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

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

Post by blindpig » Sat Aug 13, 2022 2:02 pm

The fight for Peski
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/13/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

Original Article: Alexander Kots / Komsomolskaya Pravda

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“We are on the road, always on the road, we do not move away, there are petals [antipersonnel mines]. If there is a buzz, we throw ourselves to the right of the road”. It's the last briefingbefore advancing on the town of Peski from the former DPR army forward positions. They have been here for eight years, holding the front line against the Ukrainian Army. The distance between the positions here was sometimes no more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty meters. Provocations, night clashes, positional warfare… for all these years, the Ukrainian Army's artillerymen, also from Peski, have been a nightmare for the residents of Donetsk and nearby cities. Many in Donbass have retaliated, they have stormed Peski with special passion. All of Donetsk has been able to hear it.

I hadn't been here for five months, and in this time, the capital of the DPR has changed so much that it is unrecognizable. The happy and kind city is now deserted, weeds grow between the tiles of Pushkin Boulevard, and, like in a post-apocalyptic movie, two refilled bottles of water are delivered to the hotel reception instead of mineral water. For almost six years, Donetsk has not been a front city, now it is the front. There are interruptions in the supply of water and electricity, daily shelling and the idea of ​​a “safe zone” no longer exists here. The constant sound of cannon fire acts on the nerves like a restless child banging on the back of your seat from the back row on an airplane.

In the last five months, here they have had to learn to understand when the sound of artillery can be celebrated. Volleys hit the city, but in their intervals Peski sounded like a hope to end the terror that Donetsk has been subjected to in recent weeks. Reports from the front confirmed these hopes.

From the former forward positions of the Donetsk army, we advance in single file. Who would have imagined that instruction on how to act during a bombing raid would come in handy so quickly. A buzz in the air, a hole somewhere in the woods and I was already seeing two ants under my nose lying on the ground.

"All together, follow me," ordered the commander.

“A strange image for a liberated people”, a skeptic would think. I would reply that it is typical. Every abandoned town, without exception, has been crushed by Ukrainian troops, put to sleep by artillery. It is revenge. Peski is no exception. Before leaving, I observed the work of the drone operations of the 11th regiment of the DPR. It can be seen from the sky that the battle for the city continues. The opponent clings to a small area in the northwest of the city and puts up a focal resistance. They are already isolated from the main forces, but they continue to resist. At best, the remains of the Peski garrison - and this was one of the strongest fortifications in the first line of defense - are doomed to be captured. If it turns out, suddenly, that they did not want to fight, but they were forced.

The day before, he had spoken with prisoners who had surrendered at Peski. All of them are ordinary men from towns like Nikolaev who were recruited.

“What tasks have you been assigned?” I asked Oleg Shinkaev.

“Sit and wait for reinforcements. Endure. He wondered over the radio: will there be reinforcements? They told us yes, that we had to wait.”

“We didn't even know where they had taken us. When we were captured, we realized that we were in Peski”, explained another of the prisoners, Denis Davidov. “We didn't see anything because they brought us at night. We didn't even know how to get back, which way. So, except for the shelter and the nearest trenches, we didn't see anything."

“They told us that we would be in the third line of defense, somewhere in the rear. They dumped us there, they transferred us to the same front, I didn't even know we were in Peski until we met there,” complained Alexander Dmitrik. “You had to help the twenty-third battalion, that's all. How to help, what to do, that was not explained to us. There were no orders, nothing. There were common soldiers as if they were officers”. And so you get up again after the last impact of a shell, you shake your hands and wonder who is really there, if they are all abandoned without commanders.

“There was an enemy fortified area here,” explains the commander of the 11th regiment, after which I run to a battered but still standing shed. “It was their front line where we broke through. Now Peski is difficult to sweep, but he is going to finish, the end is already in sight”.

Somewhere out there numerous explosions are heard: the opponent has launched a cluster projectile. A minute later, the report sounds over the radio: the ammunition was supplemented with petals , which have been scattered all over our path. The soldiers lament, destiny prevents us from advancing further today. But they promise that we will meet again in the center of Peski. Meanwhile, the radio reports another house that has been searched in the northwest part of town.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/13/25268/#more-25268

Google Translator

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Monument to the defenders of Donbass in Nadym
August 13, 10:50

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The monument to the defenders of Donbass was installed https://ura.news/news/1052577984 in Nadym.
The monument itself is well done. Installation video https://vk.com/wall-32205256_1645531
Thanks for the tip, comrade amarok_man In Crimea, we are planning to open a memorial plaque and a temple in memory of the dead. There is also talk about the monument, but so far without specifics. I am sure that we will also have a monument.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7798322.html

Ukraine's limited default
August 13, 11:51

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Ukraine's limited default

Western rating agencies announced Ukraine's default on its obligations.
The international rating agencies S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings have called default the postponement of payments on Ukraine's debt, downgrading the country's foreign currency ratings. Fitch has downgraded Ukraine's foreign currency issuer rating from C (default imminent) to RD (limited default).
S&P said they view Ukraine's debt restructuring as problematic and tantamount to a default. Ukraine's rating was downgraded by the agency to SD ("selective default").

Expected, but nonetheless. Zelensky brought Ukraine not only to war, but also to default. Although back in the spring they were chanting about Russia's default. In fact, Russia, which already lives in the paradigm of a multipolar world order, simply ignores the "technical defaults that the representatives of the old world order announce to it by blocking the ability to pay off debts in their own currency. Therefore, Russia reasonably considers these statements null and void and offers those who want to get their money, take them in rubles.

Ukraine, on the other hand, continues to live as a country-colony in the old paradigm, and it was she who fell into a full-fledged state of default. But as practice shows, as long as Ukraine is useful as a weapon against Russia, the owners of the old world order will continue to pump money into it to maintain the economy and continue the war. In this connection, the term "limited default" also does not make much sense for Ukraine, since it is already completely dependent on its creditors, and they can ensure debt payments not only financially, but also by other means.

From a factual point of view, the difference between the defaults of Ukraine and Russia is obvious.
Russia has all the resources to service its obligations. Ukraine does not have such resources.

PS. From the standpoint of afterthought, we can safely say that even the times of Yanukovych from an economic point of view were a lost "golden age" for Ukraine. Well, as well as they lived under the Ukrainian USSR, they will not live in Ukraine for a long time.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7798769.html

Google Translator

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UN Launches Nuclear Appeal to Russia and Ukraine

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Russia blamed the UN for IAEA experts not being able to make it to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant after the UN accused Moscow of running the NPP for its own benefit. | Photo: @MayadeenEnglish

Published 12 August 2022 (3 hours 11 minutes ago)

Guterres warned that military action near any nuclear power plant may result in a serious disaster affecting a large region. The sentiment is shared by Russia, which on Thursday reiterated its warnings about the situation.


UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued on Thursday a dire warning over escalation of military actions near Ukraine’s Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and called it “unacceptable”. He urged Kiev and Moscow to negotiate a pact to declare the area off-limits for any military action.

“I urge the parties to withdraw any military personnel and equipment from the plant and refrain from any further deployment of forces or equipment to the site,” the senior official insisted. “Instead, urgent agreement is needed at a technical level on a safe perimeter of demilitarization to ensure the safety of the area.”

The Zaporozhye plant, located in the Russia-controlled Ukrainian city of Energodar, has become the stage for a series of attacks over the past few weeks. Moscow accuses Kiev of launching artillery and drone strikes on the facility, branding these moves as “nuclear terrorism.”

Kiev has claimed that Russia was the one targeting the plant in an alleged plot to discredit Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia is using it as a military base, staging troops and heavy weapons there, Ukrainian officials said.


Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN “If the UAF attacks continue The scale of a real nuclear disaster at ZNPP (Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant) is almost unimaginable, in which case all the responsibility rests on Kyiv's Western supporters.”

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has not had access to the Zaporozhye plant since before Russia attacked Ukraine in late February. The reactors and other equipment are operated by Ukrainian staff, despite being under Russian control since the early weeks of the conflict. Attempts to organize an on-site international inspection to verify the site’s safety and security have been futile so far.

Moscow blamed the UN for the delay and said the organization’s department, which is responsible for security during official visits, was catering to Kiev by allowing it to continue its “provocations.” The Russian Foreign Ministry urged Guterres to intervene.

The secretary-general then called on “the parties to provide the IAEA mission with immediate, secure and unfettered access to the site” in his Thursday statement.

“Actions by the Kiev regime could lead to a disaster on a scale that would dwarf the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” Russian Foreign Ministry deputy spokesperson Ivan Nechaev said during a news briefing.

The Russian diplomat reiterated calls for an IAEA inspection of the Zaporozhye plant, saying Russia was in favor of one.

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

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A guaranteed way to denazify Ukraine
No. 4/68, IV.2022

I drew attention to the phrase thrown at the talks in Belarus between Ukraine and Russia by one of the participants from the Ukrainian side:

“Initially, the Russian delegation proceeded from the false premise that we have some kind of glorification of fascism, Nazism, and so on. In our country, as it turned out, and it was surprising for them, there are a number of European laws, which just spell out full-fledged prohibitions and condemnation of all manifestations of Nazism and fascism. It is absurd to present as a claim to the country something that we have already fully regulated at the legislative level in accordance with the European charters.”

What always amused me in the statements of any bourgeois politicians, in particular, and supporters of capitalism among the townsfolk, is the downright reverent attitude towards such an important aspect of any society as legal law.

And if the first category, very possibly, is simply hypocritical, since it knows perfectly well how this mechanism works from the inside, then the inhabitants over and over again show all their stupidity, naivety and idealism, bordering on idiocy, firmly convinced that it is constitutions, laws that determine being around them in the same way that the right thoughts in the head determine the quality of life. This applies both to the regulation of social relations within a capitalist society (for example, raising the retirement age) and to the regulation of relations between states (the so-called international law).

What do Marxists say about this? They say that it is not constitutions or laws that determine social life, but the content of the class struggle and real power in the hands of the ruling class, which, in turn, is only reflected in the rules of law as the protection of the economic interests of the ruling class in the form of laws that are introduced or repealed according to discretion of that class, and not vice versa. On the contrary, it happens only in the heads of idealists who believe that there are only those phenomena in the surrounding reality that are described in these same legal norms.

For example, the United States wanted to bomb Yugoslavia in the 90s, having solved its strategic tasks for dividing the Balkans, spitting from the big bell tower on the lack of permission from the UN Security Council. Has anyone done something to them? No one even squeaked, obediently wiping himself.

In other words, the ruling bourgeois class of the United States did not give a damn about the norms of international law and, by the right of the strongest group of capital on the planet, changed the material reality in the direction they needed, that is, again, materialism defeated idealism.

The ruling classes of European capitalist countries wanted to raise the retirement age for workers, in other words, to reduce, and in the future simply eliminate such a social conquest as the paid age of survival, and they raised it, deeply spitting on the heart-rending cries of the idealists.

Returning to the arguments of the Ukrainian side that fascism cannot exist in Ukraine, since it is prohibited by law, I would like to note the following:

one must distinguish between fascism as an ideology , fascism as a political regime , and fascism as a method of terror.

Fascist ideology as a way of uniting the poor and the rich on the basis of "blood and soil", as well as a method of terror against dissidents within the country or in solving foreign policy problems, the ruling class can also use in the so-called democratic bourgeois society, which we observe daily in almost every country.

Aren't the ruthless napalm bombings of Vietnam or McCarthyism in the United States, which was accompanied by mass repression of "anti-American" citizens with pro-communist views, not a form of terror?

Is it not the modern suppression of dissent in all European bourgeois countries, associated with the cleansing of opinions from the information space that are different from the position of the authorities on the Ukrainian conflict, these are not fascist methods?

It is only necessary to distinguish, as already mentioned above, fascist methods from the fascist political regime , which is already an open form of suppression of any dissent on the part of the ruling bourgeois class, which is no longer limited by any bourgeois democratic laws.

The Ukrainian side says that propaganda of fascism and Nazism is prohibited in their legislation.

And what does it change? Isn't glorification of the Bandera movement officially supported in Ukraine? Isn't hatred for other peoples officially incited in Ukraine? Don't official armed formations of nationalists operate in Ukraine, covered by the state, which are used essentially as flying squads to destroy the disloyal outside the legal field, recognized as Nazi (we are talking about Azov, an organization banned in the Russian Federation) even by the "stronghold of world democracy" - the US Congress ?

And even if the latter did not exist, as there are no such armed formations, for example, in the Baltic states, but where the first two signs perfectly exist (praise of national heroes in the person of the legionnaires of the “ V affen SS”, who fought against Bolshevism, and the artificial incitement of nationalism and national strife - despite the fact that the latter is officially persecuted according to official bourgeois law), then what prevents the ruling class from creating such flying detachments tomorrow?

For example, in the same Baltic States, the propaganda of fascism and communism is officially prohibited and prosecuted by law, but at the same time, in 2012, calendars were openly sold, which depict people in Nazi uniforms with the national flags of Latvia. The captions under the image read: “Defend your homeland. The fight against Bolshevism”, “Cowards whisper. The legionnaire fights”, “Germany protects your homeland and calls you! Your work is also the fight against Bolshevism!”, “You must also fight for Latvia.”

The layman does not understand that under capitalism both liberal-democratic and fascist currents exist and develop simultaneously. These currents not only do not contradict each other, but under certain circumstances fruitfully cooperate with each other. Do we not observe in modern democratic bourgeois countries how democratic freedoms and social guarantees are being destroyed everywhere? Don't we see how, as the economic crisis worsens and social unrest grows, the ruling class of the capitalist countries tightens legislation everywhere, more and more resorting to open forms of terror?

Are you saying that there are only 2-3% of stubborn Nazis in society and you shouldn’t make a tragedy out of this? But 2-3% are stupid fighters, torpedoes painted with a swastika. They will be directed and controlled by decent gentlemen in expensive and beautiful suits with a liberal or social democratic official agenda. And believe me, for you to disappear from this world, these 3% are more than enough. The remaining 97% will simply keep quiet in a rag: some will applaud the national heroes who dealt with the enemies of the Fatherland, while others will shake with fear behind the curtains.

The only guaranteed way to carry out a 100% denazification in Ukraine is the establishment of Soviet power with a complete cleansing of the most frenzied fascists and kicking out the social and economic base on which any fascism grows - market capitalist relations, that is, the elimination of capitalism.

But representatives of the Red Army would answer this if they were negotiating with bourgeois Ukraine. And since the negotiations are conducted by the White Guards, whose leaders are great admirers of the philosopher Ilyin, it is naturally naive to count on this, and therefore it remains only to rely on the "inviolability" of bourgeois law.

I. Ivanov
10/04/2022

https://prorivists.org/68_denazification/

People without a Motherland: eight years of observation of Ukrainians
No. 3/67, III.2022

I started writing this note on the second day of the special operation of the RF Armed Forces, February 25th. Right after I wrote the first. From that moment on, I switched to a remote form of work, and therefore I am deprived of the opportunity to move around the city, as before, which, of course, would add a lot of interesting details to my story. I mostly have to stay at home and watch what is happening using the Internet. And my real view of Kyiv is limited to a few streets on the left bank of the city. In this regard, you can learn much more about the life of Kyiv from Telegram than from me. But I have something that will not be written on social networks - observations of people and how they behave in new conditions. The lack of live contacts right now is fully compensated by the fact that during the eight years of the Kyiv regime in power, I have accumulated enough observations of those around me with whom I had to work and communicate. Therefore, I will try to share my thoughts on

Eight years ago, when the punitive battalions and the Armed Forces of Ukraine entered the Donbass, the local population had no time for evacuation. I had to go out and stop tanks and armored personnel carriers with my bare hands. Now the war has come to the territory controlled by Kyiv. And where are the fruits of that “patriotism” that the regime has been instilling in Ukrainians for eight years? There was no trace left of him. I would even say that all those who one way or another accepted the position of the Kyiv regime have no homeland. And for a long time. They turned their homeland into a reservation, and elevated subordination to the local regime to the rank of patriotism. But judging by their actions, it is better to love what they call “Fatherland” either from Europe or from the western regions. However the fighting has already reached there.

When the coup took place in February 2014, the Kyiv regime, with the support of the West, managed to successfully make a substitution in the minds of Ukrainians, fully identifying itself with Ukraine. But he never had anything to do with Ukraine, since all these years he worked exclusively in the interests of the United States, England, the European Union, the IMF and all those forces that brought him to power and built “nests” for themselves here in order to use the territory of Ukraine as a springboard for provocations against the Russian Federation. Well, since the political course after 2014 was clearly defined, it was necessary to adjust the self-consciousness of Ukrainians accordingly. Now, instead of the communist heroes who created Ukraine and died for it, fascist collaborators who fought for the establishment of capitalism were imposed on them. That is, nothing new had to be invented. Everything had been ready for a long time. It was necessary to completely destroy the remnants of its socialist heritage in the minds of Ukrainians and completely replace them with content that would correspond to the current political situation in Ukraine - a raw material and military appendage of the West.

To destroy the identity that has been formed over the past hundred years in Ukraine itself, and instead to impose on the Ukrainian people the worldview of aggressive natives fighting with the support of "Western partners" for democracy - such is the goal of indoctrination of the population. The central idea was that the Russian is the eternal enemy of the Ukrainian, which fully meets the interests of Western imperialism. As we can see, no other “culture”, except for servility to the West as the highest manifestation of human civilization, can be expected from these “Ukrainians”. In essence, we are talking about political Ukrainianism. At the same time, it should be noted that, unfortunately, the regime has achieved considerable success over the past eight years in planting its views among a significant part of the local population, who actually betrayed their homeland and turned into slave natives who adopted from the colonialists a culture specially created for them, which had been developing for decades among the nationalist diaspora in the United States and Canada, as well as in Western Ukraine. Now we will have to reap the fruits of these experiments on people.

Therefore, when the Russian Armed Forces began to take control of the eastern regions, the Ukrainians, who for eight years perceived the image of Russia as an enemy, moved together westward in the hope of finding refuge in Europe. But now we are no longer talking about shuttle migration, but about a large-scale exodus of millions of people. And Europe was not ready for this. And this is just the beginning... Throughout all these years, the regime pursued a completely disastrous economic policy, combining it with absolutely fascist methods of working with the population, such as the adoption of a law on indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, the population in its mass continued to tacitly support him. Should we be surprised now? Soon Ukraine will face such dramatic changes that it makes no sense to predict anything yet.

Over the eight years of the existence of the regime, the consciousness of Ukrainians was formed with the help of materials of a very specific content, since all sources of information were blocked, except for local collaborators working for the money of either local oligarchs, or foreign offices such as the Soros Foundation and USAID. Of course, after eight years of such brainwashing, the layman does not understand at all why Russia wants to carry out denazification. After all, for him the Nazis existed and exist only on the pages of history books. And the purpose of the special operation in the form of denazification is simply absurd. Well, since for him there is no difference between Ukraine as a Motherland and the post-Maidan regime, he takes the position of Zelensky and his camarilla. Accordingly, until Kyiv falls, there can be no question of any understanding of what is happening.

In addition, the shock troops of the fascist bandits are composed of young people for whom the last eight years have been a period of adolescence. They were pumped up with propaganda at the tenderest age for the formation of consciousness.

At the same time, it is important to clarify that when they talk about Nazism in Ukraine in the Kremlin and on federal channels, then Nazis mean all those who wear Nazi symbols, engage in Nazi propaganda in social networks, distribute relevant literature, paraphernalia and goods, and commit racially motivated murders. and cultural hatred, is included in the corresponding groups, etc. That is, Nazism is presented as evil, but the ideology of Bandera is presented as the source of this evil. Thus, the reason is not sought in the institution of private property itself, the immanent properties of which give rise to inequality and fascism proper, which, by the way, were pointed out by such anti-fascists of the past as Bertolt Brecht, but in the fact that there is an insufficient fight against extremism.

If we proceed from the above position, then fascism can be fought endlessly. As I already pointed out in a previously published article “ The Left and the special operation of the Russian Federation”, the intellectual qualities of the current holy fools who call themselves anti-fascists cannot be compared with the qualities of anti-fascists and communists of the first half of the 20th century. Simply amazing intellectual poverty… After the end of World War II and the Great Patriotic War, anti-fascism had a much more concrete meaning, while today, after decades of bourgeois academic lies, there is no unified scientific view of fascism at all. Instead, there are many subjective interpretations, the authors of which argue with each other. Based on this, anyone can register themselves as anti-fascists. And I think that it depends only on us how long this situation will continue. And the sooner Marxists can take shape as a real political force after decades of disintegration, the sooner the world will be cured of capitalism, which means

In addition, it should be noted that there are many Nazis in the Russian Federation itself, from where many of them fled to the Ukrainian punitive battalions, fleeing criminal prosecution. And they don't talk about them at all. And if they do, it is extremely rare and few. Although recently one such material was published on RT under the title " The backbone of Azov is right-wing radicals”: ​​how neo-Nazis fled Russia and joined the Ukrainian army". A cursory review of the biography and statements of Hitler's current admirers allows us to conclude quite quickly that we are dealing with mentally ill individuals whose place is in psychiatric clinics. But if they are caught in the Russian Federation, then in Ukraine the local regime rewards them with state awards. For example, the Tornado battalion consisted entirely of those. Where such individuals come from for us, unlike others, is not a secret. The problem is not medical, but social. They are generated by capitalist existence itself. When a maniac simply comes and commits a massacre at school in order to take out his own inferiority complex on others, psychologists and psychiatrists comment on his behavior, but when the same maniac substantiates his murders with political considerations, he is called a Nazi and political scientists comment on his behavior.

As V. Podguzov noted in the article " Market and Fascism ":

“It was the victory of the market economy that was needed, so that in the Baltic countries and in Ukraine, the demonstrations of old and young fascists turned into almost a favorite spectacle of the native population. Now Russian journalists of democratic nationality, who have done everything necessary for the mass revival of the “Holocaust” bearers, i.e. fascists in the Russian Federation, with feigned indignation, conduct lengthy reports from Nazi covens or places of undermining people who tried to remove "posters of anti-Semitic content."

Was it possible to imagine, before the establishment of market relations in the USSR, that columns of national jerks with a swastika on their sleeves were marching on the streets of Moscow? This was absolutely out of the question. Now, the swastika on the sleeves and walls of the market Moscow is as common as the "non-independence" prostitutes on Tverskaya. Today, in all the media of the market-driven Russian Federation, the word “fascists” in the news has become as familiar as the word, for example, “precipitation” in weather forecasts.”

That is, in the field of the Russian media, the objective background of the emergence of fascism is objectively ignored - this is the market and capitalism.

Also earlier as a conclusion I noted:

“Certainly, there are forces in the Russian Federation whose coming to power could be a disaster for Russia. And I mean not only pro-Western fascists under the Navalny brand, there are other half-wits like Malofeev, Dugin and other obscurantists who dream of building some kind of “Russian world” and promoting this ideology. Moreover, both of them can come to power only through a coup, since the popularity among the masses of both is minimal. But no matter what kind of fascists come to power in the Russian Federation - pro-Western in the format of Navalny or local in the Dugin-Malofeevsky format - Russia is in for a catastrophe.”

Bourgeois Russia is not at all immune from the establishment of fascism, with all the ensuing consequences. Because it is impossible to abolish the objective laws of capitalism itself by this or that presidential decree. So far, the possibility of this is stopped only by the current political course. What will happen after - no one knows yet. Therefore, the only way that can guarantee the preservation of Russia is a return to the path of communism, which stops all the ways and "loopholes" for the emergence of fascism by eliminating capitalism itself. But back to Ukraine.

I will cite the statement of the adviser to the head of the Office of the President Mikhail Podolyak from the ArmyINFORM website. Let's see how he responds to the goals of the special operation named by Putin.

“Russian officials really believe that they are at war with the Nazis and nationalist battalions. This is some kind of surreal story that they themselves came up with. This is how Moscow justifies its aggressive terrorist actions in Ukraine, and the leaders of the invaders still do not understand that this is not “for sale” at all. It is not for sale anywhere except Russia itself, which they have disconnected from any information zone from the global information space. They turned themselves off, they drove themselves into the trap of an invented story, they themselves are at war with themselves. That is, they kill our people, but they fight with their fears.”

According to the adviser to the head of the President's Office, "we are fighting with them for the truth", for the fact that the world is completely different, for the fact that "Russian truth" does not exist, for the fact that there are no "Nazis". Apart from the Russian Federation itself, which uses fantastically bad technologies.

“Therefore, Ukraine wins on all fronts. Ukraine is supported by global peace, Ukraine is supported by civilization, and Ukraine is the most mobilized,” said Mykhailo Podolyak.

The Russian army is approaching Kyiv, the largest cities are surrounded by the RF Armed Forces, military infrastructure facilities are being destroyed by Russian "calibers", and the local air defense is destroyed, but the Armed Forces of Ukraine are winning on all fronts...

Indeed, well, do not expect that Zelensky, Podolyak, Arestovich and other scumbags like Poroshenko and Turchinov will sit in the dock and admit that they are Nazis. Of course, Podolyak is a politically illiterate idiot who is not the first to “refute” the information that a Nazi regime has been established in Ukraine. But his example is significant. Yes, and his job is such ... to talk about "great victories" on all fronts, while Zelensky once again denounces NATO for not wanting to fulfill its promises.

Therefore, one should not be surprised that ordinary Ukrainians do not understand when they talk about Nazism. They did not notice torchlight processions in Kyiv and other cities for eight years. Just as they don’t notice even now the “dead head” symbolism on the uniform of the fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Karbats, who took the population of Kharkov hostage, or on the fighters of Azov who dug in in Mariupol. The whole point is how to build an information policy in the state. When fascism becomes commonplace, the layman cannot recognize it, because the democrats over the years have been able to instill in the layman the idea that fascism and democracy are opposites.

You know, after so many years of almost total loneliness, I sometimes involuntarily catch myself thinking: maybe I'm wrong? Maybe there is no fascism in Ukraine? But if you know what fascism is not from the stories of bourgeois academic demagogues who have been unable to agree with each other for years, but are guided by Marxism, then all these thoughts will blow away like smoke. In such internal dialogues with oneself, one more understanding comes that the layman in the person of the consumer of the media products of the Western imperialist bourgeoisie, who for years turns a blind eye to the genocide of Donbass, is the main support of fascism not only in Ukraine.

The backbone of fascism is not armed militants at all, but such good-natured and friendly citizens who see these militants as their “defenders”. About the breed of such "kind people", or, as they say here, "Svidomo", I already wrote in a post about the author of the so-called " Stalingrad Madonna ”". These “good people” may not notice the bombings of the LDNR for years, but when the war comes to their doorstep, they spew curses at the same people of Donbass, whose suffering has not been noticed for years. No matter how much I spoke with such people, the reaction was always the same - aggressive behavior and screams. Like, LDNR is a sub-republic, something like the Taliban. They mocked and ridiculed Donetsk and Lugansk. At the same time, they were not at all embarrassed that the current regime came to power through a coup d'état with the support of "Western partners" and was being used by them in their own interests. Now the tradesman is horrified by the consequences of his "blindness". He wants punishment for Russia because it did not allow the destruction of the LDNR, not seeing the consequences of its own actions in what is happening. But after all, he, in the same way, for many years did not notice the suffering of the Syrian, Libyan, Afghan and many other peoples, where the US and NATO carried their democracy. The suffering of other peoples from the democratic experiments of the West does not interest them at all. For "good people" these are some savages living far away, because they do not have democracy. They don't want to pray for them. How about not praying? After all, Poroshenko even created a “truly Ukrainian” church, so that one could pray with the help of priests certified by the regime. At the same time, I remember that Arestovich once said that any Afghan collaborator who fled the country after the seizure of power by the Taliban is much more educated than the “average Ukrainian”, since he is much more adapted to life in Western society.

Nevertheless, I also met another position - isolationist, expressed in the desire to isolate oneself from the world and withdraw into one's beloved farm. I have heard, they say, what do I care about Libya? The unwillingness to understand that Ukraine is only part of the global struggle against Western hegemony, and the focus on the fact that Russia is to blame for everything, allow us to abstract from the cause of what is happening wonderfully. But they lead to the same thing - the support of the same collaborators in Belarus and Russia. And they say that there is no fascism in Ukraine... It exists. But not Ukrainian, but American. Local collaborators at one time tried to follow the canons of Germany and Italy, and the current ones rely on the West, which will help them.

Once I wrote a comment under one of the articles on the Breakthrough website, and then one of my comrades even made it a separate post on Vkontakte. Then I tried to briefly describe the portrait of the inhabitant of our days, brought up on the values ​​of the Kyiv regime. I think it is useful to quote this quote now:

“Attempts to appeal to the mind of the philistines who think like the bourgeois, but for the most part will never become one, are useless. Attempts to discuss communism with the townsfolk immediately run into a set of clichés of bourgeois propaganda about China, North Korea, and Cuba. This is especially true of the younger generation, who, having been raised with a consumer psychology, do not want to think about any changes at all. Instagram, a warm bed, a cup of coffee, conveniences at arm's length and mobile services are their values. And the fact that while you are sipping a cappuccino in a warm office, real fascists are walking outside the window is only a reason for jokes. Moreover, it is worth noting that the townsfolk who joke in bewilderment about fascism in Ukraine are themselves the same fascists. But passive. They are nice, nice and polite people, who will transfer the old woman across the road and observe external propriety. But they are horrified by the idea of ​​eliminating the world familiar to them. It is impossible to prove or substantiate anything to them, because, as they say themselves, a theory is a theory, and life is completely different. After all, they themselves know what socialism is and that any attempt to build it will lead straight to the DPRK. They call China and North Korea, even Lukashenka's Belarus "cannibalistic systems", but justify the war against the people of Donbass. About May 2 in the Odessa House of Trade Unions and the bombing of Luhansk, I generally keep quiet. Therefore, I emphasize once again that trying to somehow convince the modern layman, for whom the most important thing is his personal little world, from which he sometimes, snatching something at a sale, experiences ecstasy, is a senseless undertaking.

In fact, it is amazing to watch how the Western bourgeoisie, when working with the local proletariat, was able to achieve such a level of detachment of its consciousness from reality that people, in contact with it, do not understand what is happening. Moreover, when I speak of misunderstanding, I do not mean at all a lack of knowledge of the actors and circumstances of the political process, but a misunderstanding of the objective reasons, the background of everything that we daily observe in the media. That is why I began to write a series of articles "The New Cold War and the Tasks of Communism." The price of ignorance is extremely cruel. And as I said, many will have to pay for it. Some even life. Bourgeois Ukraine, which has existed since 1991, will soon be gone. And what will happen instead of it is still unclear. All this only causes bitterness among the Ukrainians.

The exasperation leads to the fact that both “Svidomites” with experience and those who have just “got clear” after February 24 continue to curse Russia for their problems, but I have repeatedly said and continue to say that what is happening is not the work of Russia and not Putin at all , and a consequence of the coup in February 2014. Well, if you recognized the post-Maidan regime with its European and American patrons, turned a blind eye to the burning of people alive in the Odessa House of Trade Unions, then you simply have no moral right to complain about life. Moreover, those who “got clear” can be not only frankly of Nazi views, but also leftists who criticize the actions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. Here it is especially clearly observed that the left ones are the same right ones, only in profile. But among the latter, instead of bitterness, there is an impulse of pacifism to end the war and bloodshed. Which can only be interpreted as a defense of the Kyiv regime and its policies. I have long abandoned the division of people according to political views into left and right, but I continue to do this in my texts so that readers better understand what I mean.

This regime, with full approval, and therefore due to the ignorance of millions of Ukrainians, has been consistently destroying the country for eight years and turning them into hostages of international creditors and local oligarchs. Why then should I feel sorry for those who do not want to feel sorry for themselves and want to be a slave of terrorists in the service of international usurers? After all, a slave who defends his slavish slavery is an even more cruel enemy than the slave owner who owns it.

The Western empire calls its power freedom and calls on other peoples to submit to it, bringing up traitors in different countries year after year, which it presents as "heroes" and brings up "patriots" who, with a good combination of circumstances, can be used to seize power. Fighting for such "freedom", the peoples fall into the slavery of American capital, an example of which can be clearly seen in Ukraine. It is precisely such slaves that the local regime grows up, which identify the struggle for slavery with the struggle for freedom. It is these slaves who are ready to destroy their own fellow tribesmen. After all, the Euromaidan, the subsequent coup d'etat and the war against the LDNR - this is one continuous act of betrayal and the transformation of Ukraine into a Western reservation. That is why "good people" do not see the genocide of the people of Donbass, because for them these are not even former fellow citizens, but “cotton wool”, “cattle”, “colorados”, “descendants of convicts”, to whom the corresponding attitude was developed long before 2014. And now, it would seem, after February 24, a real opportunity presented itself to show their "patriotism" - to take up arms and go to defend their "native Ukraine" from the hated "Muscovites" and "cotton wool". But no. Millions moved abroad, to Europe. And it is extremely unlikely that they will return to the country given the current circumstances. I do not rule out that some of them will try to express their anger at the Russians living in Europe. By the way, the latter already receive (https://t.me/boris_rozhin/33173 ) phone threats. And those who remained in Ukraine are screaming that because of Putin, “our children cannot sleep peacefully in cribs.” So what? Should have thought ahead.

By the way, as the same Podolyak writes on Twitter:

“The Russians have turned our children into 'children of war'. Those who sleep in basements, who are constantly under rocket fire, who see how armed invaders rob, shoot, loot. My seven year old son sees the war like in the picture. Now ALL of this is in the memory of our children.”

I, perhaps, will not cease to be amazed by the thinking of these scumbags, who sentimentally whimper about their “little children” and at the same time continue to lie and not notice the conditions in which the children of Donbass had to live. The Russian military and the military of the LDNR do not loot. And in the cities that have been liberated from the power of the Kyiv regime, peace and order are being established, humanitarian aid is being distributed, and humanitarian corridors are being created. Whereas in cities under the rule of the Nazis, the population is robbed and killed without trial or investigation when trying to break through to safe territory. Even now, as the territories of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the Armed Forces of the LDNR are being liberated, one can see numerous torture chambers where the Karbats kept their prisoners and treated them worse than animals. In particular, in the village of Polovinkino, Starobelsky district of the LPR, on the territory of a sausage factory,concentration camp of the Aidar battalion, where local residents and militias were kept.

Maybe Podolyak has already forgotten, but I will remind you what the previous leader Poroshenko said about how Kyiv would win the war and how the children of Donbass would sit in basements and not go to school:

“We will have a job – they don’t have it. We will have pensions - they don't have them. We will have the support of people - children and pensioners - they will not have it. Our children will go to schools and kindergartens, and they will sit in their basements. Because they can't do anything! That's how, that's how we're going to win this war."

It's funny, but the fascist dump StopFake even released a whole material, dedicated to the refutation of the plot of the Russian Channel One about what Poroshenko said in that very speech during a speech in Odessa. They write that, they say, Poroshenko's words were taken out of context and even paid attention to the incorrect translation into Russian from Ukrainian. But it's not about translation and not about incorrectly cut quotes. The majority of the people of Donbass did not support the coup in Kyiv, which Turchynov, and then Poroshenko himself, intended to impose on him by force, through the so-called "anti-terrorist operation." Whereas in reality the anti-terrorist operation had to be carried out even before the Euromaidan arose, well, or when the fighting took place in the center of Kyiv. Therefore, this “refutation” does not change anything, since in reality we are talking about the rejection by Donbass of proteges of the United States and Europe. But even this obvious fact is ignored by the consciousness of ordinary "patriots". After all, of course, from their point of view, Donbass itself is guilty of its own fate. It's so funny when people who call themselves democrats and support the Kyiv regime, just as they refused to listen to Donbass in the early days of the ATO, refuse to listen now. But now for the years of "deafness" and "blindness" will have to pay well.

After the coup d'état, the people of Kiev led a normal life for eight years, and the war with murders for most of them was somewhere far away. They read about her daily, but did not come face to face. Now, after the Russian troops gradually began to surround the city, they found themselves in a depressed mood. It is one thing to believe in fairy tales about how the Ukrainian army holds back the raids of the “Rusnya”, and it is quite another thing to understand that Russian troops are slowly and unhurriedly pulling equipment to the capital. But just imagine what kind of “phase shift” will happen to those who believe in the victory of the Armed Forces of Ukraine if the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the LDNR really bring the special operation to an end, and scum like Poroshenko, Turchinov, Zelensky, Parubiy and many others go to trial? It will be an extremely entertaining sight. When the special operation is over, there will be a scrapping of the whole picture of the world, over which the local regime has been working for eight years. And that's when the fun begins.

K. Kievsky
27/03/2022

https://prorivists.org/67_ukranalism/

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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Сolonelcassad
🇬🇧🇺🇦 The battle for Bakhmut: the situation is on
the way out on August 12, 2022

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▪️At the beginning of the month, Wagner PMC units managed to break through the defenses on the outskirts of the city and reach the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut (Artemovsk).

▪️The advancing units managed to gain a foothold in the city in the area of ​​​​Patrice Lulumba Street, however, further advancement is complicated by the defense in depth of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and minefields.

▪️A large number of industrial zones and enterprises are located in Bakhmut , where Ukrainian formations have already placed defense units. In the future, this will prevent the rapid assault of the city as you move deeper into the building.

▪️Artillery of the allied forces regularly strikes at targets identified by means of objective control. The suppression of firing points and artillery positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will reduce losses during the offensive.

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Сolonelcassad
🇬🇧🇺🇦 The battle for Marinka: the situation is on
the way out on August 12, 2022

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▪️At the end of July, the allied forces launched an offensive against Marinka.

The front line in this suburb of Donetsk has remained virtually unchanged since 2014: for 8 years, the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to equip a layered defense with strong points in the area.

▪️The attack on a well-fortified line came as a surprise to the Ukrainian command.

Therefore, already in the first days, the units of the NM DPR managed to seize positions near the ventilation shaft of the Shchurovka mine.

▪️After a week of fighting, by August 8, fighters of the allied forces knocked out the Ukrainian formations from the dominant height on the waste heap of the Shchurovka mine.

For the next few days, fighting continued for farms on the southern outskirts of the settlement, which also came under the control of the NM DPR.

▪️In connection with the breakthrough of the defense and heavy casualties from dense artillery fire, the Ukrainian command was forced to transfer reserves to the front.

At the moment, the front line runs through the center of the village to the east of Druzhby Avenue, where fighting is ongoing.

▪️The local population has actually left Marinka, so the allied forces continue to inflict massive fire damage on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and suitable reserves.

Promotion in the village comes after the suppression of firing points: this affects the pace, but can significantly reduce human losses.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:12 pm

Beyond Peski
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/14/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

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Original Article: Alexander Kots / Komsomolskaya Pravda

If the eight-year siege of Donetsk were the mouth of a beast, Peski would be its sharpest fang, the one that can rend the heart of Donbass. This place, once a prestigious area of ​​the regional center, has become synonymous with the deadly threat that has been taking its toll on Donbass civilians for the last eight years. From here, practically on the outskirts of Donetsk, the capital of the DPR could be constantly bombarded. The town was considered by the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a springboard for a possible assault on Donetsk. In the event of a serious frontal attack, it is only about fifteen minutes by tank from the airport to the center of Donetsk.

Try to imagine this invisible sense of constant danger that children have grown up with and gone to school with; the sounds of explosions, which have become a familiar environment; the daily news of damage… Today [yesterday Saturday], all those people have been able to breathe a little easier. There is one less threat. And the fact that it happened in such a casual way, a short line in the report from the front of the Ministry of Defense, I still can't believe it.

Taking Peski not only has a therapeutic psychological effect. From here, it is possible to develop an offensive both in the direction of Karlovka, advancing meter by meter towards the western borders of the DPR, and to the north, towards Vodianoe, which is one of the keys around Avdeevka. Occupying that town would seriously complicate the opponent's logistics.

For the past few days, I have been working in the Peski area, watching the DPR 11th Regiment and the Somali tank battalion [ Givi's battalion, which survived despite the death of its charismatic commander] seize the village from the enemy. street to street In a dense urban battle, shock troops swept from house to house and artillery hit the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tens of meters from our troops. Tanks were hit both by direct fire and from above. In the latter case, the tanks do the artillery job, but it is less vulnerable to the counter-battery systems that its Western partners have supplied to Ukraine.

A multi-ton machine emerges from its hiding place and follows the intended route. It is placed in the positions in front of Peski. Three volleys and he retreats into the dense forest, where the equipment is hidden for now.

“What are the tasks you are working on now?” I ask Sukhoi , commander of the 11th Regiment.

