pin them down, the infantry would be waiting in ambush armed with horse drawn machine guns and artillery, giving them firepower far greater than other forces of their size.

The forces of the Tsar, the anarchist bandits of Makhno, the Kaiser’s soldiers and the Ukranian nationalists were all driven out or killed by the Red Cossacks, falling before their guns and blades like strands of Ukranian wheat to the sickle.

Although the Bolsheviks were victorious, Parkhomenko did not survive the war as he was killed in an ambush by Makhno’s anarchists in 1921.

Kovpak continued on as a soldier, becoming head of a military district by 1926. By 1937 he retired from the Red Army, serving as head of Putivl city council in the Sumy region of Ukraine, a city which is today contested by Russia and the Maidan regime.

Kovpak may have settled down to a peaceful life were it not for the events of 1941, when yet another army of Germans threatened to destroy his beloved Ukraine.

In the East, I intend to loot and pillage effectively. All that may be suitable for the Germans in the East, should be extracted and brought to Germany immediately. – Hermann Goering



Wehrmacht soldiers with a banner which says “A Russian must die for us to live”

If we are to tell the story of Sidor Kovpak, we must also mention why he came out of retirement to defend Ukraine once more.

As time moves ever onwards, history has a tendency to dissolve into myth. The broad strokes of the fascist reign of terror are well known, but as the details fade, the danger of losing clarity grows ever larger.

It is important when telling these stories to confront the realities of fascism, to examine in detail how this system works, and what it looks like in practice. It is only through this understanding of the enemy that we can truly defeat it, once and for all.

Over the duration of the war, at least 26 million Soviets were murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. 8 million were soldiers, the remainder and the vast majority were civilians. Of the dead 6 million have never been identified. Despite these staggering numbers inflicted by Operation Barbarossa, the invasion and subjugation of the USSR was only the first step in the Nazi plan.

This was no aberration. Hitler and the Nazis came about explicitly as a reaction to the rising tide of Communism in Germany, drawing their early support from the first generation of post-war fascist militias who had crushed the Communists in the 1920s. Judaism and Communism were always linked in Nazi ideology, and the extermination of both was the top priority of the regime. Jews were a primary target of the Nazis, but they were never the ONLY target. Post-war historiography, often written by the perpetrators of the Holocaust themselves, went to great lengths to obfuscate that fact.

The bedrock of Nazi ideology was the idea that Germany would forever be unable to compete with the colonial empires of Britian and France, and therefore needed to have an empire of it’s own to take it’s rightful place as ruler of the world. With all the best victims overseas already taken, the Germans looked east to the vast and fertile lands of Eastern Europe.

This was the ideological foundation from which the Nazis created Generalplan Ost. The plan was to exterminate the entirety of the Slavic people, every man, woman and child, gradually replacing them with German settlers. This was carried out in a number of ways.


Soviet Red Army POWs Murdered in Buchenwald Death Camp (c. 1943) - THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR)Red Army POWs at Buchenwald

The infamous concentration and extermination camps, places like Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka that peppered Nazi occupied Europe are well known. Millions met their ends in the camps, either worked to death for the benefit of German corporations such as Krupp and IG Farben, all of whom profited enormously from the Nazi regime, or simply exterminated in the gas chambers.

Outside of the camps, life was not much better. An entire continent of slaves toiled endlessly to feed the Nazi war machine. The Nazi plan was a capitalist plan. Every last scrap of wealth was to be extracted from the Soviet Union, be it food, resources, goods or even the gold teeth from the regime’s victims.

The value of human beings and their labor was calculated down to the penny, and when they could no longer provide value to the German elite, they were exterminated. Even this was carefully planned to maximize efficiency, with the Nazis constantly experimenting to find better methods. The accountants in Berlin pushed to ruthlessly reduce the cost of this exploitation, always at the expense of human life.

Ukraine suffered tremendously from this. The breadbasket of the USSR became the breadbasket of the Third Reich, it’s grain ruthlessly requisitioned to feed the very Nazis who murdered its people. Millions died of starvation as their rations were reduced to 420 calories a day. It is worth pointing out that Galicia, home of the collaborators in the OUN, was immune from grain requisition, as Nazi racial doctrine saw Galicians as sufficiently “Aryan” to be allowed to live.

This year, between 20 and 30 million people will starve to death in Russia. And maybe that’s a good thing, because certain peoples need to be decimated. -Hermann Goering


A young woman suffering from starvation due to the Nazi siege of Leningrad

The vast majority of those murdered, however, were simply shot. Often known as the “Holocaust of bullets”, it is unknown exactly how many met their end this way.

Entire units of SS were created, the infamous Einsatzgruppen, who could “cleanse” villages in a matter of hours. People would be marched to pre-dug pits, forced to their knees and executed at close range via gunshot. They were assisted, at every step, by local collaborators. In Ukraine, this meant OUN, UPA and various other Bandera affiliated fascists.

Despite their post war efforts to portray themselves as liberators, a simple, indisputable fact remains. The OUN, the so called Galicians who despised the “Asiatics” that made up most of Ukraine, were active participants in the genocide of Ukrainians.

The Jews that the OUN massacred with hammers and axes were UKRANIANS first and foremost. Most of them had far more connection to the country and it’s people than the so called Galicians ever did. It is only by stripping them of their Ukranian identity and heritage, as the fascists did with their ideology, that one can justify calling themselves a Ukranian nationalist on one hand while committing genocide on Ukrainians with the other.


A Ukranian woman and child executed by so called Ukranian “nationalists” near Miropol, Ukraine

Sadly, this fascist framework has been accepted almost without question in the west, and in so doing have we robbed the Ukranian people of their very identity for the benefit of Nazi terrorists.

Fortunately for all humanity the people of Ukraine would not be cowed by fascist terror. They rose and fought against this darkness, at great cost and without any thought of surrender. The Nazis and their Banderite allies, accustomed to butchering unarmed civilians, thought they would have an easy victory.

They were mistaken.

The monsters who hacked people to pieces with axes and threw bodies into ovens like cordwood did not realize that they stoked the very fires that would eventually consume them.

The Flame of Liberation

We shall drive a bullet into the forehead of the rotten fascist filth, for the scum of humanity we shall build a solid coffin!

–The Sacred War



As the Nazis pillaged and burned their way through Ukraine, the old Cossack Sidor Kovpak was waiting for them. While many Soviet administrators failed to prepare for the invasion, Kovpak was far too seasoned to make that mistake. He was able to muster a detachment of 42 partisans who were sent into the Spadschansky Forest near Poltava. Kovpak stayed behind until he could personally confirm the capture of the city on September 8th, 1941.

Thanks to Kovpak’s preparations, the newly formed partisan detachment was well armed with 36 rifles, 5 submachine guns, 8 grenades, 1 pistol and approximately 1 ton of explosives. Food and supplies had been pre-placed, and the partisans were equipped with horses and wagons. On September 29th, 1941, Sidor Kovpak’s second partisan war began in earnest with the partisans attacking and destroying a Nazi food requisition unit who had come to starve Ukraine to death.

On October 9th, Kovpak joined up with the man who would become his second in command, closest friend, and staunchest ally; Commissar and Hero of the Soviet Union Semyon Rudnev. Rudnev was leading his own partisan detachment, roughly the same size as Kovpak’s, in the forest at the time.


Semyon Rudnev

Rudnev, like Kovpak, was a long time Communist of peasant stock. He stormed the Winter Palace in 1918 and had a distinguished career as a soldier in the Red Army. It had nearly ended when he was caught up in the NKVD’s purges of 1938, but Rudnev cleared his name and was released into what should have been his retirement as a party official in Poltava. Hitler did not allow that to happen.

The two merged their forces together, forming the now legendary Putvil Partisan detachment. Together, the Ukranian Cossack and the Russian Commissar fought to liberate Ukraine from the menace of fascism, both German and Galician. Their forces were still small but grew rapidly as they wrought vengeance on the fascist monsters.

They roamed the region on foot and horseback, and wherever the Ukranian people’s avengers went, liberation followed.

The Partisans maintained good relations with the local villagers and defended them from repeated attacks by Nazi reprisal units, even taking on SS tanks and coming out victorious. All the while, the Partisans blew bridges, ambushed soldiers and raided arms depots to such an extent that Kovpak bragged of Hitler being his arms supplier.

Kovpak, the soldier who had covered himself in glory over twenty years of defending Ukraine from German invaders, was a preternaturally talented partisan commander.


The Red Hetman, Sidor Kovpak

He knew every inch of his native terrain and how to best fight in it. As is befitting a Cossack, horses were the at the heart of Kovpak’s operation. The partisans would be mounted whenever possible and used wagons as a method of fast transport for heavy weapons, including artillery, along with infantry and supplies.

This allowed Kovpak to hit where he pleased, when he pleased and far harder than imagined at a speed the fascists could not hope to match. The horses were often limbered and unlimbered quickly as the situation required. Pack animals used to transport artillery and heavy weapons into ambush positions could then be mounted and used to facilitate rapid attack in any direction. The wagons even allowed the partisans to set up and relocate headquarters very quickly, avoiding constant attempts at encirclement by the Nazis.

At the sharp end of it all was the cavalry patrol. The backbone of partisan forces were small groups of scouts, infiltrators and outriders who could be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, darting through plains and forests like the heroes of so many Ukranian songs. Kovpak’s scouts were outstanding riders, used to handling fast horses over long distances and with few roads. Horses were rarely used in the attack, rather as dragoons, with partisans dismounting to fight, scout or hide, using the horses to get in and out quickly. The cavalry patrols gave Kovpak eyes behind every blade of grass, and a rifle to go along with it.

The Nazis were harassed constantly, through sabotage, ambush, infiltration and assassination. Kovpak’s scouts were often used to draw Nazis into ambushes and traps, where entire units could be destroyed by pre-placed guns which could vanish into the forest as soon as they were done. Cavalry roamed from Kiev to Kursk, attacking Nazis wherever they went. When they found a good target, the wagons with the rest of the partisans were not far behind.


A force of Red Partisans with the famous Tachanka wagons

In other words, Kovpak’s partisans fought like Ukrainians, and that is why they won.

The Nazis failed utterly at the task of containing the Putvil partisans. By December of 1941 they had a strength of 500 fighters and were liberating entire regions from Nazi occupation. Kovpak and Rudenko established a more permanent headquarters around that time, complete with a recently acquired radio capable of reaching Moscow.

When the NKVD regained contact with Kovpak, they were thrilled with his progress and opened the taps to give him everything they could. Now, with access to more manpower and resources, Kovpak greatly expanded his operation. By the summer, Kovpak had liberated half of Sumy Oblast, along with territory in neighboring Belarus, and now commanded 18,000 Red Partisans. Sumy would remain a Partisan stronghold and was not recaptured by the fascists until 2014.

Kovpak also built up a very effective intelligence apparatus under his chief officer, Pytor Vershigora. Vershigora was a musician and film director before the war, and upon joining the Red Army, distinguished himself as an intelligence officer. Ironically, while defending the hill on which lies the grave of Taras Shevchenko in in Kiev, Pytor escaped encirclement and certain death by swimming across the Dnepr after being wounded by a landmine.

Once healed, he was sent to join Kovpak’s new Sumy Partisan Division, and soon the charismatic partisan had informants in every village, even infiltrating Nazi command structures through the enslaved secretaries and domestic laborers of Nazi officers. Kovpak, Rudnev and Vershigora were not just comrades, but close friends. It is because of Vershigora’s writing that we know most of what we do about Kovpak.


Pytor Vershigora

By August 1942, Soviet command was so impressed with Kovpak’s organization that he was summoned back to Moscow, where he was personally received by Joseph Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov and awarded Hero of the Soviet Union for the first time.

The award came with a new responsibility, however, as Stalin and Voroshilov brought Kovpak to Moscow to discuss his next assignment above anything else. It was a plan so audacious that only Sidor Kovpak had any chance of carrying it out.

Oh, you worried about nothing, about your destiny you thought in vain.

Black ravens are circling and crowing over someone else’s head, not yours.

–Song of Cavalry Patrol</blockquote
As light returned to Ukraine little by little, one region was still shrouded in darkness.

To the west, Galicia bled under the brutal rule of the genocidal bandits in the OUN. The majority Polish region was brutally cleansed by the terrorists with axes, hammers and garottes, all under the watchful eye of their Nazi masters.

Sidor Kovpak’s new mission was to light a torch in that darkness, inspiring the people to rise up by showing them that liberation was near. To do this, he selected 1500 Partisan fighters, and set off on a commando raid that has few, if any, equals in the annals of history.

Kovpak’s commando unit was tasked with penetrating over 1000 miles behind enemy lines to set up a base in the Carpathian Mountains of Southwest Ukraine. Along the way, they would have to move constantly, with no hope of reinforcement or resupply. Standing against them was not only the Nazi collaborationist OUN, but also 60,000 elite Nazi soldiers including the SS Galicia Division which comprised entirely of the OUN’s best killers.


Ukranian “nationalists” marching in honor of the SS Galicia Division, 2018

On the face of it, this appeared to be a suicide mission. No one could hope to hold off 60,000 hardened executioners with a force of only 1500 isolated commandos.

No one, that is, except Sidor Kovpak.

We can trace the beginning of the Carpathian Raid down to the hour. On June 12th, 1943 at 6PM, 1517 partisans under the command of Kovpak and Rudnev crossed from Belarus into Ukraine. The wagon train stretched over 5 miles, full of supplies for the extended mission, heavy weapons and ammunition. The partisans were given several horse drawn 76mm field guns, which they would use to great effect during the raid.

In order to conceal the movements of the wagon train, the partisans utilized their knowledge of the terrain to move at night and along secondary roads. Despite this, they moved quickly, sometimes covering over 40 miles in a night. Cavalry patrols rode far ahead, often in entirely different directions from the main force, carrying out constant sabotage and harassment to distract enemy forces.

First contact between the OUN and Kovpak happened not long after the crossing. Small OUN garrisons were convinced to surrender by Rudnev, no doubt helped along by his artillery guns. By the time the OUN command got word, Kovpak was already deep into Galicia.

Roman Shukhevych, the commander of the OUN’s military wing and perpetrator of multiple genocides in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, scrambled to raise a force to respond to Kovpak’s raid.

Roman was familiar with Kovpak, as Kovpak had already beaten his reprisal battalion in Belarus, saving thousands from being burned alive, hacked to pieces with axes and impaled by the fascist killers. Roman knew the threat that the people’s avengers posed to his terrorist fiefdom, and so stopping Kovpak was seen as a top priority.