“We are working on the planned objectives, from where the enemy is adjusting. That's the main thing for us now. He's adjusting on our infantry, our firing points. We have to destroy the positions”.

“The distance is wide to the enemy. How does it work?"

“We have experience, we have been instructed, we know how to attack. Now the targets are no longer in Peski, but in Pervomaiskoe, the next town.”

"Have you been fighting long?"

"Since 2015."

"What did you do before the war?"

“I was studying”.

"Are tanks a serious threat to the enemy?"

“I recently saw a video in which the Ucros were asked: what is the most terrible weapon for you? And they answer: the worst is when a tank works. Because he sees you. The tank works in most cases by direct fire. At first it was very difficult. We studied and learned already in the battles. Before we were preparing for one thing, but it has turned out to be something completely different. And as a result of events, we moved forward. We advance and study more and more. When you started the first line of defense the first time, then the second, now the third, the fourth, it gets easier and you understand the enemy better: how he will act, what he will do. He can be pressured or he can crush you.”

“Are all the tankers local?”

"No no all. There are those who are from Donbass, others from Ukraine.

“And who is from Ukraine?”

“I, for example, am from Yitomir.

"How did you get here?"

“In 2014, my parents came to fight here. I was there, I was 17 years old, I was a crazy young man, I jumped like everyone else. I jumped, I jumped, but then I started talking to my parents and they told me: this happens here, that happens. They told something completely different from what was seen on television. They had eaten every last dog, bombed themselves and so on. So I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and left those friends of mine who are now in the Praviy Sektor, in Azov, who used to be ultras and who are now warriors. They call me and wish me happiness and health .”

"Would you like to greet them?"

“Comrades, we will see you soon. I hope we meet. See you soon".

"In what year did you come from Yitomir?"

“In 2015. I immediately joined the tankers. He was an operator in the 9th Regiment at the time. In the area in the direction of Mariupol”.

"Why tanks, is it because of some civilian specialization?"

“No, it's not for any of that. I liked it and decided to try it. I sat in the position, tried. Now I am stronger, but then I was weak, skinny. They gave me the uniform and it was too big for me. I was in the tank and my uniform was riding up my neck. I was nervous, very nervous. But with the first shot I realized: this is it, I will be here. Since then I am not interested in infantry or artillery.

The tank expelled clouds of diesel smoke and rushed to its firing positions to dismantle the fortified area of ​​Pervomaiskoe to ensure the advance of our troops.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/14/mas-a ... more-25276

Google Translator

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Mariupol today. Restoration, construction and life
August 13, 19:27

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Mariupol today. Restoration, construction and life.
What happens in Mariupol after the liberation and how is the process of rebuilding the city after fierce fighting.



https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7799062.html

Benefits for obtaining a temporary residence permit and a residence permit in the Russian Federation for residents of the LDNR and Ukraine
August 14, 8:29 am

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Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation on current benefits for residents of the LDNR and Ukraine to obtain a temporary residence permit and a residence permit in the Russian Federation.

Citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as Ukraine, from July 14 will be able to obtain a temporary residence permit (TRP) and a residence permit (RP) in Russia without passing exams on knowledge of the Russian language, history and fundamentals of the country's legislation.

“From July 14, 2022 ... citizens of these states are exempted from confirming their knowledge of the Russian language, knowledge of the history of Russia and the fundamentals of the legislation of the Russian Federation when applying for a temporary residence permit or residence permit ,” the press center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs told TASS Russia in response to an agency request.

It is also noted that, in accordance with the law, Ukrainians have the right to apply for a TRP without taking into account the quota.
The necessary documents are established by the administrative regulations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. An application for the issuance of a TRP is considered within 60 days, a residence permit - up to four months.

Earlier, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Ivan Nechaev commented on the statement of Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk about the work on introducing criminal liability for obtaining a Russian passport.

https://russian.rt.com/russia/news/1036 ... zh-ukraina - zinc

I remember how in 2015-2017 this was a huge problem for immigrants from Ukraine, when obtaining these pieces of paper was by no means an easy task.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7799356.html

Trip to Mariupol
August 14, 11:23

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A trip to Mariupol

An interesting video showing the realities of a trip to Mariupol from the border. It is easy to see how, as you approach the city, the roads become more and more shabby, and the scale of destruction around gradually increases.



https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7799872.html

Iran to supply Russia with 1,000 drones
August 14, 12:23 p.m

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Iran to supply Russia with 1,000 drones

Well-known Middle East analyst Elijah Magier (specializes in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Palestine), well informed about the activities of the Shiite Axis of Resistance (a conglomerate of pro-Iranian groups in the above countries), citing his sources in Tehran, reports https://ejmagnier .com/2022/08/13/russia-buys-1000-drones-from-iran-and-expands-the-level-of-strategic-cooperation/ , that Russia has already concluded agreements with Iran on the supply of 1000 drones to Russia strike drones of the Shahed 129 type (the Shahed 191 was also previously reported - I believe that we are talking about 1000 drones of various types), capable of staying in the air for more than a day and capable of acting both as strike platforms and as effective spotters for artillery and missile systems).

According to Magier, Iran has already transferred to Russia a special simulator for training operators of these types of drones, as well as several machines. He also states that the first of them are already taking part in hostilities in Ukraine.

The Iranians consider the fact of such a deal as recognition of the progress of their defense industry, which, despite the most severe technological sanctions, was able to achieve significant success in the development and production of drones, ballistic missiles and air defense systems, bringing Iran into the ranks of world leaders in these areas.

Iran also regards such agreements as the actual implementation of the lifting of UN weapons sanctions (cancelled in the fall of 2021 despite US protests), which allows Iran to freely and legally sell and buy modern weapons.

Officially, Russia and Iran did not confirm the sale of drones in any way, nor did American statements that Russia would supply modern Su-35 fighter jets to Iran, which had not previously been delivered to Egypt. In aviation (unlike drones), Iran lags far behind the world leaders, so the supply of modern aircraft from Russia is seen as an excellent opportunity to seriously enhance the capabilities of Iranian air defense, complementing the modern air defense systems of its own production.

We are waiting for photos / videos from the front. If they are already delivered, sooner or later they will surface.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7800138.html

Google Translator

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How Britain Fueled Ukraine’s War Machine and Invited Direct Conflict with Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 13, 2022
TJ Coles

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UK Chief of the General Staff Gen. Patrick Sanders visited Ukrainian soldiers training in the UK, July 2022

Britain has played a key role in NATO forward troop deployments and training exercises on Russia’s borders. With war underway, the UK sends billions in arms, special forces, and volunteers to ensure escalation.


In an effort to evade his domestic woes, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who may soon be replaced—has spent much time toing and froing to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the buffoonish British PM as one of Ukraine’s closest allies. If and when Johnson leaves office, he is tipped for a role as Ukraine Envoy.

The Johnson-Zelenskyy relationship contrasts sharply with Zelenskyy’s experiences with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has warned the European Union (EU) and the US not to “humiliate” Russian President Putin and instead to seek diplomatic over military solutions to the conflict.

But Johnson’s pastiche of Churchillian resolve has deeper roots in the Anglo-American alliance when it comes to Ukraine, and is heavily informed by Britain’s membership of the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His impulses are also dictated by Britain’s post-World War Two-era role in the global order: to serve the interests of the US state. From 2015 to this year, the UK has trained over 22,000 Ukrainian military personnel as part of the Maritime Training Initiative and Operation Orbital.

The UK pushes Ukraine as a gateway to NATO

In my book Britain’s Secret Wars, I documented how the UK spent years training the Ukrainian military, long before the 2014 coup, and even when the Ukrainian military was under the command of Russian-oriented governments.

“We believe that Ukraine, as a European country, should have the right, under existing treaties, to join the EU once it has fulfilled the criteria for accession.” These are the words spoken in 2011 by Leigh Turner, Ambassador to Austria and the UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Turner went on to say: “I’ve actually spent several chunks of my career in and around Central and Eastern Europe, starting off with a year in 1980 as a civil servant at the headquarters of the British Northern Army Group in Rheindahlen in Germany.”

Turner continued: “We always used to joke nervously that this would be the target of the first Soviet tactical nuclear missile to launch hostilities in Europe.” Nothing quite puts you in the mood for political work like a few wisecracks about the apocalypse. Turner said that the UK should continue to focus on Ukraine as a weapon against Russia: “Ukraine could have a big demonstration effect in the region. Indeed, there is an argument that a successful Ukraine could be a swing-state for the whole of the FSU [former Soviet Union].”

“Conversely, if Ukraine fails, it would be easy for unelected or undemocratic leaders in the region to claim that ‘western’ style governance has no place around here.” Turner and his colleagues hoped that they could nudge Yanukovych in the pro-Western direction. “Before the election of President Yanukovych, he was often depicted as being ‘pro-Russian’. This is too simple,” Turner explained before laying out the economic “reforms” being undertaken.

To quicken the process, Turner saw the UK’s role as Ukraine’s gateway to NATO: to establish Ukraine as a NATO proxy but without giving it the benefits and collective protection guarantees of NATO members. As he said, “There’s a lot the UK can continue to do to work closely with Ukraine to help its armed forces to reform and to make them more capable of integrating into, and working with, NATO forces.”

British proposals included appointing a special Defense Adviser, providing language training, and naval integration. Turner’s follow-up statement, also in 2011, noted that 17 staff and students from the UK Royal College of Defence Studies visited Ukraine, while 20 personnel from the Ukrainian National Defense University came to Britain. As part of so-called Partnership for Peace programmes, British paratroopers trained their Ukrainian counterparts.

But according to John Kampfner, this was not enough. “When Russia invaded Donbas and annexed Ukraine in 2014, the UK was happy to fall in behind efforts by France and Germany to negotiate a settlement with Moscow and Kyiv under the Normandy Format, which ultimately failed,” writes the journalist and author, who neglects to mention why the negotiations failed. Kampfner is now Executive Director of the UK in the World Programme: a project of the Royal Institute for International Affairs think tank that seeks to formulate Britain’s neocolonial doctrines.

A House of Commons research briefing states that, at the time, the EU’s major powers, France and Germany, opposed sending military equipment to Ukraine. This was in contrast to the US position under US President Barack Obama. Britain bolstered the US position while compromising with its European neighbors by sending so-called non-lethal equipment.

“Win-wins for NATO”

In 2015, Britain established Operation Orbital to train Ukrainian forces. From 2017 to 2020, various branches of the government, including the Foreign Office and Department for International Development (which later merged), spent over £30 million of taxpayers’ money on the so-called Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF). In addition to Orbital, the funds contributed to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.

The House of Commons research briefing says that a year later, Ukraine and Britain signed a Memorandum of Understanding to continue military training and arms exports. “In 2018 training teams consisting of Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel were deployed to deliver training to the Ukrainian Navy.” In late-2020, it was reported that 100 soldiers from the 3rd Rifles and 4th Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland (4 Scots) “are in Ukraine providing training to Ukrainian Force.”

In 2021, the UK pledged £1.7bn in financing to support the Ukrainian Naval Capabilities Enhancement Programme. In June of that year, the military contractor Babcock signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding with the UK and Ukrainian governments to regenerate Ukraine’s naval ports. “Babcock will be supported by several other companies with a strong UK presence, including MBDA, Thales, and Royal Haskoning DHV.”

In August 2021, Soldier magazine reported that British forces had “been training with their Ukrainian counterparts as part of a multinational package that also involved Canadian, US and Swedish personnel.” The 400 person battle group mainly consisted of personnel from 4 Scots who were deployed to Ukraine “with the aim of developing mutual relations, joint planning and battalion and tactical operations.” The report notes how personnel practiced live-fire drills with Ukraine’s 54th Mechanized Brigade, “which has completed multiple tours in the volatile Donbas region.”

Commenting on Exercise Cossack Mace, Lt. Col. Alasdair Hempenstall of 4 Scots said of his men: “They have learnt how the Ukrainians operate from a military perspective, as well as experiencing a taste of their culture and heritage.”

A British Army Review publication from summer 2021 states: “Ukraine and Estonia have evolved more from support to (UK) Operations ORBITAL and CABRIT”, the UK deployment to Estonia as part of NATO’s Forward Presence. “These are also win-wins for NATO, which is coming neatly into alignment.”

Lt. Col. Glen Grant (ret.) is a Riga (Latvia)-based British military advisor in Ukraine and graduate of various institutions, including the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. A Northern Ireland war veteran (i.e., counterinsurgency specialist) and military-intelligence operative in 1990s’ Bosnia and Iraq, Grant has advised most of the militaries of Eastern Europe/the Baltic and Balkans regions.

Consider the background: In the 2010s, the US Agency for International Development – the State Department’s privatization and astroturf wing – helped Ukraine’s so-called Democratic Alliance; one of many groups pushing for pro-Western “reforms” and an entity prominent in the Euromaidan protests that escalated into the 2013-14 coup. One prominent Democratic Alliance leader was politician and advisor Victor Andrusiv, who went on to lead an entity called the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIF), founded by figures like ex-military officer and businessman, Anatoliy Amelin, founder of one of Ukraine’s largest investment companies, Altani Capital.

Another UIF founder, Taras Berezovets, is a graduate of Britain’s Royal College of Defence Studies who became head of the UIF’s National Security and Defense section. The late Oleksiy Skrypnyk was Deputy Chairman of the Permanent Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, who during the Trump years successfully “lobbied the United States to supply Ukraine with sophisticated Javelin anti-tank missiles.”

Lt. Col. Grant works as a security and defense expert at the UIF, “where he is supporting the Parliamentary Defence Committee” and leads military volunteers and army officers. Grant is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Statecraft (IfS): the notorious military-intelligence front organization set up in 2005 and registered to a derelict-looking mill in Scotland. As has been well-documented elsewhere, the IfS spun out a British Foreign Office-funded organization called the Integrity Initiative, which created covert “clusters” of journalists, academics, and other anti-Russian influencers.

Earlier in 2022, the UK-led Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) completed its year-long tenure as NATO’s combat corps headquarters. Training teams later deployed to Estonia and Ukraine. The ARRC also partners with the Romanian-led Multinational Corps South-East.

This March, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that Britain deployed to Poland the Sky Sabre medium-range, anti-aircraft system, which consists of radar and trucks carrying missiles, including 100 personnel. Troops from the 16th Regiment Royal Artillery operate the weapon. Others from the Regiment have been at a base on Baker Barracks, Thorney Island (on the English Channel), ready to deploy to Poland. Starstreak, meanwhile, is described as a high velocity anti-craft missile, which was sent to Ukraine.

“Diplomacy is the only path,” UK Defense Secretary declares while promising escalation in Ukraine

In September 2021, MoD personnel met with the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU), a wing of the Ukrainian military providing the umbrella for notorious battalions of neo-Nazi activists and criminal elements. Operation Orbital’s Lt. Col. Andy Cox Deputy commander said: “We will start this work with the inclusion of NGU representatives in the training activities that are already being conducted by British instructors in some units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Classified in the UK, the information was posted on the NGU website, prompting denials from the MoD.

In February 2022, the Royal Welsh Battlegroup left its base in Germany to travel to Estonia as part of Operation Iron Surge, which included a convoy of Warrior infantry fighting vehicles and Challenger 2 main battle tanks. Other entities involved included the 1st Aviation Brigade Combat Team of the Army Air Corps. Britain’s daffy Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who later fell for a state secret-spilling prank, said: “Alongside our NATO Allies, we are deploying troops and assets on land, sea and air to bolster European defences in response to the build-up of Russian military forces on the border of Ukraine.” He added: “De-escalation and diplomacy remain the only path out of this situation,” as he continued to escalate the situation and quash efforts to negotiate a settlement.

Video-prank with British Defense Minister Ben Wallace

On March 17, 2022, Vovan and Lexus held a video conference with British Defense Minister Ben Wallace on behalf of Prime Minister of 🇺🇦Denis Shmyhal. Wait for the full version of the conversation in a few days on our channel. pic.twitter.com/siq9FYKvFE

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) March 23, 2022


Also in February, it was reported that a team of Special Air Service (SAS) veterans who had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq were receiving money funneled through an unnamed private company via an unnamed European country. Veterans include warrant officers, sergeants, corporals, and snipers who will reportedly kill Russian spotters. The veterans are expert Javelin and Stinger missile operators, suggesting that they training the Ukrainians how to use such weapons. In addition, the US Joint Special Operations Group and SAS reportedly have an evacuation plan for high-ranking politicians, including Zelenskyy.

A month later, four British soldiers went AWOL to fight Russians. This prompted an official ban on personnel traveling to Ukraine. In April, the UK hosted the Ukrainian delegation to the Salisbury Plain Training Area. Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister, Volodymyr Havrylo, witnessed the British Army’s 3rd Division and Royal Marines demonstrating “a range of equipment and options for further military support, including defensive missile systems and protected mobility vehicles.”

James Heappey, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defense, confirmed that 120 armored vehicles were being manufactured/sent to Ukraine and that Ukrainian forces would be trained to use them in the UK. Special Forces arrived in Obolon, Kyiv, to train the Ukrainian 112th Battalion in how to use NLAW anti-tank missiles. Later that month, it was alleged that around 20 sabotage experts from the SAS had arrived in Lviv, western Ukraine. The Mirror reported that a squadron of serving SAS troops in Poland trained Ukrainians in sabotage.

By May, Britain had sent Ukraine 4,000 NLAWs, an undisclosed number of Javelin missiles, 3,000 sets of body armor, 2,000 helmets, and 4,000 (presumably pairs of) boots. Thousands of grenades, claymore anti-personnel devices, heavy machine guns, high-velocity sniper rifles, and 66mm anti-tank weapons had been sent via NATO countries.

And by the end of that month, the UK taxpayer had forked out a stunning £2.8 billion to Ukraine in so-called aid programs and military equipment, including 6,500 anti-tank missiles.

In June, reservists from the UK’s 4th Battalion, Mercian Regiment, trained with the Lithuanian Army’s Iron Wolf Brigade. The 3,500-troop exercises included forces from 14 different countries, including Ukraine. The 1st Regiment Army Air Corps provided four Wildcat helicopters. Heappey, the Under-Secretary of State for Defense, said: “The UK plans to deploy 1,050 UK Service personnel to facilitate the training of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It is estimated that 900 of these will be responsible for the training aspect of the programme.”

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss encourages British citizens to fight in Ukraine

In October 2015, Foreign Policy reported: “When separatists started a war in eastern Ukraine, hundreds of Russians, Belarusians, and other foreigners came to Kiev’s defense. Now they’ve been abandoned.” Flash forward to the present, and the British government and elements of the media are openly encouraging volunteers to kill and die in Ukraine, even though young men are returning and warning others that they are being used for “suicide mission[s].”

In April, when asked by the BBC about British people volunteering in Ukraine, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, who is likely to replace Johnson as PM, said: “I do support that, and of course, that is something that people can make their own decisions about.” It was reported that Truss’s comments provoked Russia to put its nuclear weapons on high-alert.

Just did a quick screen-cap of the Liz Truss interview supporting Brits going to fight in Ukraine. #UkraineRussiaWar #RussiaUkraineWar #russianinvasion Perhaps some de-badged special forces? Just sayin’. pic.twitter.com/hW5sbfBN4u



— Todd J Harrison 🟠 #Socialist #GTTO #ProEU #Ally (@ToddJHarrison1) February 27, 2022


The Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, immediately contradicted Truss: “We’ve been very clear that it’s unlawful as well as unhelpful for UK military and for the UK population to start going towards Ukraine in that sense.” Johnson’s spokesperson said: “We currently advise against travelling to Ukraine.”

By June, a reported 20,000 volunteers were fighting in Ukraine, of whom 3,000 were British. Up to 80 percent pass through the Georgian Legion, which operates under Ukrainian command where the volunteers are supposedly vetted. “You’re more of a hindrance than a help,” says veteran Martin Dunwoody, who went to give humanitarian aid but ended up advising the inexperienced combat volunteers he encountered.

Former soldier Matthew Robinson travelled to Ukraine’s Yavoriv over the nearby Polish border in transport arranged by the International Legion. On March 9, the base was hit and 35 people killed, including three former British Special Forces operatives. Robinson trained and vetted volunteers. Ex-Royal Marine Scott Sibley died and volunteer Andrew Hill was captured and paraded on Russian TV. Aiden Aslin and ex-Royal Anglian soldier, Shaun Pinner, were captured and sentenced to death. Having fought ISIS on the side of Kurds, an alleged Conservative Councillor and city trader “Macer Gifford” (nom de guerre) went to fight in Ukraine.

Exclusive Interview by Graham Philips of Aiden Aslin, a British Mercenary fighting in Ukraine against Russia, Captured in Donbass, Mariupol

1/4 on the brutal war crimes committed by Ukrainian soldiers and AZOV Battalion against Russian prisoners of war pic.twitter.com/O2kXnhWM6k

— StarBoy 🥭 (@StarboyHK) April 19, 2022


Former Royal Navy engineer, “Curtis,” joined other foreign fighters via the base in Yavoriv, explaining: “There was absolutely no structure to it at all, nothing at all.” He fought in Irpin, near Kyiv City. “Most of the ex-serving, whether it’s Navy, Army, Marines, even the Air Force, some guys were there – they were within a decent age, 30 and above, but there were a lot of young guys who had never been in any serving military, had no military training at all, kind of Call of Duty-type people.” Curtis reckoned that over 20 Britons had already died in Ukraine: “We were using essentially supermarket radios, which are not at all decent for fighting with, Russians can listen to everything we were saying and it was highlighted many times.”

Anton Vybornyi, a British citizen and businessman, was pictured in Korczowa, Poland, on the border with Ukraine with his van full of military equipment. “It includes body armour” and his team, Alexei Kalmikov and Andrius Dargis. Vybornyi raised £25,000 to assist the volunteers.

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CONCLUSION: TRUTH IN THE RECORDS

As usual, government and military records reveal the opposite of statements by politicians and their media echo-chambers about the events that precipitated the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine.

A British House of Commons research briefing contains a timeline which notes that in February 2019, Ukraine’s constitution was amended to set its NATO membership application into motion. In June 2020, Ukraine was granted NATO Enhanced Opportunity Partner status. In September, President Zelenskyy adopted a National Security Strategy, which included provision for joining NATO.

In April 2021, Russia announced a troop build-up and exercises on the border. Notice the chronology. Later that month, Russia “re-deployed its forces back to their home bases.” In October of that year, the Ukrainian military used a drone in eastern Ukraine, “angering Russia.” After amassing troops on the border, Russia in December 2021 demanded security guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO. Putin then presented draft proposals to the United Nations Security Council. The House of Commons briefing makes no reference to Britain or America’s responses – or lack thereof – to the proposals. In January this year, US President Biden seemed to invite Russia’s invasion by referring to the impending events as a potential “incursion” not invasion, which Putin took to be a signal that the US would not react harshly.

Another House of Commons Library research briefing states: “Russia is seeking longer term security guarantees from the Alliance that Ukraine will not be admitted as a Member State and that NATO military infrastructure will not be deployed in the country.” The briefing paper also notes that NATO had escalated around Ukraine: “NATO allies have moved to shore up the defence of eastern Europe with the deployment of additional ships and fighter aircraft to the region.” The 2014-15 Minsk Agreements remain “largely unimplemented by both sides.”

The combination of hubris, intransigence and militarism reflected in these official UK documents helps explain how the stage was set for a mad confrontation between nuclear powers.

T.J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University’s Cognition Institute and the author of several books, the latest being We’ll Tell You What to Think: Wikipedia, Propaganda and the Making of Liberal Consensus.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... th-russia/

West Will Brush Ukraine Biolab Allegations Under the Carpet Just Like Those of Kosovo Organ Trafficking
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 13, 2022
Aleksandar Pavic

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Western narrative control kicks into overdrive to shift blame, whitewash culprits, or make sure inconvenient lines of questioning are never pursued.

In crisis after crisis, Western narrative control kicks into overdrive to shift blame, whitewash culprits, or make sure inconvenient lines of questioning are never pursued

Soon after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent descent on Taiwan, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, called out Nicholas Burns, America’s ambassador to China, for “keeping an embarrassed silence” regarding the “insolent stunt.”

The silence was quite a change from how vocal Burns had been a mere month prior at the World Peace Forum in Beijing, where he demanded that China stop relaying “Russian propaganda” by “accusing NATO of starting” the conflict in Ukraine. He used the opportunity to accuse the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson of “telling lies about American bioweapons labs, which do not exist in Ukraine.”

But that was then and this is now in the West’s ‘rules-based order’, where each occasion requires a new set of rules. Thus, it goes without saying that, for the time being, Burns will also keep an ‘embarrassed silence’ about another potentially tectonic event – the latest, even more damning statement regarding alleged US-run biolabs in Ukraine made by the Russian Defense Ministry on August 4. Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, said Moscow was assessing the possibility of US involvement in the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as investigating US-funded research of various other pathogens.

The reason for Burns’ silence is not difficult to guess – the serious allegations made in Kirillov’s presentation, if properly investigated and proven true, could serve as an indictment of what could be America’s use of Ukraine as a vast pathogen testing ground. And since the Western media mostly chose to ignore it, the ambassador was certainly not going to make a statement they would have to quote, drawing attention to the issue. And now that Twitter has suspended the Russian Foreign Ministry’s account for daring to quote key parts of Kirillov’s media presentation about the possible origins of Covid-19, Burns and company don’t have to say anything at all. If it’s memory-holed by the social media, then it’s as if it never happened.

That’s the modus operandi of the Western elites – it’s not the truth that matters, but successfully managing the narrative so that it doesn’t leave room for doubt in people’s minds. In other words, they think they can do whatever they want.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the post-Cold War Western formula announced during the heady days of the early 2000s, an era marked by another famous American political quote, Karl Rove’s “we’re an empire now and, when we act, we create our own reality.” As Tony Blair’s policy adviser, Robert Cooper, nonchalantly put it on the pages of The Guardian in April 2002: “The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the 19th century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.”

Two decades later, despite the rise of both China and Russia and the world’s inexorable evolution to multipolarity, imperial habits die hard – usually until they hit a wall of reality, as is currently happening in Ukraine and is bound to happen in Taiwan. But back to Burns for a moment. He’s far from new in enforcing double standards in the ‘jungle’. Before his present work on poking the Dragon regarding Taiwan, and the Bear regarding just about everything, he distinguished himself as a partisan and apologist of NATO’s illegal aggression against Serbia back in the 1990s, which resulted in Kosovo’s unilateral secession.

Meanwhile, in 2009, when he was the US under-secretary of state for political affairs, Burns explained to the media that the recognition of Pristina’s independence was in fact an expression of the US’ “interest in good relations with Serbia.” Will he, in due time, express himself similarly vis-à-vis China and Taiwan? Outside the West, it’s all still a jungle to Burns and his ilk, and the ‘natives’ are to be dealt with accordingly. So, in Burns-talk, Pelosi’s Taiwan sojourn and pledge of continuing US support for the island is actually a sign of America’s interest in good relations with China.

Another notable Anglo-American figure visible across the Kosovo-China-Ukraine crisis landscape is the Englishman Geoffrey Nice, who gained international notoriety as a prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), whose sole purpose was to shift the blame for the Western-inspired bloody breakup of that multinational country solely onto the Serbs. In addition to his selective prosecution of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic for ‘crimes against humanity’, Nice’s ICTY legacy also includes accusations of destroying evidence related to human organ trafficking in Kosovo.

Nice subsequently offered his legal services to former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, one of the main figures in not just the trafficking but the alleged “forcible extraction” of human organs of still-living, mostly Serb prisoners, as outlined in a stunning Council of Europe 2011 report, ‘Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo’. The report also cites anti-drug agencies of “at least five countries” as saying Thaci “exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics.” Nice’s subsequent attempt to discredit the report was, however, brilliantly dissected and exposed by American journalist Diana Johnstone as the latest attempt by a representative of “self-righteous Western democracies” to reserve the privileges of a “culture of impunity” exclusively for themselves and their clients. Of course, the clients in the ‘jungle’ still have to pay for the imperial ‘double standards’ umbrella, so in the end, Nice reportedly accused Thaci of owing him “almost a half a million euros” for his work for the Kosovo government.

Zakharova just recently more fully described the house of horrors over which Thaci allegedly presided: “Kosovo is the territory of ‘black’ transplantation. People were dissected alive, taking out internal organs for sale to those people in the West… In the West they stood in line for organ transplant operations. And they began to receive these organs when Kosovo turned into a terrible black hole in which people disappeared, who were not just killed, but killed to sell their internal organs.”

To paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt’s immortal words justifying US support for Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, they may be sons of b****es, but they’re the West’s sons of b****es.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... afficking/

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Ukraine Denies Possibility of Peace Talks With Russia

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President Vladimir Putin declared that Kiev, by moving away from the agreements reached during the dialogue in Turkey, brought the process to an impasse. Aug. 13, 2022. | Photo: Twitter: @Marianna9110

The Kremlin spokesman reported that Moscow sent the Zelensky government a draft agreement and would wait for a reply, which it has not received so far.

On Saturday, the advisor to the head of the Ukrainian president's office Mikhail Podoliak assured that his country lacks motivation to resume negotiations with Russia.

"The current talks with Moscow will mean only one thing, that Russia has won," the official referred in an interview with the Ukrainian publication Babel.

Podoliak added that Kiev holds a dialogue with the Russian authorities exclusively to solve the problem of the exchange of prisoners, as well as the bodies of the victims.



In this regard, he added that the talks at the headquarters level are restricted only to the humanitarian component, "there are no dialogues from the military-political point of view," he assured.

Earlier, Aleksander Darchiev, head of the North American department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that the U.S. government should convince Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to return to the negotiating table with Moscow.

The diplomat confirmed that such a decision by Washington would probably be the best way to end the conflict.

Also, in recent days, the Russian presidential spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that his country is still willing to establish peace negotiations with Ukraine.

The negotiation process between Moscow and Kiev started on February 28, four days after the beginning of the Russian military operation on Ukrainian territory. Thereafter, several meetings took place, the first of which were held in Belarus, until March 29, when a face-to-face round was held in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

At that meeting results were obtained to start the way towards a peace agreement, but days later it was rejected by the Ukrainian side.

President Vladimir Putin declared that Kiev, by moving away from the agreements reached during the dialogue in Turkey, brought the process to an impasse.

On April 20, the Kremlin spokesman reported that Moscow sent the Zelensky government a draft agreement and would wait for a reply, which it has not received so far.

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

Zelensky Proposes Extending Martial Law, General Mobilization

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File photo shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attending a press conference devoted to his two years in office in Kiev, Ukraine, May 20, 2021. | Photo: Sergey Starostenko/Xinhua

Published 12 August 2022

Two separate drafts on extending the martial law and general mobilization have been submitted to the parliament for consideration.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday proposed to the parliament to prolong the current martial law and general mobilization in the country for another 90 days, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

According to the parliament's website, two separate drafts on extending the martial law and general mobilization have been submitted to the parliament for consideration.

The Ukrainian parliament imposed a martial law after the start of the conflict with Russia on Feb. 24 and extended it three times since then.

The general mobilization of the population was introduced in Ukraine on Feb. 24 and was prolonged in May for another three months.

The laws on the martial law and general mobilization in Ukraine are due to expire on Aug. 23.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Zel ... -0015.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 15, 2022 2:10 pm

tighten the rope
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 15/08/2022

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For months, the shortage of weapons and the prayers to its foreign partners for more equipment and ammunition have been the basis of the Ukrainian discourse. The war had become an artillery war - in fact it had been since its inception in 2014 - and Russia's superiority in quantity and caliber delayed the inevitable: Ukraine's victory. The discourse had changed and the Russian troops were no longer spoken of as an inoperative army that would be defeated in two weeks, as would happen after the Russian withdrawal from kyiv and Chernigov. In those first weeks, Volodymyr Zelensky insisted on meeting with Vladimir Putin to show him "the state of his army." The Ukrainian failure to convert the Russian withdrawal from the northern front into victories on the southern or eastern fronts forced a change in war communications.

Although the Ukrainian victory remained inevitable, the temporary advancesof Russia in Mariupol and especially in Lugansk made it necessary to adapt the tactics, which began to focus on the superiority of Western weapons compared to Russian/Soviet ones. Temporarily, even the high number of casualties among the troops had to be exploited. Ukraine and its sympathetic press quickly moved from concealing any attempt to learn the level of Ukrainian casualties at the front to exaggerating the figures as an argument to highlight the need for more foreign assistance. Of course, the official narrative was still based on a supposedly proven superiority of the Ukrainian soldiers over the Russians, which would make the Ukrainian Armed Forces unstoppable if they were heavily armed with Western equipment.

This equipment began to arrive in large quantities and, together with the rest of the Russian or Ukrainian-made heavy equipment, gave certain results. Of course, in each of them, it was Western weapons that had achieved the achievement, a way, not only to publicize the successes of the material, but to demand that the flow of deliveries continue and increase.

In these months, Ukraine's destructive capacity has increased notably, not only because of the availability of more precise and larger caliber weapons, but also because of the very needs of the war, which as it progresses poses greater danger and greater destruction to both front sides. Based on constant bombardment, Ukraine achieved the Russian withdrawal from Snake Island, an uninhabited but strategic island when it comes to controlling maritime traffic in the Odessa region and potentially dangerous for Russian troops and the regions controlled by Russia in the event of to have a Ukrainian garrison armed with long-range missiles. Despite the triumphalism with which Ukraine received the Russian withdrawal - which was forced and not a gesture of goodwillas Moscow wanted to explain - and an operation to place a huge Ukrainian flag there and rescue a dog, Russia, which maintains control by fire, has managed to prevent any permanent military base from being installed there.

Zmeiny has not been the only success attributed to foreign arms. The constant attacks on weapons or ammunition depots - on occasions they have turned out to be civilian objects, such as the Alchevsk tram depot, which Ukraine presented as a great success - have produced spectacular images on both sides of the front, but the Western press has highlighted only the explosions that occurred in areas controlled by Russian troops. And sources like The Timesthey have wanted to see in the attack on an airfield in Crimea, which destroyed several aircraft, proof that Ukraine has even longer-range missiles than those officially announced. However, at the moment there is no proof of the participation of missiles in the attack, since the population of the region from the first moment claimed not to have heard the sound of approaching missiles.

Over these months, it has become clear that, armed with longer-range artillery, which it uses in combination with Russian-made artillery systems, Ukraine has acquired a greater destructive capacity, but it is also obvious that this is not has translated into a change in trend on the front. Russian advances are slow in Donbass, the main theater of this war, and non-existent in the south, but so are Ukrainian advances, despite trying to present the capture of an abandoned village in the Izium area as a great victory.

This Ukrainian attempt to present as an achievement any insignificant progress that can quickly be reversed shows a high probability that the war is heading for a phase of stalemate in which the parties have to risk great losses to achieve minimal progress. This is the case on the Kherson-Nikolaev front, where the Ukrainian troops could advance slightly, but at the cost of being exposed to Russian artillery. The same could happen to Russian troops if they tried to advance on Nikolaev, in whose surroundings they would be exposed to Ukrainian artillery (either Western-made or equally powerful Russian or Ukrainian-made artillery).

This situation condemns the war to continue with intensive use of artillery and long-range attacks on both sides of the front, with the guaranteed destruction of targets in both Nikolaev and Kherson, where British intelligence continues to claim that HIMARS attacks “ probably” have put out of use the two bridges through which Russia supplies the city, located on the right bank of the Dnieper River. That destructive capacity and the vulnerability of the Russian troops due to geographical causes are the main Ukrainian hope to recover Kherson, not by capture, but by Russian abandonment, a naive hope that in recent weeks has collided with the increase in Russian attacks in the direction of to Nikolayev.

What's more, the oft-announced Ukrainian offensive on Kherson, which would be recovered before the end of August (Ukraine needs a victory to exploit on Independence Day) is now being questioned even by the media most sympathetic to kyiv. If two weeks ago The Times published an extensive report on the southern front in which it stated that Russia was facing "a humiliating defeat", this last weekend, The Washington Post clarified that Ukraine does not have sufficient forces for a major counteroffensive on the southern front. However, even in this skepticism, the medium navigates between the demand for more weapons to counter the powerful Russia and the imminent defeat of those troops.

The article highlights the strategic importance of the eastern part of the region for Russia in ensuring Crimea's water supply. "In the first days after the invasion, Russian forces blew up a dam in the region's canal that had long angered Putin," the article states, referring to the barrier built by Ukraine to prevent water from entering the canal. that supplied water to the peninsula and its population. Ukraine was aware, it had been for years, of causing a catastrophe for agriculture in the region and great difficulties, not only for the Russian authorities, but for the population.

Like other media, The Washington Post assumes that Russian troops will fight for all territory east of the Dnieper, but gives Ukraine the benefit of the doubt in the case of Kherson, on the other side of the river. In a speech that seems directed not so much to narrate reality but to plead for more heavy weapons for Ukraine, it is the destruction capacity of Western weapons that can quickly achieve a unilateral Russian withdrawal from the city of Kherson. "I think the Russians will leave Kherson soon," the newspaper quoted Dmitri Alperovitch, one of the many think-tank employees, as saying.Americans more interested in presenting a story that guarantees more American weapons for Ukraine than in seeing the reality. Under current conditions, and with no diplomatic agreement in sight (Russia implicitly offered to withdraw from Kherson and southern Zaporozhie in March when negotiations broke down, partly due to Western pressure) and after almost six months of control over the territory, Russia is obliged to fight to maintain its presence in Kherson, the only Ukrainian regional capital in its power.

As has been seen on the front lines in recent months, Ukraine's destructive capacity does not guarantee victories in close-quarters battles, but it does succeed in inflicting damage on military and civilian infrastructure. In the absence of troops with which to advance on Kherson, Ukraine intends to destroy the necessary bridges for the supply - military, but also civil - of Kherson and in the absence of resources to advance on Energodar, (unlike Ukraine, Russia has not yet attacked the bridges over the Dnieper despite being key to sending weapons to the eastern front) kyiv is ready for a nuclear game that is causing great global concern.

That is, at least, what world leaders have tried to show this week, when they have demanded that Russia abandon the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, in the town of Energodar. Under Russian control since March, the situation has escalated now that September is approaching, in which Ukraine believes that Russia could disconnect the power plant from the Ukrainian electricity system, which would spell catastrophe for Ukraine's economy, which only a few weeks aspired -falsely- to export electricity to the European Union.

Ukraine, which in concert with its partners has been accusing Russia of nuclear terrorism for days, claimed on Sunday to be attacking "Russian soldiers firing at or from the nuclear power plant," thus in a dubiously veiled admission that it will use its artillery against a nuclear power plant. After more than a week of claiming that the increasingly constant artillery shelling of the plant and its surroundings are false flag attacks carried out by Russia against the territory under its control, Ukraine now adds an even more incredible twist: Ukraine attacks the Russian soldiers who fire from the plant, but who, in turn, are attacking the plant. Russia does not attack the Khmelnitsky or Rovno nuclear power plants, but rather the Energodar nuclear power plant, the only nuclear power plant located in the territory under its control, a nonsense with which Ukraine not only tries to guarantee that it continues to be supplied by the plant, but also that Russia leave that locality to gain access to the left bank of the Dnieper without a battle. For this, it seems to be willing to risk a nuclear incident, a dangerous game in which it has already shown that it has the support of its foreign partners, who have already discharged all responsibility for any possible incident on Russia.

Without confidence that those offensives that were predicted to be quick and successful will achieve their objectives and with the certainty that Western weapons only guarantee more destruction but not necessarily superiority on the front, Ukraine is now clinging to the tactic of tightening the rope to the unsustainable situation, a risk for our own and foreign troops, but, above all, for the civilian population on both sides of the front line. Even more so if Ukraine is willing to play with fire around Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/15/tensar-la-cuerda/

Google Translator

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Assistance to the 7th Brigade of the LPR Army
August 15, 11:08

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In the order of information support.

Assistance to the 7th brigade of the LPR army.

Last week, with your effective help, our modest team delivered cargo to artillerymen, tankers and medics of the 7th brigade of the NM LPR. Part of the cargo went to motorized rifle units.
We publish reports in the TG channel "Support Group for the Seventh Brigade" https://t.me/omsbr7 .

Over the past month, the brigade took a powerful fortification in the settlement. Berestyanoe in the DPR. At the end of July, parts of the brigade entered Soledar. Two battalions of Luhansk reservists, attached to the brigade, together with the "orchestra" and with the effective support of the brigade artillery, took the Uglegorsk TPP. In general, the brigade is engaged in heavy fighting in the Artyomovsky direction.