Roman (bottom row, second from left) with Nazi Reprisal Battalion 201 in Belarus

A rabble of 6000 bandits was mustered, and despite outnumbering Kovpak more than 3 to 1, the fascists were utterly crushed by the partisans. The would-be Vikings were no match for the Cossacks, who used cavalry to lure them into traps before hidden guns cut the fascists to shreds and vanished into the night.

After two skirmishes caused such serious causalities that the terrorists ran out of guns, the OUN turned tail and ran. No further offensive action was attempted against Kovpak, with captured nationalist commanders saying they feared mass defection of their men to Kovpak’s wildly superior force. Some of them had already done that, often those forcibly mobilized by the bandits under threat of brutal murder.

The fascist militia, laughably called a self-defense force, spent the rest of the war massacring Polish civilians, against whom their courage did not fail. After the bandits were dealt with, Kovpak could turn his full attention to their masters.


Roman’s “ideology”

In Galicia, the primary lever of oppression was Nazi run dairies. Thousands of Polish and Ukranian slaves were forced to raise and milk cattle the Germans stole from them and their neighbors then send the milk, butter and cheese back to Germany as the slaves were intentionally starved. Kovpak repeatedly struck at these dairies, liberating slaves and distributing the food to the communities.

Anything that could not be taken was burned to deny it to the fascists. Army supply was hit in the same way, and the Partisans record giving away thousands of pairs of boots, clothes, livestock and more. They recount with particular joy the capture of a Nazi cigarette warehouse containing over 600,000 cigarettes, of which the partisans took as many as they could carry and gave the rest away. Railroads were another target, both for raiding and demolition.


Train derailed by Kovpak’s partisans during the raid

The partisans had to move quickly to avoid destruction, so in many cases they were not able to interact with the population. In areas where they could, their ranks were filled with locals after they saw through the lies of Bandera and Hitler. Kovpak employed many local intelligence agents and found particular support among Polish communities and the few remaining Jews not yet murdered by Bandera.

The Poles faced a nightmarish situation. They represented a majority of Galicia’s population, and many of them had been in the region for hundreds of years at the time. Galicia was ruled by Poland for hundreds of years prior to it’s conquest by Austria-Hungary in the late 1600s.

To the OUN, though, only a Galician could be a Ukranian, and a Pole could only be dead. Polish settlements, therefore, were ruthlessly raided and burned by the Banderites. Much of the work was done themselves, such as when Shukhevych’s axe wielding maniacs crossed into Poland itself where they brutalized tens of thousands.


Polish children murdered by Shukhevych’s forces

We had a heavy machine gun (Russian) and two small calibre mortars. At nigh we prepared ourselves and on the next day the whole gang, including me, attacked a Polish church, in which a mass was under way; some 200 hundred people were there, [including] elders and small children. The church was surrounded and the killing started, we fired from the machine gun through the main entrance and windows, as a result killing many people and children; those who were trying to escape were chased and killed. Then, a pogrom of individual families started, in which I also participated”. – Iwan Hryń, UPA fighter, describing one of Shukhevych’s massacres

However, the Banderites did not hesitate to call in the Nazis to do their dirty work when the Poles were able to resist. Nazis often led the larger raids, and nationalist forces served constantly on both ad hoc and official basis as guides and interpreters for Nazi forces, along with auxiliary police units. These units were instrumental in the arrest and deportation to the death camps of hundreds of thousands of people.

Polish settlements, therefore, greeted Kovpak as the liberator he was. Partisans often found shelter in the homes of Poles, recovering from wounds or simply hiding from Nazis. Kovpak also worked closely with the Polish resistance. The two groups shared information and often rescued the other’s fighters when lost or captured. This support was instrumental for Kovpak’s partisans to escape the constant pursuit from Nazi forces.

On the 5th of July, 1943, the Battle of Kursk officially began as the Nazis launched Operation Citadel against a heavily entrenched Soviet salient a few hundred miles west of Ukraine. Thousands of tanks and millions of troops clashed in the largest tank battle in history.

After a week, the Nazi offensive was stopped and the Red Army counter-attacked the badly mauled fascists, who were eventually driven all the way to the Ukranian border. The Red Army reclaimed the initiative in the war, and they never again lost it. This victory set permanently destroyed an entire army group and laid the groundwork for later offensives which would liberate Ukraine and destroy the Nazis.


The Red Army liberating Oryol, August 1943

In light of this, the 60,000 Nazis Kovpak’s raid occupied as it crossed Galicia was a major victory. Only 1500 men prevented several divisions from being put to better use in the decisive battle to the east. On top of that, they caused major damage to Nazi transportation and supply infrastructure, destroying dozens of bridges and trains, along with thousands of tons of oil and fuel the Nazis desperately needed.

Kovpak was able to do all this while constantly staying one step ahead of the Nazis, who encircled him 20 times during the 100 day raid. The partisans lost their wagons in one of the first encirclements, so Kovpak was forced to switch from speed to stealth.

The switch in tactics suited the partisans well. The partisans escaped encirclement every time, mostly through daring breakthrough attacks on Nazi lines. Kovpak’s partisans were seasoned infiltrators, with years of experience in finding even the tiniest gap in enemy defenses before they ripped it open and passed through. SS reprisal units such as Galicia were often targeted, as their soldiers were used to butchery of civilians, not real combat. They folded easily under the blows of Kovpak’s red commandos.

Even while encircled, Kovpak still found ways to maximize the damage he did to the Nazi machine. In August, the partisans escaped yet another encirclement by attacking a headquarters garrison head on, causing hundreds of causalities and destroying 6 bridges in the attack.

On the night of August 4, it was decided to break through the blockade ring and reach the right bank of the Prut River. This decision was facilitated by the fact that with the presence of a large garrison in Nadvirna, Pasechna, Zelena, we had data, and there was no data on the arrival on the right bank of the Prut River from the Kolomyia side of the 374th Mountain Rifle Regiment.

With a swift blow, the whole part fell from the mountains into the valley of the Prut River on the city of Delyatin.

Delyatin is a junction of highways and railways entering the valley of the Prut River. It can be fully called the key to the upper reaches of the Prut River. It has 6 large bridges. At the time of our attack, the German command managed to announce with air leaflets about the complete defeat of our unit, hoping, obviously, that by using chemistry, they would certainly, if not destroy the entire unit, then, in any case, finally break the will to resist. The strike on Delyatin achieved both a political and a strategic goal.

In the entire Stanislav region, the lies of the German command were exposed and a blow was struck at an important strategic point. All 6 bridges in Delyatin were blown up, including the highway bridge over the Prut River.

In the battle, more than 500 enemy soldiers and officers, 1 tank, 1 armored vehicle, 85 vehicles, 3 motorcycles, 3 railway bridges with a length of 410 m, 4 highway bridges with a length of 250 m, a railway train, 1 steam locomotive and 45 cars were destroyed, the railway station was destroyed, where all the track facilities, food warehouse, bakery, etc. Trophies were taken: 15 machine guns, rifles, pistols, etc.

–Report on the combat activities of the unit of partisan detachments of Sumy region, Maj. Gen. Sidor A. Kovpak, twice Hero of the Soviet Union

The Partisans survived but suffered heavy losses. Among them was Kovpak’s friend and commissar Semyon Rudnev. Rudnev died a hero, holding off dozens of Nazi infantry by himself so his soldiers could safely withdraw. After his platoon escaped, Rudnev fought on until his rifle ran out of ammo, then committed suicide by pistol rather than face the monstrous torture he would suffer in Nazi captivity. Kovpak lobbied successfully to have Rudnev posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union for this last stand.


Rudnev and Kovpak in happier times

Now with losses mounting and ammo dwindling, Kovpak made the decision to dissolve the detachment and return to friendly territory. The unit was split into 7 groups and under the command of the most experienced leaders, each of them set off in a different direction, with a pre-set rendezvous in October.

The weaker groups used stealth to pass through the German lines, while the stronger units attacked to distract the Nazis. Radio communication was banned to prevent enemy interception, but this meant that the partisan groups had to make their way to the front lines on their own.

The groups crossed hundreds of miles to the safety of Soviet positions while being pursued by the entire 8th SS Cavalry Division, the Nazi monsters who would later liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto and ambushed by nationalist bandits at every opportunity. The partisans employed stealth and disguise at times, and at others would move among the Polish resistance to to stay alive.

Many of them did not survive this ordeal. Of the 1500 commandos who departed from Belarus on this raid, around 900 made it out alive. Most of them died in combat with the Nazis, but an unlucky few were captured, sent to unspeakable horrors in the dungeons of the SS and Gestapo, or at the axes and chopping blocks of the Banderites.

Against this, however, were the following enemy losses:

Killed soldiers and officers – 3360
Captured — 96
Derailed railway trains — 19
14 bridges were blown up, with a total length of 1166 m
33 bridges on highways and dirt roads were blown up, with a total length of 2369 m
Oil towers blown up — 10
Destroyed oil storage tanks – 13 from 2290 tons of oil
Refineries destroyed — 3
Ozokerite1 processing plants destroyed — 1
Sawmills — 2
Power plants — 3
Communication nodes — 20
Telephone sets — 179
Communications destroyed at 245 km — 108 km
Garages — 7
Bakery — 1
Distilleries — 2
Quarry — 1
Threshers — 10
Tractors — 32
Warehouses of raw materials, food and uniforms — 51
Creameries — 15
Folvarkov and Liegenschafts2 — 95
Forestry — 25
Broken milk machines and separators — 359
Oil pipelines were blown up and oil was released in the village of Bystritsa – 50 thousand tons
36 police stations were destroyed, 6 of them of district significance
Railway station Delyatin
Cars — 333
Autodresin3 — 2
Motorcycles — 28
Bicycles — 321
76 and 75 mm guns – 4
45 mm guns – 1
Shells — 1500
Aircraft — 2
Tanks — 4
Armoured vehicles — 1
Machine guns and light machine guns — 16
Automatons — 10
Rifles — 51
Ammunition more than 10 vehicles
Rifle cartridges – 263 thousand.

Kovpak’s group survived, and he returned to the NKVD headquarters on October 21st to write his final report. A serious foot injury put Kovpak into a permanent retirement, but his partisan division was reformed and sent to Poland, where they would liberate the Bug River region under the command of Pytor Vershigora.

Kovpak was awarded a second Hero of the Soviet Union for the raid, and he continued to serve the Ukranian people as a representative in the Politburo until his death in 1967 at the age of 81. He advocated for the interests of partisan veterans until the very end.

History isn’t what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. The very selection of which histories to teach in a society shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we understand as possible. This choice of which history to teach can never be “neutral” or “objective.” Those who choose, either following a set agenda or guided by hidden prejudices, serve their interests. Their interests could be to continue this world as it now stands or to make a new world.
-Howard Zinn

Now we are left with one question.

How is it that the Galician terrorist Stepan Bandera, along with his associates Yaroslav Stetsko, Mykola Lebed, Roman Shukhevych, and the rest of the OUN who despised Ukrainians and were all guilty of genocide against them are worshipped as heroes in Ukraine today?

Meanwhile Sidor Kovpak, the Cossack hero who defended his homeland against foreign invaders for over 30 years, liberating thousands of Ukrainians from slavery and saving countless Ukranian lives from extermination at the hands of both Hitler and Bandera is virtually unknown even in his beloved home.


Pavlichenko with Soviet General Sidor KovpakUkranian heroes Pavlichenko and Kovpak

The answer is that the fascist bandits carried out one final genocide. Rather than looting and burning Polish towns as they had done before, the gang of thieves stole Ukranian history from under the noses of it’s people.

After the war, the terrorists were spirited away by British and American intelligence and taken to West Germany. Under the watchful eye of Hitler’s hand-picked spymaster and Bandera’s close friend, Reinhard Gehlen (who had also been rescued by the Americans) the OUN had a new mission: to serve as the vanguard of the CIA’s operations against the USSR.

This war was both physical and ideological. After the last stragglers of the bandit gangs in western Ukraine were killed or captured in the 50s, the CIA readied another offensive, this time to remake history in it’s own image as a way to undermine Marxism. Legions of nationalist “historians”, given endless funding and prestige by western intelligence, were allowed to write and publish fantastical tales of how it was they alone who fought to liberate Ukraine.

Once the USSR fell in 1991, it was necessary to install a new ideology to replace the old. Into the void stepped the Banderites, their ideology fully formed and nurtured from decades of CIA stewardship.

The nationalist “historians” returned home, and from there set to work systematically denying the genocide of Ukrainians by the OUN, while portraying them not only as heroes, but as the ONLY true Ukrainians. The despised masses of Ukraine were inferior “asiatics”, unworthy of being a part of Ukraine or it’s history.

Of course, the thousands of Ukrainians the OUN hacked to pieces were given no say in the matter.

The nationalists built this new Ukraine brick by brick, at first in the universities4, then in the Rada, then, finally, in the streets of Ukraine where they took up arms and began again the butchery of Ukrainians in 2014.

We must fight back against the second genocide of the Ukranian people being carried out by Bandera. This time, the entire identity of a nation is being erased, replaced with the addled fantasy of a bandit warlord. We must resist this effort!

Now, when we hear the old fascist canard Glory to the Heroes, we shall respond.

Glory to the Heroes!

Glory to Sidor Kovpak, the Cossack liberator who for decades outran, outfought and outsmarted enemies both German and Galician across the plains of his beloved homeland!

Glory to Lyudmilla Pavlichenko, “Lady Death” who avenged her family and friends on 300 Nazi invaders!

Glory to Ivan Kozhedub, the iron-willed fighter ace who broke the back of the once mighty Luftwaffe that bombed his home to rubble!

Glory to the Partisans all throughout Ukraine who stood and fought against the darkness enveloping their land, never allowing the light to go out until their final victory!

Glory to the seven million Ukrainians who marched from Moscow to Berlin to slay the fascist monster that enslaved their families, stole their land and starved their people to death!

Glory to the millions of Ukrainians who drowned the colossus in their own blood, sacrificing everything to ensure that their children would never again suffer this nightmare!

Glory to Givi, the militias and the people of Donbas who fight today against the dread spawn of Bandera, once again plaguing their homeland! The day of their victory cannot come too soon!

Glory to the TRUE heroes of Ukraine! We can never forget them, and the horrors they faced at the hands of the fascist killers and torturers!

AND DEATH TO THEIR ENEMIES!


Austrian-born Polish terrorist Stepan Bandera in a Cossack costume

Notes:

1.A natural wax used to insulate electrical conductors and for candle making. It was mined on a large scale in Galicia.

2.These are archaic terms, actually predating Nazi Germany, but refer to land held by the German army. In plain terms, these are the farms and ranches operated by the Wehrmacht as part of it’s plan to starve Ukraine.