For these two months we have been fulfilling the requests of three units, but now we have reached the command of the brigade directly. Accordingly, the needs and "Wishlist" have grown significantly. I understand that you and I are not the Ministry of Defense and we will not be able to provide a full supply of the brigade. But still, I’ll write what we’re collecting for this time.

1. A large order from the medical service of the brigade - large and small operating (surgical) sets, electrocardiographs, defibrillators and laryngoscopes. This will take at least half of the collection. All of them would have left, but they had to curtail their appetites, otherwise we would not be able to help the rest.
They also have 5 bulletproof vests of class 5A, two plates of the third size for each. Doctors are a piece product, they run along the very front, they must be protected. Broniks are already in reserve for this order.

2. Order from brigade artillery for secure smartphones with artillery and topographic software. Immediately for everyone, from mortars and MLRS to self-propelled howitzers. Several dozen, I won’t say the exact number, because. Chipboard. They also - a batch of weather stations.

3. We were not able to purchase another repeater for the gunners of the 1st battery - they were not physically in the country, and it was necessary for their distance. We will try to close this debt. We also "owe" them several dozen batteries for portable radios. They were not available and the money went to other needs. Should be in stock this week.

4. We "owe" 15 more light anti-fragmentation bulletproof vests to tankers. We, in addition to regular armor from the Permyachka BZK, sent them several cases from the Ratnik 6b45. They promised to test one for resistance to small fragments. They will hang it on a bush and blow up the RGDshka nearby. If the result suits, then we will buy these armors quickly. They again ask for tank overalls and berets. Overalls just "burn", this is a consumable. Ask for headsets.

5. The brigade asks for the Cowboy BZK for the BTR and BMP mechanics. You need a huge amount, but there are simply no such quantities on the open market. We'll find a dozen or two for sure. We need binoculars, equipment for reconnaissance: knee pads, tactical gloves, unloading, pouches, incl. under the reset of stores. Who has available - you can safely send in kind.

6. From the sent periscopes, the fighters and commanders are completely delighted and ask for more.

I don’t even stutter about thermal imagers and quadrics.

Separate pain and separate order - reservists. You may have seen a video where the NSH of one of the reservist battalions talks about the hopeless darkness with the supply that they are trying to overcome. The video was recorded in the hope of shouting to the authorities, but humanitarian workers arbitrarily leaked it to the public. Now NSh rakes from the authorities in full. We are in contact with this battalion - this is one of those who took the Uglegorsk TPP. They really fight bare-assed. Rotten knapsacks, uniforms 8 sizes larger, mosquitoes, boots of different sizes per fighter and other charms of Luhansk mobilization. They have nothing at all and need everything - from uniforms and shoes to medicine, communications and armor. We will try to help them as much as we can.

I can describe the Wishlist and needs endlessly, but for now we will slow down on this.
Thanks to everyone who has helped and continues to help!

Contacts and details: (At link)

https://leon-spb67.livejournal.com/1482488.html - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7802357.html

Russia, China and the Challenge to American Hegemony
August 15, 9:05 am

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Reflection from Egypt on the topic of the transformation of the current world order from unipolar to multipolar.

Russia, China and the Challenge to American Hegemony

Moscow temporarily withdrew its nuclear facilities from US inspections under START-3, which was signed for five years until February 2026. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, this measure was resorted to as a result of Washington’s stubborn desire to implicitly achieve a restart of inspection activities on conditions that do not take into account existing realities, create unilateral advantages for the United States and actually deprive Moscow of the right to conduct inspections on American territory.

Due to sanctions, the airspace of Washington's allies is closed to Russian planes on which inspectors could fly. They de facto deprive Russia of the right to conduct inspections of military nuclear facilities in the United States. Consequently, the fulfillment of the obligation on mutual inspections stipulated by the treaty is not possible and creates unilateral advantages for Washington, with which Moscow cannot agree.

The treaty gives both sides the right to conduct agreed on-the-spot checks of the opposite side's strategic weapons. It provides for 18 inspections per year: 10 are conducted directly at ICBM bases, SLBM submarine bases and air bases, and the remaining 8 at ICBM loading sites, repair sites, storage sites, conversion or elimination sites, training sites and at test sites.

The parties are required to communicate any changes to said agreement. The exchange of information takes place twice a year (in March and September). The suspension of inspections jeopardizes nuclear arms control. It testifies to the escalation of tension, on the one hand, and raises many questions regarding global security, on the other.

The Russian position is connected with the current realities. First of all, we are talking about a special operation in Ukraine and the West's strategy to isolate Moscow. Russia drew sanctions against the West. It struck back at American and European interests, proved the ineffectiveness of restrictive measures and demonstrated the ability to circumvent them.

It is necessary to note one more important consequence of the Ukrainian crisis, which is directly related to global security and is based on mutual control over the defense power of the two largest nuclear powers. We are talking about plans to reduce nuclear weapons and other obligations set out in START-3. If one of the most important obligations of START-3 is violated during the military operation in Ukraine, this could lead to a nuclear confrontation, no matter who initiated the use of this destructive weapon.

Moscow's decision to suspend the admission of US inspectors to its nuclear military facilities and the impossibility of conducting inspections at US facilities opens the door for mutual accusations of violating the START-3 provisions. This reinforces mistrust between countries regarding the principle of nuclear deterrence. The Trump administration has previously accused Russia of violating the provisions of START-3 and the INF Treaty, from which the United States actually withdrew in August 2019.

In other words,the suspension of mutual inspections of US and Russian nuclear facilities, which account for 95% of all nuclear weapons in the world, concerns the whole world, and not just these countries. Any changes in the reduction of nuclear arsenals and means of delivery provide an opportunity for both countries to expand the production of new nuclear warheads, hypersonic missile systems with nuclear warheads or intercontinental ballistic missiles. The parties will not know about the locations of new weapons, which threatens to use these destructive weapons. The consequences will negatively affect not only the United States and Russia, but also the whole world.

The Russian decision is symbolic, but very important.Moscow, despite strong economic, military and propaganda pressure from Washington and its allies, takes a firm position, guided by its own interests. It has shown that it is still capable of delivering retaliatory strikes that shake both American and global security. They open the door to a revision of the principles of nuclear deterrence, including the restructuring of the international system as a whole. Moscow is challenging the hegemony of the United States, which has had great political influence and intervened in various world crises. America is losing its status as the number one power in the world, and other countries, in turn, are working hard to reduce the instruments of American hegemony.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly warned Washington and its allies that it will take retaliatory measures if the "one China" principle is violated and called for an end to provocative actions in Taiwan, but was ignored. Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi did visit the island. She supported local authorities and also promised to provide American weapons and protect Taiwan from China. Beijing criticized Pelosi's visit. He regarded it as support for the Taiwanese separatists, led by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which seeks to achieve independence for Taiwan, which threatens China's territorial integrity. Moreover, this is a violation of the agreements and a serious challenge to China's national security.

In response to Pelosi's provocative visit, China launched a massive military exercise near Taiwan, leading to a five-day blockade of the island. Beijing has ignored US calls to stop the exercises, as well as their false words about supporting the "one China" principle. The Chinese army will regularly conduct military exercises near Taiwan, which Washington considers a kind of simulation of an invasion of the island. Maneuvers take place in the air and at sea. Chinese forces use live ammunition, long-range missiles and military aircraft in Taiwanese airspace.

Beijing has made several decisions that will greatly affect Taiwan's economy and gradually isolate it from the world economy. It stopped imports from 2,600 Taiwanese companies, suspended Chinese investment in Taiwan and Taiwanese investment in mainland China, launched cyber attacks on important economic facilities on the island, blocked maritime trade, and conducted military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. These measures are aimed at stoking tensions between supporters of secession, on the one hand, and supporters of a peaceful dialogue with Beijing, on the other.

Taiwan's trade with mainland China amounted to $126 billion in 2021, while with the United States and European countries it did not exceed $38 billion. This shows the possible consequences that may arise from the imposition of sanctions by China against the island.
Beijing stopped military cooperation with the United States and contacts with American representatives under the maritime security mechanism. He also suspended talks with Washington on climate change and contacts in some areas, including problems with illegal immigration, drug control and cross-border crime . The decision of the Chinese authorities is a blow to Washington and opens the door for a reconsideration of relations. Beijing urges the United States to stop all official contact with Taiwan, stop irresponsible and erroneous statements, and take concrete action to preserve the common ground in China-US relations. Otherwise, the crisis will worsen, which will hurt both sides.

The Chinese position that the United States is fomenting tensions in the Taiwan Strait and should be punished for this stems from the need to counter American hegemony and the American propensity for irresponsible unilateral actions that undermine the foundations of international relations and provoke crises.

China and Russia are united in the policy of Washington, which does not take into account the rights and interests of others. They use every advantage they have individually or in joint coordination to counter the Americans. Moscow and Beijing stopped calling for the formation of a multipolar world, and began to take real action.

Of course, the US is not going to give up so easily. They will develop a response to prove that their global hegemony has not been shaken.. Time will tell which model will ultimately dominate the world - multipolar or unipolar. It is likely that the US will provoke many crises in order to involve China in major military conflicts. Then they will impose sanctions on him and deepen the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. Pelosi's visit to Taiwan suggests that the US is ready to abandon the "one China" principle. And the weekly deliveries of offensive weapons to Ukraine show another aspect of the policy of Washington and its European allies. They seek to exacerbate Moscow's and President Putin's predicament in Ukraine, as well as continue NATO expansion to Russia's borders . This is evidenced by the admission of Finland and Sweden to the alliance in record time.

US policy seems to have several directions. The Americans are challenging China's national security and integrity, are accelerating the development of artificial intelligence technologies in the civil and military fields, are increasing their military presence near the Taiwan Strait, are making deals with Taiwan for the supply of offensive weapons, are working to increase trade between Taiwan and Western countries to prevent Beijing isolate the island from the world economy.

What is happening between the three most powerful powers in the world is like a tennis match. Players take turns hitting until one of them wins.It will take some time. All signs point to the possibility of dramatic changes. The rest of the world should prepare for a new reality and new concepts, and maybe for large-scale military conflicts and confrontations that were not even close to the Ukrainian crisis.

(c) Hassan Abu Talib, consultant at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies

https://inosmi.ru/20220814/gegemoniya-255494103.html - zinc
https://acpss.ahram.org.eg/News/17576 .aspx# - Arabic original

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7802048.html

Google Translator

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GERMANY TO LOSE 240,000 JOBS AFTER GDP DECLINE
11 Aug 2022 , 5:38 pm .

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Germany could lose more than 265 billion dollars after the fall in GDP (Photo: Ipa News)

A study by the Research Institute for Employment (IAB) in Germany reveals that the German economy will lose more than 260 billion euros ($265 billion) in added value by 2030 due to unilateral European coercive measures against Russia. and high energy prices, which will have a negative impact on the labor market.

They project that Germany's price-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) will be 1.7% lower next year and there will be about 240,000 fewer people in employment, according to the recently published study.

The level of employment is expected to remain around this level until 2026, when the expansionary measures will gradually begin to offset the negative effects and lead to an increase of around 60 thousand people in paid employment in 2030.

The disastrous effects of the war, to which the Germanic country has openly joined, can currently be seen in the price of energy. So far they have shot up 160%, which directly affects the economy. The study details that Germany's economic output in 2023 would be almost 4% lower than it would have been without the conflict.

So far there seems to be nothing to reverse that decision. Germany has been one of the countries most affected by the absence of Russian energy.

https://misionverdad.com/alemania-perde ... so-del-pib

Google Translator

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On the slogan of the defeat of their government
№ 3/67, III.2022

Heraclitus, the founder of materialistic dialectics, at one time very aptly said that "you cannot enter the same water twice ".

Indeed, a scientist, knowing about the processes taking place in water, is perfectly aware of the limitations of the statement about “one and the same water”. But ordinary consciousness, which does not dissect objects, but is content with the external forms of their manifestation, does not know any restrictions, and therefore allows itself to judge by analogies in conditions where the analogy is incorrect.

The analogy is correct if the phenomenon, which we judge by analogy, obeys the same laws and is in a homogeneous environment.

The error of judgment by analogy is either different laws, or a different environment, different conditions for their work.

Events in Ukraine are taking place in fundamentally different conditions from the First World War . We entered the water in 1917 and significantly changed both the chemical composition of the water and further processes in this water. The concept of a general crisis of the capitalist formation is inextricably linked with revolutions in the 20th century. We cannot cut them out of our reality, we cannot cut them out of public consciousness, 1991 did not roll back the world political system to 1917 in every sense - it did not roll back either capitalism or the world communist movement to the original ones. The configuration of the fronts and the balance of forces have changed, the methods and means have changed both here and there. The communists have lost their positions among the proletariat in principle in the capitalist world, but have acquired several countries that are quite stable, albeit socialist and with reservations, but still countries that are heading for the first phase of communism and oppose the capitalist world. The capitalists lost the colonial system, having received the risks of getting out of control of certain segments of the exploitation system, but developed a system of transnational corporations (which is also risky, since the problem of exiting segments is stopped by an international maneuver, but does not solve it). But most importantly, the communists acquiredexperience and knowledge of building communism . People who conscientiously study Marxism and the history of building communism in the USSR know firmly and clearly how we will build it. We have experience in planning, experience in industrialization, experience in organizing education, healthcare, and social work.

This is something that the Bolshevik Party did not have in 1917. There was a very general idea of ​​how and what to do. The specifics were born "on the knee", through a series of trial and error.

Therefore, in the current situation, it is not enough to simply quote Lenin's works on imperialist wars.

About the slogan of the defeat of their government and the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil one.

What did Lenin mean when he said that the proletarians should wish their government to be defeated? Modern leftists understand this as "surrendering unilaterally" to any opponent in any conditions. But Lenin did not write about "any conditions." He wrote about the imperialist wars of the early 20th century, where no socialist states participated and could not participate, and where the communists were terrorized by bourgeois and feudal regimes in approximately the same way . Both in Russia and in Japan in 1904, the socialists were equally persecuted, and the battle for Manchuria and Korea could not give the communists anything .

Accordingly, the capture of Manchuria by Japan or Russia did not affect the proletarian in any way, except negatively. And in this situation, it was possible and necessary to demand the end of the war by any means, including defeat. Similarly, in 1914 - the proletarian in the war bore all the hardships, but neither the communists nor the proletarians themselves received anything. And in this case it was possible to give Germany and Austria-Hungary anything.

But this same position - the defeat of the fatherland for China in the situation of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 - was already absolutely wrong, although both the Kuomintang and Japan were equally imperialists and advocated the interests of the bourgeoisie. Because the Communist Party was active in the country, it had successes in the civil war with the Kuomintang and had great chances to win this war (which happened), and in this situation, the military defeat of the Kuomintang by Japanese imperialism automatically meant that the Communist Party, which had not yet won in China The Kuomintang, which has not captured all the resources of a huge country, having only Yanan and a couple of liberated regions behind it, will have to fight alone with meager resources against the most powerful colonial empire in Asia. Plus, there was the factor that as long as China was fighting, the Japanese imperialists did not dare to attack the USSR. In this way,the victory of one of the imperialist countries, the weaker one, is advantageous .

That is, the communists used the slogan about the defeat of their government in the imperialist war not absolutely , but to a limited extent - only in conditions when the victory of any imperialist did not give anything to the communists.

The second point - the slogan about the defeat of his government by Lenin was closely linked with the slogan about turning the imperialist war into a civil one. That is, Lenin saw three forms of an acceptable way out of the imperialist war for a communist:

- the defeat of one's own government for conditions when the proletariat cannot yet seize power in any country, and victory in the war is unprincipled;

- the taking of power by the proletariat in the belligerent countries, thus, the government is defeated, but from the enemy, not external, but internal, and the war ceases mutually between the revolutionary states;

- the seizure of power in one of the countries with the subsequent defeat of the bourgeoisie of the enemy (for example, such an attempt was made to “feel Europe with a bayonet”), in which case the proletariat of the country in which they could not make a revolution should actively advocate the surrender of their country to the revolutionary enemy army. As a palliative of this option, the Bolsheviks proposed a "peace without annexations and indemnities."

At present, in no capitalist country in the world, the proletariat has any real prospects for an early seizure of power. Therefore, the option with the defeat of the government from the revolution should be considered unrealistic.

It remains only to find out whether the defeat of the Russian Federation in the special operation gives anything to the proletariat and what gives the success of this special operation.

We have already mentioned that the denazification of Ukraine is objectively beneficial for the communists, while its demilitarization and exclusion from blocking with NATO objectively benefits the existing socialist states. Does the defeat of the Russian Federation give anything?

As already mentioned, there will be no rollback to the previous relations between the imperialists of the Russian Federation and the West, therefore, all the hardships of building autarky in the Russian Federation and reorienting imports / exports will still fall on the proletarian.

But the "blood tax" of the Russian proletarian so far pays very, very limited. If during the First World War 15 million people were mobilized in Russia, that is, about 9% of the total population, in Germany - 20%, and in France - 17%, now 150 thousand participants in a special operation are only 0.1%.

And what about the Ukrainian proletarian? The Ukrainian proletarian, yes, is suffering very significant losses. He sits under shelling from both sides, Ukrainian nationalists burn him in battles, not counting (they have already noted their stupidity, wasting the personnel of the “territorial defense” from among the nationalist-minded proletarian fools on attempts to pelt military equipment with bottles of gasoline). He lives from hand to mouth, he has nowhere and nothing to run to, and they don’t let him out, the Nazis hide behind him. But... what will he get after the withdrawal of Russian troops? Even greater, most reactionary Nazi terror, to which the special operation untied its hands, a devastated, but militarizing economy according to the precepts of Forer (guns instead of butter), hellish high cost. And most importantly, in this situation, the communists lose the prospect of legal work and, in general, the preservation of the life of an asset.

On the same scale, the Russian and Ukrainian proletarian is a petty-bourgeois in worldview, for the most part nationalist and even Nazi-minded, who has done absolutely nothing sensible for communism. This proletarian is now paying the price for his philistinism, for the destruction of socialism, for nationalism, conformism and apoliticality. For him, the grief and calamity of an armed conflict between bourgeois groups is a chance to understand, if not with a head, then with a hole in the backside, that capitalism is a war for interests alien to it. A chance for insight. And on the other - our comrades in Ukraine and fragments of the socialist camp, which were not crushed by capital: socialist China, socialist North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba.

In my opinion, the choice is obvious.

But not everyone. The same Semin asks: “If Kolchak or Denikin are at war with Petliura, then on which side should Lenin be?”, which commits a natural forgery.

It is only ideologically possible to compare Putin with Denikin, and modern Bandera with Petliura. As for the rest, Kolchak, and Denikin, and Petlyura, and Lenin were in fundamentally different circumstances than they are now.

The cardinal difference was that Lenin had:

— Party;

- Red Army;

— The Soviet state.

To cosplay Lenin without a party, an army, or a revolutionary state means plunging into mossy metaphysics.

Lenin could afford to fight with both at the same time. When Kornilov had 15 thousand, a little more than a division, and Petliura called two divisions of "Sicheviks" an army, the Red Army put up about 200 thousand active bayonets in the field. In such a situation, waiting for each other's enemies to weaken or focusing on defeating one of them was completely unnecessary.

But at the same time, all the same, the quarrels of anti-communists objectively played into the hands of Lenin. When Petliura was chasing Skoropadsky's Gaidamaks, Krasnov could not beg a single filthy company from the Allied Hetmanate to fight off the Bolsheviks. The Petliurists defeated and tied up the White Guard detachments coming from Romania and Galicia to the Don. And the Red Army took advantage of this - pulling back parts of the Red Army on the Left Bank from under the blow of Petlyura, confining itself to active defense, the Red Army smashed Krasnov and Kornilov, focusing on this problem.

Then Petlyura was also defeated by the joint action of partisan detachments and the offensive of the Red Army, which secured the flank from the White Guard threat.

That is, even being in better conditions than Semin, Lenin played on the contradictions in the enemy camp.

Now, however, the left cannot actively influence events in any way, and all that remains is to take advantage of the opportunities when "Denikin defeats Petliura."

Now we need to think not about how to stop the war, which we cannot stop, but how to A) deploy propaganda in Ukraine, based on the experience of the population that survived the war unleashed by the capitalists; B) deploy propaganda in Russia, pointing to the connection of Nazism, Bandera and our Russians with the fundamental laws of capitalism.

What will boys and girls do with posters "No war" when in Ukraine it will be necessary to establish a peaceful life, deploy the structures of the Communist Party, and carry out propaganda among the population?

I. Bortnik
17/03/2022

https://prorivists.org/67_defeatism/

Google Translator

*****

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Patrick Lawrence: So far as I can make out
By Patrick Lawrence (Posted Aug 15, 2022)

Originally published: ScheerPost on August 11, 2022

So far as I can make out, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are losing their war against the Russian intervention. So far as I can make out, the AFU has been losing it more or less from the start of hostilities on February 24. So far as I can make out, the Ukrainian forces are heading toward a decisive defeat with ever mounting momentum. So far as I can make out, they grow increasingly desperate as this outcome becomes more evident, their conduct increasingly condemnable.

I should not have to begin my sentences on this topic with “so far as I can make out.” But so far as I can make out, I must—as must all who make the effort to understand events on the ground in Ukraine as they are.

If the Ukraine conflict has plunged the world into a geopolitical crisis, as I think it fair to say, it is not the only crisis it has precipitated. American media were in crisis well before Russian troops and artillery crossed Ukraine’s eastern frontier, but the war that has since proceeded has caused our newspapers and broadcasters to inflict damage on themselves that I begin to think is irreparable.

It is somewhat the same in the matter of our public discourse altogether. The volume of foul litter now lying on America’s village green sends those still walking through it into a state of “head-spinning disorientation”—a phrase I just read in a piece by the estimable Alistair Crooke. There is at least a chance, the optimist in me insists, that this damage can be undone—the media problem being of another order.

To put Crooke’s remark in context, the retired British diplomat and founder of Conflict Forum in Beirut was commenting on a remarkably forthright opinion piece carried in the August 1 editions of the ordinarily starchy Daily Telegraph, to the effect that the Western post-democracies (my term) are now governed by “an elite that has become unhinged from the real world.”

“Yes,” Crooke replies, “the Western sphere has become so prone to a ‘head-spinning’ disorientation (as was intended), through the constant rain of disinformation labels, stuck haphazardly across anything critical of the ‘uniform messaging,’ and by outrageous, obvious lying, that a majority in the Western world has begun to question their own and surrounding levels of sanity.”

I cannot but relate the dire circumstance Crooke and the Telegraph contributor depict to the accelerating spiral we see in our media and our public space since the Ukraine crisis erupted into open conflict. My head spins, indeed, at the spectacle of media coverage this poor and the extent to which it has stupefied the reading and viewing public.

Let us consider a couple of the many important events that occurred last week.

On Thursday, August 4, Amnesty International published a report headlined, “Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians.” Here are its lead paragraphs. I will quote at length to avert any suggestion that I am in the take-it-out-of-context game:

Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, as they repelled the Russian invasion that began in February, Amnesty International said today.

Such tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians, as they turn civilian objects into military targets. The ensuing Russian strikes in populated areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure.

“We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.”

Documented: AI has documents supporting these assertions. As is evident in this opening passage, the report was also damning of some of the tactics the Russian military applies in Ukraine. I get the impression of a conscious effort to achieve balance.

To say Amnesty belched in chapel is to put the case too mildly. A rage erupted among Western commentators and, naturally, Ukrainian officials. This report was a disgraceful breach, we read. The head of AI’s Kyiv office resigned, asserting, “This study became a tool of Russian propaganda.” Gary Kasparov, chair of the Human Rights Foundation, weighed in gracefully: “Amnesty International can go to hell for this garbage.” Gary did better at chess.

The caker in all this was AI’s response to the uproar on August 7. “Amnesty International deeply regrets the distress and anger that our press release on the Ukrainian military’s fighting tactics has caused,” it said in an email sent to Reuters.

What do we have here, and what don’t we have?

We do not have an apology from AI—close but not quite. We do not have any kind of retraction, either. And we do not have any substantive refutation of the AI report. Nobody went anywhere near that.

We have more or less open assertions that an organization that operates in public space sinned when it acted with some semblance of the disinterest a sound society requires of such organizations. Most nongovernmental organizations such as AI—Human Rights Watch is another prominent example—long ago abandoned this principle in the service of fortifying Western orthodoxies. Such is the pollution of our public commons. At the same time, there appears to be considerable dissension in these organizations, the divide running roughly between field workers and executive-level managers concerned with ideological conformity. I count this a factor in the case at issue.

The shock implicit in the denunciations hurled at AI derives from the fact that Amnesty International is, internal dissension notwithstanding, as compromised as most other Western NGOs and customarily conducts itself accordingly. To express regret for having made people mad and stressed in the course of doing, for once, its proper job was wholly inappropriate—a measure, in my view, of the creeping decay in our public sphere.

One other useful point here. The AI report confirms what the paying-attention among us have read of since the start of hostilities: The AFU has indeed made cynical use of civilian locations and the occupants as shields. All we have read in our corporate media reports are the Ukrainians’ incessant denials.

I come to the case of CBS and its report Friday, August 5, that some 70 percent of the weaponry and matériel the U.S. and its European allies send to Ukraine never reaches the AFU. It is diverted, we can safely assume, into a vast black market for illicit arms sales.

Safely assume: I have had it since shortly after the 2014 coup, from sound Kyiv sources and international business executives with interests in Ukraine, that Ukraine, among the world’s most corrupt nations according to Transparency International, is the world’s largest illegal arms market by some magnitudes. A number of American legislators, notably Victoria Spartz, an Indiana Republican and the first Ukrainian-born legislator elected to Congress, have been for months calling for the U.S. to monitor the distribution of the weaponry it is sending across the Polish border to Ukraine.

CBS did some good leg work and brought us up to date: It is the mess Spartz and others have suspected since the flow of guns began. The network had some good sources. And, after all, we have been able to read here and there about this filthy business for many months.

No, senior Ukrainian officials protested rudely and loudly in response to Spartz’s proposal. Monitoring the distribution of Western arms will add “another layer of bureaucratization” and so cause critical delays in shipments. As to CBS, it got roughly the same treatment as AI. There was no substantive denial of the problem, only outrage that the network had reported what it found and thus served the cause badly.

Once again, the pitiful part: On Sunday CBS deleted the segment, explaining that it will review it and republish at a later date. It has since republished the segment, having softened it in response to complaints–this by CBS’s admission–from Ukrainian officials. This is called “updating” these days.

To be clear once again: CBS did not retract the assertions in the piece. It simply said things have got better lately–which is the Ukrainian argument.

I simply cannot recognize the profession I had made mine, back when it was worthy of the effort, dedication, occasional heartache, and all the rest it required of those in it.

Speaking of which.

My first outing as a correspondent abroad was in Portugal in 1975, shortly after the Revolution of Carnations, when a group of principled army officers overthrew the 50–year dictatorship of Marcelo Caetano. I was filing to a small independent weekly with offices in a loft off Union Square in Manhattan. I was young, green, and reliably making a mistake a day.

But Lisbon was my classroom. And one of the lessons I came home with was how correspondents ought to conduct themselves in matters of politics when covering others.

All correspondents bring their politics with them, as I did in Portugal. This is a natural thing, a good thing, an affirmation of their engaged, civic selves not at all to be regretted. The task is to manage your politics in accord with your professional responsibilities, the unique place correspondents occupy in public space. There can be no confusing journalism and activism. You do your best to keep your biases, political proclivities, prejudices, and what have you out of the files you send your foreign desk. It takes discipline and ordered priorities.

We are not getting this from the Western correspondents reporting in Ukraine for mainstream media. You may associate the error of mistaking journalism for activism with independent publications, and fair enough—to a point. It happens. The truth here is that almost all mainstream journalists reporting from Ukraine are guilty of this—and I am this far from editing out my “almost.” They are effectively activists in the cause of the American national security state, its campaign against Russia, and Washington’s latter-day effort to defend its primacy.

I made a study over many years of the notable foreign correspondents of the second half of the last century. Martha Gellhorn on the Spanish Civil War. Joe Liebling on the Second World War in Europe. Ernie Pyle, for heaven’s sake. Bernard Fall on the last days of the French in Indochina. The best of the Vietnam correspondents reporting for the American dailies and wires. The inimitable Wilfred Burchett, who distinguished himself as the only Western correspondent to to report Vietnam from the North.

They walked to and fro behind and along front lines, these people. They got dirt under their fingernails. They showed us maps with lots of arrows on them. They reported the daily progress of the war with the names of unfamiliar towns in their pieces.

We get none of this from the mainstream correspondents in Ukraine. Why?

It would be easy to say they have no guts and no commitment to the profession. This may be the case among some or many or all of them. Here is my more salient answer: They are not allowed to cover this conflict at close range. Their foreign editors do not want them to and the Ukrainians will not let them. Neither wants daily reports of a slow march to defeat. Better to keep it broad and blurry and spotty. Lots of anecdotes featuring helpless victims, and Russian atrocities by the bale–none of which the correspondents reporting them actually witnessed.

Better, most of all, to rely solely on what Ukrainian officials and military officers tell you and let you see and what Western intelligence officials pretend to confirm. This, to me, is the disgraceful abrogation of duty that makes me wonder if mainstream media can ever step back from their out-and-out embrace of the role they have assumed as propagandists. Do not pretend to shock. This has been going on a long time. Ukraine simply marks a swoon too far in my estimation.

A Russian detention center in the Donbass is shelled and 50–odd Ukrainian prisoners are killed. We are asked to believe that Russian forces shelled their own holding camp for reasons unexplained. When we later learn the Russians were releasing, just before the shelling began, videos of the prisoners recounting the orders of commanding officers to torture any captured Russians, raising the question of war crimes at high levels, we are told this has nothing to do with it.

As we speak, we are asked to believe Russians are shelling a nuclear power plant their own troops have guarded since March. Here I lose the plot entirely.

One day last week we read that Russian forces are cynically sheltering in the plant on the thought that the Ukrainians cannot send rockets into it—too dangerous. The next day we read that the Russians are themselves shelling the power plant they were, one day earlier, reported to be sheltering in. There is only one plausible explanation for this: The correspondents reporting this logically impossible junk are not there and rely on Ukrainian accounts; these accounts differ one day to the next, one official to the next.

So the files sent to the foreign desk are a dog’s dinner, as the English say. And we are left with “So far as I can make out…”

I would say I feel sorry for these correspondents, but this is only partly true. It is too bad they have come of age as the mainstream of the profession collapses into propaganda and advocacy and their tours abroad have come to such an undignified business. I would weep tears of anger had this happened to me. But the alternative is to refuse and, if it comes to it, quit an enterprise a serious correspondent should have no part in.

A remarkable piece of work came across last week. It suggests a third alternative.

Eva Bartlett, a Canadian correspondent, reminds me of Wilfred Burchett in a way: She reports from “the other side” and has no use for anybody’s orthodoxies. She did this to effect in Syria, and before that in the Palestinians territories. Earlier in the Ukraine conflict, she traveled to a site nine miles outside Mariupol where it was widely reported the Russians had dug and filled a mass grave with—get set for this—9,000 Ukrainians. This is a lot of Ukrainians to bury all at once. But all the big dailies, never stopping to think things through, went with the story Ukrainian officials gave them. Nine thousand it was.

No mass grave, Bartlett found. Her piece featured interviews with local officials and witnesses, video segments, photographs. She found an orderly, undisturbed cemetery with orderly, undisturbed grave markers. She showed us pictures of same. She spoke to the grave-diggers, who were mystified by the reports of a mass grave.

Last week Bartlett reported from Donetsk City on a shower of bombs that dropped thousands of tiny, lethal mines all over the city. RT ran the piece. It is another close-in, on-the-ground piece. Her report carried the headline, “The West is silent as Ukraine targets civilians in Donetsk using banned ‘butterfly’ mines.”

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Warning sign saying “Caution, mines!” placed next to some “butterfly” mines in Donetsk © Eva Bartlett

Bartlett was careful to say the evidence points to Ukraine while staying short of a conclusion. The Ukrainians, once again, insist the Russians are culpable: This time we are asked to believe they have mined a city under the control of their Donetsk Republic allies.

I mention Eva Bartlett’s piece because, apart from its immediate topic, it is a reminder of what foreign correspondents are supposed to do. They are supposed to walk around, to talk to people they meet—altogether, to be there and report what they see, not what someone else tells them they saw.

It was bittersweet to read that piece next to the other reports I mention here. All the profession could be, all that it isn’t—so far as I can make out.

https://mronline.org/2022/08/15/patrick ... -make-out/

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LETTER FROM FAINA SAVENKOVA TO OLIVER STONE
Originally published: Donbass Insider on August 11, 2022 by Faina Savenkova (more by Donbass Insider) | (Posted Aug 15, 2022)

Hello, Mr. Stone!

My name is Faina Savenkova and I am 13 years old. I am not a movie star and my name does not regularly appear on the pages of popular magazines, I am just one of the thousands of war children you have met in your life: in Vietnam and around the world. And yet, despite the fact that I am afraid, despite the fact that I just living one day at a time, expecting beginning of shelling at any moment, for three years now I am fighting for the right of Donbass children to live in peace. The Ukrainian government threatens me, they just don’t like that I’m telling the truth about Ukraine, and yet I keep doing it, because the truth is all that a child has left in the war. It cannot be taken away.

I know that you were at war and I know that you also always tell the truth. This war really began not in February, but eight years ago, when the nationalists, with the support of United States, decided not to listen to the voice of Donbass and Crimea and started killing us. I was a little girl, I was only five years old, but I remember the confusion of my parents, my grandmother praying in the corner and the rumbling of shells. Over time, I realized why my parents were confused: they could not believe that their own army was killing people and destroying peaceful cities of their once native country.

Now I no longer have the confusion that they had at the beginning, because I see how Ukraine has been doing the same for 8 years. Every day people die in the Donbass, including children, whose future has been stolen. We are left with only flowers and toys at the site of the shelling. And still I have no hatred. Only sadness and regret because of what people can turn into, who they can become. How easily they cross the line from humanity to killing children and destroying entire cities, turning into beasts.

Unfortunately, that former peaceful Ukraine is no longer exists. But I’m not giving up, Mr. Stone! I keep writing to presidents and organizations, the UN, knocking on all doors, trying to stop this war. Recently, together with the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice, we handed over to UN Secretary-General António Guterres information about children whose personal data was made publicly available. They don’t hear me yet, but even a quiet voice still breaks through this wall of lies and hatred. And let it be dangerous, I receive threats because my data was posted on the criminal nationalist Ukrainian website “Myrotvorets”, but I look at you, at Julian Assange, and I continue to follow this path, just like you. Without the truth, chaos ensues. Unfortunately, this is not clear to all adults, but it is clear to children of war.

Good luck!
Your little fan from Donbass

https://mronline.org/2022/08/15/letter- ... ver-stone/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 16, 2022 12:43 pm

Battle for Avdeevka
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/16/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

Original Article: Denis Grigoriuk

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I put on the bulletproof vest. Having long since lost the habit of wearing it weighed on me. Also, he tried to grab me with one hand and take pictures with the other. I kept taking photos, but the result was poor. I leaned on the back of the soldiers. The backpack with the optics was at my feet. In one of the pockets he had a tourniquet and bandages to stop the bleeding in case he was injured. Somehow, every citizen of Donetsk must have a first aid kit just in case, although it is not available to everyone. You have been lucky if, when it happens, there is someone with the necessary tools to offer first aid. One of the soldiers shared it with us.

The situation in Donetsk has changed a lot. It's strange driving around the city center with a helmet and bulletproof vest. We used to put on the protection when we got to the combat zone. Now all zones are in the destruction zone of enemy artillery. So we drove through the city prepared for combat. Gradually the image changed. We were approaching the war zone. Putilovka is riddled. The Partizansky avenue stop has been destroyed. The store that was installed in the pavilion of the bus stop has burned down. There are recent hits from Ukrainian artillery everywhere.

We proceed along the black dot of Kievsky avenue. A civilian bus was destroyed here yesterday, a direct hit against the minibus killed at least three people and the rest received various injuries. Last year we were driving around here in simple civilian vehicles, but now it is better not to walk around without protection and without medical supplies, which are extremely difficult to obtain in Donetsk right now.

The roar of tanks could be heard on the outskirts of the city. The ground shook with the shots. The shells flew with their characteristic sound and hit the enemy positions. The tankers received instructions from a young commander with a nom de guerre Mazai . The soldiers were old enough to be his father, but they listened to him humbly and immediately performed the required tasks without question.

In that time, the tanks did not stop destroying enemy fortified areas. I had to scream. The tanks' engines were running, the guns were working, and the infantry were helping to replenish ammunition for further attacks on the Ukrainian positions. The soldiers had written "messages" to the enemy. One of them wanted to avenge the death of one of his comrades in this way. Private Pilot wrote “By Zmei”, Alexander, alias Zmei or Nevski (he had two nom de guerre), Kislinsky, of the Akangelsk battalion died in battle a few months ago. Mazai was taking revenge on the little ballerina whom Ukrainian militants killed in the center of Donetsk with her artillery on August 4 during the funeral ofKorsa . I found out a little later why Mazai had chosen it that way.

When everything was ready, the infantry boarded the armor to support the tank to the position from which it would fire on the Ukrainian positions in the Avdeevka area, where the heaviest battles are currently being fought. Mazai took up position and launched the bird . The drone accelerated somewhere closer to the battle. Earlier, the drone had made a reconnaissance flight to calculate enemy firing positions. It was now acting to adjust tank fire to hit Ukrainian Army positions. Led by Mazai , several military operations like this one take place on a daily basis.

I had met him barely an hour before the operation began. Visually, it's hard to tell that she has a boss look. He looks too young. Mazai was neither dry nor gloomy. On the contrary, he was smiling and seemed very sociable. He bragged about the hits made that morning. In the drone footage, the Ukrainian positions could be seen burning. This may be what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was referring to in his speech when he said that there is hell in Peski and Avdeevka.

I looked at Mazai and couldn't get it out of my head that the population should know him. Right now we are in a period in which the audience seems “war-weary”, the population has returned to their day-to-day concerns and has got used to the new circumstances. It is normal, because it is impossible to live in constant stress and if there is an opportunity to distract yourself, why not take advantage of it. It is a pity that this is impossible in Donbass.

So the public is less interested in the course of events in Donbass, although the war now being waged is not too different from the one in the spring. At that time, all information from Mariupol was a priority, the population commented on it, followed the fate of soldiers and civilians. From time to time, new heroes also appeared, whom the population admired. Mazai is less media, so if anyone knows him, there are not many. But this young man has participated in combat operations since 2014, he has acquired the skills of war and now commands older comrades.

I witnessed another successful hit in the drone fire correction operation. In this war, they play a leading role in the hostilities. This was demonstrated during the Mariupol operation and the trend has continued until now, when the liberation of the towns around Donetsk is underway. The tankers and the infantry returned satisfied. They smiled and joked. They had managed to hit the Ukrainian troops several more times. The drone captured a direct hit on enemy fortified positions. The offensive, although slow, continues. "Infantry, everybody assemble," Commandant Mazai ordered .

The soldiers jumped out of the vehicle. There were several inscriptions on the body of the armored car: the signature of the musician Alexey Poddubni, from the group Django, the familiar "Z" and the name of the car, Alexandra. I thought it had something to do with Alexander Nevsky , but it wasn't. Mazai later explained that he named the armored car after her five-year-old daughter, which also explains why she wrote "for the young dancer" on one of the shells.

The August sun beat down mercilessly. We move away from the sound of the tanks. Nothing flew back. It was as if the Ukrainian soldiers were not going to resist. But they were hitting the city with precision. The shells fell in the Kievsky district of Donetsk. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are not seeking a military victory over the armed enemy, but are dedicated to destroying the civilian population still living in the affected area. It is to them that the Ukrainian militants are targeting. They seek revenge for the fact that they are losing the battle for Donbass.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/16/batal ... more-25290

Google Translator

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Russia calls on Ukraine to stop attacking Zaporizhia nuclear power plant

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The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, located in the city of Energodar and operated by the Ukrainian company Energoatom, is today controlled by the Russian military. | Photo: Twitter
Published August 15, 2022 (1 hour 58 minutes ago)

The Zaporizhia nuclear plant, the largest in Europe, is located in the Ukrainian town of Energodar.

Russia called on the United States, the European Union and other countries to stop intrigues around the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) and force Ukraine to stop bombing the facility, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. .

"We strongly urge Washington, Brussels and other, mainly European, capitals to stop irresponsible games and intrigues around the ZNPP and immediately influence the kyiv authorities to force them to stop bombing the plant and its adjacent territories," he stressed. .

Further concurrence on the part of Western officials in Ukraine is simply criminal, even towards their own citizens. These people, like the people of Russia and Ukraine, will be at incredible risk if the people of (Stepan) Bandera (ultra-nationalist) do not stop their attacks," he stated.


The spokeswoman added that the Russian side will do "everything necessary" to ensure that IAEA experts visit the Zaporizhia nuclear plant so that this mission will provide a truthful assessment of the destructive actions of the Ukrainian side.

"We strongly condemn attempts to obstruct (the visit of) this mission," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said in a statement.

"In close cooperation with the agency and its leadership, we will do everything necessary for IAEA specialists to be on station and provide a truthful assessment of the destructive actions of the Ukrainian side," he stressed.

"It is undeniable that the attacks on the station and Energodar are carried out by Ukrainian armed groups acting under orders from kyiv," Zakharova continued. "Ukrainian President (Volodymyr] Zelensky, reveling in his own impunity," she added.

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, located in the city of Energodar and operated by the Ukrainian company Energoatom, is controlled today by the Russian military to prevent leaks of nuclear and radioactive materials.

Ukrainian troops made several attempts to attack the plant. The bombings have become more frequent since August 5, as kyiv blames Russia for the airstrikes.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-uc ... -0014.html

Google Translator

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Various Points On Ukraine And Media

Let me start today's write up out with two reading recommendations.

Lambert Strether and Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism discuss a piece on the Russian operation in Ukraine that had been printed in the Marine Corps Gazette and of which facsimile pictures were published two weeks ago on Twitter and later in full at Reddit and by Southfront.

A Marine’s Assessment of Russia’s Military “Operation” in Ukraine (a “Profound Appreciation of All Three Realms in Which Wars Are Waged”)
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/08 ... waged.html

I had read the Gazette piece when it first appeared some weeks ago and found it excellent. It realistically depicts the early Russian move towards Kiev as a feint. This is also my view. The feint, with too few troops to actually occupy Kiev, had a political and a military purpose.

Politically it put pressure on the Ukrainian government to quickly agree to Russian conditions for a ceasefire. This nearly worked when negotiations between Russia and Ukraine at the end of March in Turkey had promising results. The talks were then sabotaged by Boris Johnson's intervention in Kiev where he, speaking for Joe Biden, demanded a continuation of the war which Zelensky then promptly provided.

Militarily the feint had near prefect results. Some 100,000 Ukrainian troops were fixed around Kiev while Russian troops from Crimea moved nearly unopposed to connect the island via a land bridge to the Donbas and Russia and also grabbed a large foothold in Kherson on the west side of the Dnieper.

The hasty feint had a high price in the form of Russian casualties but helped to established front situations in the east and south that allowed for the mass destruction of Ukrainian forces with a minimum of casualties on the Russian side.

When the feint towards Kiev was no longer useful the Russian forces moved back to their starting positions without much fighting. The Ukrainian claimed that to be a victory but they had hardly anything to do with the well planned and executed retreat.

That the Gazette would print a piece that confirms this view is remarkable. Even more remarkable, as Lambert notes, is the lack of echo it has had in U.S. media:

This is August 14. “Marinus”‘s article in the August issue of MCG has been available since July 29 at the latest, the first hit at the Japanese source. The second hit appears on August 9, in a Russian-language aggregator. The third appears August 12, on Reddit. It’s been two weeks, and the media, collectively, have a ravenous news hole. So where is the coverage the Times? Where is the Washington Post? Where is Foreign Policy? Where is Foreign Affairs? Where is The Atlantic? Where is the Council on Foreign Relations? Where is the Institute for the Study of War? Where, further afield, is Defense One? The Drive? They are all silent. And yet what we have, as the quote in the headline to this post alone shows, is a significant break from orthodoxy on Ukraine and Russian capabilities generally in the professional magazine of the United States Marine Corps. Odd, very odd!

Indeed ...

Today I learned that the anonymous 'Marinus' author of the Marine Corps Gazette piece is allegedly the retired General Karl Van Riper who is well know for spoiling the Millennium Challenge war game by applying realistic conditions. The guy is hated by the chairborne divisions in the Pentagon. BTW - a facsimile of the first part of Marine Gazette piece is available here. Another excellent Gazette piece on the Russian way of fighting from January 2022 is here.

Still another excellent paper I found through a link at Naked Capitalism is by Myrmikan Research which looks at the historic context of the war through the centuries old British Russian rivalry: A World Gone MAD.

Now back to the daily business.

The New York Times continues its shameless pro-Ukrainian propaganda campaign that is deceiving its readers.

Wars are about geography and geography is depicted in maps.

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Source: LiveUAmap -

*Kherson, the capital of Kherson oblast is at the bottom left and the northern side of the Dnieper river. It is like most of the Kherson oblast under Russian control.
*Zaporizhzhia, the capital of the Zaporizhzhia oblast is on the upper right of the map. Most of the Zaporizhzhia oblast, south-east of the capitol, is under Russian control but Zaporizhzhia city continues to be under Ukrainian control.
*The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station (ZNPP) with its six reactors is next to the city Enerhodar on the south side of the large Dnieper reservoir.
Since mid March it is under Russian control. Despite the common name its beeline distance to Zaporizhzhia city is 50 kilometers (30 miles). The distance by road marked with the arrows is about 110 kilometer (66 miles).

The NYT does not provide any maps to its readers. That leaves them uninformed about the geographical realities of the war and is abused to provide lies to them.

Shelling on a nearby town kills an employee of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Shelling near a nuclear power complex in southern Ukraine killed a foreman from the facility at his home in a neighboring town, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
The Ukrainian company that oversees the nation’s nuclear power plants, Energoatom, said that Russia had directed at least six shells at the town of Enerhodar, where most of the workers at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant live.

The town is under Russian occupation, and the Russians have blamed the Ukrainians for the shelling of the giant nuclear complex — Europe’s largest — and nearby residential areas, which has raised alarm around the world. However, the Ukrainians have said that it is the Russians who are firing on civilians, suggesting the intent is to discredit the Ukrainian Army.


The claim that Russians are firing at the NPP or the nearby town is delusional. The Ukrainian president Zelensky himself has said that Ukraine is firing at the ZNPP because Russian soldiers are there.

Ukraine will target Russian soldiers at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, says Zelenskiy – video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video ... skiy-video

The NYT continues:

The United States and European Union have called for the establishment of a demilitarized zone, as the fighting in and around the plant and its active reactors and stored nuclear waste has sparked grave concern that an errant strike and resulting fire could cause a meltdown or release radiation.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said in his nightly address on Saturday that Russia had resorted to “nuclear blackmail” at the complex, reiterating a Ukrainian analysis that Moscow was using it to slow a Ukrainian counteroffensive toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, where Russian conventional military defenses appear increasingly wobbly.


Look at the map. The whole area around the plant is under Russian control. How can there be any 'fighting in or around the ZNPP'? There is none. There are only Ukrainian artillery impacts fired from the northern side of the Dnieper reservoir at the ZNPP.

There is also no way anything happening at the ZNPP that could ever 'slow' a Ukrainian counteroffensive on Kherson. A counteroffensive that for very different reasons can and will not happen.

More NYT nonsense:

Contrary to the fears of some analysts when Moscow launched its invasion in February, the more urgent nuclear threat in the Ukraine war now appears to be Russia damaging the civilian plant, rather than deploying its own nuclear weapons.

Russia has no discernible interest in damaging the ZNPP. The plant is under its full control and provides useful electricity to areas under Russian control as well as to the Ukrainian side:

In fields near Enerhodar, long lines of cars carrying fleeing civilians formed on Saturday, according to social media posts and another former engineer at the plant who has remained in touch with local residents.
“Locals are abandoning the town,” said the former engineer, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oleksiy, because of security concerns. Residents had been leaving for weeks, but the pace picked up after Saturday’s barrages and fires, he said.
...
Ukrainian employees are not fleeing but sending their families away, said Oleksiy, who left in June. Enerhodar was built for plant employees in the Soviet period and had a prewar population of about 50,000.

That alleged flight (observed by someone who isn't even there?) is also picked up in another recent NYT piece:

‘They are shooting day and night’: Civilians flee the contested region around a nuclear power complex.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Increasingly frequent explosions near a vast nuclear complex in southern Ukraine and the shelling of a nearby town where many of the complex’s workers reside have accelerated a civilian exodus from the area.
About a thousand cars were backed up at a crossing point over the front line between Russian-controlled and Ukrainian-controlled territory, according to people interviewed on the Ukrainian side Sunday morning.

The flow of people fleeing picked up over the past week as explosions near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant became more frequent, Dmytro Orlov, the exiled mayor of the town of Enerhodar, said in an interview. He said that Russian troops were firing grad rocket artillery from the town’s outskirts.

Russia has continued to blame the shelling on Ukrainian forces; Ukraine has said Russia is shelling territory Russia itself controls in a bid to discredit the Ukrainian Army.


The piece comes with three pictures.

Image

The caption to the above picture says:

Natalia Lytvenenko decided it was time to leave Blagoveshenko, a Russian-occupied territory nine miles from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, on Wednesday with three daughters and their grandmother. People have been trying to leave for the past week. David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
What I find curious about that picture is that there is no baggage visible inside the car. 'That's in the trunk', you will say. Sure, but people fleeing from home usually take as much as possible with them - several sets of clothing, jackets, household items, memorabilia, books, duvets etc. The kids for example would take at least some of their toys. Nothing of such is visible here.

Image

The caption to the above picture says:

Civilian cars lined up to try to reach a Ukrainian-controlled crossing into the city of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday. David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

If this is the 'crossing point over the front line between Russian-controlled and Ukrainian-controlled territory' described in the piece quoted above, then the picture must have been taken from the Russian controlled side. How did Mr Guttenfelder cross into that area?

But maybe it is a complete different checkpoint somewhere on the city limits of Zaporizhzhia and the people waiting to pass it are coming back from a weekend getaway. Notice again the lack of visible baggage.

Now here is the third and most interesting picture:

Image


The caption to the above picture says:

A Ukrainian couple driving through a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday, toward Russian-controlled territory. Checkpoint authorities said that some Ukrainians were trying to help bring out those seeking to leave the Russian-controlled area. David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Notice the baggage and household items on the car's roof. Now that's what I would call people fleeing form home to live elsewhere. But the caption suggests that these people 'help bring out those seeking to leave the Russian-controlled area'. Why then did they load up their car with probably everything they had?

The NYT 'coverage' of the Ukraine conflict has stopped to make any sense.

Posted by b on August 15, 2022 at 16:57 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/08/v ... .html#more

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On the course of the NWO in Ukraine. 08/15/2022
August 16, 0:26

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Answers to questions about the course of the SVO in Ukraine for the channel of military commissar Yuri Kotenok.

On the course of the NWO in Ukraine. 08/15/2022

- APU is hitting the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, threatening a "second Chernobyl". How high is the probability of a nuclear catastrophe and what could be its scale?

- A catastrophe is more than likely in 3 cases - a direct hit on the reactor as a result of targeted missile strikes on the reactor block, the failure of the station's mechanisms, which will lead to abnormal operation of the reactor and a possible catastrophe, as well as as a result of strikes on the nuclear waste storage site .

Depending on the type of damage to the station, the radius of destruction will depend - in the event of a reactor explosion as a result of a missile hit, the radius of destruction will affect several regions of Ukraine. In the case of local contamination as a result of damage to containers with radioactive elements in an open area, the radius of damage will be tens of kilometers.

In any case, all these scenarios can definitely be interpreted as scenarios of a nuclear catastrophe, which the United States and Britain are now manipulating with the hands of Ukraine.

- The West is increasing pressure on Russia, blaming the Russians in advance for any incident that may occur at the ZNPP. What threatens the situation if Russia decides to create a demilitarized zone around the station?

- In this case, the West is deliberately trying to blackmail with the threat of a nuclear catastrophe in order to force Russia to bend and force it to make some concessions, such as transferring the ZNPP under international control or even under the control of Ukraine. Obviously, these are unacceptable options for Russia, but the West, cultivating fear of the nuclear threat, is trying to force it to make such concessions.

The West will certainly turn a blind eye to any actions of Ukraine, even if Zelensky’s gang shoots directly at the ZNPP from the other side of the Dnieper online.

- The media is discussing the topic of shifting the referendum in the DPR, in Kherson and in the liberated territories of the Zaporozhye region. If such a decision is made, to what extent will it meet the interests of Russia?

- Referendums in the DPR and LPR are tied to the completion of the liberation of the territories of Donbass. Accordingly, they will pass as quickly as our army can liberate the territory of the DPR. We have already coped with the task of liberating the LPR.

In the case of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, the timing of referendums depends on the ability of the CAA of the regions to establish the structure of state power and ensure the work of election commissions. Therefore, referendums in the LDNR and other liberated regions can be held separately. In my opinion, the sooner their accession to Russia is fixed, the better - this will ensure the irreversibility of their withdrawal from Ukraine.

- The Ukrainian side continues to use Haimars, sometimes successfully. Is there a universal "cure" for this type of MLRS? What is the set of measures that should be taken to completely eliminate this threat?

- At the moment, our air defense systems partially shoot down missiles of this complex, but during mass launches they periodically break through our defenses and cause some damage.

How to deal with it? More carefully disguise our headquarters and logistics infrastructure, deal with the dispersal of warehouses. To reduce the effectiveness of strikes against warehouses, it is necessary to improve the operation of air defense systems against missiles of these complexes, plus to hunt for them and methodically destroy them.

There is no recipe for a quick victory here - long and painstaking work is needed to minimize the effectiveness of this weapon system and improve work to counter them and their subsequent destruction.

- In my personal opinion, specialists in anti-terror and special operations are urgently needed in the NVO zone. The experience of the same Igor Girkin could be useful. In this regard, was it worth it to detain him at the entrance to the Kherson region, and what caused such a decision and its publicity in the media?

- From my point of view, any person who willingly wants to go to fight the Nazis in Ukraine should get such an opportunity, because now there is no more important task for the country than the destruction of the Nazi regime in Ukraine and its sponsors.

I don’t know all the reasons for this story, but I repeat, if a person wants to go to war, he should be provided with such an opportunity. This is especially important in conditions when the emphasis is on the contract-volunteer format of warfare, and not on the mobilization one.

— Western sources write that Russia has ordered at least 1,000 UAVs from Iran. How realistic are these numbers, and how could the supply of Iranian drones affect the course of hostilities?

- Officially, this information has not yet been confirmed. Regarding 1000 UAVs, obviously, they mean their production for some time. Obviously, here we are not talking about a one-time purchase of 1000 cars, especially since in the Russian Federation there simply aren’t so many operators for new cars.

Therefore, if the UAVs are really bought, then they will be delivered in parts, as they are produced and the calculations are trained. Taking into account the well-known quality of Iranian drones, they will become a serious help for our gunners, supplementing, for example, well-performing drones of the Orlan-10 type and other, rarer specimens.

- In a few weeks, the transition of hostilities from the spring-summer to the autumn-winter period will begin. How will the seasonal factor affect the confrontation in specific sectors of the front?

- In mid-autumn, offensive operations will be limited by worsening weather and autumn thaws. On the other hand, the descent of the "green" will make it difficult for both sides to hide from artillery, which is somewhat more beneficial for us, since we have an advantage in artillery, and it will become more difficult for the enemy to hold positions outside the cities. However, this will create many difficulties for us.

It can be expected that in October-November the intensity of hostilities in some directions will decrease and tendencies towards positioning will prevail, although, for example, this is unlikely to interfere with the assault on large settlements, as the example of the assault on the same Mariupol or Volnovakha showed.

https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/39305 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7804367.html

What's in Nikolaev
August 15, 4:40 p.m

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About the situation in Nikolaev, occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

What is there in Nikolaev.

The lull of the past week was replaced by the fierce shelling of industrial zones in Nikolaev. Explosions sounded again in the YuTZ area, in Zaichevskoye and in the Novozavodskaya area.
The water situation is becoming unbearable, more and more houses and entire neighborhoods are disconnected from the water due to the destruction of networks caused by salt water supplied directly from the estuary.
Against this background, an outburst of indignation was caused by information that Senkevich could not really report on where the 56 million allocated for the restoration of water supply had been spent.
The water conduit, of course, was not restored, water is pumped without purification directly from the estuary, they drilled from a dozen and a half wells, in which the water, according to the head of the city water canal, is just as salty ... but where is the rest of the money? Where, where, in the pockets, who needs it, what do you, as little ones, do not understand?

Oils were also added by the head of the Nikolaev Parks utility company, who reported with a blue eye that they had already stolen (oh, spent) 17 million since the beginning of the year on green spaces, and plan to spend almost the same amount (steal). It's time to mow lawns (or cabbage) in front-line Nikolaev.

Against this background, the intention of the head of the department for culture (!!) to rename Pushkinskaya Street sounded almost imperceptibly. There is no need for Mykolaiv to have a street with that name. It was through Russian Nikolaev that Pushkin passed on his way to Odessa, it was in Russian Nikolaev that there was a monument to the great Russian poet, and Mykolaiv will have another street named after Gnilosyrov (there really is such a Ukrainian poet).

After the shelling, the oncoming flow nevertheless became weaker than the flow of those leaving, and Nikolaev becomes even more deserted. Huge unemployment contributes to this - Kim has already admitted that 80 percent of the townspeople have lost their jobs. Not surprisingly, on the notice boards there are invitations to work as a full-time economist with a salary of 6,500 hryvnias (dirty!), the tax in Ukraine is 19.5 percent (18 - income, and 1.5% - military tax), which means that a person is in the hands will receive 5,230 hryvnias - 8,600 in rubles. Considering the price of a minibus, which has doubled (up to 14 hryvnias), a person will only have enough for bread and water. However, you can count on the humanitarian aid. It is no longer given to everyone, in the general queue. Not enough for everyone, of course. Only according to the lists of social services. But the Baptists turned around with humanitarian aid, evangelicals and other American and European "churches". With packages of cereals and bottles of vegetable oil, they attract new adherents, it is clear that in a time of general poverty, they have new opportunities to spread their influence much more widely than in a well-fed society.

And of course, the explosion of discussions in local publics was caused by the news about the creation of the VGA in Snigirevka and the appointment of Yuri Barbashov from Nikolaev as the head there. He himself is from Nikolaev, many people know him, and everyone understands that Barbashov’s appointment to Snigirevka is a sign that Russia is coming to the Nikolaev region. Forever and ever.


(c) Larisa Shesler

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7803471.html

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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Сolonelcassad
📌The situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of August 15, 2022

▪️The Russian armed forces continue to suppress the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the border areas of the Sumy region. A checkpoint of Ukrainian formations was discovered and destroyed near the village of Yunakovka .

▪️In the north of the Kharkiv region, battles of medium intensity are taking place:
➖In the past days, units of the RF Armed Forces managed to take the settlements of Udy and Odnorobovka .
➖Russian rocket troops and artillery carried out strikes on the facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Merefa and Chuguev , as well as Kovyagi.

▪️In the Soledar direction , fighting continues on the outskirts of Bakhmut (Artemovsk):
➖After capturing the village of Vershina , the Wagner PMC detachments reached the Ukrainian fortified area in Zaitsevo , south of Bakhmut. Its assault will allow launching an attack on the city simultaneously from two directions.
➖Ukrainian formations blew up the bridge over the Bakhmutka River in the northern part of Bakhmut in order to prevent its use by the allied forces in the future.

▪️In the Donetsk direction , fighting is underway on the outskirts of the capital of the DPR:
➖Clashes continue near the fortified area of ​​the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the junction of the ring road near the recently liberated village of Peski. Its capture will allow to continue the offensive on Pervomaiskoye and Netaylovo.
➖The Armed Forces of Ukraine once again shelled the cities of the Donetsk agglomeration, killing several civilians.
➖Under Ugledar , units of the RF Armed Forces and the NM of the DPR launched offensives against the strongholds of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In the area of ​​the village of Pavlovka , a Ka-52 helicopter of the Russian Aerospace Forces was shot down, the crew survived and was evacuated to the rear.

▪️In the Dnepropetrovsk region, the Russian Armed Forces hit two traction substations in Apostolovo and Sinelnikovo with missile strikes.

▪️Ukrainian formations once again fired at Energodar and the territory of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant , rockets fell in the area of ​​power unit No. 6. The strikes were carried out using Western-made weapons.

▪️In the Krivoy Rog direction, the RF Armed Forces again hit the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Osokorovka near the contact line.

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forwarded from
⚔WELDERS
France supplies banned mines to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military mined the approaches to their positions in the area of ​​the settlement. Experienced (northwest of Donetsk) with fifty French mines HPD mod.F2.

This is a very dangerous anti-tank mine with a magnetic target sensor. Designed to destroy armored vehicles with a cumulative jet when the vehicle passes over a mine. It is installed in the ground, on the ground and in the water to a depth of 1.5 m.

This mine is dangerous because it is triggered by the movement of any metal objects near it. It also explodes when an electromagnetic metal detector approaches it.

The HPD mod.F2 mine is a mine-detecting mine and its use violates Protocol II of 1996 "On the Prohibition or Restriction of the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices", which is part of the Geneva Convention of October 10, 1980 on the Prohibition or Restriction of the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons , which may be considered to cause excessive damage or have an indiscriminate effect.

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The invasion of capital
By Michael Roberts (Posted Aug 16, 2022)

Originally published: Michael Roberts Blog on August 13, 2022 (more by Michael Roberts Blog)

Last week, Ukraine’s foreign private creditors agreed to the country’s request for a two-year freeze on payments on about $20bn of foreign debt. This would enable Ukraine to avoid defaulting on its overseas borrowings. Unlike other ‘emerging economies’ in debt distress, it seems that foreign bondholders are happy to help Ukraine out–if only for two years. The move will save Ukraine $6bn over the period, helping to reduce pressure on central bank reserves, which slid by 28 per cent year-to-date, despite significant foreign aid.

Ukraine’s economy is, not surprisingly, in a desperate state. Real GDP is projected to decline by more than 30% in 2022 and the unemployment rate is at 35% (Constantinescu et al. 2022, Blinov and Djankov 2022, National Bank of Ukraine 2022). “We are grateful for the private sector support of our proposal in such terrible times for our country,” responded Yuriy Butsa, Ukraine’s deputy finance minister, “I’d like to emphasise that the support we’ve received during this transaction is hard to underestimate . . . We will stay fully engaged with the investment community further on and hope for their involvement in the financing of the rebuilding of our country after we win the war,” Butsa said.

Here Butsa reveals the price to pay for this limited largesse by foreign creditors.: the accelerating demand of foreign multi-nationals and governments to take control of Ukraine resources and bring them under the control of foreign capital without any restrictions and limitations.

In a past post, I had outlined the plan to privatise and hand over the vast agricultural resources of Ukraine to foreign multi-nationals. And for several years now, a series of reports by the Oakland Institute economic observatory has documented the takeover of foreign capital. Much of what is below comes from Oakland.

Post-Soviet Ukraine, with its 32 million arable hectares of rich and fertile black soil (known as “cernozëm”), has the equivalent of one-third of all existing agricultural land in the European Union. The “breadbasket of Europe,” as it is called, had an annual production of 64 million tons of grain and seeds, among the world’s largest producers of barley, wheat and sunflower oil (for the latter, Ukraine produces about 30 percent of the world total).

As I explained in my previous post, the planned takeover of Ukraine’s resources partly provoked the conflict: the semi-civil war, the Maidan revolt and the annexation of Crimea by Russia. As the Oakland Institute has outlined, to limit unrestrained privatization, a moratorium on the sale of land to foreigners had been imposed in 2001. Since then, the repeal of this rule has been a main goal of Western institutions. As early as 2013, for instance, the World Bank provided an $89 million loan for the development of a deed and land title program needed for the commercialization of state-owned and cooperative land. In the words of a 2019 World Bank paper the aim was an “accelerating of private investment in agriculture.” That agreement, denounced at the time by Russia as a backdoor to facilitating the entry of Western multinationals, includes the promotion of “modern agricultural production … including the use of biotechnologies,” an apparent opening towards GMO crops on Ukrainian fields.

Despite the moratorium on land sales to foreigners, by 2016, ten multinational agricultural corporations had already come to control 2.8 million hectares of land. Today, some estimates speak of 3.4 million hectares in the hands of foreign companies and Ukrainian companies with foreign funds as shareholders. Other estimates are as high as 6 million hectares. The moratorium on sales, which the U.S. State Department, IMF and World Bank had repeatedly called to be removed, was finally repealed by the Zelensky government in 2020, ahead of a final referendum on the issue scheduled for 2024.

Now with war grinding on, Western governments and corporations are stepping up their plans to incorporate Ukraine and its resources into the capitalist economies of the West.On July 4 and 5, 2022, top officials from the U.S., EU, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.”

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The URC’s agenda was explicitly focused on imposing political changes on the country–namely, “strengthening the market economy“, “decentralization, privatization, reform of state-owned enterprises, land reform, state administration reform,” and “Euro-Atlantic integration.” The agenda was really a follow-up to the 2018 Ukraine Reform Conference which had emphasized the importance of privatizing most of Ukraine’s remaining public sector, stating that the “ultimate goal of the reform is to sell state-owned enterprises to private investors”, along with calls for more “privatization, deregulation, energy reform, tax and customs reform.” Lamenting that the “government is Ukraine’s largest asset holder,” the report stated,

Reform in privatization and SOEs has been long awaited, as this sector of the Ukrainian economy has remained largely unchanged since 1991.

The irony is that the 2018 URC plans were opposed by most Ukrainians. A public opinion poll found that just 12.4% supported privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOE), whereas 49.9% opposed it. (An additional 12% were indifferent, whereas 25.7% had no answer.)

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However, war can make all the difference. In June 2020, the IMF approved an 18-month, $5 billion loan program with Ukraine. In return, the Ukraine government lift[ed] the 19-year moratorium on the sale of state-owned agricultural lands, after sustained pressure from international finance institutions.. Olena Borodina with the Ukrainian Rural Development Network commented that,

the agribusiness interests and oligarchs will be the primary beneficiaries of such reform…[This] will only further marginalize smallholder farmers and risks severing them from their most valuable resource.

And now July’s URC has re-emphasised its plans to take over the Ukraine economy for capital, with the full endorsement of Zelensky government. At the conclusion of the meeting, all governments and institutions present endorsed a joint statement called the Lugano Declaration. This declaration was supplemented by a “National Recovery Plan,” which was in turn prepared by a “National Recovery Council” established by the Ukrainian government.

This plan advocated for an array of pro-capital measures, including “privatization of non critical enterprises” and “finalization of corporatization of SOEs” (state-owned enterprises)–identifying as an example the selling off of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company EnergoAtom. In order to “attract private capital into banking system,” the proposal likewise called for the “privatization of SOBs” (state-owned banks). Seeking to increase “private investment and boost nationwide entrepreneurship,” the National Recovery Plan urged significant “deregulation” and proposed the creation of “‘catalyst projects’ to unlock private investment into priority sectors.”

In an explicit call for slashing labour protections, the document attacked the remaining pro-worker laws in Ukraine, some of which are a holdover of the Soviet era. The National Recovery Plan complained of “outdated labor legislation leading to complicated hiring and firing process, regulation of overtime, etc.” As an example of this supposed “outdated labor legislation,” the Western-backed plan lamented that workers in Ukraine with one year of experience are granted a nine-week “notice period for redundancy dismissal,” compared to just four weeks in Poland and South Korea.

In March 2022, the Ukrainian parliament adopted emergency legislation allowing employers to suspend collective agreements. Then in May, it passed a permanent reform package effectively exempting the vast majority of Ukrainian workers (those at businesses with fewer than 200 employees) from Ukrainian labor law. Documents leaked in 2021 showed that the British government coached Ukrainian officials on how to convince a recalcitrant public to give up workers’ rights and implement anti-union policies. Training materials lamented that popular opinion towards the proposed reforms was overwhelmingly negative, but provided messaging strategies to mislead Ukrainians into supporting them.

While workers’ rights are to be removed in the ‘new Ukraine’, in contrast the National Recovery Plan aims to help corporations and the wealthy by lowering taxes. The plan complained that 40% of Ukraine’s GDP came from tax revenue, calling this a “rather high tax burden” compared to its model example of South Korea. It thus called to “transform tax service,” and “review potential for decreasing the share of tax revenue in GDP.” In the name of “EU integration and access to markets,” it likewise proposed “removal of tariffs and non-tariff non-technical barriers for all Ukrainian goods,” while simultaneously calling to “facilitate FDI [foreign direct investment] attraction to bring the largest international companies to Ukraine,” with “special investment incentives” for foreign corporations.

In addition to the National Recovery Plan and the strategic briefing, the July 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference presented a report prepared by the company Economist Impact, a corporate consulting firm that is part of The Economist Group. The Ukraine Reform Tracker pushed to “increase foreign direct investments” by international corporations, not invest resources in social programs for the Ukrainian people. The Tracker report emphasized the importance of developing the financial sector and called for “removing excessive regulations” and tariffs. It called for further “liberalising agriculture” to “attract foreign investment and encourage domestic entrepreneurship,” as well as “procedural simplifications,” to “make it easier for small and medium enterprises” to “expand by purchasing and investing in state-owned assets,” thereby “making it easier for foreign investors to enter the market post-conflict.”

The Ukraine Reform Tracker presented the war as an opportunity to impose the take over by foreign capital. “The post-war moment may present an opportunity to complete the difficult land reform by extending the right to purchase agricultural land to legal entities, including foreign ones,” the report stated. “Opening the path for international capital to flow into Ukrainian agriculture will likely boost productivity across the sector, increasing its competitiveness in the EU market,” it added. “Once the war is over, the government will also need to consider substantially lowering the share of state owned banks, with the privatisation of Privatbank, the country’s largest lender, and Oshchadbank, a large processor of pensions and social payments,” it insisted.

Elsewhere there are less explicit pro-capital polices offered by semi-Keynesian Western economists. In a recent compilation by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), various economists have proposed Macroeconomic Policies for Wartime Ukraine. In this the authors “emphasise at the outset that Ukraine’s crisis is not a setting for a typical macroeconomic adjustment programme. ie not the usual IMF fiscal austerity and privatisation demands. But after many pages, it becomes clear that there is little difference in their proposals than those of the URC. As they say “the aim should be to pursue extensive radical deregulation of economic activity, avoid price controls, facilitate matching of labour and capital, and enhance the management of seized Russian and other sanctioned assets.“

The takeover of Ukraine by capital (mainly foreign) will thus be completed and Ukraine can start paying back its debts and providing new profits for Western imperialism.

https://mronline.org/2022/08/16/138220/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Aug 17, 2022 12:04 pm

The importance of Peski
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/17/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

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Original Article: Vzglyad

The allied forces of Russia and Donbass have captured the town of Peski, from where the opponent has bombarded the northern and western areas of Donetsk for the past eight years. The battles for this town have been the toughest and have become "carnage and hell" for the Ukrainian troops. Now, the allied troops can accelerate their advance towards Artyomovsk, Soledar and other cities, which will ultimately complete the liberation of Donbass and will have an adverse psychological effect on the kyiv regime.

On Saturday, the Russian Federation Defense Ministry announced the liberation of Peski, located northwest of Donetsk, bordering the city's Kuibishevsky district. The battle for control of this town was between the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Donetsk People's Republic between 2014 and 2015, when kyiv managed to maintain its control.

At the end of last week, the leader of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, pointed out on his Telegram channel that it was difficult to take Peski: "the enemy is literally on the ground, tunnels have been dug between the basements of the houses". “But that has not helped them, they fled leaving everything behind: ammunition and the bodies of his brothers from him ,” Pushilin wrote.

Earlier this month, soldier Serhiy Gnezdilov recounted the course of the battles for Peski from the Ukrainian Army's point of view, describing the situation as "carnage", "where a huge number of Ukrainian infantry are buried every day" and " a personal hell” in which, on occasion, 6,500 projectiles have been fired in one day with the only answer being 82 and 120mm mortars. "Counterbattery fire is non-existent, the enemy puts artillery in our trenches without any problem, destroys fortified cement positions in ten minutes, without pause or minimal rest for our line of defense," wrote Gnezdilov, who did not hide his radical anti-Russian vision. and called for a war against Russia for generations.

For many years, this rock has been the basis of Ukrainian formations. From here, the opponent bombarded the north and west of Donetsk: the Kievsky, Kirovsky, Kyubishevsky and Petrovsky districts, as well as the towns of Staromikhailovka and Lozovoe. Soldiers from the Somalia battalion liberating the town encountered American Javelin anti-tank missiles and German MG-42 machine guns, known as Hitlersage . As reported by Izvestia , the old machine guns fire 1,200 rounds per minute and can still be used in battle.

Among the community of experts, there are different points of view when it comes to analyzing Peski's catch. For some, it is an important step in the liberation of all of Donbass, while for others it is just a tactical episode. The captain of the first rank and deputy director of the magazine Voin Rossiy, Vasily Dandykin, compares the liberation of this place with the capture of Volnovakha and Popasnaya. The expert foresees progress in other areas with strong points of the Ukrainian formations. "There is already progress in the direction of Artyomovsk, Soledar, Seversk," he noted. According to Dandykin, Russia actively uses missiles, artillery and aircraft to destroy enemy reserves, including mobile air defense installations. “Ukraine is suffering losses in the Kharkiv and Nikolaev area. The opponent is in constant tension, which makes it difficult to send troops in the direction of Donbass, so in the near future, allied troops will reach the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk line to complete the liberation of Donbass, ”he predicted.

Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the Natsionalnaya Oborona magazine , is confident that Peski's release will worsen the situation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on this sector of the front. “But it is nothing more than a tactical episode, we need large-scale advances in the context of the second phase of the special operation . We can count on this episode and add it to the list of victories and successes. From these successes in different areas will come the common success in the course of the special operation”, Korotchenko believes. The expert does not believe that the bombing of Donetsk will go down, since the capture of Peski is not the liberation of Stalingrad, Berlin or Königsberg. “Peski is a small town. We are gradually advancing, the Russian military machine is undermining the Ukrainian Army,” he added.

Alexander Perendzhiev, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the Russian University of Economics and a member of the Official Russia Council of Experts, also believes that “Ukrainian Armed Forces will continue to intensively shell Donetsk from other places, so we will have to continue driving out the Ukrainian nationalists and destroying their equipment.” According to the expert, the liberation of Peski adds one more to the bag of successes of the allied forces, but it does not solve any problem. “It is a good preliminary step for the liberation of Donbass. Now we have to liberate Artyomovsk, because this is the key after which Avdeevka can be surrounded and the fight for Slavyansk and Kramatorsk can begin.”

Perendzhiev explained that Peski has been captured by various factors. It's not just about the ability to maneuver, use equipment, but professional artillery support. "The use of reconnaissance drones and the application of precision bombing in the most vulnerable places has determined the speed of the taking of this fortified area," he insisted.

Alexander Makushin, a member of the Association of Historians, an expert at the Russian Military History Society, added that "allied troops with care and minimal cost in terms of casualties have defeated the line of defense of the Ukrainian formations." “We are acting without patriotism, without the practice of taking seats on significant dates. Our troops entered Peski a week ago and have methodically swept through the town. We are showing a new kind of warfare and that scares our geopolitical opponents,” Makushin believes.

The military historian described Peski as one of the defense strong points, whose breach "will force the enemy to retreat". “If we look at the map, the Donbass districts are one continuous urban agglomeration. As soon as we expel the enemy from here and go to Artyomovsk-Soledar, the kyiv regime will have a psychological fall,” the expert suggested. Zelensky will have to use all his forces to hold the front line and "the kyiv authorities will have to try to stop the offensive of the allied troops with his bodies, that is, with the lives of the Ukrainians." As an example, Makushin mentioned the recruitment of soldiers who have already been wounded and men over fifty.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/17/la-im ... more-25296

Google Translator

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Kiev Tacitly Admitted to Waging Nuclear Terrorism Against Europe
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 15, 2022
Andrew Korybko

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The only possible explanation for this shocking stance is that the West has become so desperate to stop Russia’s slow but steady advance throughout the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that its ideologically driven elite are literally willing to sacrifice their own people’s lives and that of future generations in a last-ditch gamble to bring that about. Their citizens, meanwhile, obviously don’t approve of this but are powerless to shape the course of events.

“Kiev’s Nuclear Terrorism Towards The Zaporozhye Power Plant Threatens All Of Europe”, as the author wrote last week, yet many in the West still claimed that it was Russia that was waging such after being gaslighted by the Mainstream Media (MSM) into falling for the unbelievable narrative that the Eurasian Great Power would bomb the same facility under its control. The truth has since been indisputably spilled by none other than Zelensky and his senior advisor Podalyak. The first brazenly declared that “Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant, or shoots using the plant as cover, must understand that he becomes a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our army”, while the second confirmed that Kiev will “use any kind of weapon” to “liberate” that facility.

These statements amount to tacit admissions that Russia was once again right in what it warned about Kiev, which in this context was that it’s waging nuclear terrorism against Europe. There’s now no longer any doubt after those two leading officials openly announced that they’ll use military force to remove Russia from the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP). The fact that those threats haven’t been condemned by any Western official suggests passive acceptance of their proxy holding the Damocles’ sword of a nuclear catastrophe over everyone’s head. This is all the more astounding when the consequences of any potential disaster would reverberate widely throughout the continent, especially the Black Sea region that several EU and NATO members abut.

The only possible explanation for this shocking stance is that the West has become so desperate to stop Russia’s slow but steady advance throughout the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that its ideologically driven elite are literally willing to sacrifice their own people’s lives and that of future generations in a last-ditch gamble to bring that about. Their citizens, meanwhile, obviously don’t approve of this but are powerless to shape the course of events. Even if they peacefully protested en masse, it won’t make any difference since the most that they could do in theory is pressure their officials to condemn Kiev, which is unrealistic to expect and also wouldn’t make any difference. The only one capable of averting this impending nuclear catastrophe is that crumbling country’s US patron.

Cynically speaking, Washington might not mind all that much even if the worst-case scenario transpires since the “silver lining” would be that its economic rivals across the Atlantic would be forever prevented from competing with it in the future. That said, it’s unclear which ratio of its elite might hold these views and whether they have the influence to ensure that their country doesn’t intervene to prevent that from happening. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that at least some within its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) aren’t averse to that scenario otherwise it wouldn’t have ever gotten to the point where Kiev is practically boasting about bombing the ZNPP on the pretext of “liberating” it from Russian control.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this that’s much larger than the Ukrainian Conflict itself, and it’s that radical elements of the US elite will resort to the highest-stakes last-ditch efforts to ensure that their ideological agenda is advanced regardless of the costs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will cross the red line, though it could always happen even without anyone intending for it to. In terms of the broader picture, the impending resumption of the US’ “Pivot to Asia” following Speaking Pelosi’s provocative trip to Taiwan earlier this month suggests that a regional variation of Kiev’s indirect nuclear brinksmanship might one day be applied towards the People’s Republic.

The East Asian theater of the New Cold War is very different from its Eastern European one but that same strategic principle remains constant: it can no longer be discounted that the US’ regional proxies will follow in Kiev’s footsteps by raising the stakes to the highest levels in a desperate attempt to stop China if it’s emerging victorious in a hot conflict (even at a slow and steady pace like Russia is in Ukraine). In a sense, this is a remix of Nixon’s so-called “Madman Theory” where he pretended that was crazy enough to do the unthinkable in order to deter his country’s international rivals at the time, with the primary difference being that the ideologically driven US elite might actually not be pretending.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... st-europe/

Ukraine: Why Inspectors Can’t Reach the Zaporozhye Nuclear Plant
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 15, 2022


The UN doesn’t want IAEA monitors to confirm Kiev was shelling the power plant, says local administration

Members of the UN are blocking a visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) so they can avoid confirming Kiev shelled the Russian-controlled facility, local official Vladimir Rogov told RT in an interview on Monday.

Rogov, a member of the Zaporozhye military-civil administration, insisted that the ZNPP is always prepared to welcome the atomic energy watchdog, which has repeatedly expressed a desire to visit the facility, but noted that the UN has “directly started to block the possibility of an IAEA inspection.”

The official suggested that if the agency does visit the plant, it would be forced to conclude that it had been shelled by Kiev’s forces. “It is obvious, it’s all been documented, and not only that, it’s also well known who is being supplied with American guided missiles. Obviously, not Russia, but the Zelensky regime.”