3.Another archaic term referring to an armored car

4.Soviet era professors were purged after the fall of the Union and were replaced with nationalists. Many schools were also founded in 1991 with financial support from USAID (funded entirely by the US government) and a cornucopia of intelligence linked NGOs to teach nationalist propaganda in lieu of history.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... es-memory/

[blindpig]

Media Support ‘Self-Determination’ for US Allies, Not Enemies
GREGORY SHUPAK

BBC: Russia's Invasion of the Donbas

BBC maps showing separatist-held territories in the Donbas before the Russian invasion, and Russian-held territories now.

Article 1 of the UN Charter says that one of the purposes of the UN is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” However, what “self-determination” means in specific international legal cases is far from a settled debate. Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute explains that

contemporary notions of self-determination usually distinguish between “internal” and “external” self-determination, suggesting that “self-determination” exists on a spectrum. Internal self-determination may refer to various political and social rights; by contrast, external self-determination refers to full legal independence/secession for the given “people” from the larger politico-legal state.

Donbas seeks self-rule

This question is germane to the war in Ukraine. The most intense fighting in the country is currently in the Donbas, a region in Ukraine’s east that largely consists of Russian speakers. Immediately before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Russian government announced it was recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk, the Donbas’ two major regions, as independent states. They have been warzones since 2014, when Russia-aligned separatists began fighting Ukraine’s central government after the success of the US-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government.

WaPo: Eastern Ukrainians vote for self-rule in referendum opposed by West

Washington Post (5/11/14): “The lines of voters appeared to reflect a significant protest vote against the central government in Kiev.”

In April 2014, separatist leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk declared the territories’ independence. The next month, they held a referendum on self-rule. The Washington Post (5/11/14) reported that people voted more than once at a polling station in Mariupol, and that the way the referendum was administered allowed for the possibility of further fraud; at the same time, the paper also noted that Donetsk and Luhansk residents “turned out in significant numbers…to vote in support of self-rule.” Here “self-rule” could mean the regions having greater autonomy within Ukraine, becoming independent countries on their own, or joining Russia.

Ukraine’s government and its Western backers saw the vote as illegal. Ukraine’s military

generally allowed balloting to proceed…. But Ukrainian national guardsmen shut down the voting in the eastern city of Krasnoarmeysk and later fired into a crowd outside the town hall, wire services reported. The Associated Press said one of its photographers saw two people lying motionless on the ground after the clash.

The Post noted that despite the flawed voting process,

many people here—at least those who voted—will see it as a powerful expression of popular will. At the very least, the lines of voters appeared to reflect a significant protest vote against the central government in Kiev….

It did appear that turnout was relatively high. Journalists from several Western news organizations interviewed 186 residents in the Donetsk region, away from polling stations, and found that 116 had cast ballots or intended to. A total of 122 favored self-determination. The results were not scientific, but reflected the level of interest in the referendum.

The Kosovo precedent

Responsible Statecraft: Russia’s move in Ukraine has parallels with US actions in Kosovo

Sarang Shidore (Responsible Statecraft, 2/22/22): “NATO proactively waged a 78-day war against Yugoslavia to ensure its break up and the creation of a new nation state.”

Non-Western media outlets (Asia Times, 2/28/22; Balkan Insight, 3/9/22) have identified a precedent for Russia citing Donetsk and Luhansk’s right to self-determination as a rationale for attacking Ukraine: the Kosovo War. In 1999, NATO conducted a 78-day war that helped to dismember Yugoslavia and create a new state, Kosovo, a Serbian province whose population was 90% ethnic Albanians. Sarang Shidore (Responsible Statecraft, 2/22/22) summarized the Kosovo/Donbas parallel thusly:

Kosovo [was] repressed in the past by Milosevic’s Serbia. NATO’s war resulted in major atrocities and ethnic cleansing of the minority Serb and Roma populations by the US-backed Kosovo Liberation Army, as well as persecution of the Serbs who inhabit the sliver of a territory in the border region of Mitrovica. Yet the demands of the Serb population in Mitrovica to secede from Kosovo and merge their tiny region into neighboring Serbia is seen as an unacceptable transgression.

Why is there one…standard for Kosovar Albanians and another for Kosovar Serbs?… Should it be a surprise that Ukrainian Russians are just the latest subjects of this list?…

Ethnic Russians in Ukraine mostly support Moscow, and their cultural and linguistic rights have been increasingly violated by a nationalistic government in Kyiv. This has been used by Russia as a means to intervene and create new facts on the ground.

The linguistic discrimination to which Shidore points is a January 2021 law that mandated using Ukrainian in the service industry—obligating, for example, shops and restaurants “to engage customers in Ukrainian unless clients specifically ask to switch.” This law followed 2019 legislation that required middle schools that taught in Russian and other minority languages switch to Ukrainian (France 24, 4/1/21).

In addition, Donbas residents endured violence and bigotry from the Ukrainian government following the start of the 2014 war. James Carden of The Nation (4/6/15) reported that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko cut Donbas residents off from social services and benefits. He also blocked them from using the banking system, preventing them from accessing credit “or even the most rudimentary banking services,” such that commerce “ground to a standstill.” According to Carden, the Ukrainian state shelled Donbas civilians and deployed snipers, while “the Kiev government and its representatives in Kiev have repeatedly attempted to dehumanize [Donbas residents] by referring to them as ‘terrorists’ and as ‘subhumans.’”

While Russia is the only country that formally recognizes Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, 117 of the 195 countries in the world recognize Kosovo—which means that 78 countries do not, including major world powers like Russia and China, as well as Western European nations like Spain and Greece (Deutsche Welle, 6/10/22).


From Wikipedia.

The Kosovo/Donbas parallel may be inexact, but it has merit. In each case, residents were subjected to violence and discrimination, and a substantial portion of them expressed a desire to exercise their right to self-determination; in both Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia, an outside power attempted to justify a military assault by saying that it needed to rescue a minority population from persecution.

One crucial difference, of course, is that the Ukrainian government is supported by the US, while Donbas residents seeking self-determination are allied with Russia and Russia did the invading in the name of supposed humanitarianism; in contrast, the Yugoslavian government was backed by Russia, whereas Kosovars seeking self-determination were supported by the US, which invaded Yugoslavia allegedly for humanitarian reasons.

My purpose here is not to adjudicate the self-determination or independence claims of the people of Kosovo or the Donbas (though I see pro-independence arguments as highly questionable in both cases, and think neither of the related military interventions was just). Rather, my aim is to investigate whether there were significant differences in how corporate media covered the Kosovo and Donbas cases despite their similarities.

As a barometer of possible US media bias in favor of the home team, I examined how often Kosovars’ right to self-determination was cited in New York Times and Washington Post coverage of Kosovans’ independence claims, and compared it to the frequency with which self-determination was considered in the context of Donetsk and Luhansk’s independence claims. Invoking a peoples’ right to self-determination can function as a way of legitimizing their independence claims: Doing so suggests that those who are attempting to create an independent state are merely trying to shape their own destiny. (Even mentioning the term “self-determination” arguably carries the message that those who are seeking to create their own state have a plausible claim, even if that claim is not explicitly endorsed.)

I looked at how the Kosovo and Donbas independence claims were handled in the coverage of the years leading up to and during the wars in both places. To gauge how often the media have discussed the possibility that Donetsk and Luhansk have the right to self-determination in the years immediately preceding and since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, I examined the last five years of coverage. One New York Times piece in that period—an article in the New York Times Magazine (1/16/22)—included the word “self-determination.” However, it was not used in reference to Donetsk and Luhansk: It was used to describe the motive of a Russian fighting on the Ukrainian side in the Donbas who wanted to protect Ukrainian independence from Russia.

‘Pretext’ and ‘sham’

WaPo: Putin is breaking 70 years of norms by invading Ukraine. What comes next?

A Washington Post op-ed (2/25/22) noted that “it is so unusual for one country to so brazenly attack another’s political independence and territorial sovereignty today”—but NATO’s 1998 attack on Serbia, with similar justifications, was not offered as a precedent.

My search of the Post yielded similar results. Three Post articles in the last five years mentioned Donetsk, Luhansk and “self-determination,” but not to consider the territories’ assertation that they have this right. One piece (3/18/22) said that Ukraine “aspir[es] to prosperity and self-determination through memberships in NATO and the European Union.” Another (2/25/22) said that in 2014,

there was the pretext of the Crimean “declaration of independence” and subsequent deployment of a self-determination justification for Crimea’s becoming part of Russia. Likewise, by recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia is setting itself up to use a (sham) vote to justify irredentism—claiming these territories based on historical and ethnic ties.

The referendum may have been flawed but, as the Post reported at the time, people in the Donbas “turned out in significant numbers…to vote in support of self-rule,” and leaving that out makes the notion of people in the Donbas region exercising their right to self-determination sound less plausible than might otherwise be the case.

The third Post article (2/26/22) said that

the [UN] Security Council remains a critical venue for smaller countries to affirm and argue directly for the UN Charter’s core principles of sovereign nonintervention and the equal self-determination of peoples.

It went on to describe Kenyan ambassador Martin Kimani “decr[ying] Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent states.”

‘In the interests of the West’

In sum, both the Times and the Post declined to present readers with any information that might encourage them to have an open mind about Donetsk and Luhansk’s self-determination claims. In fact, the papers failed to even mention that there are “significant numbers” of people in these territories saying that they have a right to self-determination that they wish to exercise. Here we have a case of a self-determination claim that accords with Russian interests, and diverges from the US position, being concealed from the public.

Kosovars’ self-determination and independence claims, which lined up with US interests and contradicted Russia’s, received far more of a hearing. From 1995–99, the five years leading up to and including NATO bombing campaign, the Times published 22 articles with the words “self-determination” and “Kosovo,” “Kosovar” or related variations. The Post ran 32.

That’s not to say that every piece necessarily offered the view that Kosovo had a right to exercise self-determination, up to and including statehood. However, the idea that it did was treated as legitimate and worthy of debate, in a way that has not happened with Donetsk and Luhansk. Many of the articles did, in fact, back Kosovars’ self-determination claims.

Noel Malcolm wrote in the Times (6/9/99) that Kosovo becoming independent is

in the interests of the West. It is certainly the strong preference of the Kosovo Albanians themselves, who voted overwhelmingly for independence as long ago as 1991. It is what the volunteer soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army were fighting for; without some assurance on eventual self-determination, they will be very reluctant to give up their weapons.

The Post’s Charles Krauthammer (6/17/99) contended that

the case for [Kosovo’s] independence is not just practical but principled. If the overwhelming Albanian majority wants self-determination, democratic principles . . . should allow them to have what they want.

Only part of the story

Thus the coverage that I studied evinced a willingness to treat the notion of Kosovar self-determination seriously, and to explicitly support independence in some instances, and did not present the possibility of Donetsk and Luhansk’s having self-determination rights as something that readers should consider when formulating their perspectives on the present war in Ukraine. Articles outright endorsing Kosovar independence carry the added message, stated or unstated, that the US had at least a reasonable case for militarily intervening in the former Yugoslavia in the name of the Kosovars’ cause.

Canadian Dimensions: Ukraine is at the centre of a superpower proxy war

Greg Shupak (Canadian Dimensions, 3/18/22): “Had the US seriously pursued peace, Minsk II could have both ended the war in Donbas and extinguished the NATO issue that was a driving factor in the invasion Russia launched.”

On the other hand, failing to draw readers’ attention to Donbas residents’ self-determination arguments means offering audiences a one-dimensional view of the war in Ukraine: It presents it solely as an illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, rather than as also an internal Ukrainian conflict in which eastern Ukrainians have legitimate grievances against Kyiv. This omission is significant, considering that the US discouraged negotiations that could have resolved outstanding issues surrounding the Donbas’ position in Ukraine before Russia’s February intervention (Canadian Dimension, 3/18/22).

Another period of coverage is also revealing. Kosovo declared its independence on February 17, 2008. That month, the New York Times published four articles containing some versions of the word “Kosovo” and the word “self-determination.” The Washington Post also ran a 2008 article (2/17/08) containing both terms, though it did not explicitly state whether it believed that Kosovars have that right. In April 2014, the month that separatist leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence, 11 Times articles mentioned the territories, but none said anything about “self-determination.” The Post published 12 articles on the matter, without mentioning “self-determination” in any.

As people go on dying in eastern Ukraine and the region is leveled, an American public that the corporate media have given only part of the story is more likely to acquiesce to Washington inundating Ukraine with weapons to keep the war going (Bloomberg, 6/23/22; FAIR.org, 3/22/22) than to press for a diplomatic approach to ending the death and destruction as quickly as possible.

https://fair.org/home/media-support-sel ... t-enemies/

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DNR lifts moratorium on death penalty
July 8, 17:38



News of the death penalty.

DNR lifts moratorium on death penalty

The Parliament of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) lifted on Friday the moratorium on executions of death sentences. This was reported by the press service of the People's Council of the Republic.

“The People’s Council of the Donetsk People’s Republic has lifted the moratorium on the execution of death sentences,” the parliament’s Telegram channel said. This legal norm will come into force after the publication of the DPR law “On Amendments to Article 202 of the Penal Code of the Donetsk People’s Republic”, which was adopted on July 8 as part of the regular plenary session of the autumn session of the DPR People’s Council of the 2nd convocation.

As Yelena Shishkina, chairman of the Committee on Criminal and Administrative Legislation, explained in her speech to the parliament on Friday, “the draft law proposes to recognize part 9 of article 202 of the Criminal Executive Code as invalid.” This paragraph stated that the provisions of the code on the execution of the death penalty come into force on January 1, 2025.

“Thus, the provisions of the Penal Code on the execution of the death penalty will be put into effect from the date of the official publication of this law,” Shishkina noted. According to the press service of the parliament, the law on amending article 202 of the DPR Penitentiary Code was adopted by the deputies in two readings as a whole and will come into force from the day it is published on the official website of the People's Council.

Arguing for the need to lift the moratorium on the execution of death sentences, Shishkina noted that "the possibility of the practical application of an exceptional measure of punishment - the death penalty - will serve as a deterrent to the commission of especially serious crimes." The draft law, as she noted, was proposed "in view of the need to protect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and interests of the Donetsk People's Republic in the current military-political situation."

On June 9, a DPR court sentenced British citizens Sean Pinner and Aiden Aslin, as well as Moroccan Brahim Saadoun, to death on charges of participating in hostilities as part of the Ukrainian armed formations as mercenaries. They were taken prisoner in the Donbass. In addition, on July 1, the DPR authorities charged two more mercenaries from the UK.