The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant – the largest in Europe – has repeatedly come under attack over the past few weeks. While none of the reactors have so far been struck, the shelling has partially damaged a nearby thermal power plant as well as equipment used to cool the nuclear reactors.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of using rockets, artillery and drones to attack the ZNPP and has described Kiev’s actions as “nuclear terrorism” and holding the whole of Europe hostage.

Rogov stated that Western countries have “completely lost their instinct of self-preservation” in an economic, geopolitical and ecological sense, as a disaster at the ZNPP would spell trouble for European countries first and foremost.

“Nevertheless, we do not hear a single adequate statement, not a single voice of reason, either from Germany or from France,” he noted.

Kiev, meanwhile, has denied responsibility for shelling the plant and insists that it is Russia that has been targeting it in a plot to discredit Ukraine. The US State Department has taken Zelensky’s side and has called for a withdrawal of Russian forces from the area and the creation of a demilitarized zone around the plant.

While that solution has been supported by the UN and the EU, Rogov insists that the West should instead be working to establish a ceasefire there. Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has pointed out that if Russian forces were to leave the power plant it would be vulnerable to action by Kiev.

“Those who propose the withdrawal of Russian troops should be aware of the consequences that this object will be left without protection and can be used by Kiev and nationalist groups for the most monstrous provocations,” said the Russian ambassador, stressing that Moscow does not use nuclear facilities for military purposes.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... ear-plant/

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Energy hara-kiri of Germany
August 17, 10:51

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Energy hara-kiri of Germany

Energy sanctions against Russia turned out to be a serious mistake, writes Klaus Ernst, head of the Bundestag committee on energy and climate issues, in an article for the Berliner Zeitung. "Feverish attempts" to replace oil and gas from Russia with supplies from other countries have not been successful. According to the politician, the fact that Russia is still supplying gas to Germany is "rather surprising." Ernst urged to “remove the taboo” from Nord Stream 2 and sit down at the negotiating table with Russia in order to prevent a possible “hot” autumn and cold winter.

Neither many German citizens nor German industry will survive the coming winter without some losses, writes Klaus Ernst, head of the Bundestag's energy and climate committee and former chairman of the Left Party, in an article for the Berliner Zeitung. According to him, inflation in Germany is primarily caused by rising energy prices. “Already now, not only low-income people are afraid to look at a check at a gas station or in a supermarket,” the politician notes. At the same time, they have not yet seen “real accounts”. They will receive them only with an annual receipt from the utility companies. “The government's calls for austerity measures are pure cynicism. Many have nothing left now, ”says Ernst.

“Energy sanctions against Russia turned out to be a serious mistake! A major recession is inevitable. In the energy sector, the economic downturn is caused primarily by sanctions against Russia, as well as statements that Russian energy supplies will be cut off regardless of existing agreements or contracts. Expanding the use of renewable energy as soon as possible is the right thing to do; it also makes sense to diversify energy imports. However, jeopardizing the energy supply of Europe's largest economy is hara-kiri, it harms citizens and industry and does not help Ukraine in any way, ”the politician notes.

On the contrary, as an energy exporter, Russia “benefits from higher prices and has already found new export opportunities in India and China,” Ernst said. According to the politician, in the first half of 2022, the current account surplus of Russia's balance of payments tripled compared to the same period last year. He emphasizes: "We should not expect that as a result of our sanctions, the conflict will end faster."

The "feverish attempts" of the Minister of Economy in the spring in the short term to replace oil and gas from Russia with supplies from other countries were not crowned with success either. In the best case, the first deliveries will be in 2024. For Schwedt and the refinery located there, which will be cut off from Russian oil supplies by the federal government, rather than by reducing supplies from Russia, "no real alternative is in sight yet," Ernst said. Serious consequences threaten not only the collective of workers and employees of the plant, but also the entire energy supply of East Germany.

According to Ernst, the debate about extending the life of nuclear power plants will not lead to a solution to the problem, as well as discussions about restarting coal-fired power plants. Additional power generation will not be able to replace Russian energy carriers. “The negative consequences for achieving our climate goals also make this path questionable, but it seems to be acceptable for green politicians,” the politician argues.

Ernst continues: “How else can you secure energy supply other than direct negotiations with Russia? Violating treaties through your own sanctions while expecting Russia to abide by them is political stupidity. The fact that Russia is still making deliveries is rather surprising. It is necessary to remove the taboo from Nord Stream 2! Why, according to Khabek, will dependence on Russian gas increase if part of it passes through Nord Stream 2?

“Fossil energy sources at reasonable prices will be needed for a long time to come. An agreement with Russia could quickly stabilize energy supply, increase supply and thus lead to a fall in energy prices. This would to some extent prevent a possible “hot” autumn and cold winter – and would not interfere with Ukraine!” Ernst sums up in his article for the Berliner Zeitung.

https://russian.rt.com/inotv/2022-08-17 ... a-komiteta - zinc

Such tantrums, which the Russian media like to quote, primarily reflect the concern of big German capital, which, under the guise of caring for "ordinary Germans", is actually trying to ensure the mitigation of the upcoming energy crisis, voicing through their lobbyists in the Bundestag and through the controlled press theses about the need for negotiations with Russia and concessions from Germany to ensure an increase in gas supplies to Germany. The main reason is extremely banal - without cheap Russian gas, the German economy in the 3rd-4th quarter of 2022 will face a recession and the closure / shutdown of hundreds of enterprises, including large industry giants.

German big business has been held hostage by the anti-Russian policy, and at the current stage it is suffering systemic losses that cannot be covered by complicity in the plundering of the remnants of Ukraine. So the whining continues, but the course of the Scholz government is not corrected. With a high degree of probability, we can expect that in the next local elections, big business will continue to support those figures who advocate the sabotage of anti-Russian sanctions, as well as provide a platform for the indignant representatives of local authorities, whose heads are spoken by large German concerns.

However, this whining should not be confused with the official position of the Scholz government, which, by design, will be forced to continue on the current course, despite the obvious damage to the German economy, which will lose many of the positions that were won and strengthened under Merkel, when Germany was in earnest claimed economic hegemony in Europe. The USA quite gracefully takes the economic competitor out of the game with the hands of "green" and "liberal" clowns, who happily destroy Germany's leading role in Europe.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7806415.html

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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Сolonelcassad
The situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of August 16, 2022

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▪️Mutual shelling continues in the north of the Kharkiv region :
➖Russian rocket troops and artillery launched a series of strikes on targets in different parts of Kharkov.
➖Ukrainian RQ-20 Puma UAVs are operating along the line of contact to identify the positions of the Russian Armed Forces.

▪️On the Slavic direction , fighting is going on in the forests on the outskirts of the city.
➖Units of the 3rd Motorized Rifle Division of the RF Armed Forces re-established control over Bogorodichny.
➖During the day and night, Russian artillery hit objects in the settlements of the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration.

▪️There are no significant changes in the front line in the Soledar direction :
➖Skirmishes continue on the outskirts of Bakhmut. Detachments of "PMC Wagner" are trying to reach the city from the north and south.
➖Despite reports of the capture of Bakhmutsky and Kodema, both settlements still remain under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

▪️In the Donetsk direction, allied forces are attacking the strongholds of Ukrainian formations on the outskirts of the capital of the DPR:
➖Units of the NM DPR are moving in the direction of Pervomaisky and Nevelskoye from the previously taken village of Peski.
➖In the evening, there were reports about the exit of the Slavic brigade of the NM of the DPR to the fortified area on the territory of an abandoned air defense unit on the southeastern approaches to Avdiivka.
➖The offensive near Ugledar continues, and so far unconfirmed information has been received about the exit to the road between Ugledar and Maryinka .
➖Ukrainian artillery shelled residential areas of Donetsk, Yasinovataya and Gorlovka.

▪️Russian artillery hit targets in Marganets and Nikopol, from where Ukrainian formations are shelling Energodar and the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.

***

Сolonelcassad
Battle for Marinka

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situation by the end of August 16, 2022

▪️Over the past week, the front line in Maryinka has not changed significantly. Units of the NM DPR have entrenched themselves in the private sector east of Druzhby Avenue and are preparing to storm a multi-storey building in the center of the village

▪️The units of the 61st brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine defending Marinka suffered significant losses from the concentrated fire of the allied forces. The Russian Aerospace Forces are also attacking a fortified area in neighboring Krasnogorovka.

▪️The situation in Maryinka is somewhat reminiscent of the assault on the village of Peski: continuous attacks on the rear and reinforcements of Ukrainian formations, as well as the destruction of fortifications, will force the defenders to retreat from their positions to the next lines of defense.

At the moment, this has not happened yet, but as the fire impact increases due to superiority in artillery, the allied forces will systematically push the APU out of the settlement

***

forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Good news in the Avdiivka direction: units of the 1st Guards Slavic Omsbrd of the NM DPR advanced, pushing the enemy back and taking operational control of the territory of the air defense unit near Avdiivka, which the enemy had turned into a defense center. The enemy partially retreated from their positions.

Reconnaissance and units of rifle battalions are moving forward.

For the Slavs, the battles in this direction are of a fundamental nature - 7 years ago, in January 2015, they were thrown to storm an air defense unit. But the operation failed. The columns of the Slavs reached the deployment line in battle formations, but did not have time to do so and were attacked from three sides.

The enemy was clearly waiting for an attack, letting the units into open space and opening point-blank dagger fire. Under these conditions, the Slavs resisted, snapped, destroying the enemy, but the losses were considerable: dozens of dead and wounded, some of the soldiers were captured, cars and armored vehicles were burned.

We talked about betrayal. At that time, nothing was heard about personnel purges in the command of the DPR in connection with the defeat of the air defense unit.

Now the situation is different - the initiative is on our side, we are working on the front line and positions of the enemy with artillery fire, aviation is actively used.

I expect further progress in this direction in the next 24 hou

***

forwarded from
Radio Sputnik
❗️On August 4, 9 and 12, Ukrainian saboteurs blew up power transmission towers through which the Kursk NPP supplies industrial facilities, transport, social infrastructure and the population of the Kursk region and neighboring regions

🔺The actions of the saboteurs led to the disruption of the technological process of the operation of the nuclear power plant .

🔺A criminal case has been opened about the terrorist attack, the criminals and their possible accomplices are being searched, and measures have been taken in cooperation with the National Guard to strengthen the security of nuclear facilities.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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Gazprom Warns of Rising Gas Prices in Europe

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Gazprom warns gas prices could exceed 4 000 dollars per thousand cubic meters this winter. Aug. 16, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @LizoComb

Published 16 August 2022 (11 hours 56 minutes ago)

According to the Russian energy giant, gas prices in Europe may jump 60 percent by this winter.

Gas prices in Europe have quadrupled from early this year amid declining flows, with Russia being Europe's primary source of natural gas.

The largest Russian company said via Telegram, "European spot gas prices have reached $2,500. According to conservative estimates, if such a tendency persists, prices will exceed $4,000 per thousand cubic meters this winter."

Claiming to supply gas "in accordance with confirmed requests," Gazprom reported that between January 1 and August 15, the company's gas exports to countries outside the former Soviet Union had seen a 36.2 percent reduction, with production down 13.2 percent.

Sanctions concerning the ongoing Ukraine along and technical problems this year have triggered such action in Gazprom's exports to Europe.


The London Stock Exchange ICE reported Tuesday that, for the first time since March, the cost of gas futures at the title transfer facility (TTF) in the Netherlands rose above 2 600 dollars per thousand cubic meters, up 13 percent from the previous day's liquidation.

In this scenario, Gazprom's flows through the Power of Siberia pipeline exceed the contracted daily quantities on a regular basis.

This increase in Gazprom's shipments to Asia implies a 60.9 percent increase in gas supplies to China between January and July compared to the same period last year.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Gaz ... -0016.html

Poland Demands Ukraine Recognize Genocide Committed in WWII

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Polish Deputy Minister says Ukraine must acknowledge the genocide committed against Poles. Aug. 16, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@Newslogic_in

Published 16 August 2022 (12 hours 20 minutes ago)

On Tuesday, Poland’s Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage called on the Ukrainian government to recognize the genocide committed by its country during World War II.

According to the statement made by Poland's Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Jaroslaw Sellin on Tuesday, the mass murder committed by the Ukrainian government during the Second World War matches the concept of genocide. The Polish official considers that Kiev's administration has to acknowledge it.

"They have to acknowledge it because it's a fact. It's simply a fact. A political decision was made and implemented for ethnic cleansing, the extermination of the entire national minority that has lived there for centuries," said a Polish diplomat.

"This is genocide, it fits all the parameters of the definition of genocide, so there is no discussion here. This is a historical fact. Sooner or later, the Ukrainians will have to recognize it," Sellin.

According to Polish historians, between 100,000-130,000 ethnic Poles were massacred by Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). By 2016, the Polish parliament issued a resolution designating July 11 as a day for commemorating the genocide, alluding to the date when the UPA attacked 150 Polish towns in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. In turn, the Ukrainian government denounced the resolution as counterproductive.


Poland's administration has drafted a proposal for a joint working group for finding mass graves and performing exhumations to give proper burials and commemorating the dead. Sellin said the collective working group members' list was sent to the Ministry of Culture in Kiev.

"We are waiting for a personnel proposal from the Ukrainian side," said the Polish official.

Warsaw considers a problem the fact that Kiev glorifies the UPA as Ukrainian nationalists who fought against the Soviet Union; at the same time, they ignore things like the genocide committed against Poles. Sellin said that Poland's task is to build a common historical truth.


He continued to say that Ukrainians will "sooner or later come to the point where part of the traditions of this military formation and the nationalist political movements behind it are unacceptable, worthy of condemnation."

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

Finland To Restrict Entry Visas for Russians

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Finland to limit visa issuance to Russians as it advocates EU-wide ban. Aug. 16, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@Svidomi_En

Published 16 August 2022 (14 hours 43 minutes ago)

Under this visa restriction measure announced Tuesday by the Finnish Foreign Ministry, only 100 tourists per day are allowed to enter.

Finland and the three Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - have called on the European Union (EU) to impose a total ban on Russian entry.

The number of daily visas for Russians will be halved as of September 1. Only 500 Finnish visa applications from Russia will be handled each day, of which 100 will be for tourists and the rest for workers, students and people with family in Finland.

According to the Finnish ministry, the country "supports the complete suspension of the visa facilitation agreement between the EU and Russia."

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which strongly favor an EU-wide ban, have already stopped granting visas to Russians.


Following the Russian special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, the EU decreed the suspension of all flights to and from Russia.

However, the entry of Russians into the bloc by land is still allowed. A visa granted by a Schengen zone country provides access to any other 25 states in the border-free travel zone.

The EU has rejected a total embargo on Russians regarding entry to the bloc. As officials told the Financial Times last week, "Russians who are not in favor of the war should also be able to travel." Germany, for its part, has opposed backing this move.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Fin ... -0011.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:09 pm

in Nikolayev
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/18/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

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Original Article: Larissa Shesler

Recently, the local patriots have radiated a stupid euphoria in their publications, they have multiplied the false posts and photos about the thousands of Russian soldiers who said that they had been surrounded on the right bank of the Dnieper [even Oleksiy Arestovich publicized this false information- Ed ] and about the impending attack on Kherson. But suddenly a rare bird fliesin the middle of the Dnieper River, an isolated patriot who has survived two weeks in the fog of lies. And now discouragement reigns and premonitions of a "second Mariupol" appear among them. The statements of Georgy Tuka, deputy minister for displaced persons, about a future forced evacuation of the population of Nikolaev could not cause optimism either. The feeling is growing among the local population that Nikolaev will soon become the epicenter of a new military escalation.

Recruitment does not moderate its intensity and, except for employees of the police and recruiting offices, all workers, including those of social services and even university presidents, can receive citations. All this has led to many young residents of Nikolaev stealthily hiding with their grandmothers in the villages, in dachas or, for those with greater purchasing power, in residences on the Black Sea. The army has started a campaign to intimidate conscripts and the Nikolaev press has published, for example, the criminal case against a draft evader in Pervomaisk, Nikolaev region. Most likely, instead of disappearing without saying anything after receiving the summons, he refused to accept it, for which he now faces a prison sentence of between three and five years. Indeed,

As always, there are those for whom war is a blessing. In Nikolaev, a criminal case has been opened against the owners of an armory that sold fake bulletproof vests, helmets and other equipment to volunteers, who send this material to the Ukrainian troops. In general, the question of volunteers in Ukraine is becoming a panacea for investigators of the rampant theft of donations and resale of humanitarian aid. I'm sure that many volunteers who bought fake bulletproof vests that don't protect anything in these stores were perfectly aware of the garbage they were buying. But money never smells bad.

The Government does not forget its own either. The fall in the price of gasoline and diesel encouraged the Government to re-impose VAT. And if yesterday you could see gas at Nikolaev gas stations for 45 hryvnias, after the return of VAT the price will return to the old 55-60 hryvnias. There will be no time for anyone to get used to it.

Meanwhile, the patriotic press begins a new campaign to promote repression against "supporters of the Russian world." As supposed supporters of the anti-Maidan of Nikolaev in 2014, the names of the detained lawyer Arbatsky, the former deputy Igor Kopeika and some others have begun to be mentioned. As someone who had a direct relationship with the leadership of the anti-Maidan movement in Nikolaev, I can say that, at that time, I did not even hear the name of Arbatsky, not a single hryvnia was received from those people. Moreover, as he was not received from anyone else. But I feel sorry for the lawyer Arbatsky, whom they are trying to accuse only because he probably does not profess bandero ideas.

Night missiles have hit Nikolaev's famous kyiv-Mogila building. Last week, a well-known Telegram channel posted that there were troops stationed there. A visit to the admissions office made just after the publication did not convince that the building was the target of the missiles. In a huge building on such a wide territory, a room for such an excursion can always be found. In general, Russian missiles rarely hit the city center and try not to hit residential buildings. The main attacks occur in industrial areas and ports.

Although after the war, factories, universities and residential buildings will have to be restored. And Russian names will have to reappear on streets and squares.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/18/en-ni ... more-25302

Google Translator

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Russian Patience With the War in Ukraine Is Not Endless as the West May Soon Learn
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 16, 2022
James ONeill

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In March of this year Russian troops captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. It has been in Russian possession ever since, although the Ukrainian forces have made desperate attempts to recapture it. These attempts have included bombing and shelling of the site. To describe this and incredibly stupid is an understatement.

The plant is a nuclear plant and its wanton destruction could cause the dispersal of nuclear material far from the site. To say that it endangers the lives not only of the Russian occupiers and the surrounding Ukrainians living in proximity to the plant is a massive understatement. The destruction of the plant risks a nuclear contamination of a vast surrounding area that includes not only Ukrainian territory, but also that of its geographical neighbours, including Russia, Poland and Hungary.

The Russians have protested the bombing and shelling of the plant, thus far without success. The Ukrainians seem impervious to the risks that are evident to all the people in the region, and as noted, in surrounding countries as well. The remarkable response by the Ukrainians is to blame the Russians for the shelling of the plant. This is not only demonstrably false, but is proven to be so. There is absolutely no reason for the Russians to destroy the plant, not least because it would endanger its own people.

What theUkrainian motive is for the shelling is not clear. They have expressed the wish to retake possession of the plant, but that is not going to happen. Nobody in their right mind would hand such a potentially dangerous object over to the Ukrainians who have shown by their actions a reckless disregard not only for the inhabitants of the plant, but also the lives and safety of the millions of people living within the likely zone of contamination in the event that the plant is destroyed.

The Ukrainians are not of course acting on their own in this reckless conduct. The Ukrainians are backed by the by the full forces of the NATO powers, who seem willing to allow the fighting to continue until the last Ukrainian. There is no realistic possibility of Ukraine ever winning this war and the intervention, through arms, “volunteers” and political support from the western powers who are backing the discredited regime of Zelenskyy.

These same Western powers that are backing the Ukraine regime are the same powers who endlessly site their devotion to the “rules based international order” which in the Ukrainian context is no more than a sick joke. The Ukrainian government has recently banned at least nine political groups that oppose it, including those that appeal to a Russian speaking audience. That group has suffered extra restrictions, including the banning of their native language.

It is the Western powers that have been supplying the missiles that have been hitting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant over the past week or so. They must bear a degree of responsibility for the damage that is done to the plant and to the surrounding countryside and neighbouring nations. It has been estimated that the nuclear radioactive contamination that will ensue will be greater than both the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters that have occurred in recent years. Both of these nuclear disasters were accidents and were not deliberately planned for.

The Zaporizhzhia disaster by contrast is a deliberately engineered catastrophe. The United Nations’ international nuclear supervisory agency, the IAEA has condemned the attack on Zaporizhzhia as “suicidal”. The United Nations has not however, specifically condemned the Ukrainians for the attack on the plant, claiming instead that there were “conflicting reports”on who was to be held accountable. This is a disgraceful abdication of the UN’s responsibility. It is abundantly obvious who is responsible for the attacks, and that is the Ukrainians. The Russians have no conceivable motive for damaging the plane and to suggest otherwise betrays an alarming lack of logic by the UN.

The Kiev regime, together with its United States master, has been the main source of the claim that the Russians are responsible for what is happening at the plant. They say that the Russians are alleging Ukrainian responsibility for the attacks as cover for its own nefarious plans for the nuclear plant. It is an example of the type of twisted logic that one has come to expect from the Ukrainian regime and from their American masters. The latter are constantly seeking the means to criticise Russia and the nuclear power plant is a classic example of them seeking to turn to their advantage a Russian success, in this case the capture of the plant in March, shortly after the beginning of the Russian intervention.

There is one other point that clearly illustrates Ukrainian culpability for the missile attacks on the nuclear plant. The evidence clearly demonstrates that the missiles were fired from territory that is still under the control of the Ukrainian forces. It is a relatively simple matter to track missiles from their point of origin and the evidence has clearly demonstrated Ukrainian culpability for the attacks.

The attacks on a nuclear power plant illustrate the desperation of the Ukrainian government that despite extensive western military and political support is manifestly losing the war in Ukraine. A further measure of the extent to which the Ukrainian regime will go also came to light a littler over a week ago with a report from Amnesty International. That report made it very clear that the Kiev regime was using civilian centres such as schools and hospitals as well as residential areas as locations for their artillery weapons. When the Russians respond by attacking these weapons centres they are accused by the Ukrainians and by the insipid western media of attacking civilian centres. It is a well-established ploy by the Ukrainians and must be known to the apologists in the western media who continue to present incredibly one-eyed reports of the fighting.

The Russians have responded to this barrage of Ukrainian misinformation by summonsing the United Nations Security Council for an emergency session to highlight the dangers posed by the actions of the Ukrainian forces. Russia is calling for IAEA inspectors to be allowed to visit visit and report Ukrainian positions. This has met with predictable opposition from the British and American representatives on the Security Council. Their destructive attitude itself speaks volumes as to the true nature of the western backing of the Ukrainians ion the Wass, regardless of this multiple crimes.

There currently seems to be no limited to the steps that the Americans will take to support their Ukrainian allies. Thus far that strategy has been of little direct risk to the Americans who are content to use the Ukrainians as their proxies in this war. How long Russian patience will persist in the face of this strategy is an open question. The Americans for their part seem content to go on pushing at Russian patience. They may learn that such patience is not unlimited.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... oon-learn/

Finland and Sweden: Loss of Autonomy in Exchange for Illusory Protection
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 16, 2022

Military Review
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The Russian special operation in Ukraine, provoked by the actions of the West, has frightened some countries so much that they are ready to sacrifice their sovereignty in exchange for a false sense of security. Sweden and Finland, longtime “pacifists” in the turbulent sea of ​​world politics, under pressure from the United States, applied to join the North Atlantic Alliance.

On August 9, Biden showed everyone an example and ratified the inclusion of the Scandinavian countries in NATO – Spain, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Hungary remained. There is no doubt that these countries will sign any papers. Turkey is still balking, but this is just another round of attempts to sit on all the chairs at the same time, which Erdogan has so far succeeded in doing.

Obviously, there is no point in denying that Washington’s long-standing dream of drawing the countries of northern Europe, especially Sweden, into the alliance has been crowned with success. At least on paper, the score is in favor of NATO. The main questions are how justified is the refusal of the Swedes and Finns from long-term neutrality and what threats and bonuses does the loss of independence bring in exchange for deceptive protection?

First of all, one must understand that neither Stockholm nor Helsinki were on the lists of Russia’s priority targets. Only in an inflamed mind can one imagine that the Kremlin will launch an operation to demilitarize its northern neighbors. Relations were either neutral or conditionally friendly. Negatively colored can be called the intersection of the interests of Sweden and Finland with Russia in the Arctic region. But even here, the countries were involved in a coupling with NATO and other alliances, and therefore the responsibility had to be borne collectively.

And the number of Scandinavian armies never struck the imagination. On the scale of the alliance, which consists of 30 countries, the armed forces of the candidates also do not have much weight. Sweden has 14,6 thousand fighters and only 10 thousand in reserve, while Finland has 19,25 and 238 thousand, respectively. For comparison: the Turkish army, which puts spokes in the Scandinavian wheels, has more than 550 thousand people.

The Scandinavians have exclusively defensive troops, unable to attack independently and on a large scale. Finns have up to 200 tanks, about 200 infantry fighting vehicles, 750 armored personnel carriers, more than 3 artillery pieces (many Soviet-style), 000 aircraft, up to 50 helicopters and more than 20 warships. The Swedes are somewhat more modest – more than 20 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, 500 fighters, a little more than 96 artillery pieces, 450 submarines and more than 5 surface ships. As Western analysts note, this arsenal does not have the means to “project power beyond its borders.”

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Source: vladtime.ru

What could Sweden and Finland, not burdened by NATO, count on in the event of the start of a third world war? For the same thing that Stockholm used so much during the entire period of the unprecedented massacre – the preservation of its own cultural heritage and large profits from trade weapons and resources. By the way, if Finland has been in the shoes of neutrality for a short time (since the end of World War II), then Sweden has been avoiding military alliances for more than two hundred years.

Since the admission of these two countries to NATO, they become legitimate targets for Russia. Recall that at the June summit, the alliance declared our country “the most significant threat” and no longer perceives it as a partner. Brussels only needs to be reminded when Russia was a de facto partner of the military alliance, and not on paper. When did it rapidly absorb the Baltic states and Eastern Europe?

Scandinavian “bonuses”

Finland and Sweden, in the event of an aggravation of the NATO-Russia conflict to a hot state, find themselves in a completely disadvantageous position. It still needs to be hit by ballistic missiles in the UK, for the Scandinavians a massive launch of tactical nuclear weapons carriers will be enough. Proximity to the Russian border does not allow the deployment of effective missile defense – the reaction time is reduced to critical values.

It is not entirely clear whether those in power in these countries were able to adequately convey to respectable citizens of the European north about all the delights of joining NATO and “security” under the American, British and French nuclear umbrella. The notorious Article 5 of the alliance’s charter, which regulates a collective military response to aggression against any country, works the same way in the opposite direction. For the actions of individual members of NATO, the other players in the alliance bear full responsibility.

Be that as it may, strategically NATO receives almost 800 thousand square meters. kilometers of new territory near the very borders of Russia. It is too early to talk about a serious preponderance of forces on these frontiers – it will take the West several years to reformat the armed forces of the Scandinavian countries. It is also premature to talk about the deployment of strike weapons that directly threaten Russia – Brussels will obviously be careful not to provoke a war. But the airfields for NATO aviation in Finnish Rovaniemi, Tampere, Kuopio and Tikkakoski is a serious threat to the north-west of Russia. And, of course, the Baltic Sea, which from now on will become the final inland water body of NATO.

In addition to losing their remaining autonomy, Helsinki and Stockholm will face several financial burdens. First of all, this is the NATO requirement for each country to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. In the past, not all countries observed this rule, or rather, compliance was the exception in the alliance rather than the rule. Only the USA, Great Britain, Poland, Estonia, Greece and Latvia regularly spent 2% or more. The rest saved as much as they could. After February 24, this focus will no longer work – NATO intends to arm itself to the teeth, and this fate will affect the new members in the first place. In which case, it is the Finns and the Swedes who will hold back Russia on the northern borders, so the filling of the military budget will be strictly monitored.

For reference, last year Sweden spent $7,9 billion on defense, or 1,3% of GDP, Finland is formally already in the alliance – $5,9 billion and 2%, respectively. Sweden announced an increase in military spending to $11 billion by 2025 two years ago. What does it say? For the Scandinavian countries, joining the anti-Russian military alliance becomes a complete formality – they were actively building up the power of the army until February 2022.

Imageb]
Swedish RPG Carl Gustav M4

Sweden in this game is a particularly tasty morsel for the American military-industrial complex. The fact is that, unlike Finland, the Swedes have a powerful defense industry. Perhaps, Sweden does not produce now only tanks of its own design – in all other respects, military high-tech is quite at the world level. Saab Bofors Dynamics is able to build anti-ship missiles, and Saab AB is able to build fourth-generation fighters and AWACS aircraft. Swedish gunsmiths are consistently among the top ten largest exporters in the world.

Is this interesting to Washington, which is thoroughly pumping its military industry during a special operation in Ukraine? Of course not, so the Swedish military industry is waiting for a slow death under the sauce of “optimization to NATO standards.” First, the guns will be transferred to unified platforms, and these will not be Volvo chassis. Then the turn of replacing the electronic filling will come, the vaunted Swedish steel will go under the knife next.

At best, the military-industrial complex will remain the role of a local supplier, or a court atelier of some American defense industry giant, which does not allow spending money on promising developments. If you want to be in NATO, know how to part with your illusions.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... rotection/

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UN grain ship sails from Ukraine to Africa

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According to the UN World Food Program, the grain shipment will go to the humanitarian response in the Horn of Africa. | Photo: @WFP
Published 16 August 2022

This is the first shipment of food aid to leave Ukraine after the signing in July of agreements between kyiv and Moscow.

The first ship chartered by the UN left the Ukrainian port of Pivdenny on Tuesday with 23,000 tons of grain to be sent to the countries of the Horn of Africa.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure indicated that the Brave Commander ship set sail for the port of Djibouti, where the food will be delivered upon arrival to consumers in Ethiopia.

According to the World Food Program (WFP), the grain shipment will go to the humanitarian response in the Horn of Africa, where the threat of famine looms in the region affected by drought.


The UN entity noted that the African region is one of the areas in the world where the almost total cessation of Ukrainian cereals and food on the world market has made life even more difficult for families already struggling against rising hunger. .

This is the first shipment of food aid to leave Ukraine after the signing in July of agreements between kyiv and Moscow, with the mediation of Turkey and the support of the UN, to export Ukrainian cereals.


Since the entry into force of the agreement, fifteen ships have left Ukraine, according to the country's authorities, but still no UN humanitarian ship.

Ukraine and Russia are among the world's largest exporters of grain, the price of which has soared since the start of the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/onu-zarp ... -0003.html

Google Translator

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Winter of despair
August 18, 7:39

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Winter of despair

One in four UK residents will not be able to pay their gas and electricity bills after the increase in electricity tariff limits in October , reports The Independent, citing a study by Citizens Advice.

According to the organization, 13 million people across the UK will be in debt when annual electricity bills rise to £3,600, twice the number of people who can no longer pay their bills.

What's more, in January, when the limit is raised again and bills reach £4,200, the number of people unable to pay electricity could rise to one in three. This was described by the organization as a "winter of despair".

“It is becoming increasingly clear that skyrocketing prices will swallow up all the aid that has been announced so far,” chief executive Claire Moriarty said, calling for increased support for the most vulnerable.

Charities are asking the government to expand emergency payments amid 40-year high inflation of 10.1%, which is only exacerbating the already difficult situation for many Britons. At the same time, London is accused of being “very, very slow” in coping with the cost of living crisis. So, a member of the Conservative Party and chairman of the board of directors of the Asda supermarket chain Stuart Rose condemned Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who went on vacation, who is “resting on the beach” while the UK inevitably moves towards a recession.

However, as noted by The Independent, Cabinet Minister Keith Malthouse rejects accusations of inaction against the government. "This idea that we're all just sitting around eating buns and picking our noses is not true," the politician said, adding that Johnson's successor would make the decision on what to do about rising electricity bills.

(c) Adam Forrest

https://russian.rt.com/inotv/2022-08-18 ... a--kazhdij - zinc
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics /cost-living-energy-bills-debt-b2146776.html - original in English

It is strange that the article does not say that Putin consistently raises the price of electricity and this is "Putin's tax". Falls short of the heights of the Biden administration's rhetoric.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7807520.html

The largest plant in Slovakia was stopped
August 18, 13:14

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The largest aluminum plant in Slovakia stops production.
The decision is due to a sharp increase in the cost of electricity, which made Slovalco unprofitable.
The shutdown process at Slovalco has started and will not be stopped. Work until the end of September to lose, according to the newspaper, several hundred workers and office staff at this company, located in the town of Ziyar nad Hronom (Central Slovakia).
The plant, which provides aluminum to many EU countries, has been operating there for the past 70 years.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7808854.html

Google Translator

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WHAT ABOUT UKRAINIAN GRAINS?
Clara Sanchez

17 Aug 2022 , 1:47 pm .

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Ukraine is no longer considered "the breadbasket of the world" (Photo: Dado Ruvic / Reuters)

THOSE WHO WOULD SAVE THE WORLD FROM A GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

Until a few days ago, all the actors in NATO's sphere of influence maintained a hegemonic discourse on the grains trapped in Ukraine because of Russia, which would generate the world's largest food crisis. What about the grains? What will happen now with the global food crisis?

On July 22, 2022, the "Black Sea Grain Initiative" was signed separately between Russia and Ukraine, negotiated by Türkiye and the United Nations to release for 120 days through the ports of Odessa, Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk the 20 million tons of grain trapped in the Ukraine , without which, according to the actors in NATO's sphere of influence, the most catastrophic world food crisis "provoked by the war" would be generated, and of course in the poorest countries.

Faced with this agreement, the Secretary General of the United Nations stated that "there is a beacon in the Black Sea... of hope... of possibility... of relief... in a world that needs it more than ever... relief for developing countries and stabilization of the price of food.

And it is that not only Ukraine will be able to export grains, Russia will also be able to do so, including its fertilizers.

To do this, the ships will navigate a corridor in the Black Sea still strewn with explosive mines, under the direction of Ukrainian pilots, the inspection of Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and UN officials, monitored from the Joint Coordination Center in the Istanbul National Defense University, to prevent, among other things, the transport of weapons.

However, the first ship contracted by the UN to transport 23,000 tons of grain to the poorest countries in the world, which really suffer from a food crisis, and not since the war in Ukraine began, but for years, set sail 25 days later. of the agreement to the Horn of Africa, specifically to Ethiopia through the World Food Program.

When 20 ships have left through the Black Sea corridor with more than 540 thousand tons of agricultural products, most of them corn, purchased under previous commercial contracts, with preliminary destinations to Türkiye, Iran, Republic of Korea, China, Ireland, Italy, Romania, among others to be determined.

The first of these ships left for Lebanon with a cargo of 26,527 tons of maize * destined for chicken feed, which will be the majority of the remaining 20 million tons. Logical, because most of the grains produced by Ukraine are used for animal feed and biofuels. Not to feed the hungry of the world.

In fact, the agreement does not state that all grains go to countries with food insecurity or in emergency conditions, since it is intended to "comply with pre-existing trade agreements and take care of those interests."

Given this, UN officials have argued that "trade plays a role in stabilizing the market, even if it does not go directly to nations facing food shortages" and, furthermore, ensure that "the release of Ukrainian ports had already lowered world food prices.

However, it is recognized that the market is not always efficient to send the grain to where it is needed and in relation to food prices, according to the FAO, in July they fell for the fourth consecutive month, although it is insisted that the agreement on the export of Ukrainian grains the only action that has influenced it. And whose relationship is closely linked to the price of energy .


Meanwhile, the rearrangement on the geopolitical board continues where Türkiye assumed a leading role, demonstrating its quantum of power by controlling the Strait of Bosphorus or Istanbul, as a choke point for maritime trade by connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, becoming the only way out of the latter.

On the other hand, it is clear that the topic of the world food crisis "created only by Russia" will vanish from the international agenda, because it is not Ukrainian grains that will save the world from it, as they had not done before start the Russian special military operation in Ukraine; and until now it is beginning to be recognized by "experts" that "around 6 million tons of that trapped grain is wheat, and only half of that is for human consumption."

So much so that the World Food Program has done the same in this new scenario, indicating that "it will take more than grain ships from Ukraine to stop world hunger." What a find! And it will only be a relief for countries facing food crises. Ukraine is no longer "the breadbasket of the world."

In short, because with this strategic decision taken by Russia to sign the initiative in the midst of the war, it dismantles the use of the food crisis as an instrument of Western pressure , of NATO and its sphere of influence , which now migrates from grains trapped in Ukraine to the nuclear issue as the global threat, redirecting the hegemonic discourse, although Russia has been warning about it for months.

And it is in this scenario that the food issue takes force again, now it is the nuclear war that will create the famine that would generate 5 billion deaths , by affecting the productivity of the main world crops of rice, corn, wheat and soybeans, as well as changes in livestock production and world fisheries, something that may seem obvious, however, it is the United States that has dropped not one but two atomic bombs (Fat Man and Little Boy) on a Japan defeated in 1945 to impose his dominion in the world.

And in this aspect, analyzes and studies begin to emerge on where it will more or less impact it, and of course, the poorest countries in Africa and the Middle East are the most affected, while Australia, France or Spain would be the best planted in the middle of a nuclear war.

As if a nuclear war by itself, with the actors that could be involved, would not endanger human life on the planet; and it is precisely what can occur if a third world war breaks out.

For now, point to Russia.

* Until 08-16-2022, 451 thousand 481 tons of corn, 50 thousand 300 tons of sunflower meal, 41 thousand 622 tons of wheat, 11 thousand tons of soybeans, 6 thousand tons of sunflower oil and 2 1,914 tons of sunflower seeds in 21 ships, which includes 23,000 tons of food aid to the Horn of Africa according to the United Nations Organization, Türkiye and also cited by Reuters (2022) in its article " The first food aid ship post-blockade leaves Ukraine for Africa ."

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/qu ... de-ucrania

Google Translator

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Russia denounces Ukraine's provocation before Guterres visit

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The Russian Foreign Ministry described this threat to the Zaporozhie plant as nuclear blackmail. | Photo: Sputnik
Published August 18, 2022 (38 minutes ago)

From the Russian defense portfolio they detailed that an artillery brigade of the Ukrainian Forces plans to attack the area from firing positions located in the city of Níkopol.

The spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashénkov, denounced this Thursday that Ukraine plans to carry out a provocation at the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant during the visit of the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, to that country this Friday, August 19, to hold Moscow responsible for a technological catastrophe.

From the Russian military portfolio they detailed that in the territory occupied by the plant and in the surrounding areas there are no heavy weapons, there are only security units; and that to carry out the provocation, an artillery brigade of the Ukrainian Forces plans to attack the area from firing positions located in the city of Níkopol.

The senior official detailed that, in addition, the Ukrainian radiological, chemical and biological defense troops would previously concentrate in the vicinity of the nuclear power plant to be prepared to record the accident that would occur, as well as "carry out a set of measures to demonstrate the alleged elimination of its consequences.



To which the Russian military spokesman elaborated on the deployment of radiation monitoring posts near the Central; and the training of various territorial defense brigades, and military units stationed in Zaporozhie "on actions in conditions of radioactive contamination in the area".

While he stressed that the Russian Armed Forces "are taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety of the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant."

For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry branded kyiv's preparations at the Zaporozhie plant as nuclear blackmail. The spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, stated that it is “a provocation around a nuclear facility for a long time, a direct threat to nuclear energy. It is definitely an act of nuclear blackmail.”

Guterres arrived this Wednesday in the Ukrainian city of Lvov, where he will meet with the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelenski, and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to address the Russian-Ukrainian conflict; in addition to visiting the port of Odessa, used for the export of Ukrainian agricultural products.

The situation at the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant has worsened since last August 5, when authorities from the city of Energodar reported several attacks against the plant, which they attributed to Ukrainian forces.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-de ... -0006.html

Google Translator

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Ukrainian Shelling of Zaporozhye Nuclear Site May Lead to Catastrophe, Says Technical Official
SCORINOCO AUGUST 17, 2022

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Dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station that services the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The hydroelectric station and the nuclear site, currently under Russian control, are being shelled by Ukrainian forces. Photo: RT.