One day in Russia this will be cancelled.
A couple of mercenaries would be nice to bring to a logical conclusion.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7726119.html

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of July 8, 2022

The situation on the fronts for the past day:

Kharkov front. The Russian Armed Forces launched strikes on the Ukrainian troops' bases in the north of the Kharkiv region. To the north of Kharkov there is an assault on Dementievka. To the north of Slavyansk , fighting intensified in Bogorodichnoye, which is already almost completely under the control of our army. To cover their zrada, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on the rocket and mortar shelling of Russian forces in the area of ​​​​the village of Mikhalchyna Sloboda in the north-east of the Chernihiv region.

On the Slavyansk sector of the front, the attacks of the RF Armed Forces on Slavyansk and Kramatorsk intensified. In the suburbs of Seversk, a blow was struck on a large convoy of Georgian mercenaries who took part in the hostilities. There is a movement of joint forces in the direction of Verkhnekamensky, with the liberation of the surroundings of Zolotarevka.

The Donetsk front in the area of ​​Pavlovka, Shevchenko and Yegorovka has stabilized. Fighting is underway near the Avdiivka-Konstantinovka highway and on the outskirts of New York. The enemy is still holding Kodema and Semigorye. We celebrate the work of our fighters - a Ukrainian MiG-29 was destroyed over the DPR. An offensive is under way in the direction of Veselaia Dolina.

On the southern flank of the RF Armed Forces, they strike at targets in Nikolaev and in the Krivoy Rog region. Over the Nikolaev region, Ukrainian MiG-29s and Su-25s were shot down, and in the Odessa region , two installations of the Harpoon coastal missile system delivered from the UK were destroyed . There were no significant advances on both sides.

"Arrivals". An ammunition depot is on fire in Shakhtyorsk after a massive artillery shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine . The administration announced the evacuation of residents outside the city. As a result of shelling by Ukrainian militants in the city, 11 civilians of Gorlovka were wounded . Donetsk got it again today. Ukrainian militants attacked the Tekstilshchik microdistrict and the Kalininsky district. A woman was also wounded in the Petrovsky district of Donetsk today.

Calibration by the Russian Aerospace Forces was carried out in the area of ​​the village of Petrovka, northeast of Kharkov. Military facilities in the Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa and Nikolaev regions were also destroyed.

🛡Borderlands. The Bryansk region was fired upon by Ukrainian drones, gas stations and a frontier post were damaged. There were no casualties.



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Сolonelcassad
Offensive on Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 8, 2022

Ukrainian drones entered the airspace of the Bryansk region twice : one of them fired at a gas station in the village of Novye Yurkovichi in the Klimovsky district, later, air defense systems worked near the city of Karachev .

In the Kursk region , Ukrainian formations attacked the positions of the border guards. The UAV dropped an explosive device at the place of deployment of military personnel in the village of Krupets , Rylsky district.

The RF Armed Forces hit enemy targets in the border village of Mikhalchina Sloboda , as well as the Shalyginsky and Belopolsky districts of the Sumy region .

In the north of the Kharkiv region , the Armed Forces of Ukraine hold the Udy-Prudyanka-Russian Tishki-Verkhniy Saltov line . Subdivisions of the RF Armed Forces are conducting fire suppression of Ukrainian positions along the entire line of contact.

In the Donbass , Ukrainian formations are preparing for a further offensive by the allied forces in the Bakhmut direction .
In the south of Lysychansk , the cleansing of the last centers of resistance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is being completed.
In the Seversk direction, the allied forces are advancing on the enemy from the side of the Disputable . The Ukrainian command transferred additional units of the 10th Guards Rifle Brigade to Ivano-Daryevka in order to prevent a breakthrough in the defense in this area.
The tactical group "Charlie" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continues to strengthen the defensive lines on the line Pokrovskoye - Soledar - Yakovlevka - Belogorovka .
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are intensively shelling the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the vicinity of Grigorovka .
Ukrainian artillery is constantly shelling Klinovoe to prevent the Russian Armed Forces from advancing towards Zaitsevo and Vesela Dolina .
The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to strike at the Donetsk agglomeration and other settlements of the People's Republics: in the morning, a warehouse in Shakhtersk was hit . At least 10 civilians, including children, were injured as a result of an artillery attack by Ukrainian forces on Gorlovka .

In the Zaporozhye region, both sides are not taking serious offensive actions, artillery duels are going on.

In the Krivoy Rog direction , episodic battles take place on the Lozovoye-Zarechnoye line.



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forwarded from
Militarist
In the Kherson direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine today again have heavy losses. Over the past day Ukrainian troops have lost:

- more than 200 people killed and wounded;
- 3 UAVs;
- 2 military pickup trucks;
- 2 Su-25 attack aircraft;
- 2 MiG-29 fighters;
- 5 armored fighting vehicles;
- 3 anti-tank missile systems;
- 5 operational-tactical missiles of the Tochka-U complex and 16 rockets were intercepted in the air;
- the command post of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was destroyed;
- 2 control points of the rear of the operational command "South" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed.

***

Сolonelcassad
The situation in the Soledarsko-Bakhmut direction
as of 19.30 on July 8, 2022

In anticipation of the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces in the Bakhmut and Seversk directions, the Ukrainian command is increasing the grouping of troops and equipment in the areas of combat contact.

In the Seversk direction, to contain the offensive of the RF Armed Forces from the side of the Disputable , additional units of the 10th Guards Brigade, reinforced by several anti-tank systems, were deployed to Ivano-Daryevka .

The cover of the Ukrainian grouping from the air is carried out by the Strela-10 air defense system in the vicinity of Vyemka and Zvanovka , as well as MANPADS calculations in Berestovo .

Ukrainian artillery and tactical aviation planes strike at the areas of Zolotorevka , Verkhnekamenka , Disputed and Nikolaevka .

In the Soledarsko-Bakhmut direction, the command of the tactical group "Charlie" organizes a defensive line on the line Pokrovskoye - Soledar - Yakovlevka - Belogorovka .

In the vicinity of Razdolovka and Pereezdnoye , several units of armored vehicles are placed in reserve in case the main line is breached. Ukrainian howitzers are active in Yakovlevka , Bondarny and Fedorovka .

In Bakhmut and Soledar, military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are preparing for a possible long-term siege of cities, equipping engineering structures in residential areas and houses of the local population.

Due to constant air and artillery strikes on Bakhmut, the personnel reception point was moved to Nikifirovka and Konstantinovka .

Mortar and artillery crews of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are firing at the settlement. Klinovoye from the environs of Zaitsevo and Vesela Dolina .

The RF Armed Forces carried out artillery, missile and air strikes on the areas of concentration of military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Belogorovka , Berestovoye, west of Disputed, Veseloe, west of Klinovoye , Vershina , Novolugansky , Kodem , Zaitsevo, Pokrovsky and Uglegorsk TPPs .



***

Сolonelcassad
The situation in the Nikolaevsko-Krivoy Rog direction
as of 17.00 July 8, 2022

The Ukrainian command still intends to conduct a counteroffensive in certain sectors of the front. To assess the situation in the area of ​​Blagodatnoye and Shesternya , two maneuverable electronic intelligence groups were sent.

In the Nikolaev direction, Ukrainian units intended to carry out several sabotage attacks at night on the positions of the RF Armed Forces in the directions of Posad-Pokrovskoye - Stepovaya Dolina .

However, Russian troops revealed the plans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and carried out a massive shelling of Ukrainian positions in Posad-Pokrovsky, Stepova Dolina , Novohryhorivka. As a result of the force of 28 Ombr, 59 Ombr and consolidated companies of the defense, they suffered losses.

To Nikolaevseveral dozen wounded Ukrainian soldiers were sent. The servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Posad-Pokrovsky left the settlement without permission, refusing to perform tasks. Currently, the garrison in Posad-Pokrovsky is virtually absent, the village is located in the "gray zone".

A similar situation arose in Stepovaya Dolina, where the personnel of the 2nd battalion of the 28th Ombre lost more than 20 people killed and wounded in two days. To hold the settlement, the rotation of the brigade's military personnel to the territorial defense units from Pervomaisky was carried out .

In the Krivoy Rog direction, low-intensity clashes took place at the Lozovoye-Zarechnoye line . Ukrainian assault groups, supported by tactical aircraft, tried to gain a foothold in the gray zone on this sector of the front.

However, as a result of mortar and artillery shelling by units of the RF Armed Forces against the advancing forces in the Davydov Brod area, the 63rd Ombpr suffered losses and the personnel retreated from the occupied areas.

At the same time, a Su-25 attack aircraft and a MiG-29 fighter of the Ukrainian Air Force were shot down in the Belaya Krinitsa-Ozerovka area. And at one of the observation posts, the NLAW ATGM was found.

After several unsuccessful offensive attempts, the calculation of the MLRS HIMARS attempted to defeat the Novokakhovskaya hydroelectric power station . Air defense systems of the RF Armed Forces shot down part of the shells.

Russian artillery and mortar crews hit the objects of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Nikolaev, Galitsinovo , Bereznegovatoy , Malomikhaylovskiy,
Zelenodolsk , Novosemenovka , Shirokovsky , Stepova Dolina, Posad-Pokrovsky, Novogrigorovka, Zarechny.

The situation in the Nikolaev-Krivoy Rog direction remains tense. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to break through the defense line of the RF Armed Forces in different sectors of the front. Despite the loud statements of Ukrainian propagandists, the attempts end in heavy losses and retreat to the previous lines .

This can explain the strikes on civilian targets in the Kherson region using Tochka-U OTRK and HIMARS MLRS. The tactics of terror and intimidation of the civilian population indicate a desire to cause as much damage as possible to areas under the control of the RF Armed Forces.



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INTERNATIONAL FAN
NYT: Kiev Foreign Legion filming 'Hollywood picture' for the West

The Ukrainian International Legion is filming 'Hollywood-style' videos to win Western approval and demand more modern weapons for Kiev. The New York Times reports this in its article.

The publication notes that the most famous detachment is the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine (ILDU) ("International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine"), created in February 2022 at the request of Volodymyr Zelensky . The exact number of its participants is unknown, but the majority are from the US and the UK.

NYT journalists write that the "Legion" monitors its image in social networks and the media and publishes videos shot in "Hollywood style". The purpose of such videos is to convince the inhabitants of Western countries to help Kyiv even more with weapons and money.

Some of the mercenaries who came to the “square” have experience of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they could count on “air strikes and other important support,” the NYT article says. However, as the newspaper notes, in Ukraine things are different. Mercenaries do not have to rely on support when fighting "superior and better armed Russian forces." Often, even basic things, such as good nutrition or equipment items, are not enough. Also, many are shocked by the intensity and combat effectiveness of the Russian army.

"It's much more intense than what I saw in Afghanistan," said former US Army paratrooper Brian.

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forwarded from
Poddubny |Z|О|V| edition
4:07
TROPHY OF THE ALLIES (Part 1)

The propagandists of the regime, of course, hung noodles on their citizens' ears about the organized retreat from Lysichansk, but the facts show that the lads fled the city without an order. They abandoned dozens of pieces of equipment: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled guns, wheeled armored vehicles.

All this equipment will be used by the LPR fighters to liberate the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic. Ahead is the battle for the Donbass.

The lads also threw Western donations. NLAW, Javelin, 60mm mortars, body kits for AK, teplyaks, nightlights, communications equipment.

Thanks to NATO countries for helping NM LPR. Next time send directly, without intermediaries.

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forwarded from
Poddubny |Z|О|V| edition
1:47
TROPHY OF THE ALLIES (part 2)
Here are the abandoned drones. It is clear that along with military-industrial complex products, the guys also use civilian drones. In this sense, everything is like ours. A large number of scopes for Trijicon assault rifles. Sights of the American Marines. The sights are good. American-made communications equipment, active rockets for artillery.

The Lugansk military, Russian scientists and military experts thank the generous lads and Western sponsors. They say to bring more.

***

#in Russian
British journalist arrived in Donetsk - John Miller told Alina Lipp how shocked he was about what he saw here

03:30 You hear how a Ukrainian shell flew near our hotel. And we just go on... such is our life here.

"It's the Ukrainian side that's been killing civilians here for years, and it's not being reported in the West."

"This is the first war in Europe in a long time, and there is not a single British or American journalist here! Because if they were here, they would HAVE to report that Ukraine is shelling them here."

John's channel: @johnnyjamesmiller

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

[blindpig]

A war like they did not expect
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/09/2022



The war in Ukraine, until February this year limited to Donbass, has always had an international component that went beyond the obvious geopolitical interests of various regional and world powers in the situation. Local groups and citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk led the protests that began a movement of open rejection of the government that had been established in kyiv after the February 2014 coup. It was the capture of military bases, arsenals and, in the case of Lugansk, the SBU building which gave way to an armed phase initially centered on Slavyansk and Lugansk, linked to Igor Strelkov's small group, made up of volunteers from Russia, and Alexey Mozgovoy.

The beginning of the war brought about the arrival of numerous volunteers from the Russian Federation, without a doubt the largest and most relevant foreign contingent. But the Russian volunteers were not the only ones and already in the summer of 2014 both sides publicized the presence of foreign soldiers: among them there was a small group of Spaniards or the Serbian volunteers, with Dekias the best known, on the side of the People's Republics, and numerous Croatian and Georgian soldiers on the kyiv side. And both sides have had soldiers from Chechnya, in the war for different reasons either in defense of Russia or against it. Isa Munayev, who died in the battle of Debaltsevo defending Ukraine against the advancing LPR and DPR is just one of many examples. In his absence, it was the much less experienced Adam Osmaev who inherited command of the Dudayev battalion. However, the low weight of Osmaev and his lack of preparation as a military commander meant that the leading role of the Chechen presence in favor of kyiv passed to the Sheikh Mansour battalion led by Muslim Cheberloevky, who fought side by side with Dmitro Yarosh's Praviy Sektor. in the destroyed town of Shirokino.

The end of the great battles after the 2015 winter campaign and the signing of the Minsk agreements reduced the weight of foreign troops on both sides of the front line, although their presence has not disappeared at any time. This is shown by the presence of the Spanish-Colombian militiaman Alexis, in the DPR since 2014 and back at the front after recovering from the serious injuries he sustained in 2017, which took him away from the battle for months. On the other side is Aiden Aslin, known for having fought against the Islamic State as part of the Kurdish militias and who in recent years has fought in the Ukrainian Army, a much less dangerous side to defend until February of this year, when the war it was located in Donbass with no apparent danger of spreading to the rest of the country.

Aslin, along with fellow British Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun, captured in the battle of Mariupol, was sentenced to death by a DPR court. Accused as mercenaries - not soldiers of the regular army as they claim - the courts denied them the protection that the Geneva Convention guarantees to prisoners of war. Pending the outcome of the appeal, the lives of these three soldiers are in danger. Yesterday, Friday, the Parliament of the DPR lifted the moratorium until now in force against the death penalty. His case was intended to show the risks that foreign soldiers run, a way to discourage the arrival of foreign volunteers that now meets with the lack of interest of the countries of origin of these soldiers to intercede for their citizens.

Compared to soldiers like Aslin, whose presence in the Ukrainian Army dates back several years, many have been the volunteers and soldiers of fortune who have come to Ukraine in recent months. The beginning of the Russian intervention in February 2022, with which a completely new phase of this war that has been going on for eight years began, was a new impetus for the arrival of foreign fighters. But if in 2014 it was the People's Republics that called for volunteers, mainly Russians, to come to the defense of the clearly weaker side, this time it was kyiv who has called on foreign soldiers to come to the front to defend the country from Russian aggression. Although the figures are not clear, it is clear that this foreign legion has not been formedto which he aspired, for example, Olena Semenyaka. However, the press has left in these months a whole series of stories among which some relatively high-profile cases have stood out. This is the case of the famous Canadian sniper Walli , who left Ukraine disillusioned and without having had the leading role he expected, or Ben Grant, the son of a British deputy.

The absence of reliable data on casualties on both sides makes it difficult to track foreign soldiers as well. During this time, at least two US soldiers have been captured by Russian troops in the Kharkov region and several foreign soldiers have died, such as the Brazilian Thalita Do Valle, who died along with her compatriot Douglas Burgio. There have been several attacks in which the Russian authorities have alleged the presence of foreign soldiers (without, on occasions, having been able to prove their presence). However, the Russian attack on the Yavoriv military base, a known headquarters of foreign soldiers, on March 13, which caused a high number of casualties, marked a turning point.

Since then, many foreign volunteers have left Ukraine. Many did it immediately after the destruction of the Yavoriv base and others have done it in stages and always repeating similar stories: lack of prominence, lack of organization in the Ukrainian Army and, above all, the difficulties of a war whose harshness they did not expect An article published this week by The New York Times , just one of many that have given foreign soldiers a voice, focuses on a group of Americans and Brits who are part of the Odin unit., a curious reference to the Nordic god that recalls the referents of extreme right groups. Despite being veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the soldiers show their surprise at the state of the war, the Russian superiority in terms, not only of weapons, but also in regards to such basic aspects as the availability of food. .

In the face of those who know the harshness of war after spending years in the trenches under Ukrainian artillery fire, until February 2022 the best-armed and most powerful side of this war, the newcomers and those who have seen the war from rearguard seem not to have really understood the conflict. First of all, the account of foreigners who have joined the fight after the Russian intervention shows their surprise at the difficulty of fighting without the air superiority they had enjoyed in past wars. Disintegrated the Iraqi army and decimated the Taliban in the first months of the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States and its allies always guaranteed themselves a military superiority that protected their soldiers from having to suffer all the harshness of those wars,

"This is much more intense than what I saw in Afghanistan," says one of the US soldiers quoted by The New York Times , a veteran of a war in which his country dropped the mother of all bombs simply to test its effectiveness. "This is combat, combat," he adds, unaware that it was also for the civilian population of Afghanistan or Iraq under US bombs.

Some soldiers of fortune continue across the country, says The New York Times, which lists among the possible objectives of staying in Ukraine the search for related far-right groups or simply gaining followers on social networks. That may have been the goal of former CIA analyst Malcolm Nance, who this week announced his return to the United States after months in Ukraine, where he has made numerous media appearances, generally in Lviv, always in his spotless uniform and sometimes with his gun without magazine As has been verified these weeks with a well-known account of a supposed Canadian soldier who claimed to be in Ukraine, sometimes it is not even necessary to go to the country to present yourself as a brave soldier and get thousands of followers for an account on social networks that can easily erased when the fraud is uncovered.

The high casualties that the Ukrainian Army is suffering at the front make it possible that, in the future, the list of weapons required by kyiv from its Western partners will also include the request for troops to handle these weapons. Hence, the visible heads of the kyiv government seek to highlight the supposed successes of foreign soldiers. The same article from The New York Timesmentions the praises of Oleksiy Arestovich to the foreign soldiers who fought in the battle for Severodonetsk - there, Russia alleged the presence of soldiers of Polish nationality, although at the moment there is no documentary evidence of this -, of which the adviser of the Office of the President highlights his "motivation, professionalism, preparation for urban combat." However, despite the fact that, according to Arestovich, his role was important in holding off the Russian troops for a while, it was a losing battle for Ukraine.

Despite the media presence and Ukraine's interest in extolling the successes, real or imagined, of the foreign soldiers who came to defend the country, the reality of an artillery war between two powerful armies makes the role of volunteers foreigners or soldiers of fortune has been limited, at least for the moment, to propaganda appearances and a limited role in a foreign war that they do not seem to fully understand. With the ingenuity of waiting for a known war and in which to fight as British or as Americans, reality has forced them to assume a role more akin than expected to that of the Afghans or Iraqis who have suffered for so long under British or American bombs.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/09/una-g ... more-25001

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THE DEEPER MEANING OF UKRAINE
Alastair Crooke

Jul 8, 2022 , 9:22 am .


Other leaders are no longer naive when the West offers glass beads (or paper dollars) in exchange for their true riches (Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev / AFP)

The West, in its arrogant way, went to war with the Russia-China axis without due caution. He expected easy "victories" with sanctions that would implode the Russian economy and with military tactics of urban warfare borrowed from Syria that would bleed the Russian army dry. Instead, it is turning out to be a monumental debacle. More than that, its multiple failures and insultingly brazen propaganda are proving to be a breaking point, ushering in a new era rather than fixing the old order, as the West had hoped.

Why is this news so pressing? First of all, because of what lies "below". Structural weakness and "dry decay" that has accumulated over decades, in damp basements. They kept them apart, hidden. The "children" were removed so that they would not hear a thing when the "adults" talked to each other while admitting the decay and rot affecting their Mansions.

Of course, the dilapidated condition of the "Big House" (America) was always suspected by the outside world, but then Russia brazenly showed how dilapidated it is to the whole world: economically, in war, and before the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum . Putin urged the world to stand firm against the claims of the smug owners of the Big House. He was a kind and courteous call to rebel.

Yes, the Ukraine conflict is indeed a turning point. But for whom? Some (non-Westerns), at the recent Davos Forum, simply rolled their eyes at the excited Europeans' reaction to the events in Ukraine, and pointed to the double standard in their neglect of disastrous conflicts elsewhere and disdain by earlier waves of refugees. "There is a Manichaean and Western drive to see the world in binaries," said Samir Saran of a New Delhi think-tank: "We operate in shades of grey."

Still, Ukraine's realpolitik is reshaping global geopolitics. On one level, it has incited "others" to rebel against the West's claims to call itself The Civilized World, as if to say that "there is no civilization beyond our civilization." Such an assumption explains why the West condemns all other civilizations, both present and past, as backward and as potential threats to global stability and security. That is why he uses euphemisms to define himself as "the international community."

Why? Because the Western Zeitgeist refuses to conform to the immutable law of the social tradition that governs Eastern cultures, "but manifests itself as a spirit that struggles to incorporate itself into humanity and change the world", as Christopher Dawson wrote almost a century in Religion and the rise of Western Culture . This means that, unlike the Chinese, Indians, Buddhists, Amazonians, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, or any other civilization, Western civilization is unique in that it has continually sought to aggressively spread itself in a missionary way, imposing itself and taking over the rest. of the world. In other words, only she pretends to be global.

The broader meaning of Ukraine lies in this idea: other leaders are no longer naive when the West offers glass beads (or paper dollars) in exchange for their true riches. Ukraine has stepped up talks on integration into economic blocs, with several speeches by regional BRICS leaders at this week's summit focused on how to escape dollarized debt. Or better yet, how to implement an alternative system to the one established at Bretton Woods.

Furthermore, BRICS citizens - like those in Europe as well - do not yearn for more efficient markets or "more" neoliberalism. The Middle East, in particular, has had enough of neoliberalism with extreme wealth inequalities, which have increased. It has had bad experiences with World Bank and IMF-style predatory development doctrines. They now have evidence that properly prepared states can not only survive Western sanctions, but can use them as tools to modify the world trading system for their benefit.


The risk from the cost-of-living crisis is easy to understand: the danger of additional food shortages is almost incalculable. As in Europe, there is fear, and anger too, of the disintegration of the system; fear, as cities become violent and mismanaged. They are not looking for "more Europe" or more identity politics. They don't give a damn about "more of anything." The anger is evident as people want the systems to work, but they don't. They want to live life normally again.

And as the cold winds of rising price inflation and recession blow, they look to their leaders, not for "more free markets," but to shield them from market and regulatory follies. They feel the danger of unknown "fatal loops" imploding parts of their economies.

This is the biggest geostrategic message emerging from the West's war against Russia: the Russians - and many others - say they are "fed up" with "Westernization" (meaning their "missionary" attribute). In any case, to be "the West", but not "Westernized"; be "European", but not a "more Europe" demagogue, non-Westerns suggest.

It is in this context that the term "Russian World" ( Russky Mir ) gains importance. It has an ancient origin: its first formal use in its modern sense was in 2007, when President Putin decreed the establishment of the government-sponsored Russky Mir Foundation.

To some, the term "The Russian World" means wherever Russians live. If you only mean that, then it is a purely nationalist project. For some, the term refers to the Russian-speaking world, but if it only indicates that, then it is simply a linguistic project. For others, the term implies wherever Orthodox Christians live, but if that is all it is, then it is a purely confessional project.

Actually, for many Russians "The Russian World" today means something more, something much broader. It refers to all those wherever they live who oppose exploitative westernization. While they live primarily in Russia, China, India, Africa, Latin America, the Muslim world, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan, they exist throughout the world, including in Western centers. They are the ones resisting the carefully orchestrated illusionary campaign of "the international community". For those Russians living in the real world , the illusions of the West are absurd and evil.

https://misionverdad.com/traducciones/e ... de-ucrania

Google Translator

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Over 747 Tonnes of Humanitarian Aid Sent to Ukraine, DPR, LPR


The Head of the Russian Defense Control Center said that a total of 747 tonnes of humanitarian aid have been delivered to Ukraine and the Lugansk and Donetsk self-proclaimed people's republic. July 8, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@tassagency_en

Published 8 July 2022 (11 hours 25 minutes ago)

Russian authorities announced that more than 747 tonnes of humanitarian cargoes were delivered on Friday to Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR).

Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Defense Control Center in the country, reported Friday that over 747 tonnes of humanitarian aid had been delivered to the people of southern Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.

"Six humanitarian operations were conducted on July 8, 2022, in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics and the Kharkov and Kherson regions," said the Russian official.

"A total of 747.8 tonnes of humanitarian aid were distributed among people," he added. Since March 2, 41 135.9 tonnes of humanitarian have been delivered to Ukraine from the Russian federation.

According to Mizintsev, 1 278 humanitarian operations have been conducted for the neighboring country.

The top Russian official highlighted the fact that Russia's executive authorities, jointly with Russian regions and public organizations and patriotic movements, have coordinated about 44,700 tonnes of humanitarian cargoes.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ove ... -0019.html

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As West Blames Moscow for ‘Food Crisis’, Ships Sail From Mariupol With Moscow’s Help While Ukraine Holds Vessels in Its Ports
JULY 8, 2022


The Azov Concord cargo ship under the flag of Malta leaves the seaport of Mariupol, using the humanitarian corridor organized by the Russian military, in the Donetsk People's Republic. Photo: Sputnik / Pavel Lisitsyn

By Eva Bartlett – Jul 7, 2022

Western media and state officials keep blaming Russia for the ‘food crisis,’ but Moscow is trying to reopen Ukrainian and Donbass ports

Without much notice in the West, on June 21, the first foreign ship departed from the Port of Mariupol since Ukrainian and foreign mercenary forces were fully forced out of the Donbass city a month prior. Escorted by Russian naval boats, the vessel’s departure set the precedent for a resumption of normal port activity to and from Mariupol.


Russia’s Defense Ministry on May 20 announced the liberation of the Azovstal plant from Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion, and some days later stated that sappers had demined an area of one and a half million square meters around the city’s port.

In early June, the ministry declared the facility ready for use anew. “The de-mining of Mariupol’s port has been completed. It is functioning normally, and has received its first cargo ships,” Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at the time.

Russia promised to give ships safe passage, and on June 21, the Turkish ship Azov Concord left with a Russian escort. At Mariupol port that day, prior to setting off, the captain of the ship, Ivan Babenkov, spoke to the media, telling us that the vessel, without cargo, was heading to Novorossiysk for loading, and then on to its destination.

Rear Admiral Viktor Kochemazov, commander of the Russian naval base in Novorossiysk on the Black Sea’s northeastern coast, down the Kerch Strait from Mariupol, explained that while the corridor has been operational since May 25, the nearly one-month delay in departing was because “ships were significantly damaged during the conduct of hostilities.” Notably, he also said that some ships were deliberately damaged by Ukrainian forces in order to prevent them from leaving.

From aboard a Russian anti-sabotage forces boat, media watched the Azov Concord leave port. Further on, the ship would be met by warships of the Novorossiysk base and escorted to the Kerch Strait where FSB border control ships would continue to escort the ship.

A Bulgarian ship, the Tsarevna, was readying to depart the port next, “also following the same humanitarian corridor to its destination in accordance with plans for the use of the court by the owner,” Rear Admiral Kochemazov said.

Western press ignoring developments
Predictably, just as the Western media continues to ignore Ukraine’s war crimes against the Donbass republics, including not only the bombing of houses, hospitals, and busy markets – plus the killing and maiming of civilians – so too do they omit coverage of anything positive emanating from areas where Ukrainian forces have been ousted and stability restored.

Instead, Western media continues to spin the story that it’s Russia that’s blocking ports and preventing grain exports, and blame Moscow for “aggravating the global food crisis” – when in reality, it is Ukraine that has mined ports and burned grain storages.


In fact, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, “70 foreign vessels from 16 countries remain blocked in six Ukrainian ports (Kherson, Nikolaev, Chernomorsk, Ochakov, Odessa and Yuzhniy). The threat of shelling and high mine danger posed by official Kiev prevent vessels from entering the high seas unhindered.”

While Russia maintains it has opened two maritime humanitarian corridors in the Black and Azov Seas, Kiev is apparently not engaging with representatives of states and ship-owning companies about the departure of docked foreign ships.

Meanwhile, in the same vein, media outlets like the New York Times (writing as always from afar) claim that Mariupol is “suffering deeply” under Russian rule (citing the runaway former mayor, nowhere near the city for months, who is the source of previous war propaganda) even describing the Azov Neo-Nazis as “the city’s last military resistance.”