Kiev is flirting with disaster by shelling hydroelectric facility servicing the Zaporozhye nuclear plant, says a local official.

The shelling of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station by Ukrainian forces risks a “nuclear catastrophe” at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Arseniy Zelensky, the Kakhovka facility’s deputy director for reconstruction, told reporters on Saturday, August 13.

According to Zelensky, as quoted by Russian state media outlet TASS, Kakhovka is now operating in a “very dangerous” emergency mode.

The Kakhovka plant is located in Kherson region in southern Ukraine, which was seized by Russian forces in the early stages of Moscow’s military operation. Together with Russia-controlled Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, it has been attacked by Kiev’s troops—with use of Western-supplied weapons—as reported by the regional authorities.

“In case of problems with the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, there will be big troubles at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. [This] could lead to a nuclear catastrophe,” the deputy director of the Kakhovka plant said.

He explained to journalists that if the dam is destroyed, the nuclear facility would be deprived of the water needed to cool its reactors.

He revealed that the station has been working in emergency mode “since the first days of hostilities.”

“The station’s own needs, backup 6 kV, are lost, we are working in a very dangerous mode,” he said, adding that one of the turbines had to be turned off following Ukrainian rocket attacks.

If the military action ceases, Zelensky said, the plant can be “restored within a week.”

“Fortunately, the station has not yet received major damage, except for hydroelectric unit number three, which burned down in March, it takes 1.5 years to complete the work,” he said.

Zelensky’s remarks came the day after Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the military-civilian administration of Kherson Region, revealed that the city of Novaya Kakhovka had again been attacked by “Ukrainian nationalists” but “no tangible damage” was caused. “The hydroelectric power station was not damaged,” he said.

On August 11, Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council that a nuclear disaster can happen “at any moment” amid the “reckless” shelling of the Zaporozhye plant by Kiev’s forces.

“Kiev’s criminal attacks on the nuclear infrastructure facilities are pushing the world to the brink of a nuclear disaster that would rival the Chernobyl one,” Nebenzia said.

Responding to Kiev’s claims that Russia was the one targeting the plant in an alleged plot to discredit Ukraine, the diplomat said that Russia has no reason to target the facility or its own troops, and that multiple attacks on the facility have been documented from Ukrainian-held territory in Dnepropetrovsk Region.

The US Department of State, however, took Kiev’s side by endorsing the demand for a demilitarized zone around the Zaporozhye nuclear plant and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops that control the area.

https://orinocotribune.com/ukrainian-sh ... -official/

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

***

forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin on the situation at 13:00 Moscow time on August 18, 2022 during the operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine especially for the Voenkor Kotenok Z @voenkorKotenok channel :
1. Avdiivka
.
To the north of Avdiivka and in the industrial zone - no significant changes, positional battles.
To the south of Avdiivka, the pressure of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the army of the DPR is intensifying in the direction of Vodiane, which is still under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The enemy is still holding out in Pervomaisk and Nevelskoye, although he has lost a number of positions during the offensive of our troops, which are gradually moving towards these settlements. It is still too early to talk about the real semi-environment of Avdiivka. The Orlovka-Avdeevka highway is still actively used to supply the Avdeevskaya group.
2.
Artemovsk.
Fighting on the Zaitsevo-Kodema line. The enemy is still being held in these settlements, but in the area of ​​Kodema he is gradually being pushed back.
On the outskirts of Artemovsk from Pokrovsky - without significant changes.
The Artemovsk-Soledar highway is still under enemy control.
3.
Soledar.
Street fighting in the western part of Soledar.
Fighting on the outskirts of Yakovlevka, in Belogorovka, Bakhmutsky. Reports of the complete capture of Yakovlevka and Bakhmutsky are ahead of events.
4.
Seversk.
Positional battles in the area of ​​Serebryanka, Verkhnekamensky, Ivano-Daryevka. The enemy controls Seversk and the Seversk-Soledar road.
5.
Slavyansk.
The main activity is in the area of ​​Bogorodichny, where our troops made little progress, and in the area of ​​the ruins of Mazanovka, which was occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine last week. According to the RF Ministry of Defense, in the Mazanovka area, the enemy suffered serious losses in manpower as a result of missile attacks on combat groups of the 92nd brigade.
6.
Kharkov.
Our troops continue to press on the enemy northwest of Kharkov from the area of ​​the recently liberated settlements of Odnorobovka and Udy.
There is pressure in the area of ​​Nursery, Dementievka, Cherkasy Tishki. Regular flights continue to Kharkiv and Chuguev. At night, a large location of foreign mercenaries was covered (on a tip from local residents, a new Nazi hunt for anti-fascist Kharkovites is expected, following the example of Nikolaev).
The enemy transferred up to 3 BTGs near Kharkov to strengthen the defense.
7.
Marinka.
There is some progress in the village, but it is too early to talk about a radical change in Marinka. The enemy has not yet shown a desire to retreat.
Fights for Novomikhailovka (it is too early to talk about his release). Fighting a few kilometers from Ugledar. Reports of the complete capture of Pavlovka are still ahead of events.
Fighting near Yegorovka, Shevchenkovo ​​plus further to the west in the region of Velikaya Novoselovka, but positional tendencies dominate there.
8.
Nikolaev.
Our troops are probing the enemy's defenses in the area of ​​Blagodatny and Aleksandrovka. The enemy is not conducting any "attacks on Kherson".
Positional battles on the Ingulets River, where the enemy suffers heavy losses, trying to hold a bridgehead near the settlement. Andreevka.
Positional battles near the settlement Vysokopole, Potemkino in the Nikopol direction.

***

Ukraine: A Wake-Up Call for Europe
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 17, 2022
Boaventura de Sousa Santos

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It is becoming clear that US neoconservatives have succeeded in creating a warmongering, anti-Russian mood in Europe through an unprecedented information war.

It is becoming clear that US neoconservatives have succeeded in creating a warmongering, anti-Russian mood in Europe through an unprecedented information war, the consequences of which will take some time to assess. It is, however, possible to identify the signs of what is to come.

Losers: We do not yet know who will win this war (or if anyone will win it, apart from the arms industry). But we do know who will lose the most: the Ukrainian and European people. Parts of Ukraine are in ruins, millions of people have been displaced, and the euro has fallen; these are signs of defeat. In the seven decades since the destruction caused by World War II, Europe had risen again. Led by high-profile politicians and supported by the United States in its anti-communist crusade, Western Europe managed to establish itself as a region of peace and development (even if, alas, at the expense of colonial and neocolonial violence and appropriation). All it took to put the peace and development at risk was one ghost war: fought in Europe, but not led by Europe, and not even in the interest of Europeans.

Energy transition: Carbon dioxide (CO2), which is responsible for global warming, remains in the atmosphere for many thousands of years. It is estimated that 40 percent of the CO2 emitted by humans since 1850 remains in the atmosphere, according to a Deutsche Welle report that cited the 2020 international Global Carbon Budget study. So, although China is the largest emitter of CO2 today, the fact is that, if we look at the CO2 emissions data for 1750 to 2019 (from Deutsche Welle’s analysis of Our World in Data figures), Europe was responsible for 32.6 percent of emissions, the US for 25.5 percent, China for 13.7 percent, Africa for 2.8 percent, and South America for 2.6 percent of the total emissions during that period. Given the cumulative emissions debt that Europe has rung up over the course of 269 years, the story of its recent credit toward balancing the global carbon budget by leading the fight for renewable energy in recent decades is a qualified success—it is the least they can do. We may be critical of an energy transition that is underpinned by the ecology of the (mostly European) rich, but at least it was heading in the right direction. The war in Ukraine and the fossil fuel energy crisis it triggered were enough to make all projects related to this energy transition evaporate. Coal has returned from exile, and oil and nuclear energy are being rehabilitated. Why is perpetuating the war more important than advancing the energy transition? What democratic majority has decided to follow in that direction?

Political spectrum: The approaching economic and social crisis will have an impact on the political spectrum in European countries. On the one hand, it is worth noting that it is the most authoritarian governments (like Hungary and Turkey) and far-right parties that have shown the least enthusiasm for the warmongering, which is encapsulated in the anti-Russian triumphalism that has dominated European politics in recent months. On the other hand, the left-wing parties, with few exceptions, have given up their own (left-wing) position on the war. Some of those parties who had distinguished themselves in the past with their stance against NATO have remained silent in the face of its senseless and dangerous expansion to all continents. When the continuation of the war and the expansion of military budgets begin to cause the impoverishment of families, what will the citizens think in terms of political choices made in the name of protecting them? Will they not be attracted to opt for the parties that have shown the least enthusiasm for the warmongering jingoism that caused their impoverishment?

Citizen safety: In June 2022, Interpol made public its concern that a large number of the weapons supplied to Ukraine could enter the illegal arms market and end up in the hands of criminals. This situation is all the more serious since some of the equipment provided to Ukraine includes heavy artillery. The experience of what has happened in the past in other theaters of war justifies this concern. For example, much of the war material supplied by the US to Afghanistan ended up in the hands of the Taliban against whom the US army was fighting. The US tragedy of successive massacres caused by armed civilians is well known. What will happen in Europe if the easy accessibility of these weapons leads to them ending up in the wrong hands?

Normalization of Nazism: Shortly before the war in Ukraine, several intelligence services and security think tanks had been warning about the strong presence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, their military training and equipment, and the way they were being integrated into the regular military forces, which is unprecedented. Understandably, the outbreak of war has put this concern to rest. What is at issue now is whether Nazism can be turned into a nationalist ideology like any other and whether its recurrent attacks on progressive politicians in Ukraine can be converted into patriotic acts. It remains to be seen what impact this will have in Europe, against the background of the growth of the extreme right.

Phantom anti-communism: The anti-Russian hatred that has been exacerbated in Europe by the invasion of Ukraine subliminally contains anti-communist hatred, even if it is known that the Communist Party is a minority in Russia and that President Vladimir Putin is a right-wing politician who is a friend of the European far right. For sectors of the ultra-right, communism is now an empty signifier and serves as a weapon to demonize political opponents, to justify canceling those opponents on social media, and to promote hate speech. It is to be feared that this hangover will remain in political life beyond the war in Ukraine.

Crime and injustice in the Balkans: The war in Ukraine has had the effect of bringing to the attention of more informed Europeans the arbitrary way Yugoslavia was destroyed, the NATO bombing of civilian targets in 1999, and the war crimes that were committed by all sides in former Yugoslavia. Historical and religious anti-Balkan prejudice—Chancellor Klemens von Metternich of the Austrian Empire (in office 1821-1848) used to say that Asia began on Landstrasse, the street in Vienna where Balkan immigrants lived—has come to be reflected in the way some countries in the region have been waiting for many years to join the EU.

It is too early for a general assessment of the times we are living through, but the signs are disturbing and do not bode well.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... or-europe/

'Neoconservatives'? The Biden regime? Naw, the liberals are up to their necks in this too, give them no slack. Capitalism, imperialism, hegemony, one damn thing leads to another...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 19, 2022 12:05 pm

Initiative and offensive actions
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/19/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

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Original Article: Ukraina.ru

The Russian Army maintains the initiative and continues to carry out offensive actions. And despite the Western weapons that were going to allow Ukraine to launch a counteroffensive, the opponent has not been able to do so, explains Boris Rozhin, an expert at the Center for Political and Military Journalism and author of the Colonel Cassad Telegram channel. He said so in an interview with Ukraina.ru . Earlier, the well-known military correspondent Evgeny Poddubny had reported that allied forces have reached the highway connecting Marinka and Ugledar. In this way, the chances of regrouping and supplying themselves have been significantly complicated for the enemy groups west of Donetsk.

Boris, have there been episodes during the campaign where, by controlling the road, we were able to cut off supplies from one group to another?

The battle in the Ugledar area has been going on for a long time, just like in Marinka itself. Some of our progress in the Novomikhailovka area has really undermined the enemy's actions, but it cannot be said that they are completely isolated there. The positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Ugledar and Marinka have been hit by artillery at other times. Now we can say that the difficulties in the Marinka and Ugledar grouping are increasing due to the impact of different weapons, but we should not exaggerate these successes. The battles in the Shevchenkovo ​​and Pavlovka area show that the enemy still maintains the capacity for organized resistance.

Have we been able to launch an assault on Avdeevka by organizing the offensive on Pervomaiskoe and Vodianoe?

An artillery offensive is gradually advancing in the area of ​​Pervomaiskoe and Vodianoe, but those towns remain under Ukrainian control. It will only be possible to expect a serious attack on Pervomaiskoe and Vodianoe to capture those locations once the area around Peski is fully taken. The assault on Avdeevka has not started. There are battles in the industrial zone, battles north of Avdeevka, but no one has started storming the city yet.

Are Pervomaiskoe and Vodianoe key locations to take Avdeevka or can you advance through another area?

Pervomaiskoe runs parallel to Avdeevka in the direction of western Donbass. Controlling Vodianoe would mean that the front line would turn to head for the Orlovka-Avdeevka road. I repeat, positional battles are taking place in the Avdeevka industrial zone and to the north, near the Avdeevka-Konstantinovka highway. At the moment, there is no great progress there.

Rodion Miroshnik, LPR ambassador to Russia, says that there is movement towards Seversk, which is besieged from at least three sides, and that the destruction of the main fortifications continues. Do we really just have to wait or will additional efforts have to be made in that area?

We have taken certain positions, but the city remains under the control of Ukraine, which is based on the hills. Serebryanka has not yet been taken and neither has the Seversk-Soledar highway. In other words, a number of operational and tactical issues still need to be resolved. It makes no sense to enter the city head-on from Verjnekamenskoe without taking the heights.

How do you assess the pace of progress towards Artyomovsk and Soledar? There was talk of the capture of the industrial area, but then silence followed.

In Soledar, the industrial zone has been taken and the battle is gradually drawing closer to the center of the city. But when it comes to urban battles, things don't go fast. It is also said that Bajmutskoe and Yakovleka have been taken, but at the moment there is no graphic confirmation from there. Yes, there is progress, but at the moment it is hard to say how much the release of Soledar will hasten the capture of Bakhmutskoe and Yakovleka.

Military blogger Yury Podoliaka says that because of the involvement of volunteers, we have started to use the Brusilov advance tactic, when we simultaneously attack different places, preventing the enemy from concentrating forces. Do you agree?

We have attacked several addresses in the past. It cannot be said that the tactic of attacking in different directions is exactly Brusilov's. This tactic has been used not only by Russia, but also by the French army. In addition, in the spring we simultaneously attacked the Mariupol and Lisichansk-Severodonetsk directions. This tactic has not started now.

You have visited the Army 2022 forum. Is there any type of weapon that will be delivered to the troops in the short term?

The forum has presented the main weapon trends that have not been seen this year. The orders that have been announced within the framework of the forum mean supply of existing weapons. Some of them are already being actively used: drones, tanks or infantry vehicles. It is equipment that is needed in large quantities. The need to increase the production of these weapons was raised as early as the spring. That is, everything continues in the context of expected trends.

Sergey Shoigu stated that the operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation has put an end to the myth of the superweapons that the West supplies to Ukraine and that were supposed to turn the situation on the front line. But enemy propaganda claims that this campaign "has ended the myth that the Russian Army is invincible." Can any conclusion be drawn?

Our army maintains the initiative and continues to carry out offensive actions. As for whether Western weapons will allow Ukraine to launch a counteroffensive, the enemy has been unable to do so despite supplies.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/19/inici ... more-25309

Google Translator

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UAV near Kerch and Sevastopol
August 18, 23:42

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UAV near Kerch and Sevastopol

In addition to the traditional shelling of Donetsk and Gorlovka, today the enemy was actively shelling Svetlodarsk, there are many dead, including children.
Also today, they blew up a warehouse in the Belgorod region, scattered it in the Lepestki region, and also tried to attack the Kerch Bridge UAV and the Belbek airfield (2 UAVs were shot down - 1 in the Belbek region, 1 in the Kerch region). Well, shelling of ZNPP and Energodar continues.

Regarding questions on what to do with it, my position has not changed since the spring.

1. The SBU and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense must be officially recognized as terrorist organizations. Members of these organizations and their accomplices should automatically be treated in the same way as terrorists and ISIS accomplices.

2. As a demonstrative response, strikes against the central and regional departments of the SBU, as well as the objects of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, including in Kyiv, are highly desirable.

3. As a response to attacks on the Zaporizhzhya NPP - to force the disconnection of Ukraine from the Zaporozhye NPP. Defiantly, as a response, destroy several thermal power plants, as well as strike at the infrastructure of underground gas storage facilities. The selection of objects is actually optional.

Terrorism must have a price that Ukraine, or what is left of it, must pay on a long-term basis.
Hysteria is not needed here, methodical and systematic strikes against the infrastructure of terror and its infrastructure and economic base are needed, regardless of the priority issues of conducting a military operation to defeat the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Ukrainian theater of operations.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7809771.html

Possible consequences of a radiation leak at ZNPP
August 18, 3:39 p.m

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Consequences of radiation spread from ZNPP in case of damage to the plant's reactor as a result of shelling or incapacitation of critical plant maintenance mechanisms. There are also risks associated with the storage site for spent radioactive elements.
The United States and Britain, who continue to shell the nuclear power plant with the help of drug addicts from the Zelensky gang, are not at all worried about this radius of destruction, for obvious reasons.

This situation once again confirms the complete justification of the SVO, since it is quite obvious that if the creation of a dirty atomic bomb is completed after the attack on Donbass, the Zelensky gang would try to blackmail Russia not by the threat of shelling the ZNPP, but by the threat of using a dirty nuclear bomb.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7809435.html

Google Translator

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NATO Ready to Attack a Nuclear Plant to Ethnically Cleanse Russians from Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 18, 2022



I interview independent journalist George Eliason based in Donbass for shocking insight into the predatory nature of NATO member states.

“Why is Zelensky shelling a Nuclear plant? The war will end and money stream will dry up. If Ukraine sets off a Nuclear explosion (3 times that of Chernobyl) funding opportunities increase and are guaranteed for 100 years during clean-up operations. This IS the thought behind the process. Bankrupting EU and US while ensuring disappearance of Russians and Russian speakers in the region.”





https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... m-ukraine/

Russia Warns of False Flag Attacks and NATO’s Plan to Create a Second Chernbobyl
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 18, 2022

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It is no coincidence that the mass media widely quotes the conclusions of experts of the American Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Washington, D.C.) and some other similar agencies of Western countries, rather than the IAEA, which has the right to such conclusions, that a large-scale catastrophe at the ZNPP seems unlikely to occur.

◽️ In their opinion, the concrete shelters of its nuclear reactors are 10 meters thick and the plant was also designed and built to withstand such incidents as a downed civilian aircraft.

◽️ At the same time it is not ruled out that a direct hit of large-caliber artillery shells in the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel will lead to radioactive contamination of the area within a radius of up to 20 km, and an emergency situation at a nuclear reactor – up to 30 km maximum. At the same time, it is emphasized that the risks of radiation spreading in the territory of European countries are estimated to be minimal.

◽️ Thus, according to U.S. experts, the consequences of the nuclear incident at the Zaporizhzhia NPP will be limited in nature and will not affect the territory of European countries.


Thesis of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, at the Briefing on the Results of the Analysis of a Possible Provocation at the Zaporozhye NPP.

August 18, 2022

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is analyzing the development of the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Since July 18, 2022, the plant has been subjected to systematic shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces using multiple rocket launchers, artillery and unmanned aerial vehicles.

As of 18 August 2022, there had been

12 shelling, during which more than 50 bursts of artillery shells and 5 kamikaze drones were recorded on the territory of the nuclear power plant and the city of Energodar.
The Russian Ministry of Defense conducted an investigation and determined that the strikes came from the direction of the settlements of Marganets and Nikopol.
As a result of the shelling, the auxiliary support systems of the station as well as life support facilities in Energodar were damaged.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the Ukrainian side, together with their handlers from the United States, is trying to play the card by causing what they believe to be a minor accident at the nuclear power plant and thereby disrupting the normal and safe operation of the plant, accusing Russia of this.

The Ukrainian side has repeatedly stated that strikes on the plant are carried out by the Russian Armed Forces, and Russian heavy weapons are deployed on the territory of the NPP, from which the AFU facilities are shelled.

We are ready to present to the IAEA real pictures with a very strong resolution, a sample placed on the slide, which show that we do not place weapons, especially heavy ones, on the territory of this plant. The Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation told UN Secretary General Guterres about this.

We know that with a large number of military and commercial foreign satellites the same information can be presented to the world public by the American side.

At the same time, the United States keeps silent about objective data on the shelling and the situation at the nuclear power plant, thus encouraging the impunity of the Kiev regime and contributing to a possible nuclear catastrophe on the territory of Europe.

I would like to point out that it is no coincidence that the media widely quotes the conclusions of experts of the American Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Washington, DC) and some other similar institutions of Western countries, rather than the IAEA, which has the right to such conclusions, that a large-scale catastrophe at the ZNPP seems unlikely to occur.

In their opinion, the thickness of concrete shelters of its nuclear reactors is 10 meters, moreover, the plant was designed and built with the need to overcome the consequences of such incidents as the fall of a civilian aircraft.

At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that a direct hit of large-caliber artillery shells in the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel will result in radioactive contamination of the area within a radius of up to 20 kilometers, and an emergency situation at a nuclear reactor within 30 kilometers at most. At the same time, it is emphasized that the risks of the spread of radiation on the territory of European countries are estimated to be minimal.

Thus, in the opinion of U.S. experts, the consequences of the nuclear incident at the Zaporizhzhia NPP will be limited and will not affect the territory of European countries.

At the same time, I would like to remind the UN Secretariat and the entire world community that the principal cause of accidents at the Chernobyl plant and Fukushima NPP, despite the fact that in the first case there were experiments with nuclear reactor, and in the second case – earthquake and tsunami, is failure of support systems, power supply disruption, partial and complete blackout of cooling systems, which led to overheating of nuclear fuel and destruction of reactor.

As a result of the Chernobyl disaster more than 20 European countries were contaminated with radioactive isotopes. About 4 thousand people died from direct exposure to radiation, tens of thousands of cases of genetic defects in newborns and hundreds of thousands of cases of oncological diseases were registered. Not counting the consequences of the forced evacuation, up to 100,000 people and more than 5.5 million have received an increased dose of radiation.

At the Fukushima nuclear power plant, only at first glance may it seem that the consequences are insignificant. Up to 500,000 people were forcibly evacuated in stages, and descendants will feel the consequences of radioactive water dumped into the ocean.

One gets the feeling that this has been forgotten.

According to our experts, due to the actions of the AFU, a similar situation may arise at the Zaporizhzhia NPP.

Thus, in case of failure of reserve diesel-generators and mobile pumps, in case of emergency situation the core will overheat and, as a consequence, the reactor installations of the largest in Europe nuclear power plant will be destroyed, and radioactive substances will be thrown into the atmosphere and will be carried for hundreds of kilometers.

Such an emergency situation will cause mass migration of the population and will have more catastrophic consequences than the impending gas energy crisis in Europe, which is confirmed by the forecast of a number of European specialized organizations.

In addition, according to available information, the UN Secretary General Guterres plans to visit the city of Odessa as part of his trip to Ukraine from August 17 to 19, 2022. By this date the Ukrainian armed forces intend to stage a provocation of a man-made disaster at the Zaporizhzhia NPP, which consists of a radiation leak, destroying the integrity of the nuclear waste storage facility and putting the reactor of the plant into abnormal operation.

According to their intention all this must be a consequence of military actions of the Armed Forces of Russia on the territory of the nuclear power plant, incompetence of Russian specialists involved in the operation of the nuclear facility.

For the purpose of staging, the Ukrainian armed forces plan to fully deploy radiation observation posts in the formations, military units and subunits of the Dnepr grouping of forces deployed in Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, to provide 100 per cent of military personnel with chemical and radiation protection equipment, to conduct training on chemical and radiation protection and other security measures. In particular, units of the 44th detached artillery brigade were ordered to be ready to act in conditions of radioactive contamination of the terrain by August 19. Subunits of the 704th Independent Regiment of the Air Defense Regiment of the AFU are also being redeployed to the area of the Zaporizhzhya NPP.

Artillery strikes against Zaporizhzhia NPP are planned from the city quarters of Nikopol.

This “spectacle” will be accompanied by the notifications of the population about the increase of the radiation background and other “special effects”. The staging is being carried out in the interests of influencing the UN Secretary General and the international community to cover up decisions that are beneficial to Kiev.

The ultimate purpose of the provocation is to create an exclusion zone of up to 30 kilometers, to introduce international forces and foreign observers into the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, and to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of nuclear terrorism.

As a conclusion from the abovementioned, we draw your attention that if the negative development of the situation related to the shelling of the nuclear plant by Ukraine continues, the issue of withdrawal of the 5th and 6th power units to the “cold reserve” may be considered, which will lead to the shutdown of Zaporizhzhya NPP.

Slideshow https://disk.yandex.ru/d/GiI4ELQR2oC7lg

Link https://t.me/mod_russia/18816

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❗On August 19, the #Kiev regime is preparing another provocation at #ZaporozhyeNPP during the visit of UN Secretary-General António Guterres to #Ukraine, as a result of which the Russian Federation will be blamed for creating a man-made disaster at the power plant.

🎙The Statement by Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov

▪In order to prepare for the provocation, the command of Dnepro operational-tactical group is deploying radiation observation posts near Zaporozhye by August 19. Also, the command is organizing training exercises for units of 108th Territorial Defence Brigade, 44th Artillery Brigade and military units deployed in Zaporozhye on measures to be taken in conditions of radioactive contamination of the area.

▪Besides, units of 704th NBCP Regiment of AFU are to complete concentration in Zaporozhye area by August 19 and be ready for fixation of the accident at Zaporozhye NPP as well as for carrying out a set of measures for demonstration of supposedly liquidation of its consequences.

▪Units of 44th Artillery Brigade of AFU are planning to launch artillery strikes on the territory of Zaporozhye NPP from firing positions located in Nikopol’ on August 19. The Russian Armed Forces will be blamed for their consequences.

▪Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly spread rumours that Russian troops have occupied the nuclear power plant and are shelling AFU with long-range artillery systems while shielding themselves with NPP.

❗️We would like to point out that the Russian troops have no heavy weapons either on the territory of the plant or in the surrounding areas. Only security units are stationed there.

▪The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are taking all necessary measures to ensure the security of Zaporozhye NPP.

Russian Embassy in London

⚡️Ukrainian armed formations continue to shell the #ZaporozhyeNPP, using mainly Western-made shells

On the photos one may see one of their components, found at the station after one of the attacks

🇺🇸 The manufacturer’s data is clearly visible – the U.S. company EaglePicher Technologies

❗️That is how the Kiev regime and its Western supervisors day by day threaten nuclear safety and nuclear security of the largest NPP in Europe

🔗Russian Mission in Vienna https://t.me/ViennaMissionRu

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https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... hernbobyl/

Do NASA Maps Really Prove HIMARS Reduced Russian Artillery Strikes? (No)
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 18, 2022



Newsweek and many others both in the mainstream Western media as well as across social media have claimed NASA maps indicating fires in Ukraine “prove” US-supplied HIMARS have reduced the number of Russian artillery strikes. However, a quick visit to NASA’s publicly available map (the link is in the references below) indicates that the number of fires varies greatly day-to-day including some days with hardly any fires at all long before the first HIMARS was delivered to Ukraine.

References:

Newsweek – Ukraine Map Suggests U.S.-Supplied HIMARS Could Be Turning Tide of War: https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-map-….

NASA – Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS): https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/

DW – Could HIMARS turn the tide of war in Ukraine? (indicates first HIMARS strike took place in late June 2022): https://www.dw.com/en/what-role-are-h

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... trikes-no/

Is the Ukrainian War on its Own People Now Over?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 18, 2022

Henry Kamens
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My former neighbour in the US wrote to me, tongue in cheek, a few days ago. “I was told the Ukrainian civil war is over and Russia won because the Azov Battalion was wiped out. There is a total media blackout in the US, and worse than that – so much disinformation before and how it will be justified in the end. I suppose that now the US has a new problem …this is China!!”

It is Not as Simple as That!

This man must be locked in a cave, as CNN and all the rest of the gang are still pummeling the Russians. Meanwhile the West and its Ministries of Propaganda are in damage control mode.

Take for instance when CBS News recently pulled a documentary and had to amend a feature story that claimed 70% of foreign weapons never make it to the front lines in Ukraine. For some unknown reason, the Biden administration/government didn’t agree with it, or something.

Since the documentary is no longer available on CBS, it was re-uploaded it here and there on YouTube. But who knows how long it will be allowed to stay.

According to the documentary, less than 30% of the weapons arrive at their destination. But it not too hard to answer that question, David Arakhamia, the majority leader of Ukraine’s parliament and Kyiv’s top negotiator, called on US and NATO allies to quickly supply Kyiv with additional weapons, citing a lack of progress in brokering a peace treaty with Moscow.

Ukraine knows why many of the weapons, US and NATO supplied, are not making it to the front and many have disappeared. I wonder what he might know about that. Now, do you understand why his diplomatic passport was recently revoked? I suspect he may disappear as well, as have the weapons. He is too open in what he has been doing for the government and with foreign governments—especially with contacts and networks in Georgia.

But where are the rest?

The link to the CBS programme reads,

“the page may have been removed, had its name changed, or is just temporarily unavailable”.

We removed a tweet promoting our recent doc, “Arming Ukraine,” which quoted the founder of the nonprofit Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman’s assessment in late April that only around 30% of aid was reaching the front lines in Ukraine.

The changes were made amid an outcry from the Ukrainian government and its supporters. Now Republicans who did not vote for the “no strings attached” funding for arms and money to Ukraine are pounding their chests and saying “we hate to tell you so but we told you so!”


Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds You!

Meanwhile, Ukraine has made a blacklist of politicians and scholars who have been labelled as Russian propagandists. This list includes Americans, meaning Ukraine is imposing censorship on Americans who do not close ranks with Kyiv and the Biden administration in a war of convenience, as reported by Tucker Carlson of Fox News and the mainstream media.

However, the truth of Ukraine and its military operations is now being exposed – in spite of the spin that shows a different story. You can post anything on Facebook (radical organization banned in Russia), or whatever it is called these days, as long as it is anti-Russian, but people on the ground are telling a different story in their own homes, where it is more difficult for official lines to penetrate.

The rhetoric is heating up, and Ukraine and its spin doctors are looking for other means of getting their point across. These include trashing the reputation of Amnesty International over its recent report documenting how Ukraine regularly uses schools and public areas to shield its military activities, blatantly and recklessly using the local population as human shields.

With few exceptions, access to mainstream sites with other views on things in Ukraine, and those which take exception to US and NATO policy, is a rare exception today. Roger Waters, one of the founders of Pink Floyd, is one of the few artists and pop musicians who have kept their wits about them, and have the courage to speak out publicly about their different view of things.

Waters described Biden’s actions in Ukraine as those of a war criminal – and the action of reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border as what it is! It is easy to dismiss those views as those of a mere artist, who knows nothing of hard political affairs, until you consider where Zelensky himself came from, and Ronald Reagan, Jan Paderewski and others who didn’t suddenly develop a new capability when someone voted for them.

Ordeal of Ukraine’s Disinformation Board: Terrible Idea, Terrible Results

Now Volodymyr Zelensky claims that the way to stop Russia from annexing any more of Ukraine’s territory is to revert to more punitive measures. He is calling for Western countries to ban all Russian citizens from entering their countries.

He fails to understand that sanctions don’t work, though those who are behind him should by now. We only have to recall the Bush era War on Drugs, with all the punishment that entailed for non-compliant and presumed guilty countries, which had no effect whatsoever on the consumption, criminal trafficking and distribution of narcotics.

Zelensky’s propaganda efforts may have proved to be too effective, as even American politicians, including all Democrats, have swallowed the disinformation hook, line and sinker. Now they have to make it real to make their solutions work, like they did in Iraq with the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, a failure Western governments are still very uncomfortable explaining away.

All Coming to a Head!

Perhaps it would be better to ban Zelensky and his minions as a step in the right direction – towards peaceful negotiations. It is all coming to a head in Ukraine, and the sooner the better, as it is high time for reconciliation and reconstruction, and an end to the needless destruction.

Zelensky said Russians should “live in their own world until they change their philosophy.” If he stays in his own, he may have a political future what will be Ukraine proper, but only if he starts learning Polish in the meantime.

Yes, Russians live their own world, and it is a tough one for now. However gas and oil will find a market like water finds its level.

Sanctions will not prevent the sale of Russian oil, but they will burden it with additional costs. Of course, with the current global oil price, life goes on. But if there is no alternative to Russian oil it is the end users who will have to bear these costs, and no one will be able to blame the Russians for them on one hand, and keep buying their oil on the other.

The thing about sanctions is that some people will make a bigger profit than under normal trading. Even in the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic, when the exchange rate at one point was 4,210,500,000,000 deutschmarks marks to the dollar, some businessmen were able to make large profits by not playing by the rules, exactly what sanctions are about.

Russian gas sales to the EU will continue as there are insufficient alternatives. Anytime there is a profit motive there will be ways to get round sanctions, as we have learned from Iran and South Africa, and more recently the relative prosperity of prewar Armenia.

For example, there is a pipeline from Kazakhstan that goes through Russia (from the Tengiz Field-CPC). If some Russian crude was added, would the shipment be rejected?

South Africa under apartheid was subject to all sorts of sanctions, just as neighbouring Rhodesia was after declaring unilateral independence from the UK to maintain white minority rule. In both cases, they were still able to get oil, and were the most developed countries in Africa at the time.

There had to be some transfers to intermediaries, and that cost a little extra, but there were still enough well-wishers around to make profit more important than principle, amongst them Sir Garfield Weston, now known primarily through the charitable foundation which bears his name, despite how much of its endowment came from sanctions busting and his enthusiastic support of the apartheid regime.

Now there seems to be a concerted effort, at least according to the New York Times, to impose a total embargo on Russian oil. This is close to a full-scale declaration of war, at least a proxy one, as everyone will be forced to take sides, and won’t be able to choose their side in most cases.

However, turning off the Russian oil tap is easier said than done, as petroleum projects are sold on an international market. For the West, especially Western Europe, to close ranks over this is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Addictions are Hard to Break

The West is more than dependent on Russian oil and gas, especially gas, than it ever imagined. It is perhaps better and more accurate to use the term addicted.

However it will not be too difficult for Russia to shift much of its export market to China and India if it chooses to. Who now is “kowtowing” to American pressure to close ranks in punishing Russia for pursuing its own national security interests and protecting the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine?

In fact, the oil is already flowing, with discounts, to China and India, and it is not hard to see that Western countries will find innovative ways to circumvent sanctions. People soon stopped being suspicious when they were no longer told where their food came from, the labels suddenly reading “produce of more than one country”. As long as no one has to use the word Russian, that element will still be there.

Not all European countries are interested in the EU-wide ban on Russian oil. Hungary and Slovakia are interested in their own energy security, especially gas, and are not keen to follow the lead of other countries who are more into political expediency and punitive actions than economic realities.

The irony is that the citizens of every former Eastern Bloc state begged for years to be free of the political expediency and punitive actions imposed upon them by the Soviet Union, but were repeatedly let down by a West which told them overthrowing communism wasn’t realistic. As independent states, they are seeking better realities, and finding themselves excluded from these by the West which continually preached their virtues.

That’s why the EU is giving these two countries more time, to show some understanding of their plight. Officially they will be given till December 2023 to ban Russian oil. It is even likely that more leeway will be allowed, as they don’t consume so much, for the sake of purported European solidarity.

If the EU and the West really want to get serious and have hard-hitting sanctions, they need to ban Russian gas and go back to burning wood and dirty high sulphur coal. It is going to be hard for the EU to go Cold Turkey – so it might be better to start damming some rivers and hope that the wind blows, and there will be lots of sunny weather, for an alternative fuel source.

The rhetoric is strong but let us to see what happens next, considering the price of oil in the world market, short supplies, and the dynamics of supply and demand (greed) at play in many members of OPEC.

It is just a matter of time before the collective West cuts off our ability to communicate; Facebook and YouTube already have, as have social and mass media in general. Sanctions and free speech are at opposite sides of the river of normalcy, and when the West cannot win the proxy war in person, then they will win it on paper, and how it is reported or recorded by historians.

Huxley summed it up:

“By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. … Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. … Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

Yes, run the show, however, the show must go on—and it will not be the West that is allowed to write the script.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... -now-over/

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Supporters of Ukraine’s far-right Svboda and Right Sector parties march on the anniversary of Stepan Bandera’s birthday in Kiev in 2015 (Photo: Creative Commons)

Poland says Ukraine must recognise Bandera’s genocide during WWII
Originally published: Morning Star Online on August 2022 by Morning Star Online (more by Morning Star Online) | (Posted Aug 19, 2022)

Ukraine must acknowledge the genocide of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in World War II, a Polish official says.

Warsaw has proposed a joint commission to exhume mass graves and give victims a proper burial, but received no response from Kiev, Deputy Culture Minister Jaroslaw Sellin told reporters on Tuesday.

Ukrainian authorities have rebuffed protests from Poland and Israel about their glorification of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and his organisation the UPA, which massacred over 130,000 Jews and Poles in an ethnic cleansing programme during the second world war.

Bandera, who fought with the Nazis against the Soviet Union, has been given Ukrainian national hero status as an anti-Soviet militant since the “Maidan” coup of 2014, with his birthday named a public holiday in his honour.

The public rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators was one factor cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin when he invaded Ukraine in February.

Mr Sellin said the UPA’s massacres met the definition of genocide. “This is a historical fact. Sooner or later, Ukraine will have to acknowledge it,” he said.

“The traditions of this military formation and the nationalist political movements behind it are unacceptable, worthy of condemnation.

“They have to acknowledge it because it’s a fact. It’s simply a fact. A political decision was made and implemented for ethnic cleansing, the extermination of the entire national minority that has lived there for centuries,” a Polish diplomat added.

Poland designated July 11 a national day in memory of the genocide in 2016, earning a rebuke from Ukraine, which has also dismissed Israeli objections to rallies celebrating Bandera as “counterproductive.”

https://mronline.org/2022/08/19/poland- ... ring-wwii/

I suppose the Poles are 'Putinists' too.....

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(I’m not including the actual tweet because it contains readable images of the entire article I am about to example, which I think goes beyond fair use, but here is a link to the tweet, which is sadly not in the Internet Archive.)

A Marine’s assessment of Russia’s Military “Operation” in Ukraine (a “profound appreciation of all three realms in which wars are waged”)

Originally published: Naked Capitalism on August 14, 2022 by Lambert Strether (more by Naked Capitalism) (Posted Aug 18, 2022)

We — I’ll use the royal “we” here — at NC have long been aware that analysis and coverage of Russia’s tactics and strategy in Ukraine that is not dictated by organs of state security here in the United States is an inverted pyramid resting on a very small point: A small group of dissidents willing to go on the record with their views. These dissidents — Mercouris, Military Summary, Martynov, Moon of Alabama, Lira, New Atlas, and Ritter, among others — are all variously monetized and have been marginalized in one way or another, and their analysis rests in turn on an even narrower point: Telegram accounts and Russian/Ukrainian sources that are not available to us. But now we have evidence that the dissidents are not alone, and analysis parallel to their own has been taking place.

It was with a sense of relief and amazement that I noticed the following outraged Tweet occur on my timeline:

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(I’m not including the actual tweet because it contains readable images of the entire article I am about to example, which I think goes beyond fair use, but here is a link to the tweet, which is sadly not in the Internet Archive.)

Hmm, I said. “The Russian Invasion of Ukraine.” In a thing called “Marine Corps Gazette” (MCG). I’d better go find it, I thought. First, I encountered the MCG paywall. A search on the author, “Marinus,” yielded nothing useful. Next, I searched for the subhead:

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Four hits, one in Japanese, three in Russian. Not very promising! So I went another hop out to the article in Aftershock(fourth on the results list), a Russian-language aggregator, and read the comments thread, where I found a quotation from the article in English, which gave me a string to search on (“The most important of these resulted from the avoidance of collateral damage”), giving me some hope that I could find a full text version of the article. Here are the results:

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Two from Reddit (August 12), and the known article at Aftershock (August 9). The Reddit article does not include a full text version, but does include an eBook-like reader where you can click through each of the four pages, along with a not very illuminating discussion.