Yet, what I’ve seen in multiple trips to Mariupol in the past couple of weeks is rubble being removed so that the rebuilding process can begin, newly established street markets, public transportation running, and calm in the streets.


The people of Mariupol have indeed suffered, but now that the Azov Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists no longer reign, they can live without fear of persecution, execution, rape, torture, and all of the other ‘democratic values’ of the forces backed by the West.

The rebuilding will take time, but with the port functioning anew, and the possibility now of also bringing reconstruction materials by sea, it can begin, ship by ship.

https://orinocotribune.com/as-west-blam ... its-ports/

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

Ruins of Azov Steel Factory Display Nazi Insignia and Signs of NATO Support
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 8, 2022
Sonja Van den Ende


Among the ruins of the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]

The Azov Steel factory was an important propaganda tool of the Western media since the Azov Battalion occupied the factory in March this year. In the official narrative, there were “good fellows” inside the factory, defending Mariupol and its citizens. The “good fellows” surrendered last May 2022.

When I visited Mariupol, I got a totally different story from the remaining citizens inside the city, and from the sight of the Azov Steel factory, where much paraphernalia was laying around.



What I saw, especially in the catacombs that are said to go about five to ten stories below the ground, says a lot about what must have happened there.

The Russian army cleared the first floor so that we could take a look there. It was furnished and appeared like a military headquarters, with (bunk) beds. There were also many books, such as Mein Kampf, and the flags of Azov with the “Wolfsangel” emblem, which were used by the “Schutz Staffel” SS battalions of Nazi Germany.

The Azov Battalion, which was founded in Mariupol in May 2014, is a Ukrainian far-right militia formed from so-called Patriots of Ukraine and the Social-National Assembly, both led by Andriy Biletsky (a far-right extremist).

Funded by the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky who has close ties to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the militia was established at the beginning of the war in the Donbas and has since terrorized the people in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

In the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), there is a similar battalion with a different name, called Aidar, which also terrorizes the inhabitants of the LPR.


The destroyed Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]


Azov Steel factory, Russian water supply truck and ambulance. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]

The Owner of plant, Rinat Akhmetov, is connected to organized crime

Rinat Akhmetov was the owner of the Azov Steel factory. According to Wikipedia, he was also a criminal:


Rinat Akhmetov

“In his documentary and book about the Donetsk Mafia: Anthology, Ukrainian author Serhiy Kuzin claims Akhmetov held the role of a ‘mafia thug’ in his early years; according to Hans van Zon, Professor of Central and Eastern European Studies at the University of Sunderland, ‘As early as 1986, Rinat and his brother Igor were involved in criminal activities.’ The book is removed on Amazon, also, the documentary is banned, at the request of the Ukrainian and the U.S. government. Released in a WikiLeaks diplomatic cable, Volodymyr Horbulin, one of Ukraine’s most respected policy strategists and former presidential advisor[s], told the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine dated 3 February 2006, to U.S. Ambassador John Herbst that Akhmetov’s Party of Regions is a ‘haven for Donetsk-based mobsters and oligarchs’ and called Akhmetov the ‘godfather’ of the Donetsk clan. In 2006-2007 and 2007-2012, Akhmetov was a member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) for the Party of Regions.”

New evidence reveals that Akhmetov has invested a lot of his money in the Netherlands—a money-laundering haven—in a holding company called Metinvest B.V.


The institute sponsored the (Syrian) White Helmets and its so-called founder James LeMesurier, an ex-British special commando who was murdered in Turkey under suspicious circumstances. The White Helmets had the appearance of a humanitarian organization but assisted ISIS and other groups seeking the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad government.On July 11, 2016, five Ukrainian officials visited the UK.In official documents, they are described as “reserve officers,” but in the draft application for the Ministry of Defense, they are described as a “Ukrainian Special Forces team.”The application states further that, in a series of meetings with their British counterparts, they provided invaluable information about how they were dealing with Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine.
In interviews conducted in the summer of 2016, the Ukrainian Special Forces described their operations behind hostile lines in the separatist-controlled Donbas region, including targeted killings and destruction of infrastructure. See Inside the Covert War in Ukraine (vice.com).

This is a paramount example of the direct UK role in the war in eastern Ukraine and attempted destruction of Russia which threatens the loss of the unipolar status of the West.

The Connection Between Azov and NATO

Many clues can be found in Mariupol about the connection between NATO and the Azov Battalion.

A few weeks ago I was in Mariupol, in one of the military quarters, where Azov propaganda was kept, everything Nazi literature, flags and emblems. There were even IDs of a German embassy employee and a Canadian general, as I wrote in my previous article.


[Source: Photo courtesy of Sonja Van den Ende]

In the Azov Steel factory, the military headquarters of Azov, I found more evidence: photos with names of the fighters, flags, clothing, medicines and “self-written” instructions from NATO commanders.

The rot of dead corpses could be smelled everywhere—in the catacombs but also outside. The day I was there was a hot day, above 30 degrees Centigrade (about 96 degrees Fahrenheit). In the catacombs, I photographed the evidence so that there can be no misunderstanding that the Azov Regiment is a Nazi battalion. The West is frantically trying to—but cannot—debunk this in all kinds of media reports.


Food for the militants at the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]


Clothes, bandages and medicines at the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]


Azov battalion sign. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]


Bunk beds and clothing at the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]


Signs with photos of Azov fighters who probably died at the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]



U.S. anti-tank guided missile inside the catacomb of the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]


U.S. missile inside the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]

NATO Connection?

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Svyatoslav Palamar, a deputy commander of the Azov Battalion, and Serhiy Volynsky, the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, were moved to Russia.

U.S. General Eric Olson, a British Lieutenant Colonel and four NATO military instructors also allegedly surrendered at the Azov Steel factory in Mariupol. This information still needs to be authenticated which I have not yet been able to do. According to the official U.S. media General Eric Olson is retired. But of course we can’t trust the U.S. media.


Unverified photo of U.S. General Eric Olson at the Azov Steel factory. [Source: techarp.com]


Text, letter Description automatically generatedA notebook with a self-written note by NATO commanders found at the Azov Steel factory. [Photo courtesy of Sonja van den Ende]

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... o-support/

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‘The situation is more than dramatic’: Germany is rationing hot water and turning off the lights to reduce natural gas consumption
BY TRISTAN BOVE
July 8, 2022 1:46 PM EDT


Bicyclists ride past the Klingenberg natural gas–powered thermal power station on July 4, 2022, in Berlin.
SEAN GALLUP—GETTY IMAGES

For months, Germany has feared having to ration energy amid Russia’s increasing willingness to turn off the tap. Now those fears are becoming a reality as Germany prepares for a return to 1970s-style energy rationing, when the OPEC oil embargo forced governments to mandate measures like dimmer lights and car-free Sundays.

Only, the energy crisis of 2022 isn’t limited to oil.

Last year, Germany relied on Russia for 55% of its natural gas imports. Germany has since been able to reduce that number to 35%, but with Russia seemingly prepared to further cut gas shipments to Europe, German officials are having to make some difficult choices.

This week, a city official in Hamburg—Germany’s second-largest city—warned that “warm water could only be made available at certain times of the day in an emergency,” forecasting the possibility of a severe natural gas shortage. And on Friday, residents in the eastern German state of Saxony were told by their housing association that they could take hot showers only between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., and 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. each day, the Financial Times reported.


“The situation is more than dramatic,” Axel Gedaschko, a German politician and president of GdW, the federal association of German housing, told the FT.

It isn’t just hot water that’s being rationed. In addition to shorter shower times, officials are asking city councils nationwide to turn off traffic lights at night, stop illuminating historic buildings, and go easy on using air conditioners in a bid to conserve electricity, according to the FT.

Return of energy rationing
The German economy ministry issued recommendations in June for citizens to follow during the summer, as the chances of an acute energy shortage next winter grow.

Germans are now being asked to use air conditioning as sparingly as possible, avoid heating in homes whenever weather permits, and switch light bulbs to more energy-efficient LEDs where possible.

Also last month, shortly after Russia tightened natural gas supplies to Germany through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 40%, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck issued a video appeal to citizens on Twitter, saying that the circumstances were now “serious” and urging Germans to begin thinking about how they can conserve energy within their own households.


“Every kilowatt-hour helps in this situation,” Habeck said.

Officials are asking Germans to ration their energy now as the country races to fill its natural gas reserves before next winter. With full reserves, Germany would be able to shoulder a complete cutoff of Russian gas imports for around 10 weeks, a government official said last month.

But filling reserves is proving to be a big ask, as German gas reserves are currently only 62% full, according to the country’s network regulator Bundesnetzagentur.

Habeck has said that Germany’s plan is to have natural gas storage at 80% capacity by October and 90% by November. But this relies on flows from Russia being semi-reliable, and German officials are becoming increasingly pessimistic that supplies from the critical Nord Stream 1 pipeline will resume anytime soon.

The Nord Stream 1 flows are still at only 40% of maximum capacity, according to the Bundesnetzagentur. Should the supply remain limited, the office notes that it will “hardly be possible” for the country to meet its November target of reaching 90% storage capacity.


Without ample reserves, the chances are growing that Germans will be saddled with more acute energy shortages next winter and forced to resort to even stricter rationing measures. The country is currently in the “second alert level” of its gas emergency plan, which means “security of supply is currently ensured, but the situation is tense,” according to the economy ministry.

At the current alert level, the German government can recommend rationing measures, but cannot mandate them. This could change quickly if the country enters the third and final stage of its alert plan. At that stage, the government would be granted wider powers to intervene through “nonmarket measures” to regulate natural gas usage, including stricter rationing ordinances.

https://fortune.com/2022/07/08/energy-r ... ff-lights/

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

Graham, Blumenthal meet with Zelensky in Kyiv
BY JULIA MUELLER - 07/07/22 7:58 PM ET


Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) speak to reporters on designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism during a press conference in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, May 10, 2022.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday to push for legislation that would classify Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

The bipartisan duo introduced a resolution in May seeking to make Russia the fifth addition to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, joining North Korea, Iran, Syria and Cuba.


In late June, Zelensky called on the United Nations to designate Russia as a terrorist state.

“Bicameral and bipartisan support is really important for Ukraine. We feel it, we feel this unity,” Zelensky said, according to a report from the president’s office published on Thursday.

Both U.S. parties, he said, “support Ukraine very fundamentally,” as evidenced by the resolution, which Zelensky hopes “will be brought to fruition.”

Blumenthal mention the grisly images that emerged from Bucha following Russia’s withdrawal from the Kyiv region, saying, “If that isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is,” in an interview with Reuters Thursday.

The proposal from Graham and Blumenthal calls on the secretary of State to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“There’s no doubt in my mind, senator, that the Russians are terrorizing the Ukrainian people,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told senators in a hearing in April. “The question is this — and again, this is something that the lawyers are looking at — to make sure that we actually meet the statutory requirements of that designation.”


Zelensky also debriefed the senators Thursday about Russia’s latest attacks, with strikes hitting the Kharkiv and Donbas regions in eastern Ukraine on the same day of the senators’ visit.

The Ukrainian president said he hoped the meeting would help “our partners have accurate information about our defense needs” and stressed the importance of air defense to combat the ongoing attacks.

The trio reportedly discussed using U.S. weapons systems to reclaim Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine, using long-range artillery and hand-to-hand combat.


Last week, the Department of Defense unveiled an $820 million weapons package for Ukraine, which includes advanced air defense systems. The U.S. has committed $6.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24.

https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... y-in-kyiv/

Linsey always smells shit. It's on his upper lip.

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U.S. announces another weapons shipment for Ukraine
Dave Lawler, author of Axios World


A HIMARS system in eastern Ukraine. Photo: Anastasia Vlasova for The Washington Post via Getty

The Pentagon announced another arms shipment to Ukraine on Friday that is valued at around $400 million, bringing the total military assistance rolled out since February to over $7 billion.

Why it matters: The latest shipment includes higher-precision artillery ammunition as well as four advanced High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), which have allowed Ukraine to strike Russian military stockpiles and other targets behind the front lines.

*The new shipment will bring the total number of HIMARS — a mobile rocket launcher — inside Ukraine to 12.

*A senior defense official said the other eight systems are all operational, and that the pace of deliveries was dictated by the rate at which Ukrainian units are being trained to use the systems, which were not previously part of the Ukrainian arsenal.
*The U.S. is also sending three tactical vehicles, spare parts and other equipment. The official would not say what type of artillery ammunition was being provided, only that it would allow for more precise targeting than had previously been possible.

State of play: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emphasized the importance of HIMARS and other longer-range systems to allowing Ukraine to change the equation in the eastern Donbas region, where Russia has been utilizing relentless artillery strikes to make gradual gains.

*The pace at which new weaponry and troops are integrated into the fight will be key to Ukraine's efforts to stem its territorial losses and potentially launch a counteroffensive later this summer.

*Russia currently appears to be preparing for the next phase of its offensive in Donbas after completing the capture of Luhansk, one of two administrative regions there.

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/us-wea ... russia-war

[blindpig]

'Drinking The Kool-Aid' On The War In Ukraine
In Summer 2004 Col. (ret.) Patrick Lang published Drinking the Kool-Aid which described the way in which group think had led to the war on Iraq. The idiom itself has a sinister background:

[Jim Jones, a self-styled "messiah" from the United States] called together his followers in the town square and explained the situation to them. There were a few survivors, who all said afterward that within the context of the "group-think" prevailing in the village, it sounded quite reasonable. Jim Jones then invited all present to drink from vats of Kool-Aid containing lethal doses of poison. Nearly all did so, without physical coercion. Parents gave their children the poison and then drank it themselves. Finally Jones drank. Many hundreds died with him.

Many have never heard of that story or have forgotten it. The idiom's meaning had changed:

What does drinking the Kool-Aid mean today? It signifies that the person in question has given up personal integrity and has succumbed to the prevailing group-think that typifies policymaking today. This person has become "part of the problem, not part of the solution."
What was the "problem"? The sincerely held beliefs of a small group of people who think they are the "bearers" of a uniquely correct view of the world, sought to dominate the foreign policy of the United States in the Bush 43 administration, and succeeded in doing so through a practice of excluding all who disagreed with them. Those they could not drive from government they bullied and undermined until they, too, had drunk from the vat.

With regards to the war in Ukraine Pat himself has sipped the Kool-Aid. It has clearly clouded his judgment.

In a recent comment at his blog, Pat writes:

Chuba
I never let patriotism or any other sentiment cloud my analysis. Russia is past the “culminating point” of its offensive and is subject to a sudden reversal of fortune.