So, let’s back up and ask ourselves what the Marine Corps Gazette is. From Small Wars Journal:

Marine Corps Gazette is a professional journal for U.S. Marines founded in 1916 at Marine Corps Base Quantico for members of the United States Marine Corps. Begun by then Col John A. Lejeune as the vehicle to launch the Marine Corps Association (MCA), the journal is known as “The Professional Journal of U.S. Marines”. Today the MCA continues to publish the Gazette….

And the Marine Corps Association (MCA):

The Marine Corps Association (often abbreviated MCA) is the professional organization for members of the United States Marine Corps and friends of the Corps.

The Marine Corps Association, the Marine Corps University Foundation, and the Marine Corps Historical Foundation, however, are unique in that they were organized and exist for the primary purpose of supporting ongoing programs of the active Marine Corps. To effectively serve their purposes, their activities must support and be carried out with the guidance and cooperation of the active Marine Corps leadership.

In 2015, the Marine Corps Association had 66,000 members and spent over $1,000,000 in support of Marines. The Marine Corps Association gives out a number of professional writing awards annually to serving Marines.


So the MCG is not a negligible publication, and the MCA is not a neglible institution (albeit a literal NGO).

This is August 14. “Marinus”‘s article in the August issue of MCG has been available since July 29 at the latest, the first hit at the Japanese source. The second hit appears on August 9, in a Russian-language aggregator. The third appears August 12, on Reddit. It’s been two weeks, and the media, collectively, have a ravenous news hole. So where is the coverage the Times? Where is the Washington Post? Where is Foreign Policy? Where is Foreign Affairs? Where is The Atlantic? Where is the Council on Foreign Relations? Where is the Institute for the Study of War? Where, further afield, is Defense One? The Drive? They are all silent. And yet what we have, as the quote in the headline to this post alone shows, is a significant break from orthodoxy on Ukraine and Russian capabilities generally in the professional magazine of the United States Marine Corps. Odd, very odd!

The rest of this post will be very simple. I’m going to fair-use slabs of the text as graphics, and not necessarily in order. (An enthusiastic reader, not me, has done a lot of highlighting.) Most, if not all, of the points made by “Marinus” will be familiar to readers, whether from Yves’ posts or from comments. I’m not going to give any hat tips, for reasons that I assume are obvious from the current climate of opinion. People may, of course, choose to do their own happy dances in comments (ideally with links). I also encourage readers to comment on the substance of the piece!

So let’s start.



* * *

First, the avoidance of collateral damage:

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Second, the relatively gentle treatment of the rail system:

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I’ve always been a little non-plussed with all the claims of Russian brutality — beyond the brutality of war itself — when the trains are still running, the electrical power grid is still on, the Internet functions, and there’s potable water. Very different from, say, Fallujah. (Granted, the Russians want to integrate the Zaporizhzhia power plant into their own grid, but that’s consistent with their policy of making outcomes more stringent the longer the war goes on.)

Third, artillery really is “the king of battles”[1]:

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(Sorry for the ugly join, there.)

Fourth, Kiev really was a “feint” (or “raid,” as “Marinus” characterizes it).

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“Marinus” concludes:

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John Boyd[2], eh? Yikes. Just the kind of ally we need against China. Ah well, nevertheless….



* * *

I wonder who “Marinus” is. Probably another Colonel or Lieutenant-Colonel who couldn’t, or couldn’t bear to, climb the greasy pole to become one of the loser Generals (Iraq, Afghanistan) at the Pentagon. I encourage you to read the whole piece, which you can do either at the original tweet or on Reddit. It contains a more sophisticated argument on Russian doctrine than I have been able to include here.

NOTES:
[1] Take that, flyboys.
[2] More on John Boyd from, sorry, Wikipedia.

https://mronline.org/2022/08/18/a-marin ... are-waged/
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Sat Aug 20, 2022 12:09 pm

Mariupol before winter
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/20/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

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The battles of the last eight years and the last six months have left and continue to leave enormous damage in Donbass and in the areas of the rest of Ukraine that are on the front line. In the case of Donbass, the number of towns completely destroyed - by the current phase of the war, but also by the previous one - is immense, although there are specific places where the destruction is such that they require priority. The war has not been the only priority for a long time for the Russian authorities, who have quickly begun to rebuild some of the key infrastructures and who are trying, by forced marches, to guarantee minimum conditions in the localities in which the largest population has to be sheltered. . Although relocation to nearby locations that have suffered less damage may be a temporary solution, cities like Mariupol imply the need for immediate reconstruction due to the huge population made homeless by the war. With daily ferries bringing material from Russia, rebuilding Mariupol has been a priority since the end of the battle. However, the level of damage that the city suffered makes the task considerably difficult, especially with regard to the coming winter.

Original Article: Rybar

Winter is coming and this is the status of the reconstruction of Mariupol as of August 19, 2022. In about a month, autumn will hit the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov with force: the rains will begin, the temperature will drop to 10º and the cold wind will start to blow from the sea. What condition will Mariupol be in in terms of destroyed homes and temporary accommodation?

The data: population and conditions of the housing stock.

According to the head of the city's municipal administration, Konstantin Ivaschenko, there are currently 200,000 people in the city out of a pre-war population of 450,000.

Before what happened, Mariupol had 2,700 apartment buildings and 48,000 single-family homes. According to the data of the current local authorities, at least 60-70% of the housing stock has suffered serious damage. About 15-20% of it will not be able to be rebuilt.

This assessment is confirmed by the results of the study mentioned by Sergey Fedyushin, from the construction department of the DPR Ministry of Construction. At that time, 359 residential buildings had been inspected, of which 47 cannot be rebuilt; 156 are between 30 and 70% damaged and require major repairs and the rest do not exceed 30% damage. If these data are correct, more than 40% of the city's apartment buildings are completely or partially destroyed. Around 30% are significantly damaged and only the remaining 30% do not require major repairs or reconstruction.

The valuation of single-family housing areas has not yet been fully completed. Many of the houses near the city center have been destroyed to their foundations.

But even under these conditions, almost half of the population of Mariupol has not emigrated and has remained in the city.

What is Russia doing to rebuild Mariupol?

For the winter, Russia has promised to build twelve high-rise buildings on Kuprin Street, which will be carried out by construction companies of the Ministry of Defense, as well as two five-story buildings on Primorsky Street. There is no information about the construction of more residential buildings.

Builders from the Tula region will restore neighborhoods in which houses have suffered more than 30% damage: the roofs and engineering systems of sixteen-story buildings will be completely replaced. Some of the reconstruction work is being carried out by companies from Moscow and St. Petersburg, but its scale is insignificant.

In Mariupol, construction and structural companies formed by local residents produce glazing for windows and repair buildings with minor damage. The work can be done manually or with little machinery and does not require great design or study activities.

What is the conclusion?

According to the most optimistic estimates, the restored or replaced dwellings will not exceed 10% of those destroyed. Despite this, at least 40% of the pre-war population remains in the city.

Taking these data into account. Between 50,000 and 100,000 residents of Mariupol may find themselves with the arrival of winter in buildings that have not been adapted for the winter season or even on the street. In the best of cases, it will be possible to send a part of that population to pensions for the winter.

It is to be hoped that the responsible persons understand well that the picture is one of the absence of massive reconstruction work on the Mariupol housing stock and that if this does not change, there will inevitably be a humanitarian catastrophe in the city with the arrival of the cold.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/20/25316/#more-25316

Google Translator

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“Everyone’s a Little Problematic in Ukraine’s International Legion”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 18, 2022
Lindsey Snell and Cory Popp

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“Benjamin Velcro” is former US serviceman and volunteer with the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, the official unit of foreign volunteers under the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In early August, Russian media widely shared voice recordings in which Velcro recounted the torture and murder of a Russian prisoner of war.

“I don’t know where the fuck he was from, somewhere in Central Asia or Central Russia. He was about 18. We were told to take no prisoners. Because we had been told we were just mercenaries and we’d be executed by Russia. So we don’t give a fuck, man. We slit his fucking achilles and made him swim across the Severodonetsk River, to see if he could swim across the river without achilles tendons. He drowned…or he was shot, I don’t know. We were all kinda taking practice shots at him.”

According to Velcro, the horrific war crime he detailed didn’t actually happen. “I had just come back from the front. I was drunk. And I just decided to troll this Russian guy I met in Thailand years ago by telling him this story. Next thing I knew, that shit just blew up on Russian media.”

Velcro, who speaks Russian fluently, was already in Ukraine when the war started in February. His fiancée, a woman from Mariupol, had just left him. “I wanted to do something good,” he said. “So I organized my own primitive humanitarian missions, bringing bags of medical supplies across the border to Ukraine and giving them to different volunteer groups. But I wanted to do more. I was in the US military, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I’d already lived in Ukraine before, so this wasn’t a war tourism gig for me.” Velcro joined a small volunteer combat unit in Ukraine before joining the International Legion as a drone pilot.

The International Legion

“I’d have to categorize the people in the International Legion by ethnic groups,” he said. “The Polish people who come, they see this as an extension of the defense of their own country. They see Ukraine as their backyard. And probably 3000-something Euros a month is a good salary for them. So, you add those factors up, and you have a lot of Polish people.

“The other Europeans, in general, are a mixed bag. You have some people who miss military service. You have a lot of people who are just lost, they fucked up a lot in their lives, and they see joining the International Legion as a way to redeem themselves.

“And then there are the people from Latin America. They’re motivated by money. From a Colombian’s perspective…they’re pretty well-known for being mercenaries abroad. They’re making way more money fighting for Ukraine than they could dream of making in their own country.”



“Everyone’s a little problematic in the Legion,” Velcro continued. “I think the First Battalion of the International Legion is a total shitshow. The best example is Craig Lang. Craig Lang is wanted for double murder in the US, and he’s in First Battalion. That guy should not be in the Legion.”

Craig Lang, a 32-year-old US Army veteran, first went to Ukraine in 2015. He joined the Right Sector and Azov Battalion, two far-right militias who openly espouse a neo-Nazi ideology. After returning to the US, Lang allegedly murdered Danny and Deana Lorenzo in Florida in 2018. He then fled to Ukraine. In addition to facing murder charges, Lang is being investigated by the US Department of Justice for war crimes he allegedly committed in Donbas. He is currently a member of the International Legion.

“Another point of corruption is the spokesperson for the International Legion,” Velcro said. “She is a fraud. She goes by ‘Mockingjay.’ She was outed for all kinds of fraud in other countries. She isn’t who she pretends to be.”

Emese Fajk, 30, used forged bank slips to win a reality TV show auction in Australia in 2020. She fled to Maidera Island, where she met and dated a wealthy cryptocurrency trader, Steve Silva. She again forged bank slips to defraud her landlord in Madeira of rent she owed and stole electronics from Silva. She later surfaced in Ukraine, where she is the press officer of the International Legion.

“And weapons go missing,” Velcro said. “Two MP5s went missing from the International Legion. The idea of weapons going missing…in the US military, if a private drops a rifle during a training exercise, and for some reason, stumbles back to his formation without it, the whole base would be locked down until the rifle was found. And two MP5s just…drifting off. Lord knows how many RPGs, grenades, and AKs are just out there floating around. I feel like Ukraine is going to be a major hub for weapons trafficking, if it wasn’t already.”

The Far-Right



“I met some people from Right Sector,” Velcro said. “I mean, how can a group called Right Sector deny its political leanings? At a minimum, I think they were all very Banderist-type Ukrainians.” On its official website and social media accounts, the Right Sector, a political party with an armed wing that formed in 2013, has railed against immigrants, the LGBT community, and Muslims. Their soldiers often wear patches bearing Nazi insignia. To them, as to all of Ukraine’s far-right militias, Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera is a Ukrainian national hero.

“In reality, military circles generally bring in kind of right wing people,” Velcro mused. “Even in the US, there are some crazy motherfuckers. I mean, those Capitol Hill riots, a lot of those dudes are military veterans. It was pretty inevitable. You open up the doors to foreign fighters in a conflict and people with political ideologies wanting training are going to want to come and get more of that.

‘And the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, there were definitely some people with hard right wing views filtering in, and not enough action was being taken to like curb this shit. We had one dude in our unit that would just put this stuff, like, Misanthropic Division shit all over his fucking gear and he opened up his phone and you saw like, White Lives Matter.”

The Realities of War

“There are a lot of foreign volunteers here who have issues,” Velcro said. “I mean, there has to be something wrong with you to want to stay here after experiencing Russian shelling. It’s one thing to come here and think you’re going to get into some movie-style shootout with the Russians. The reality of what happens is there’s extensive trading of artillery fire. Infantrymen really don’t do much except get killed or hold ground.

“The comforts that you had as a Western soldier don’t exist here. I remember the first time I got shelled, like really fucking shelled. We were in the middle of a field in the Donbas and there was no communications. It was dark, and we had no night vision goggles. We were told to dig if we expected to live, and that there’s going to be an armored assault coming through, and that the Ukrainian soldiers had abandoned their post for some reason. I said to myself, ‘What the fuck am I doing with my life, man? Why am I in this situation? This is absolute insanity.’ But then I fucking just leaned into it.”

Velcro does not think Ukraine currently has a realistic chance to win the war. “Russia probably has a lot more weapons than Ukraine can handle and sustain,” he reasoned. “We all know that Russia is not feeling the pinch, economically-speaking. The middle-class, urbanite people are not feeling the pinch…yet. People who say otherwise are delusional. You have to consider that there’s a 10% inflation rate…something like 20% in France. A lot of people are going to stop wanting to fund this war.”



Weapons supply issues have hit all segments of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including the International Legion. “There’s total grift and corruption going on everywhere,” Velcro said. “Some of the volunteer groups are now weapons trafficking. I went into the supply room and I asked my team leader for uniforms for my soldiers. And he said, ‘We don’t have any uniforms.’

“And I said, ‘Man, it’s going to get cold here. If you guys don’t have regular uniforms to supply these foreign fighters now, what’s going to happen when it’s freezing out?’ The network of volunteers is burning out. You can’t sustain a war crowd-funding it forever.

“We’re driving around in unarmored technicals on the frontline. At one point, the Legion even asked me to pay to help repair a vehicle, and I did. I went up to an ABC News crew who had driven up to us in an armored vehicle, and I said, ‘So, you guys get legit armored vehicles? I wish we had those.’ The ABC cocksuckers just gave me a smirky look.

“Reading the comments on Reddit, and all that kind of delusional bullshit, where people write, ‘Oh, well, they get all these javelins.’ No, man, those javelins are gone. 70% of them were fired off in the beginning of the war. The US sent out a huge stockpile of them right before the war, and the US has a 36 month wait period for one javelin to come into the line. So there won’t be javelins, or nice anti-tank guided missile systems anymore.”

Ukraine’s War Crimes



Velcro’s experiences with the International Legion in Ukraine support a recently-published Amnesty International report alleging that Ukrainian Armed Forces have been stationing soldiers and operating military equipment in civilian areas. “Whenever I hear like a story about Russians hitting a school, I just kind of shrug,” he said. “Because I was garrisoned inside a school at one point. The school didn’t have kids in it, so it’s not like they were endangering children. But, you know, all it takes is for Ukraine to say, ‘Ah! They hit a school!’ And that kind of just cumulates into a fucking easy media narrative on their their part.

“And everyone knows that since 2014, Ukraine has been forced to fight a war in which it didn’t have guided weapons. And even with guided weapons, we can talk about mistakes that the U.S. made in Afghanistan recently, for that matter. But I mean, of course, Ukraine probably shelled civilian areas. This sort of collateral damage is inevitable.”

Burn out

Velcro has now left the International Legion and Ukraine. “I’m just too burnt out. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t scope through a myriad of foreign government entities to find a legit unit that’s well-supplied and has people who are committed…I’m just burnt out.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... al-legion/

Ukraine War Veterans: How Kiev Plundered US Aid, Wasted Soldiers, Endangered Civilians, and Lost the War
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 18, 2022
Lindsey Snell and Cory Popp

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“The weapons are stolen, the humanitarian aid is stolen, and we have no idea where the billions sent to this country have gone,” a Ukrainian complained to The Grayzone.

In a video sent via Facebook messenger in July, Ivan* can be seen standing next to his car, an early 2010s model Mitsubishi SUV. Smoke is pouring out of the rear window. Ivan laughs and pans his phone’s camera across the length of the vehicle, pointing out bullet holes. “The turbocharger died in my car,” he said, panning his phone toward the front of the vehicle. “My commander says I should pay to repair it myself. So to use my own car in the war, I need to buy a new turbocharger with my own money.”

Ivan flipped the camera toward his face. “Well, you fucking motherfucker members of parliament, I hope you fuck each other. Devils. I wish you were in our place,” he said.

Last month, Ukraine’s parliamentarians voted to give themselves a 70% salary increase. Filings indicate the raise was enabled and encouraged by the billions of dollars and euros of aid that have poured in from the US and Europe.

“We, the Ukrainian soldiers, have nothing,” said Ivan. “The things the soldiers have been given to use in the war came directly from volunteers. The aid that goes to our government will never reach us.”

Ivan has been a soldier since 2014. Currently, he’s stationed in the Donbas region, where he is tasked with using small, consumer-grade drones to spot Russian positions for artillery targeting. “There are so many problems on the frontline now,” he said. “We don’t have an internet connection, which makes our work basically impossible. We have to drive to get a connection on mobile devices. Can you imagine?”

Another soldier in Ivan’s unit sent us a video of himself from a trench near the frontlines in Donbas. “According to documents, the government has built us a bunker here,” he says. “But as you see, there are only a few centimeters of a wood covering over our heads, and this is supposed to protect us from tank and artillery shelling. The Russians shell us for hours at a time. We dug these trenches ourselves. We have two AK-74s between 5 soldiers here, and they jam constantly because of all the dust.

“I went to my commander and explained the situation. I told him it’s too hard to hold this position. I told him I understand this is a strategically important point, but our squad is broken, and no relief is coming for us. In 10 days, 15 soldiers died here, all from shelling and shrapnel. I asked the commander if we could bring some heavy equipment to build a better bunker and he refused, because he said the Russian shelling could damage the equipment. Does he not care that 15 of our soldiers died here?”

“If you tried to explain the situation Ukrainian soldiers are facing to an American soldier, they would think you were insane,” said Ivan. “Imagine telling an American soldier that we are using our personal cars in the war, and we’re also responsible for paying for repairs and fuel. We’re buying our own body armor and helmets. We don’t have observation tools or cameras, so soldiers have to pop their heads out to see what’s coming, which means at any moment, a rocket or tank can tear their heads off.”

Illya*, a 23 year-old soldier from Kiev, says his unit is facing the same conditions in another part of the Donbas region. He joined the Ukrainian Army shortly after the war started. He has a background in IT and knew such expertise was in high demand. “If I had known how much deception there was in this Army, and how everything would be for us, I never would have joined,” he said. “I want to go home, but if I flee, I face prison.”

Illya and the other soldiers in his unit lack weapons and protective gear. “In Ukraine, people cheat each other even in war,” he said. “I’ve watched the medical supplies donated to us being taken away. The cars that drove us to our position were stolen. And we have not been replaced with new soldiers in three months, though we should have been relieved three times by now.”

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A billboard calls on Ukrainians to report “Russian collaborators.” Photo by Cory Popp.

“Everyone is lying”: US doctor describes shocking corruption

Samantha Morris*, a doctor from Maine, went to Ukraine in May to try to help provide medical training for soldiers. “The first time I crossed the border from Poland, I had to hide my medical supplies under mattresses and diapers to prevent them from being stolen,” she said. “The border guards on the Ukrainian side will just take things, and tell you, ‘we need this for our war,’ but then, they just steal the items and resell them. Honestly, if you don’t hand-deliver donations to the intended recipients, the items will never reach them.”

Morris and a few other American medical professionals began to hold training courses in Sumy, a mid-sized city in northeastern Ukraine. “We drew up a contract with the governor in Sumy, though all they provided to us were meals and lodging, and the lodging was just us sleeping in the same public university we held our training courses in,” she said. “The Sumy governor had a friend, a local businessman, and he demanded that this businessman be added to the contract as a ‘liaison’ between us and the city of Sumy. And as a liaison, he would get a percentage fee of the contract. Our lawyers tried to negotiate the businessman out of the contract, but the governor of Sumy wouldn’t budge. We ultimately just signed the contract so we could hold our trainings.”

In the two months she spent in Ukraine, Morris says she encountered theft and corruption more times than she could count. “The lead doctor at the military base in Sumy has ordered medical supplies from and for the military at different points in time, and he has had 15 trucks of supplies completely disappear,” she said. The military first aid kits she had intended to give to soldiers once they graduated her training program were stolen. She saw the same kits for sale at a local market days later.

“I got a call from a nurse at a military hospital in [the Ukrainian city of] Dnipro,” Morris recalled. “She said the president of the hospital had stolen all the pain medications to resell them, and that the wounded soldiers being treated there had no pain relief. She begged us to hand-deliver pain medications to her. She said she would hide them from the hospital president so that they’d reach the soldiers. But who can you trust? Was the hospital president really stealing the medications, or was she trying to con us into giving her pain medications for her to sell or use? Who knows. Everyone is lying.”

Donated protective military equipment and combat medical supplies have flooded Ukraine’s online marketplaces. Sellers are careful to hide their identities, often creating new vendor accounts for each sale and willing to fulfill orders exclusively by mail. “We have found armored helmets given as aid from the Americans for sale on websites,” Ivan said. “You know, inside the helmet, the class of protection and brand are written. We saw this brand before and realized the helmets were the ones given to us as aid. Some of us tried to contact the sellers to set up a meeting, so we could prove they were selling stolen aid, but they were suspicious and stopped responding to us.”

Ivan says he has heard about the theft of weapons donated from Western countries, but pointed out that several soldiers in his unit are sharing a single AK-74. “I wouldn’t know about how they’re stealing the weapons, because the weapons never reach the Ukrainian soldiers in the first place,” he said. “And if they were giving more than small missiles and rifles, if they were giving us what we actually need to fight Russia, they would be weapons too big to steal.”

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A Ukrainian army vehicle on the road to Dnipro. Photo by Cory Popp.

“I don’t think they want us to win”: Ukrainians scoff at Western aid

Ivan is not optimistic about Ukraine’s chances to win the war. “There won’t be a Donbas left,” he said. “The Russians will destroy it, or they’ll control all of it, and then they’ll move on to the south. And now, as it is, I’d say 80% of the civilians who have stayed in Donbas support Russia and leak all of our location information to them.”

When asked if he thought the US and European countries truly want Ukraine to win the war, Ivan laughed. “No, I don’t think they want us to win,” he said. “The West could give us weapons to make us stronger than the Russians, but they don’t do this. We know Poland and the Baltic countries want us to win, 100%, but their support isn’t enough.”

“It is obvious that the US doesn’t want Ukraine to win the war,” said Andrey*, a Ukrainian journalist based in Mykolayiv. “They only want to make Russia weak. No one will win this war, but the countries the US is using like a playground will lose. And the corruption related to the war aid is shocking. The weapons are stolen, the humanitarian aid is stolen, and we have no idea where the billions sent to this country have gone.”

Andrey is especially appalled by the lack of services provided to internally displaced Ukrainians. “It really isn’t a mystery why everyone wants to go to Europe,” he said. “There’s a refugee center near Dnipro, for example, and displaced people are only allowed to stay there for three days. And it’s 45 or 50 people in one big, open room with one bathroom and a tiny kitchen. Horrible conditions. So after the three days, if they have no money, no clothes, nothing, they are kicked out and have no choice but to go back to their homes in dangerous areas. We must ask our government where all the aid money has gone, when our soldiers don’t have what they need, and our civilians don’t have safe places to stay.”

Foreign journalists cover up grim reality with triumphalist delusions

Before the war started, Andrey spent several years reporting on corruption and crooked politicians in Ukraine. After an investigation into a government official in Odessa resulted in death threats against his wife and young daughter, Andrey sent them to live with relatives in France. “Ukraine is a democracy, right? So the government won’t press on you in an official way. First, you get phone calls warning you to stop. Then, they offer you money to stop. And then, if you refuse to be bought, you should be prepared for an attack.

“Real journalism is dangerous here,” he continued. “You see, since the war started, we have these new star reporters, and every day, they write that ‘Putin is bad, the Russian soldiers behave very badly…today, the Ukrainian army killed 1,000 Russians and destroyed 500 Russian tanks.’ They get a million followers on Twitter because they lie, and this isn’t real reporting. But if you write about the corruption in the Armed Forces, and have real examples…you won’t be famous, and you’ll be in trouble.”

Andrey has been picking up extra work as a fixer, arranging interviews and translating for foreign journalists in Ukraine to cover the war. “I have worked with about a dozen journalists from different countries in Europe,” he said. “All of them have been shocked. They left Ukraine shocked. They said they could not believe the situation here. But this shock did not make it into any of their articles about the war. Their articles said that Ukraine is on the road to victory, which is not true.”

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A billboard promoting the Azov Battalion in Kramatorsk. Photo by Cory Popp.

Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers confirm Ukraine’s Armed Forces endanger civilians

In July, we spent the night at a hotel in Kramatorsk and were concerned to see that neo-Nazi Azov battalion soldiers were among the hotel’s guests. On August 4th, Amnesty International published a study revealing that since the start of the war in February, Ukrainian forces have endangered civilians by establishing bases in schools and hospitals and operating weapons systems in civilian areas, which is a violation of international law.

Amnesty International now plans to “re-assess” its report, in response to a massive public outcry after its publication, but Ukrainian soldiers and foreign volunteers have confirmed that Ukrainian armed forces maintain a heavy presence in civilian areas. “Our bases were mostly built in Soviet times,” said Ivan. “So now, Russia knows our bases inside and out. It’s necessary to spread the soldiers and weapons out to other places.”

A former US serviceman who goes by the moniker “Benjamin Velcro” was a volunteer fighter for the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ official unit for foreign volunteers. He spent five months in various parts of Ukraine, and says that soldiers being stationed in civilian areas was a common occurrence.

“Whenever I hear that Russia bombed a school, I just kinda shrug,” the American foreign fighter said. “Because I garrisoned inside a school. That’s a fact. The school didn’t have kids in it, so it’s not like they were endangering children. So all it takes is for Ukraine to say, ‘Ah! They hit a school!’ And that cumulates into an easy media narrative on their part.”

Like Ivan, Velcro is also pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances to win the war. “Man, I want everything in the world for Ukraine to win this. I want Ukraine to get its pre-2014 borders back. But do I think that’s tenable? No. You can’t sustain a war by crowdfunding forever.”

*Several interview subjects requested to be quoted under assumed names to protect themselves from potential danger

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... t-the-war/

The Donbass Anti-Kiev Resistance Struggle & the Innate Fragility of Colonialism
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 19, 2022
Rainer Shea

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When Che Guevara declared that colonialism is doomed, he was talking not just about the colonialism in the exploited countries, but in the settler-colonial countries which benefit from imperialism. The USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the little Zionist settler state that Washington gives aid to—they’ll all be swept away by the progression towards history’s next stage. Amerikkka and the other colonial regimes can’t last, because they’re built upon a fundamental imbalance. No civilization that was created through theft from other civilizations will be able to remain stable. It’s why the Russian empire gave way to the Soviet Union, with its nationally liberated republics, and why Amerikkka will give way to a post-colonial federation.

The lack of sustainability within the U.S. colonial project becomes more apparent all the time. We can see the country falling apart with every systemic failure in the face of disasters, every act of brutality by our paranoid police state, every destructive neoliberal policy by our hubristic ruling class, every terrorist attack by radicalized fascists, every mass shooting by men who‘ve been consumed with rage at their conditions. The consequences of this imbalance in the way our society is set up are showing themselves with growing intensity. The only way to rectify this imbalance, to end the chaos, is by ending our colonial capitalist paradigm. Yet the way the prevailing culture is designed makes it seemingly impossible to imagine something different. If settler-colonialism can be dismantled, what would things look like afterwards? Is it even possible? It is possible, and we’ve gotten an idea of what it will look like ironically because of U.S. imperialism’s most recent failure: the Ukraine debacle.

When the imperialists carried out a coup in Ukraine in 2014, they aimed to do a nation-building project, where they would construct a version of Ukraine that’s been purged of its Russian-speaking population so that NATO could find an optimal new strategic location. But nation-building hasn’t historically gone well for the imperialists, as Iraq and Afghanistan showed. The people the new Kiev regime aimed to forcibly relocate started putting up a fight. They protested against the regime’s discriminatory agenda and support for Nazi militias, which the regime reacted to by carrying out the Odessa Massacre. The burnt bodies of the demonstrators in the crowd weren’t overlooked by the Russian-tied masses of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. After the Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to join Russia, the people of Donetsk and Luhansk mobilized towards armed struggle against the monsters to the west, now aware that separatism was their only escape from the additional horrors Ukrainian fascism intended to inflict upon them.

When the Amerikkkan empire began to try to colonize the African and Native peoples, these peoples also fought back, and they’ve been continuing to fight back ever since. They’ve carried out slave rebellions, valiant armed struggles against the treaty-breaking colonizers, efforts to patrol Black neighborhoods, tribal uprisings like Wounded Knee, anti-pipeline struggles like Standing Rock, and civil rights struggles like Black Lives Matter. The only way the settler state has managed to make these nations relatively pacified is through centuries of white supremacist terror, whether involving paramilitary violence campaigns, police murders, or mercenaries. The colonizers are constantly having to wage war to hold back revolution, to stop the equivalent of the Donbass uprising from happening here.

The people of the Donbass have been able to take territory away from the Kiev regime so fast because they’re at a relative advantage. Being historically tied to Russia, they’re part of a cultural identity that became extensively equipped with knowledge on how to fight fascism during the second world war. Their shared experience of resisting Hitler’s attempt to colonize them has given them a lasting spirit of militancy, of readiness to crush anyone who tries to destroy them. This is why Russia’s communist party called for the government to take action, military action if necessary, in order to beat back the rising new fascist menace. Operation Z is Russia’s new Great Patriotic War, an action to rescue Russia’s people in the Donbass republics from the threat of invasion by Kiev.

The U.S. colonial project has been able to survive and expand by wiping out 90% of the indigenous peoples, and by placing the descendants of African slaves effectively under army occupation via increasingly militarized police. Without the success of the USA’s colonial warfare efforts, these nations would by now have demolished the settler state, same as how Russia is now demolishing the Kiev regime’s military and paramilitary forces. The U.S. settler state’s unparalleled effectiveness at committing genocide has represented a great delay for the victory of the oppressed nations, but these nations can still win. They can still win because capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism inevitably create contradictions, contradictions that liberation struggles have the potential to take advantage of.

As the U.S. empire continues to collapse, these contradictions—state violence, falling wages, rising prices, and so on—will keep getting more severe. But deterioration of conditions doesn’t in itself bring revolution closer, that requires revolutionaries taking the necessary steps. What we must do is rebuild the militancy which initially made the oppressed nations a formidable opponent to the Amerikkkan empire, a task which will require solidarity from people of all colors and nationalities. Full tribal land jurisdiction return, slavery reparations, and the other requirements for restorative justice are essential for the liberation of the entire proletariat, not just the proletarians who are nationally oppressed. Communism can only win under our conditions if the national question is adequately addressed, if the proletariat works in unison to rectify the injustices this country was founded upon. This task will require nothing less than the abolition of the country itself, like how Israel must be abolished, and the construction of a post-colonial new order.

However well we manage to build the solidarity needed for achieving these goals, colonialism will self-destruct. The oppressed nations will sometime soon carry out yet another revolt, prompted by their deepening poverty, the new Jim Crow of the carceral state, and the settler police state’s intensifying reign of terror. This revolt could take on a more pronounced form than the unprecedentedly huge demonstrations we saw a couple years ago, and escalate into armed guerrilla struggle. If the reactionary settlers thought the looting and riots were bad, wait till they’re faced with an actual insurgency, waged by people who feel like they have nothing to lose because of how badly colonialism has trampled upon them. Millions of people, more every day, are living an existence devoid of any hope under the present social order, pushed to the side by a system that sees them as expendable. People of all colors are part of this discarded class, and at some point they’ll decide to try to take their revenge.

The question is whether communists, by that stage when our revolutionary crisis has reached its explosive moment, will have sufficiently prepared the people for taking down the state. We must work to educate the people on revolutionary theory, build the networks for community aid and defense, and inform ourselves on what the people need so that we can correctly serve them. All the while, we must equip and train ourselves for what the conditions may demand of us. There will be no Russian military to provide backup for our liberation efforts. We’ll need to take on our own fascist beast by ourselves, relying on knowledge of how others throughout the Americas have so far defeated reactionary regimes.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... lonialism/

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Russia: US Pushing Ukraine to False Flag Nuclear Provocation

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Russia denounces that US pushes Ukraine to commit atomic crimes. | Photo: Twitter @PinkCerberus

Published 20 August 2022

The Russian embassy reacted to statements made by U.S. State Department spokesman, Ned Price, who stressed on Thursday that the White House “condemns in the strictest terms Russia’s reckless disregard for nuclear security.”



The embassy of Russia in the United States denounced that Washington, with its “irresponsible” rhetoric, is pushing Ukraine to perpetrate "crimes" that threaten to unleash a catastrophe at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.

“Kiev’s military continues to launch systematic attacks against the plant, using multiple rocket launchers, artillery and drones, all with the collusion of Washington, which could cause a disaster whose repercussions Europe would have to face for many decades,” the embassy declared on Telegram.

The Russian embassy reacted thus to the statements of the US State Department spokesman, Ned Price, who stressed on Thursday that the White House “condemns in the strictest terms Russia’s reckless disregard for nuclear security.”

The spokesman also urged Moscow to cease military activities near the Ukrainian nuclear facilities and return control of the Zaporozhie plant to Kiev, while accusing Russian troops of “coercing” the plant personnel.


The Russian diplomats stated that Price did not provide “any evidence” to support his accusations in his comments, while leaving Ukraine, which is “mainly responsible for what is happening,” out of his speech. “Clearly, Washington does not disdain brazen lies in its unstoppable attempts to denigrate our country,” the Russian officials stressed.

They argued that the Ukrainian military is gradually increasing its attacks daily. In total, they carried out 12 artillery strikes on the nuclear power plant and the city of Energodar this Thursday, with more than 50 projectiles exploding in and around said areas, in addition to launching five kamikaze drones.

Along these lines, the Russian embassy in Washington alluded to a report by the Russian Ministry of Defense in which it warns that Ukrainian troops intend to stage a provocation to generate a radiation leak, compromise the integrity of the nuclear waste deposit and put the reactor in a state of abnormal operation, with the aim of creating an exclusion zone and blaming Russia for nuclear terrorism.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0001.html

Russian and French Leaders Discuss Ukraine Conflict

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Putin and Macron agree on the need to send a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to assess the Zaporozhye NPP situation. Aug. 19, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@RondonKamilo

Published 19 August 2022

Putin and Macron addressed in a phone conversation the conflict in Ukraine, including security matters at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plan, according to the Kremlin.

French President Emmanuel Macron started the conversation in which Russian leader Vladimir Putin warned of a radiation spill due to the "systematic shelling of the territory of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant by the Ukrainian military."

The Kremlin said both leaders agreed on the need to send an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission to assess the situation in the Zaporozhye area as soon as possible.

This time, the Russian side agreed that the Agency's mission could travel through territory currently under Kiev forces' control, the Elysee Palace. Russia had earlier said the IAEA delegation could only move through territory controlled by Russia.

Following discussions by technical teams, the French and Russian sides will return to the issue within the next few days.


Putin and Macron talk by phone about the situation in Ukraine. They highlighted sending a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the nuclear plant.

The Kremlin also said Putin insisted on inviting international experts to visit a prison facility in Yelenovka, in the Donetsk People's Republic, which Russia says Kiev forces attacked last month, killing 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounding dozens more.

As for the agreement for Ukrainian grain exports across the Black Sea, negotiated by the UN and Turkey, the Russian president told Macron that there are still obstacles preventing Russian grain from reaching world markets. This is detrimental to global food security, the Kremlin said.

The last phone conversation between the presidents was held on May 28. On that occasion, Putin said Russia was open to brokering an end to the conflict, accused Ukraine of stalling peace talks, and condemned the West's supply of arms to Kiev.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0013.html

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Ukraine war of attrition at inflection point

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to materialize, while a massive Russian knockout blow to the tottering Ukrainian military also seems improbable

August 19, 2022 by M.K. Bhadrakumar
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
The great beauty about the war of attrition is that the military strategy of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy may not necessarily achieve the intended strategic success. Worse still, it may remain inconclusive and it becomes difficult to distinguish between the winner and the vanquished.

The best example in modern times has been the War of Attrition that Egypt launched in March 1969 to wear down Israel by means of a long engagement and so provide Egypt with the opportunity to dislodge Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had seized from Egypt in the Six-Day War of 1967.

That War of Attrition turned out to be inconclusive. No territory was exchanged, and there was no obvious victor. Opinions vary as to whether either side had achieved a strategic success. Arguably, Egypt’s failure to make any territorial gains was tantamount to an Israeli victory; but then, the shift in psychological balance resulted in Egyptian favor, which ultimately led to the 1979 peace treaty that followed the Camp David Accords.

But for such peaceful negotiated endings, leadership is needed. Henry Kissinger in his new book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, devotes a chapter to Anwar Sadat as one of six world leaders he knew, who possessed such strategies of statecraft necessary to bring Egypt’s War of Attrition to a close. Kissinger calls it Sadat’s ‘strategy of transcendence.’

When it comes to the Ukraine conflict, Russia is seeking what Clausewitz called ‘the exhaustion of the adversary’. But the paradox is, the side that is perceived to be at a disadvantage — Ukraine — is increasingly seeking means to neutralize Russia’s advantages over time.

There is no question that Ukrainian artillery has started to hit Russian forces where it hurts in the Russian logistics effort in the highly strategic southern Black Sea region, where the geopolitical contestation is ultimately going to be decided. Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out on Tuesday that “the situation in Ukraine testifies to US attempts to prolong this conflict.”

For two months already, Kiev has been talking about launching a major counteroffensive to recapture the southern city of Kherson and turn the tide against the Russian forces advancing toward the critical port city of Odessa, which is a vital lifeline to Ukraine.

Kiev is smashing bridges on the Dnieper and Russian ammunition depots in Crimea, but the larger movement of infantry is yet to happen. The Russian forces are reinforcing and digging in to defend Kherson. The Politico wrote, “Is it a feint from Kyiv to scramble and confuse Russian forces? Or an indication that Ukraine currently lacks the firepower to unseat Moscow’s hold on key territory — and that a grinding war of back-and-forth gains is inevitable?”

Meanwhile, there is growing doubt whether all those billions of dollars worth of weapons pouring into Ukraine from across Europe and North America really make any difference to the “big picture.” In the best case scenario, Europe will muddle through a cold, shivering winter. Equally, there is also the apocalyptic scenario of Europe in autumn with ‘epic collapses of stocks, debt, currencies, much higher inflation.’

In the Donbass frontline itself, the Russians continue to “grind down” the Ukrainian military. The operations are currently positional battles along the Bakhmut-Seversk-Soledar lines. Russian assault groups entered Bakhmut, which is a highly strategic communication hub for Kiev, four days ago and managed to establish a foothold on the city’s eastern outskirts. On Wednesday, Russians took control of Vershina on the south-eastern outskirts of Bakhmut. A multi-pronged attack on Bakhmut is beginning.

As for the city of Soledar, Ukrainian defences are crumbling after suffering heavy losses in counter-battery duels. The Russians claimed that over 50% of the personnel and military equipment of the 15th Battalion of the 58th Motorised Infantry Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed. Again, the Russian forces took control of Peski last week, which will now take the offensive toward Krasnogorovka as well.

That said, there is a long way to go still to bring the Russian offensive to the 2014 administrative borders of Donbass. Thus, the Ukrainian forces that have been bled white are unable to push hard while the Russians keep grinding them to dust.

Whiff of endgame in the air
On Tuesday, a top official in Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR, Vladimir Matveyev, who holds the rank of general, made a sensational disclosure at the Moscow Conference on International Security that Russia has information to the effect that the Western sponsors of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have almost written him off and are plotting the dismemberment and occupation of part of Ukrainian lands.

To quote Matveyev: “As one can see from the information coming to the SVR, the Western handlers have almost written it off (the Kiev regime) and are working hard on plans for the dismemberment and occupation of at least part of the Ukrainian lands. In reality, there is much more than Ukraine at stake for Washington and its allies. It is the fate of the colonial system of world domination.”

The general couldn’t have declassified such sensitive information in front of an elite international audience in a fit of “psywar.” Is there is a vague hint that the endgame is not far off?