The 'culminating point' is a term of art described in the book "On War" by Carl von Clausewitz. Born in 1780 Clausewitz served in Prussian army. He later joint the imperial Russian army in its war against Napoleon before returning as chief of staff to the Prussian military:

Clausewitz was a professional combat soldier who was involved in numerous military campaigns, but he is famous primarily as a military theorist interested in the examination of war, utilising the campaigns of Frederick the Great and Napoleon as frames of reference for his work.
Even today "On War" is still a must-read for any military officer.

The culminating point is discussed in Book VII 'The Attack', Chapter V 'Culminating Point of the Attack':

The success of the attack is the result of a present superiority of force, it being understood that the moral as well as physical forces are included. In the preceding chapter we have shown that the power of the attack gradually exhausts itself; possibly at the same time the superiority may increase, but in most cases it diminishes. The assailant buys up prospective advantages which are to be turned to account hereafter in negotiations for peace; but, in the meantime, he has to pay down on the spot for them a certain amount of his military force. If a preponderance on the side of the attack, although thus daily diminishing, is still maintained until peace is concluded, the object is attained. There are strategic attacks which have led to an immediate peace but such instances are rare; the majority, on the contrary, lead only to a point at which the forces remaining are just sufficient to maintain a defensive, and to wait for peace. Beyond that point the scale turns, there is a reaction; the violence of such a reaction is commonly much greater than the force of the blow. This we call the culminating point of the attack.

The attacker, in Clausewitz's description, has a moral and physical force advantage at the start of the battle. But as it attacks it usually also has the disadvantage of taking more losses than the defending side. (One rule of thumb is that the attacker needs a power ratio of 3 to 1 over the defender to win a battle.) Taking more losses than the defending side means that the relative advantage of the attacker diminishes over time.

As the battle (or war) proceeds the actual power ration shrinks from 3 to 1 to 2 to 1 and then to 1 to 1 or even lower. There comes a point where the attacker is down to the minimum force needed to keep the other side away. Beyond that is the culminating point of the attack. If the battle or war does not end before that point is reached it will likely end in the defeat of the attacker.

Pat Lang claims that Russia has reached the culminating point and has thus exhausted it forces to the point where it has no longer advantages and is now likely to see a reversal of its fortune. But that presumes that we are seeing a typical war like those Clausewitz took part in or Napoleon's or Hitler's marches towards Moscow, the first of which Clausewitz certainly had in mind.

The war in Ukraine is a 'special military operation' and very untypical for several reasons.

Russia attacked with a force that was smaller than the Ukrainian forces. Over all roughly 120 Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG) from Russia with 1,000 men each plus some 50,000 soldiers from the Luhansk and Donetzk republics took part in the war. At the begin of the war the Ukrainian forces had 250,000 soldiers and they have since mobilized several hundred thousand more.

Russia uses far more sophisticated weapons than the Ukrainian side. These are long range weapon and cruise missiles that hit supplies and incoming troops in the rear of the frontline as well as strategic targets. It has an excellent and nearly impenetrable air defense and electronic war fare capabilities that a high ranking U.S. officer described as 'eye watering'. Russia has a huge advantage in artillery capabilities and a sufficient amounts of ammunition to sustain a high rate of fire over years. It can also outproduce the 'west' with regards to new weapons and supplies.

All this has led to the very unusual effect that the Russian advantage on the battlefield has increased over time. It may have been 1 to 1 at the beginning of the battle but it has since increased to about 2 to 1 or even higher.

In his latest briefing (vid) the head of the Austrian military academy Colonel Reisner shows how the ratio of forces has changed over time. At 7:10 min in he shows this chart.



He explains that at the beginning of the battle for Donbas in April the force ratio was 93 Russian BTGs against 81 Ukrainian BTG equivalents. On June 26 the ratio of forces was 108 Russian BTGs versus 60 Ukrainian battalion equivalents. Russia had increased the size of its engaged forces while the Ukrainian side had lost 25% of its capabilities. So according to the Austrian military the force ratio at the start of the 'special military operation' was 1.15 to 1 and on June 26 it was at 1.8 to 1.

What we are seeing is the opposite of the decrease of the ratio of forces that Clausewitz described as the path to the culminating point.

A recent talk by a high ranking Ukrainian general confirms the high rate of attrition of the Ukrainian army. He says that 'western' weapon deliveries only cover 10 to 15% of the Ukrainian losses. In fact the 'west' can no longer produce enough new weapons and ammunition to cover those losses.

In Foreign Affairs Prof. Barry Posen writes about Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory:

Ukraine’s backers have proposed two pathways to victory. The first leads through Ukraine. With help from the West, the argument runs, Ukraine can defeat Russia on the battlefield, either depleting its forces through attrition or shrewdly outmaneuvering it. The second path runs through Moscow. With some combination of battlefield gains and economic pressure, the West can convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war—or convince someone in his circle to forcibly replace him.
But both theories of victory rest on shaky foundations. In Ukraine, the Russian army is likely strong enough to defend most of its gains. In Russia, the economy is autonomous enough and Putin’s grip tight enough that the president cannot be coerced into giving up those gains, either.
...
Ukraine’s leaders and its backers speak as if victory is just around the corner. But that view increasingly appears to be a fantasy. Ukraine and the West should therefore reconsider their ambitions and shift from a strategy of winning the war toward a more realistic approach: finding a diplomatic compromise that ends the fighting.

Lt.Col. (ret) Daniel Davis agrees with Posen:

In short, there is no valid military path through which Ukraine can hope that trading space for time will result in stopping Russia’s methodical progress through Ukraine – much less reverse it. To continue contesting every town and city is to ensure the Ukrainian casualties continue to mount and its urban areas destroyed. In the end, Russia is still likely to achieve a tactical victory.

It is necessary, in light of these physical realities, for U.S. and Western policies to change. Continuing to give verbal support to Ukraine and claiming that eventually, Kyiv’s side will win the war is not likely to change the outcome and is likely to result in a policy failure for Washington.

Prof. Posen criticizes the false numbers that various organizations put out to show high losses of Russian forces:

Early on during the war, boosters of Ukraine argued that Russia could be defeated through attrition. Simple math seemed to tell the story of a Russian army on the verge of collapse. In April, the British defense ministry estimated that 15,000 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine. Assuming that the number of wounded was three times as high, which was the average experience during World War II, that would imply that roughly 60,000 Russians had been knocked out of commission. Initial Western estimates put the size of the frontline Russian force in Ukraine at 120 battalion tactical groups, which would total at most 120,000 people. If these casualty estimates were correct, the strength of most Russian combat units would have fallen below 50 percent, a figure that experts suggest renders a combat unit at least temporarily ineffective.

These early estimates now look overly optimistic. If they were accurate, the Russian army ought to have collapsed by now. Instead, it has managed slow but steady gains in the Donbas.

The numbers and other claims that the British defense ministry puts out get repeated in the U.S. by the neo-conservative Institute for the Study of War. Nearly every U.S. media quotes one of those two sources.

They are serving the Kool-Aid Pat Lang, TTG and other around them have been drinking since the beginning of Russian operation.

They also presume that Russia could not intensify the war. The president of Russia disagrees with them:

Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try. We have already heard a lot about the West wanting to fight us ”to the last Ukrainian.“ This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but that seems to be where it is going. But everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet.
At the same time, we are not rejecting peace talks, but those who are rejecting them should know that the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.

True to form the British defense ministry used that to serve more Kool-Aid:

"Despite President Putin’s claim on 7 July 2022 that the Russian military has ‘not even started’ its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment,” an assessment from Britain’s defense ministry said on Saturday.
One sign the defense ministry pointed to was its expectation that fresh Russian troops would be deployed with MT-LB armored vehicles. The MT-LB, first designed in the 1950s to pull artillery, is not heavily armored and can mount only a machine gun to protect its forces.

I bet that we will not see any MT-LB at the front line. I doubt that we will see any at all. Russia still has thousands of tanks, real ones, that it can send should there be any need for them.

All the Kool-Aid drinkers also forget that this war is about much more than this or that town in Ukraine or even Ukraine itself.

As Putin said:

But here is what I would you like to make clear. They should have realised that they would lose from the very beginning of our special military operation, because this operation also means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the US-style world order. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world based not on self-serving rules made up by someone for their own needs, behind which there is nothing but striving for hegemony, not on hypocritical double standards, but on international law and the genuine sovereignty of nations and civilisations, on their will to live their historical destiny, with their own values and traditions, and to align cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality.
Everyone should understand that this process cannot be stopped. The course of history is inexorable, and the collective West’s attempts to impose its new world order on the rest of the world are doomed.

No Kool-Aid served in Washington or London will change that. It is thus better to stay away from it.

Posted by b on July 9, 2022 at 17:28 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/07/d ... .html#more

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

***

forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of July 9, 2022

The situation on the fronts for the past day:

Kharkov front. In anticipation of a possible crossing of the Seversky Donets River by Russian servicemen, several groups of foreign mercenaries and the Kraken nationalist battalion have been deployed to Stary Saltov and Molodovaya. Russian troops attacked the areas of concentration of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Petrovka, Russkaya Lozova, Cherkassky Tishki, Pitomnik, Zolochev, Kutuzovka, Staraya Gnilitsa, Bazalievka, Prudyanka, Adamovka and Kharkov.

On the Slavic sector of the front , the battles for Grigorovka ended . Also today, the village of Klinovoye was liberated. There is an active offensive near the village of Veselaia Dolina, which is only five kilometers from Artemovsk. There is a cleanup going on. Artillery of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is ironing the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Druzhbovka and Kramatorsk.

There are no changes on the Donetsk front today. There is a counter-battery fight.

Two Su-25s of the Ukrainian Air Force were shot down along the southern flank in the Nikolaev region. In the Zaporozhye direction, the enemy is building up its offensive capabilities: on July 7, up to 18 tanks were transferred to the Novoivanovka, Nikolskoye, and Lyubitskoye areas. In the Zelenodolsk region , the deployment point of the Tornado battalion was hit , where more than 40 militants were killed.

"Arrivals" from the APU. Today, the Russian air defense system has been operating in Kherson since the morning . At 5:30 am, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired two rockets from the HIMARS MLRS at the city of Irmino from the direction of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). Also in the afternoon, another rocket from the HIMARS MLRS was fired at the city of Alchevsk from the direction of Artemovsk . Leninsky, Kalininsky, Kirovsky districts of Donetsk were again under fire from the Armed Forces of Ukraine today.

Terrorist attack. In the Bryansk region , an attempt was made to sabotage the railway tracks in the Unechsky district at the Robchik-Peschanka stretch. Right in front of the freight train, an unknown explosive device went off, as a result of which the windows of the driver's cab were damaged - there were no other damages or casualties.

Calibration . The RF Armed Forces carried out massive strikes against the facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Druzhkovka, south of Kramatorsk. Strategic facilities in Kharkov and Nikolaev were also destroyed.

In the world: the United States is prolonging the conflict in Ukraine at any cost and the supply of new HIMARS will contribute to the destruction of the civilian population of Donbass by Kiev. This was stated by the Russian Embassy in Washington.

👁From the interesting: Ukrainian media once again staged a mega win from the Snake Island, after all, placing their flag on it. Judging by the photographs, the operation was short-lived, the Ukrainian special forces set up the ensign directly at the coastline, even being afraid to climb the abandoned position of the Pantsir air defense system, which was lit up in the photograph. All this is due to the fact that the island is an excellent target for Russian aircraft and missiles, and the presence of the Ukrainian contingent on it is tantamount to suicide.



***

Сolonelcassad
Karel Scherel-Salzburg - another French Nazi in the service of the Armed Forces

Yesterday it became known the name of the French mercenary, who in June in Kharkov gave a sensational interview to TF1 . Another fighter of the "International Legion" turned out to be an adherent of the ideas of Nazism for verification .

Karel Sherel-Salzburg is 27 years old. In a conversation with reporters, he mentioned that before the start of the NWO he lived in Ukraine.

The mercenary claims to have fought as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass . But, judging by the profile biography on Linkedn, he moved to Ukraine only in 2021.

The Frenchman adheres to neo-Nazi ideas, in 2019 he was arrested by the French police for a group attack on antifa in Nantes. His social media profiles are full of Nazi symbols , incl. emblems of the division "Dead Head" and images of the "Black Sun".

He joined the International Legion in March for the sake of "protecting all of Europe from communism" and resisting "the political system of Russia and the Russian way of life ". Currently located in Kharkov.

According to Karel, anti-fascists, nationalists and even anarchists from Latvia, Estonia, France and Japan serve in his unit .

The greatest fear for a Frenchman is to be captured by the Russians , where they allegedly face inhuman torture. The mercenary claims that he is ready to commit suicide in order not to surrender to the RF Armed Forces.

Karel is looking forward to the victory of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and is already dreaming of his own restaurant in Ukraine. Whether there will be portraits of Bandera and Hitler in his institution, neither the mercenary nor the journalists specified.

The International Legion continues to use foreigners as mouthpieces , now with a new narrative about torture in Russian captivity. A dead mercenary is much more profitable for the curators of the legion than a prisoner who talks about the realities of service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.



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forwarded from
INTERNATIONAL FAN
The situation in Ukraine and Donbass at this hour:

In the DPR, two members of Azov were sentenced to death.
Zelensky fired ambassadors to Germany, Hungary, Norway, India and the Czech Republic.
US Congresswoman Spartz: Yermak, head of Zelensky's office, may be a "Kremlin agent".
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine called the control over the supplied weapons an undermining of military assistance.
The Zaporozhye region asked for help from Russia due to the shutdown of gas supply by Kyiv.
Two people died and five were injured during the shelling of Donetsk.
The Telegraph: Zelensky attacked the commander-in-chief after the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass.
The special forces of the RF Armed Forces liquidated at least three Polish mercenaries in the Kharkov region.
Bild: only 10 EU countries transferred 100% of the promised aid to Ukraine.

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Сolonelcassad
The situation in the Kharkiv direction
as of 17.30 July 9, 2022

The Ukrainian command, in order to prevent a breakthrough of defense lines, intends to strengthen the grouping of troops in the Kharkiv region by forcibly attracting mobilized citizens.

In Udy , Bezruki and Slatino , members of the defense system who had completed a two-week combat training course were sent. In Zolochiv , Slatino, Molodova , and Stary Saltov , sappers of the 92nd brigade mine the approaches to settlements.

In anticipation of a possible crossing of the Seversky Donets River by Russian servicemen, several groups of foreign mercenaries and the Kraken nationalist battalion were deployed to Stary Saltov and Molodovaya.

To reveal the routes of a possible offensive by the RF Armed Forces, the Ukrainian side is actively using reconnaissance drones of various types in Zrubank , Udy , Slatino, Petrovka and Molodova.

Mortar and artillery attacks were carried out on identified targets in the vicinity of Sosnovka , Kazachya Lopan , Liptsov and Neskuchny . In addition, the use of a planning UAV Switchblade was noted in the Sosnovka area .

In turn, Russian troops carried out strikes against areas of concentration of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Petrovka, Ruska Lozova , Cherkasskiye Tishki , Pitomnik , Zolochiv, Kutuzovka , Staraya Gnilitsa , Bazalievka , Prudyanka , Adamovka , and Kharkov .



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Сolonelcassad
The announced deliveries of new missiles for the HIMARS MLRS with a range of up to 300 km hint at the preparation of strikes deep into Russian territory, starting from the Crimea. The United States consistently continues to raise the stakes, gradually expanding the range of weapons, seeing that despite the losses, a significant part of the supply of weapons reaches the front and is fully used. Since the threats and actions of Russia on all previous deliveries were not unacceptable to the United States, they quite naturally continue to act on the principle "step by step" after checking the reaction of the Russian Federation and assurances that "we do not seek war with Russia."
In autumn, you can expect air defense systems and combat aircraft (already open).

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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"Tell me, what are you fighting for?"
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/10/2022



Original Article: Dmitry Steshin / Komsomolskaya Pravda

From my house in the center of Donetsk to the front it is twenty minutes by car according to the navigator, about an hour on foot. We left early in the morning, in the cold. During the day, in the Donetsk steppe, the thermometer easily crosses the fever line, 36º, the sun burns like a pan with the bulletproof vest and the automatic weapons do not cool down until hours after firing. Possibly it is the journalist's luck to participate in a day's routine of a sniper unit. How? With a few handshakes. I brought for the boys a suitcase with a Moscow weather station, a gift from a Syrian doctor. An ophthalmologist explained to me during a brief encounter in the subway that one of these sniper groups had saved his family in Deir-ez-Zor a few years ago. So he considered it his duty to help those who had saved them. This is how good flows through the world, through unknown and unpredictable connections.

The town we moved to is being bombed from morning to night. A projectile has just hit a residential sector where the population continues to reside, going to work in the morning. The oldest of the group has the nom de guerre Moskva and watches the citizens waiting for the morning bus along the green corridor . They don't have to see us. The snipers take up their covert positions. According to the guys, in addition to drones in the air, there are clearly people in the village who help the Ukrainian troops. It is difficult to know who they are.

They prepare the 12.7 caliber rifle in its box. One of the snipers jokes: "We're going fishing." We hide my car as best we can, box it up in a courtyard under a green perspex roof. There are no rituals, signs or signals. The bus leaves and we quickly put on our vests and belts and get out, already feeling the unbearable heat of Donbass coming down on us. Only these arrivals at the positions are worse than the bombing. We pull the last forces and there is still a kilometer to run and with the equipment through some areas where we can be in sight of the enemy. Curious trenches have been dug up to the ankle. I watch the boys with what I will spend a few hours not particularly pleasant and whose outcome is unpredictable.Moscow, light-eyed, has been through Syria and Libya and has the energy of a commander. It is an inexplicable phenomenon that, even so, is instantly noticeable. My countryman from the Volga, Astrakhan , has a stubborn look. He is the main sniper of our group.

Enot is the oldest, he is 46 years old. He and Moskva conduct reconnaissance, identify targets and cover snipers. Enot explains everything to me patiently. Psychologically, it was important for me when, in the afternoon, they began to bombard us incessantly and our artillery conducted counter-battery fire. Enot briefly commented: “out”, “it will run over us”, “these are ours”, “this is for us”. I listened to him attentively, like listening to a teacher in first grade.

The boys sit on the floor. What can I say, they are the elite of the Russian Army. Moskva explains to me where we are going: “These are the old positions of the Ukrainian Army. The ukrops covered them from Grads and withdrew about half a mile to other positions. And there is the Mannerheim line.”

I notice something: "I thought it was military propaganda to explain why we can't drive the enemy away from Donetsk."

“I see these bunkers, everything is fortified, even the doors are made of steel. That was why they escaped from the forest so easily. Why cling to these trenches when you have concrete fortifications behind you?

Now it is we who are holding on to these trenches, holding them. The roots and trunks of the forest plantation remain, but large trees have been cut down by shrapnel fragments. Even so, there are still young acacias, whose branches would serve as beautiful swords to play musketeers. As I used to play as a child.

The positions of the Ukrainian Army are marked by metal gabions, a gift from friends in the West. Another gift is lying on the ground - an empty container from an English NLAW anti-tank missile. They received these positions from our people and now our people receive them from them. All the parapets and trenches are littered with, as archaeologists say, "proof of existence" in different layers. From one of the lowest I pull out some excellent Bundeswehr anti-shatter goggles that I've wanted for a long time. All around, as far as the eye can see, there is a terrible mess full of leaky plates, bulletproof vests, helmets, our rations and Ukrainian snacks. A tank machine gun with an electric trigger and several ammunition belts hang from the parapet under a Ukrainian jacket. What is he doing here? The wind blows the bandages hanging in the bushes, stained with brown blood, no one knows whose. Yesterday there were three deaths here.

The cannon looks towards our rear. I don't understand immediately, but in the end I realize that after the occupation of the Ukrainian positions, the front turns out to be on the other side. All of this is seriously reminiscent of the trench warfare of the First World War, at least as we have imagined it from the books and movies.

Snipers choose a hole to take cover. In case something happens, you have to immediately jump there. They place the donated weather station on the parapet. She appears calm, but the arrow rotates rapidly, measuring the wind on the screen. The snipers write down data in a notebook: temperature, pressure, etc. They explain to me that it is important to work at a distance of less than a kilometer.

Along with Enot , I approach the front limit. Sometimes he freezes for a dozen minutes and sweeps the space with his optics. Enot has hands of iron and patience of stone. I sit at his feet in the trench and distract him with stupid questions: “What do you see? How many ukrops ? Enot answers patiently: “776 meters. Nobody at the moment. Everything is fortified, even around the trees there is cement. Further on there is another line in height, also made of cement, there are machine gun points”.

Suddenly, right above us, automatic weapons fire begins to rain down. He is supported by machine guns, but then everything goes down. A veteran militiaman steps down from the parapet and places a grenade launcher in the corner of the trench. I don't know how he got there with the grenade launcher at the ready. The commander of the division appears, with the Italianets nom de guerre . He sternly addresses a young militiaman with a rookie mustache and covered in an iron helmet almost to his chin: “Why were you making noise?”

The militiaman tries to justify himself: "I heard the crack of a branch under my feet and someone spat."

Enot shrugs and says that it is better for everyone to be on their guard than relaxed. We re-inspect the neutral zone and there is a surprise: movement marks. A few days ago, the Cossacks were there and when they left they did not warn the sappers of mines. Italianets swear, not exactly in Italian. A shout interrupts his diatribe: “Drone”. And we jump into the hole.

The bunker is organized by the reservist Volodya, a short soldier who looks like an underground gnome with a hedgehog on his head. Volodya immediately begins to prepare tea for his visitors. To the right of the bunker is another bang , the drone has dropped a mine. Volodya looks at the clock and says: "Well, nothing, guys, we have 30-32 minutes free." I look at him without understanding anything and he explains: “Believe me, everything is like the pharmacy. Now the drone will come back, they will change the batteries, put another mine and it will come back. Yesterday they destroyed half of our shelter.” I look into the darkness and I realize: yes, exactly half remains, beyond it is a whole mess of land and destroyed remains.

but free timedoes not work, Polish 60-caliber mines begin to reach us at long intervals. They are silent, you can only hear the explosion itself, sometimes nothing else. There are a lot of Polish shells, they do not skimp on them. Poland is said to have manufactured thousands of mortars for Ukraine in recent months. Volodya, taking advantage of the absence of his superiors, says: “Do you want some bread? They have brought the same for our neighbors.” He gives me a piece of bread that is on a cot. The bread is covered in green mold, but it looks like wood. I look straight ahead and try to make a joke, something therapeutic, like penicillin, but no one laughs. “You are not going to write this,” Volodya tells me. Everything boils inside me. It's half an hour by car from the city and they can't bring proper bread to the soldiers...

Then everyone starts complaining. “There is no water, the managers say they are afraid to bring it. We can't go on leave, I haven't seen my family for five months. Even if it's one day, it takes me an hour to get home and the tea doesn't have to come from Kamchatka. The food is just stew. There is, yes, a lot."

After thirty minutes, everything repeats itself. “Drone”. And everyone runs to hide. Italianets jump into the bunker and start a long conversation. Observers don't always like sniper groups: "You make a noise and then we get covered in artillery from morning to night." Can't argue with that. Spending months sitting in positions begins to make you think of only one thing: surviving. Snipers or reconnaissance or sabotage groups have somewhat broader tasks: inflicting damage on the enemy and surviving. There is a point where those interests come together and sparks fly. It is no accident that Moskva called a group of people with a device called a droneboyto our positions. With its help, the drone's communication with the operator can be silenced, landed and captured. Italianets agrees that depriving the opponent of drones is a good thing, but does not want to open fire on the enemy so that snipers can work against machine guns and grenade launchers. Deep down, everyone understands.

Italianets is a fifth grade miner, an elite miner, who has been in the trenches for five months. Anyone would be angry and want to go home. The conversation is at a standstill, so I ask, “Tell me, what are you fighting for?”

He answers without thinking: "For my wife, for my house, for me."

"How long have you been fighting?"

"Five months. This weekend has been the first at home since spring. They called me on Sunday afternoon: Get ready. I had lost six boys in this time, I went to see their women. Three had died from bombings, three from subversive acts. Some asked me why I hadn't died, others asked what they were saying."

Italianets is silent, he turns around, his face shows that everything around him is coming down on him and he begins to fear what he is saying. He handed her a pack of cigarettes saying, "Okay, I brought them from the border, from duty free." He calms down, recomposes himself and sums it all up: “I fight and I will fight for my boys”.

The situation is resolved. The walkie-talkie makes a noise. A group of soldiers comes with a droneboy and they all get ready to hassle the ukrops . We hear how they get closer, the mines fall in the path of the boys, but not accurately. Heavy artillery begins to work. I see with Enot how the projectiles fall on the town where I have left the car. Smoke plumes are clearly visible in the air. EnotHe reassures me: "This one is tall, that one is even taller, and that one is off-direction." These observations comfort me just a little, I force myself not to think about the car. What's more, the counter battery begins to hit the enemy. Inconstantly and weakly, but it starts. Some Grads begin to fall on the Ukrainian Army, then a distant artillery and a few volleys.

The correct name for the droneboy is “Mobile UAV Suppression System” and its creators were clearly inspired by Star Wars. The droneboy stands in the trench and is shown the direction the drones are coming from towards our position. He approached me from behind and joked: “It is forbidden to direct this thing to women and children, he says so on the sign”. The operator looks at me surprised and shatters the fantasy by reading: “It says humans and animals”, he laughs and says that they just gave him the device a few hours ago and they just taught him how to use it. “But he has two buttons, it's not that difficult. I think we'll manage."

Astrakhan brings a rifle that seems to be three meters long and takes position. Moskva , in the observation position, watches with long-distance binoculars and Enot , with the machine gun, is ready to cover the sniper. The soldiers to our left and right open fire with machine guns. But the enemy has guessed our clever move and opens mortar fire, forcing us to the ground several times.

As night fell, we dismantled the positions. The way back turns out to be longer, three times the way to wait for the artillery fire to die down. We wait in a good place, where a mine destroyed the peach trees of a rich house.

The shells continue to fall on the town, we wait and go to the car. The owner of the patio in which I have hidden the car has covered it with an old flag. She has tried to save the car, but even so, a piece of shrapnel has broken the window. I imagined the woman protecting the car under the bombs. I thought that's the representation of courage. This woman has a daughter at the front in Lisichansk and she is doing everything she can for victory. I didn't have time to thank him. Moskva advises me to go out quickly despite the exchange of volleys. It looked like a bad action movie, the kind where the main character is driving fast with bombs exploding left and right. Except that the hero behind the wheel is usually a brave man, while I barely had my nose above the wheel.

I flew to the forest behind the town, took a breath and saw a Lada Niva in the middle of the road, beaten and with flat tires, in the middle of a puddle of gasoline. He had just been attacked by a drone. A soldier was taking photos around the car, recording the damage on his phone. I stopped and offered to help, but the soldier shook his hands: "Get out of here, brother, drive fast." There was nowhere to hide: Donetsk had been under artillery fire since morning, and by nightfall the city was covered in a thick blanket of smoke. Only then did the shelling stop. Until the next day.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/10/dime- ... more-25009

Google Translator

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Russia Denounces US Intention to Extend Conflict in Ukraine


Russia reveals the intentions behind the United States' continuous armament of Kiev in light of the Ukraine war: prolonging the war. | Photo: Twitter @MayadeenEnglish

Published 10 July 2022 (6 hours 43 minutes ago)

The statement called untenable the White House’s claims that the weapons supplied to Kiev are used for defensive purposes, and denounced that they are used to destroying cities in the Donbass region and constantly attack residential areas in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.


Russia denounced the unbridled desire of the United States to extend the conflict in Ukraine at all costs with new deliveries of multiple rocket launcher systems to Kiev.

“Washington does not bring peace, but, on the contrary, pushes the Ukrainian authorities towards new bloody crimes,” the Russian Embassy in Washington asserted in a statement released in Moscow by the Foreign Ministry.

The denunciations of the diplomatic mission are a response to the announcement made by U.S. President Joe Biden of sending a new military aid package worth 400 million dollars to the government of President Vladimir Zelensky. The package includes the supply of four HIMARS (high mobility artillery rocket system) multiple rocket launchers.

Kim Dotcom
@KimDotcom
The Ukraine war profit math:

US gives Ukraine $ 2 billion worth of free weapons to fight Russia.

Raytheon + $31.3 billion
Lockheed + $37.7 billion
Northrop + $19.2 billion
GeneralD + $15.5 billion

Return of investment: $101.7 billion

From just 4 of 25 US arms manufacturers!



12:37 PM · Mar 21, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
4,741 Retweets588 Quote Tweets9,428 Likes

The statement called untenable the White House’s claims that the weapons supplied to Kiev are used for defensive purposes, and denounced that they are used to destroying cities in the Donbass region and constantly attack residential areas in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.


“Every day civilians are killed in different districts of the capital of Donetsk, where there are not even Russian servicemen nearby,” the statement said and recalled the recent attack launched by Ukrainian forces, in which a 10-year-old girl was killed.

It stressed that more than 150 children have died at the hands of Nazis in eight years in the Donbass region.

HIMARS systems can be used with various projectiles. Their manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, notes that they can fire six Gmlrs guided missiles at a distance of 70 kilometers.

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