Indeed, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is meeting President Zelensky in Ukraine on Thursday to discuss a political solution to the conflict. On Monday, Guterres had a call with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu “to discuss the conditions for the safety operations of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant” during which they “also exchanged views on the fact-finding mission in relation to the Olenivka prison incident.”

The Zaporizhia NPP’s safety has turned into a major international issue as Ukrainian shelling continues. The topic figured in a phone conversation between the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday. The US is reportedly seeking a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine situation next Wednesday.

Again, an impartial fact-finding mission on the Olenivka prison incident can cause serious damage to Zelensky’s standing, being a horrific a war crime that scores of Ukrainian POWs (from Azovstal in Mariupol who were being interrogated by the Russians) have been silenced in a HIMARS missile strike.

Are we seeing the first signs of Zelensky being collared? In a recent article in New York Times, well-known columnist Thomas Friedman made dark hints that “privately, US officials are a lot more concerned about Ukraine’s leadership than they are letting on. There is deep mistrust between the White House and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky — considerably more than has been reported.”

The bottom line is, there could be more to it than meets the eye in the remarks Wednesday evening on Rossiya-24 television by the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov that he expects to meet with Pentagon and State Department officials “in the near future, where it would be possible to dot the i’s and determine whether the Americans are really ready for equal, mutually beneficial interaction.”

Antonov lamented the state of Russia-US relations: “The situation is deplorable. I’d like to say otherwise, but I can’t. Everything that was created in recent years has come apart. It seemed that two years ago the relations were complicated when we had the Trump administration, were expelling Russian diplomats, wrangling over property. But today they are just unprecedented.”

He added that Russians traveling outside their country or residing in the US, “are discriminated against for being Russians, intimidated, persecuted, threatened. Unfortunately, cultural, scientific and educational ties have been severed. Mentions of the role of our country in World War II are being blotted out.”

Taking note that Russian FM Lavrov and Blinken held phone talks at the end of July for the first time in more than six months, Antonov said: “I have to admit that the Russian-US political dialogue is paralyzed today. As a result, even the areas that are of mutual interest to the two countries suffer. Contacts are occasional… We are firmly convinced that without direct interaction of our powers, it’s impossible to solve not only the problems of bilateral relations, but also issues concerning the whole world.”

Antonov seemed to be “sensitizing” the Russian public opinion. What he said was a complete turnaround from Putin’s speech just the previous day pillorying the “collective West” and the US in particular.

To be sure, Ukraine’s war of attrition is approaching an inflection point. The Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to materialize, while a massive Russian knockout blow to the tottering Ukrainian military also seems improbable.

Meanwhile, the intelligence agencies in Russia and Washington are quietly working out prisoner exchange that President Biden desires. In the Cold War chronicles, such exchanges usually foretold a détente.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/08/19/ ... ion-point/

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Quality Of Ukraine Reporting Continues To Deteriorate
The news about the war in Ukraine is getting so fake that even an amateur can debunk it no time.

Consider this from the Washington Post:

Across the river from Ukraine nuclear plant, shelling adds to fear

In Nikopol, just two miles across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the threat of imminent nuclear catastrophe is compounded by daily shelling from Russian forces near the plant.


The real distance between the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and Nikopol is 15 kilometers (9 miles) not "just 2 miles".

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Source: LiveUAmap

Nikopol is too close to the plant for sirens to be of use — there’s no time to switch them on. Instead residents on the other side send warnings if they see artillery batteries being rolled out.
The well protected six reactor blocks of ZNPP can be seen in the upper left of the picture. The next civilian settlement is on the right side, some 2+ kilometers away from the plant with several big buildings between the two.

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How anyone would see "artillery batteries being rolled out" at the plant is beyond me. The Russian side of course insists that there is no artillery at the ZNPP and that the Ukrainians are shelling the plant. Which makes sense as the plant is, since early March, under complete control of the Russian side.

This misreporting by the Washington Post comes after it published a big fake story about an alleged Russian intelligence failure at the beginning of the war:

Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed

Just consider this circular sourcing of the story:

In the final days before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s security service began sending cryptic instructions to informants in Kyiv. Pack up and get out of the capital, the Kremlin collaborators were told, but leave behind the keys to your homes.
...
The communications exposing these preparations are part of a larger trove of sensitive materials obtained by Ukrainian and other security services and reviewed by The Washington Post.
...
Ukraine’s security services have an interest in discrediting Russia’s spy agencies, but key details from the trove were corroborated by officials in Western governments.
...
Ukraine’s security agencies have scored notable victories. Early on, a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization published what it described as a roster of FSB operatives linked to the war effort, posting the identities and passport numbers of dozens of alleged spies in a move meant to disrupt the agency’s plans and rattle its personnel. A person connected to the NGO, which is called Myrotvorets, or Peacemaker, said the data was obtained by Ukraine’s security services. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing threats to his security.
...
Details published by Peacemaker and confirmed by Ukrainian security officials describe Kovalenko as a 47-year-old veteran of the spy service who in recent years was responsible for managing the agency’s clandestine ties to Ukraine’s parliament and main pro-Russian party.


The extremist rightwing 'NGO' Myrotvorets is not independent but run by the Ukrainian secret service. It is known for publishing 'kill lists' of alleged 'enemies of Ukraine':

The site reflects the work of NGO "Myrotvorets centre", led by a person only known with the alias "Roman Zaitsev", former employee of Luhansk Security Service of Ukraine office. The website is allegedly curated by the government law-enforcement and intelligence agency Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and was promoted by Advisor to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko. The identity of the staff is secret, and a hidden panel sifts through information, often collated from Open-source intelligence, as well as information provided by individuals on a confidential basis.
...
On 24 May 2016, Committee to Protect Journalists wrote an open letter to then Ukrainian President Poroshenko urging him to "condemn the unfounded and damaging allegations published on Myrotvorets, and to clarify publicly that the Ukrainian Interior Ministry is dedicated to protecting journalists and apprehending the people responsible for threatening them, in contrast to Interior Minister Avakov's previous statements".
On 2 June 2016, G7 ambassadors to Kyiv released a joint statement expressing deep concern about disclosures of journalists' personal data on the Myrotvorets website and called on the Myrotvorets team to withdraw personal data from public access.

Other such lists put out by the Ukrainian government accuse U.S. political scientists and journalists of pro-Russian disinformation.


The Myrotvorets, says the Washington Post, used "data" [that] "was obtained by Ukraine’s security services". Details published by it were then "confirmed by Ukrainian security officials". This was "corroborated by officials in Western governments" and "reviewed by The Washington Post".

That still means that the only source of that alleged 'data' are "Ukraine’s security services" which, as the Washington Post notes, "have an interest in discrediting Russia’s spy agencies".

That make the whole story about the alleged FSB failure a garbage in-garbage out product based on a sole source, the fantasies created by the Ukrainian secret services.

Which altogether tells you something about the 'quality' of Ukraine war reporting by the Washington Post.

Posted by b on August 20, 2022 at 11:12 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/08/q ... .html#more
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Sun Aug 21, 2022 2:04 pm

Brief meeting of three
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/21/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

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Original Article: Antifashist

Seeing the photo reports and reading the information on Thursday's meeting (I don't know if a 40-minute conversation can be called "negotiations") between Zelensky and Turkish President Erdoğan and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, it came to me at the head the lines of the now popular song “When We Were at War”, based on the poems of the Soviet poet David Samoilov. “When we were at war, when we were at war. There each one thought of his loved ones or his wife”. I don't know if it was his loved ones, but judging by the expressions on the faces of the participants in the Lviv talks, each one was thinking about his own, his benefits, his destiny, his life.

For example, Zelensky, who has refused to participate in peace negotiations with Russia until Moscow withdraws its troops to the borders on February 24, was clearly thinking about how his behavior would affect the attitude of his overseas employers. After all, despite the fact that Erdoğan personally handed him a developed plan, a road map if you prefer, in search of peace or, at least, a "truce" (something that the Europeans and some countries of the western lobby that want a kind of Minsk-3 for the G-20 summit to be held on November 15-16 in Indonesia and to which, according to the latest information, both Putin and Xi Jinping will attend), the president of Ukraine must take into account, first of all, the will of its American and British partners,banquet , a war that brings good benefits to the local arms lobbies. This may be Zelensky's last chance to prove himself useful and meet clients' expectations of him before a possible Allied winter offensive, which could threaten Kharkiv or Odessa for Ukraine.

The British outlet The Economist openly states this in an article alleging that Zelensky is trying to show progress to his Western partners and local skeptics by continuing to talk about the Kherson counter-offensive, but at the same time advising Kiev to abandon those plans for 2022, as "Russia has moved troops into the city and fortified itself."

"Right now, the situation on the fronts is stagnant... And the Ukrainian Army can only unblock this situation early next year, when new personnel have been trained in Britain and additional brigades are formed," writes the recommended medium. The West "be patient" in the "war of attrition" that has begun, but, on the other hand, it recognizes that Western governments "may become nervous about maintaining support for Ukraine, since heating bills may increase markedly in the winter months."

The fact that it will not be possible to end this war quickly, as they want in Europe, is also confirmed by the forecasts of the Fitch agency, which states that "the war will continue even in 2023, with which Ukraine's public debt will exceed 100 % of GDP”. The economic forecasts of the rating agencies, which as a rule do not tend to hysteria or excessive reflection, indicate that neither peace nor a truce should be expected.

That seems to satisfy Zelensky, since the Anglo-Saxon plan to prolong the conflict is working. But the question of how one can live during that time remains open. The financing does not come fundamentally from the United States [where the bulk of the armament comes from- Ed ] but from the European Union, which does not expect an irreconcilable belligerence from the Ukrainian authorities, but rather some reason for a partial lifting of some sanctions against Russia.

In Lviv, the Turkish leader also referred to the sanctions, always in the context of their use for their own benefit. Slowly, Turkey is becoming one of the main beneficiaries of this war, skilfully acting between the warring parties on the principle “what is yours is ours”.

The American outlet Politico has openly accused Erdoğan of double-dealing, calling him a double agent . The publication expressed concern about Ankara's masterpiece. "On the one hand," says Politico, "Erdoğan and his son-in-law's company supply kyiv with drones, but on the other, Turkey is increasingly helping Russia avoid sanctions and increasing its economic cooperation." The authors of the article express their opinion that it is impossible for a NATO country to maintain such a balance and threaten Turkey in the words of an anonymous US administration official: “If Turkey enters into a formal economic partnership with Russia , Washington will consider recommending to Western companies to cut or reduce their economic ties with Ankara."

"We believe that Turkey should become a global destination for business and capital, but closer relations with Russia will create real risks for the integration of Turkey and the rest of the world," said the official, "and if the West can prove that Turkey helps Moscow evade sanctions, Washington can cut Turkey off from the dollar with secondary sanctions.”

Erdoğan leads this game. It is not this that is surprising but the sudden epiphany of the Americans. It has long been known very well that the Turkish president is no friend of anyone, including Russia. The events of the failed coup of 2016 have long been forgotten and any rational politician should act solely in the interests of the country he represents. The only question is what they are. It is evident that Turkey not only aspires to be an influential regional power, but will try to use its role as one of the poles of an emerging multipolar world, extending its influence to the Central Asian region, Transcaucasia, Asia Minor and North Africa. , thus creating a sphere of influence following the example of the former Ottoman Empire.

It is important for Russia to remember that it will be on good terms with the Turks as long as it remains strong. If it isn't, Turkey will be the first to take a bite. It has always been like this and it is naive to think that anything has changed.

In general, as expected, the Lviv meeting ended in nothing. And it could not be otherwise for the same reason that Minsk-2 was not implemented. With the arrogance of the current regime in kyiv, which has believed its power, the decision to continue or end the war is not made in Ukraine but in Washington and London. And they don't want peace, at least not yet.

You may be wondering what's up with the Secretary General of the United Nations. What was he thinking? Nothing, really. Thanks to the efforts of the United States, the people who lead the United Nations and other international organizations have long since become straw men designed to cover important events with their presence. What could António Guterres be thinking? Possibly on how to quickly get out of the hospitable land of Ukraine.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/21/breve ... more-25326

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Studying foreign trophies
August 21, 12:25

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Shoigu said that the M777 howitzer and the HIMARS MLRS, which are now being studied in terms of strengths and weaknesses, were at the disposal of the Russian Federation.

Russian troops have seized key Western-supplied weapons in Ukraine, and Russian specialists are studying them. “Of course, both our science and our industry are engaged in it. We look from two sides. The first is the possibility of combating these weapons, how and what can be opposed to them. On the other hand, how it can be hit, its main shortcomings, ”said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in an interview with the Rossiya-1 TV channel.
The HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, the M-777 howitzer, the NLAW and Javelin man-portable anti-tank missile systems, the Stinger man-portable air defense system, small arms and armored vehicles — these types of Western weapons have been seized by the Russian military in Ukraine, the defense minister specified, adding that this has long been known And of course, there are no surprises.

https://eadaily.com/ru/news/2022/08/21/ ... ars-im-777 - zinc


So far, only the captured M777 howitzer, previously declared as captured Caesar and MLRS HIMARS have not yet been officially demonstrated. Shoigu's comment on the fact is the first official confirmation of access to HIMARS.

PS. Shoigu also said that the Kinzhal hypersonic missile was used in the course of the NWO in Ukraine 3 times.
The results of the application are recognized as brilliant. The United States has previously stated that it currently does not have air defense systems at its disposal that can stop this missile. The main problem is that there are still quite a limited number of these missiles, and it is certainly necessary to increase their production.

PS2. Pictured is a captured M777 at an exhibition of captured weapons from NATO countries at the Army 2022 forum.
This gun fell partially damaged into the hands of our military during the battles for Lisichansk (it was overwhelmed along with an American tractor in one of the hangars by a destroyed missile strike). Now it has already been put in order and now the howitzer will take its place in the collection of other foreign trophies.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7813808.html

Google Translator

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Ukrainian Army Fired 6 Rockets at Donetsk, Local Authorities Accuse

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The said area of Donetsk is located in the northern part of the city where one of the main squares - Shakhterskaya square, the railway station, the stadium Donbass Arena are located. Aug. 20, 2022. | Photo: Twitter:@sportstalkline

Published 20 August 2022 (15 hours 12 minutes ago)

Ukrainian troops at 21:35 local time shelled an area of Donetsk city, launching six rockets from the BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launching system.

Ukrainian troops at 21:35 local time shelled an area of Donetsk city, launching six rockets from the BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launching system, the representative office of the Donetsk People's Republic at the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of Ceasefire reported.

"One civilian was killed. Ukrainian militants launched an artillery attack on Buslaev Street, a man born in 1950 died in his apartment," reads the statement of the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire on its Telegram channel.

The said area of Donetsk is located in the northern part of the city where one of the main squares - Shakhterskaya square, the railway station, the stadium Donbass Arena are located. Also in this part of the city ends Artiom street, the main artery of Donetsk.

Since 2014, when the people's republic declared its independence from Kiev after the coup, Ukrainian security forces have periodically shelled the area. The airport that previously stood there was destroyed as a result of many months of fighting between the Ukrainian army and Donetsk militias.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ukr ... -0012.html

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Employees of Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Station Urge Kiev to Stop Attacks, Warn of Disaster
AUGUST 20, 2022

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A view of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, in Energodar, currently under Russian control and experiencing shelling by Ukrainian Armed Forces. Photo: Dmytro Smolyenko.

Former and current employees of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, located in the town of Energodar, are calling on the Ukrainian authorities to stop attacking the plant with missiles. Video messages from these current and former emplyees were uploaded to the power station’s Telegram channel. https://t.me/zaporojie24/2631

Vlad Lavrik, a former employee of the plant, said that the Ukrainian military has attacked “the nuclear waste storage facility” and the plant’s “switchgear,” as well as a holiday village during a festival. In this context, he called on Ukrainian soldiers to think before firing towards Energodar.

Another former employee of the plant urged the Kiev authorities to “end this outrage,” “give up weapons” and “not to provoke a global crisis.” “Stop, otherwise it will be irreparable,” he warned.

A current employee said, “I appeal to the decision-makers from the other side of Dnepr: please stop. Your actions are so reckless and dangerous that they could lead to an international catastrophe.”

Vladimir Martinyuk, a former employee of the nuclear power plant, explained that all the missiles falling even 20-30 kilometers from the facility are dangerous, as the city and the plant are built on sand. “Sand can move because of vibrations, and the safety of the nuclear power plant depends on the displacement of that sand. And any open hostility… can lead to a tragedy,” he said.

Zaporozhye is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe with six power units. The first of them was commissioned in December 1984, while the sixth one was commissioned in October 1995. The province of Zaporozhye, in which the plant is located, is currently under partial control of Russian forces.

Attacks on the power plant have intensified in August. Last Monday, August 15, local authorities reported that Ukraine “fired massive artillery shells” towards Energodar, causing explosions near the plant.

On Thursday, August 18, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the objectives of the shelling of the plant by the Ukrainian Armed Forces are to create an exclusion zone of up to 30 kilometers and to accuse Russia of nuclear terrorism.

https://orinocotribune.com/employees-of ... -disaster/

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Ukraine: Zelensky Kidnaps Student Dissidents, Bans Opposition Parties, Shuts Down Independent Media, Commits Egregious War Crimes and Imposes Regressive Labor Laws
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 20, 2022
Dmitri Kovalevich

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More Ukrainian Soldiers Continue to Defect as Eastern Ukrainians See Better Future with Russian Federation
For more than five months, full-scale hostilities have taken place on the territory of Ukraine. The number of victims is growing every day on both sides of the front line.

From the signing of the “Minsk 2” peace agreement in February 2015 until February 2022—seven long years—hostilities in the Donbas region raged with regular shelling and small arms attacks by the Ukrainian military and paramilitaries against the towns and cities of the region. Ukrainians throughout the country have become accustomed to this routinized, “low intensity” warfare.

However, the entry of the Russian Federation into the conflict on the side of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics more than five months ago has upset the routine, causing much confusion and bewilderment among Ukrainians. They are asking themselves, how can it be that Kyiv could also be shelled in response to the shellings of Donetsk? “Isn’t the strongest military power in the world on our side? Why can’t it stop this war that has broken out?”

Western propaganda (and since 2014, Ukrainian propaganda, too), deeply corrupts a person’s understanding. It encourages the idea that a country like Ukraine, subordinated to the West, can do whatever it wishes so long as it supports the goals of the large Western countries. In this context, liberal-minded views in favor of peace do not count. Non-Western countries are, by default, considered inferior and local opponents of Western imperialism are suspect, be they governments or simple political movements.

Internal Dissent in Ukraine

To combat internal dissent, the Ukrainian state encourages its citizens to speak up against those it labels as “traitors” and “collaborators.” People who behave “suspiciously” by criticizing the actions of the authorities or even daring to declare responsibility of the Ukrainian authorities for the military intervention by the Russian Federation are considered traitors by default.

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Ukrainian law enforcers detain former Crimea SBU department chiefUkraine is more and more of a police state under Zelensky. The size of its intelligence service (SBU), which has been supported by the CIA since the 2014 Maidan coup, is equivalent to that of the FBI when Ukraine is much smaller than the U.S. Here the SBU is arresting Crimea’s former SBU department chief, Oleh Kulinich, who has been charged with treason and faces 15 years in prison. [Source: news.yahoo.com]

Of late, the news reporting of “criminal conduct” in Ukraine is telling the stories of the woman convicted by a court for the crime of reading Russian Telegram channels while using public transport; the man who was found in possession of the flag of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic; and the teenager who photographed an airport building.

A Ministry of Digital Transformation was established in Ukraine in 2019 with the help of the European Union and the U.S. It is part of implementing a strategy of silencing dissent. The ministry goes so far as to offer guidelines on how to correctly fill out a “collaborator report” to finger suspect acquaintances of “the enemy.”[1] The ministry cites a typical letter sent to the chatbot єВорог: “His sister is the wife of a separatist who is fighting for Russia. They keep in touch and exchange information about the location of our army in the city.”

Often such denunciations become simply a method of settling old personal scores. These raise uncomfortable memories of the pogroms against Jews which marked Ukraine during the years of Nazi German occupation. For example, one of the examples of denunciations sent to the Ministry of Digital Transformation has been highlighted by Maksim Buzhansky, deputy leader of President Zelensky’s political party. He writes of a woman being targeted for the crime of collaboration: “She is pregnant by a Russian and considers herself to be something of a first lady of the village.”[2] This is how simple envy or personal dislike can become a pretext for a witch-hunt under the guise of a political agenda.

One of the most egregious recent cases was the expulsion of Elvira Khomenko, a student from a university in the city of Bila Tserkva, 80 km south of Kyiv. Elvira was a student in the veterinary department. She wrote that enemies should be treated with kindness, that she does not eat meat, does not support the Ukrainian army, and does not support the killing of people.[3] She is described as something of a hippie and peacenik who strongly maintains her beliefs and opinions.

At the end of July, she was expelled from the university and denounced to the SBU, Ukraine’s political police service. Elvira has since disappeared without a trace. Police are refusing to accept her mother’s statement in defense of her daughter, treating the mother with contempt. [As of August 1, 2022, the whereabouts of Elvira Khomenko are known only to Ukrainian authorities.]

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Elvira Khomenko [Source: twitter.com]

In order to carry out its widespread, anti-Russia brainwashing in Ukraine, the Zelensky-led government has banned all opposition political parties and closed critical media. Over the past two years, half of the television channels in Ukraine have gone off the air, accused of pro-Russia sympathies. Since February 2022, all remaining media are obliged to relay only the point of view of the Office of the President, under threat of being accused of treason.

During this period, the opposition parties Platform for Life (social democratic), the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the “Socialists,” the Union of Left Forces, the Sharij Party, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine and the Labor Party of Ukraine have been banned and their property seized. Earlier, only party activity was suspended; the seizure of party properties is a new escalation. As the list of banned parties makes clear, they are left-wing for the most part. Their “fault” is their disapproval of the eight-year-old conflict waged against Donbas (which became the reason for the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine).

In July 2022, the wealthiest Ukrainian, billionaire Rinat Akhmetov (number one on Forbes-Ukraine’s list of wealthiest people in the country) gave up control of his media holdings, although he and his media have been quite loyal to Zelensky’s office. Hundreds of employees lost their jobs. The “logic” of this business decision by Ahkmetov is that a Ukrainian billionaire has no need to own costly media if it cannot be used to advance his or her personal interests and “merely” serves to relay the point of view of the authorities.

Worker and trade union rights under attack

Under the pretext of the war in Ukraine, authorities have begun to actively attack worker and trade union rights. They are promoting regressive “reform” of existing labor legislation. This had failed earlier due to pressure by international trade unions. In early July, the parliament sent to Zelensky for his signature Bill No. 7251, which regulates the “optimization of labor relations” under martial law.

This legislative innovation significantly curtails the rights of Ukrainian employees and nullifies the main historical gains of the working class, rolling them back to the situation of the 19th century. Among the provisions of the new law is that Ukrainian employers are no longer required to limit the working day to eight hours and the working week can stretch up to 60 hours. That could mean a ten-hour working day with one day off per week, a twelve-hour working day with two days off, or seven days of eight and a half hours each with no day off! Thus will Ukrainian employers be able to save on overtime pay.[4]

Back in 1810, the British educator and social philosopher Robert Owen advocated for a reduced work day; by 1817, he had formulated the slogan: “Eight hours’ labor, eight hours’ recreation, eight hours’ rest.” Oh, how the world of the 21st century is evolving—backwards!

In addition, from now on, Ukrainian workers can be fired on vague pretexts of no available work. Employers themselves will determine how this applies, depending on their interests.

A second regressive labor law

In July the Ukraine legislature (Verkhovna Rada) also adopted Bill No. 5371, on simplified termination of employment contracts during martial law. It regulates labor contracts for businesses of fewer than 250 employees, essentially canceling the provisions of the Labor Code for them. This amounts to some 80% of all companies in Ukraine.

Working conditions, working hours, holidays and wages will now be regulated not by law but by the terms of contracts drawn up by the employer. “Anything can be written in the contract, especially in conditions of unemployment. In fact, this means that Ukrainians will have to work on the conditions that employers will impose on them,” says Ukrainian lawyer Rostyslav Kravets.[5]

The governing regime in Kyiv pushed through the bill, citing a familiar theme: “Russian aggression.” But the bill was originally registered in April 2021, nearly one year prior to Russia’s military intervention.

Formally, the bill was submitted on behalf of the head of the parliamentary committee on social policy, Galina Tretyakova, and a number of other deputies from the ruling Servant of the People party. Ukrainian trade unions had demanded Tretyakova’s resignation following a sickening speech in which she said that poor people should be sterilized to reduce the country’s welfare bill.

Bill 5371 was developed by the Ukrainian public organization “Office of Simple Solutions,” which was originally created by the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili (2008-13), together with the associations of Ukrainian employers and the USAID program.

In other words, the deprivation of Ukrainian labor rights has been financed by a U.S. government agency. (As for Saakashvili, he is awaiting trial in Georgia under charges of violence against his political opponents as well as harsh restrictions against media outlets before and during his presidency. He is also charged with entering the country illegally, in October 2021, when he was first arrested and detained.)

George Sandul, a lawyer at the Kyiv public organization “Labor Initiatives,” commenting on Bill 5371, noted that the employee always has less power than the employer, and at the international level, numerous conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) are devoted to this issue. “De facto, this regime assumes that literally anything can be entered into an employee’s employment contract, without reference to Ukrainian labor laws. For example, additional grounds for dismissal, liability, or even a 100-hour week,” explains Sandul.[6]

In June, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) appealed to Ukrainian authorities to remove the scandalous bill No. 5371 from consideration, as it contradicts the ILO conventions ratified by Ukraine’s “association agreement” with the EU (entered into force in September 2017) and European legislation.

Ukraine has in recent years served as a testing ground for anti-social reforms and cuts, which are then carried out in other European countries. These are all the more misplaced considering that Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in Europe and over the past eight years, there has been a massive outflow of Ukrainian workers westward in Europe or eastward to Russia.

Resisting military service in wartime

Since the beginning of Russia’s military operation, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men have been drafted into the army and thousands have illegally fled across the border to dodge military service. Millions of women, too, have left the country, leaving many manufacturing facilities at a standstill. Even regular public utilities are understaffed, while many restaurants in the capital city Kyiv have closed as their chefs and other staff have left.

In July, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine reported on the elimination of 45 escape routes used by men of military age. Those caught were traveling by foot, car or boat. One enterprising draft dodger tried to leave the country by swimming across a river in a diving suit.[7] Fees charged by those guiding the escapees range from the equivalent of US$1,000 to US$20,000.

Forced conscription was brought on and has been intensified due to huge combat losses. David Arakhamia, the head of the Zelensky-led party’s parliamentary faction, has stated that losses amount to about 1,000 killed and wounded per day.[8] The British Daily Mail reported in July that the death toll was around 20,000 a month.[9] But official statistics of Ukraine’s losses are treated as classified information by the Ministry of Defense.

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Funeral for one of many Ukrainian war dead. [Source: voanews.com]

“The numbers of dead are a state secret during martial law. This is due to military expediency and the fact that the enemy should not know these numbers and use it for their own opportunities,” Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar said on July 14.[10]

Economically, Ukraine survives almost exclusively on loans from Western partner governments and international banks. It finances its public budget expenditures only by some 30%.[11] The main sphere of government expenses is, to no surprise, military. To a certain extent, the Ukrainian military can be described as a mercenary force of the United States, Great Britain and other NATO countries.

Ideologically, Ukrainian authorities openly position themselves as part of a “civilized West” waging war with a “barbaric East.” “We are the European army of a European country. The enemy will be destroyed consistently, systematically and as planned and expected, by a decent army of the good old West,” Aleksey Arestovych, an adviser to the head of the President’s Office, recently stated.[12]

However, for this army, a significant part of its recruits must be snatched off the streets or from parks and workplaces. Since February, Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 have been barred from leaving the country. Starting October 1, this ban will also apply to women, who are being made liable for military service under the cunning theme of “combatting gender discrimination.” But this “fight against discrimination” is far from being an extension of rights; it is an extension of duties as defined by an increasingly unpopular and isolated governing regime.

Russian-controlled southern Ukraine

The populations of the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine oppose the regime in Kyiv for the most part, but since 2014 they have been forced to hide this. Soldiers of Ukraine’s armed forces continue to complain that, since the start of the Russian military operation, local residents are betraying their positions to Russian forces and to the forces of Luhansk and Donetsk, allowing these to more accurately target their military operations.

In one video from the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, still held by Kyiv, a soldier of the Ukrainian army complains that the locals do not like them and do not want war against the Russian Federation. He explains, “There are a lot of people here who are not being called up by the military registration and enlistment offices. We are brought here from all over Ukraine, but no one will involve the locals. The recent scenarios in Lisichansk [small city in the Lugansk region] and other territories showed that residents were willing to go to war, but against Ukraine.”[13]

In fact, many Ukrainian soldiers are telling the truth of what is happening in the territories controlled by the Russian Federation and the Lugansk and Donetsk republics. However, “control” by Russia or the Donbas republics does not mean peace. Deliveries of heavy artillery from the U.S. and other large NATO powers now allow Ukrainian forces to shell more heavily their former territories in the east, sometimes reaching deep behind Russian/Donbas republic lines. The shelling of the territories controlled by Kyiv receives wide coverage in the Western press, but the shelling of uncontrolled territory by the Ukrainian army is completely ignored, underlining once again the prevailing system of a double standard in Western media.

In July, three Ukrainian drones with explosives attacked the nuclear energy complex (the largest in Europe) near the city of Zaporozhye located on the Dnieper River, the fourth largest river in Europe.[14] The purpose was to disrupt the operation of the station, which supplies electricity to several nearby regions. Luckily, the concrete ceilings of the complex withstood the attacks by what was light munitions. The complex was designed and built in Soviet times to operate during wartime. Russian forces control the complex and are working with its Ukrainian engineers and other specialists to keep it operating.

At the same time, the Ukrainian special services, in conjunction with Western intelligence services, wage regular terror attacks in uncontrolled territories, threatening those citizens of Ukraine who cooperate with the Russian Federation or the Donbas republics. Many leaders of the Donbas rebels have been assassinated since 2014, notably the revered, former head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, assassinated in 2018.

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A banner with a portrait of Alexander Zakharchenko, Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, is seen during the funeral in Donetsk, Ukraine, September 2, 2018. [Source: businesinsider.com]

Terror tactics are being used to prevent a return to peaceful life. These are prompting even former Ukrainian ultra-nationalists to reconsider their views on the conflict. In June, for example, Dmitry Kuzmenko, the head of a Ukrainian “territorial defense” (ultra-nationalist) paramilitary unit, and many of his former fighters decided to adopt Russian citizenship.[15]

Meanwhile, deliveries of American “HIMARS” precision multiple rocket launchers and the shelling of Kherson led even the former leader of the Kherson cell of the Ukrainian fascist party Svoboda (“Freedom”), Eduard Bekharsky, to reconsider his views. “Today’s shelling of my hometown by the Armed Forces of Ukraine using American HIMARS put a bullet in my relations with Ukraine. My father was an officer in the Soviet army. I remember my childhood in the garrisons in the Urals. I am more Soviet than Ukrainian. And now I’m finished with Ukraine,” he wrote.[16]

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in July on simplified admission of Ukrainian citizens to Russian citizenship, residents of other regions have been moving to Russian-controlled Kherson. However, their route, according to eyewitnesses, is quite difficult since it is necessary to pass through front lines and mined territories. Taxi drivers in the Kyiv-controlled city of Zaporozhye charge up to US$1,000 for such a dangerous trip.

There is also a legal option, but it costs $400 and up. To make such a trip legally, the traveler must submit an application to Ukrainian authorities and then pass a verification procedure by the SBU. Men do not use this option since they would immediately receive a summons to military service.

The coming social and political transformations in southern Ukraine

In July, the local authorities of the southern regions of Ukraine controlled by the Russian Federation–Kherson and Zaporozhye—announced the preparation of a referendum on joining the Russian Federation.[17]

Preliminary plans call for the votes to take place in mid-September. This will severely curtail stated plans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to return these regions under their control, since a vote to join the Russian Federation formally places the regions under the military umbrella of Russia and, perhaps, opens the way for entry of international peacekeeping forces from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, in which Russia is a leading member.

In Russian-controlled cities and towns in southern Ukraine, the interim administrations are distributing one-time social payments of 10,000 rubles (app. US$165) to residents, which is equal to the minimum monthly Ukrainian pension for elderly.[18]

In June, internet service began to be provided from Crimea to these regions and mobile communications were established through Russian operators.

Unlike Kherson, many larger cities of Donbas have been heavily damaged due to the frequently used tactics of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to use schools, hospitals and residential buildings as shields.

Reconstruction in the heavily damaged city of Mariupol began in June. Russia is mounting an ambitious program of reconstruction assistance throughout Donbas. Large teams of building workers are being mobilized in Russia, including a clever program in which Russian cities partner with a selected city in Donbas and provide technical as well as material assistance.

Following the recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, brigades of workers from there are helping in the restoration. “They will provide serious help in solving the problems of restoring destroyed social, infrastructural and industrial facilities,” said Russian Ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora.

He also said the DPRK already uses building equipment manufactured by enterprises in Donbas. “Our Korean partners are therefore very interested in acquiring spare parts and units manufactured in Donbas in order to update their own production base.”[19] Kyiv has severed diplomatic relations with North Korea and Syria in response to their respective recognitions of the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk republics.

In the Russian-controlled part of the Zaporozhye region, the roads damaged or destroyed in the fighting are being restored. A resident of the DPR, author of the left-wing Telegram channel “Concretely,” describes the process as follows: “Yesterday, I watched a road being repaired in the liberated territory. Repairs are being done more substantially than Ukraine ever did. Not only is the roadbed completely removed and restored, its support bedding (so-called pillow) is one and a half meters deeper. From the original road dating from Soviet times and ‘killed’ by Ukraine through neglect, only its direction will remain. A completely new road is being built, 100 kilometers long. The locals, I think, have never seen such a miracle; modern civilization has come to our steppes.”[20]

In Ukrainian media, this news was presented as a case of Russians “stealing” the old asphalt from the roads because they themselves do not have such roads.

In the Russian-controlled parts of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, new tariffs for utilities were approved in July. Utilities in those regions are much less expensive than in the rest of Ukraine: Natural gas is less than one-fifth the price in the Russian-controlled areas; hot water is almost 60% less; heating is more than 60% less; and electricity is 45% less. Such are the economic benefits brought by Russia and which are very appealing to local populations.[21]

Previously, Russian authorities announced the cancellation of all the debts of Ukrainian citizens owed for gas, electricity and water utilities, as well as bank debts. As a result, thousands of households in Kyiv-controlled territories have stopped paying their bills, expecting that Russia may some day arrive and write off their debts as well. This is one of the reasons why the regime of Zelensky is obliged to step up requests to the Western powers for additional financial assistance.

Crimea

Apparently, the regions of Donbas and southern Ukraine will follow the path of rebuilding and restoration taken earlier in the Chechen Republic and Crimea.

Crimea and most of what became Ukraine following 1991 lived off the infrastructure legacy of the Soviet Union without repairing or updating it. After the 2014 referendum in Crimea (March 15 of that year), the Russians involved in restoring the infrastructure of Crimea were shocked by the degree of deterioration of buildings, pipes and roads.

In 2014, average wages and pensions almost tripled for Crimeans as a result of their vote to join Russia. Naturally, this only strengthened their loyalty to Moscow. Now Crimea and Chechnya are the most loyal regions to the Russian central government, not least due to the substantial financial injections into the economies of these regions. These are much higher, proportionately, than in other regions of the Russian Federation. The volume of infrastructure investments per capita in Crimea, for example, is 29% ahead of the Russian average.[22]

In 2013, by comparison, the per capita GRP (gross regional product) of Crimea was 25% of that in Russia, the average salary was less than 40% of that in Russia, and investments were 30% of that in Russia.

Because of Western sanctions, tourism in Crimea has suffered heavily. As well, the blockade of water supply imposed by Kyiv did not allow the development of agriculture in the arid northern regions of Crimea. Ukrainian authorities blockaded the Northern Crimea Canal in 2015, which provided most drinking and agricultural water to Crimea from the Dnieper River to the north. The canal was built during the 1950s.

In place of tourism, the Crimean economy is now shifting toward industrial production, in particular, shipbuilding and engineering at Soviet factories that were virtually abandoned or on the verge of bankruptcy under Ukraine’s rule. Ukraine has allowed much of its industrial production capacity to degrade since 1991, saying it can instead buy superior equipment from Western corporations.

Among the largest projects in Crimea since 2014 have been extensive water supply and pipeline infrastructure; a new airport in the capital city of Simferopol; and the historic Kerch Strait Bridge, 19 km long and carrying trucks and autos as well as a two-track railway to and from Crimea and the Russian mainland.

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Kerch Strait Bridge—an example of economic development that has restored Crimea as a part of the Russian Federation. [Source: newyorker.com]

Ukraine is today threatening to strike the bridge with missiles. Perhaps it is too much of an embarrassment to Ukrainian officials. Since 1992, several plans to build a Podolsky Bridge, four kilometers long, in the Kyiv region across the Dnieper River have failed due to bad planning or escalating costs.[23]In 2015, Ukrainian nationalists organized, in addition to the water blockade, an energy blockade of Crimea, blowing up power lines in the Kherson region. The destroyed power lines were finally restored at the end of July 2022. “Crimea has overcome the water, food, and transport blockades set up by the Kyiv regime, and now the latest energy blockade,” Oleg Kryuchkov recently announced. He is an information officer for the head of Crimea. “Crimea receives water through the unblocked North Crimean Canal, trade and transport links with the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions have been restored, and the energy system has been fully restored. Everything is returning to normal.”[24]

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Drying of Crimean Canal as a result of Ukrainian water blockade that has now ended because Russia has reclaimed much of the territory around Crimea. [Source: aljazeera.com]

All this said, there remain conflicting loyalties among business people in Crimea toward Moscow or Kyiv. Due to policies deregulating business in Ukraine, in accordance with the loan requirements of the IMF, private businesses in Crimea often lean in favor of Ukraine. Such businesses are more prone to evade taxes and not comply with sanitary and labor standards. The Russian state tightly regulates private businesses, in contrast to Ukraine, causing dissatisfaction with private taxi drivers who worked in Ukraine, at times without licenses and without paying any taxes. Some hotel owners—those who built their hotels in protected areas prior to 2014—are also dissatisfied, thanks to bribery and corruption.

Behind the scenes in Ukraine and its former territories, there is also competition between state-planned and private, neoliberal economies. In the Russian Federation, workers and technicians employed in state-run enterprises receive higher salaries and benefits.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... abor-laws/

Notes at link.

Russian Ops in Ukraine Update (Aug. 20, 2022): US Sends Drones, Howitzers but Not Enough
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 20, 2022



Update on Russian special military operations in Ukraine for August 20, 2022:

1. Russian forces continue incremental advances in the Donbass;

2. Ukraine’s Kherson offensive remains stalled;

3. The US is supplying Ukraine with additional HIMARS ammunition but not additional launchers;

4. The US is also sending smaller caliber (105mm) and thus shorter-range howitzers in small numbers to join dwindling numbers of 155mm M777s sent by the US earlier;

5. The US is sending ScanEagle drones similar to Russia’s Orlan-10, but only 15 of them vs hundreds of Russian drones;

6. Despite several successful sabotage operations in Crimea, Ukraine is unable to hit critical Russian targets in the numbers or on the scale Russia is hitting corresponding targets in Ukraine;

7. The US is sending 40 MRAPs and 50 HMMMVs to replace Ukraine’s destroyed armored vehicles; References: US Department of Defense – Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing AUG. 19, 2022: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcri

NASA – Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS): https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/

Washington Post – Crimea attacks point to Ukraine’s newest strategy, official says: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/

Al Jazeera – Ukrainian attacks in Crimea weaken Russia’s military capacity: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8

Alexander Mercouris – Putin, Shoigu Pitch Russia as Main Opponent of Globalisation: https://youtu.be/DdOJmMOqDfQ
Similar trends should be expected in the Russian-controlled territories of southern Ukraine and Donbas as soon as peace comes to them.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... ot-enough/
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:18 pm

independence week
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 08/22/2022

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Next August 24 will be six months since the beginning of the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Today marks the same deadline since the Russian recognition of the DPR and the RPL, which that same night signed the friendship and security agreements with the Russian Federation that officially involved Moscow in the security of the People's Republics, the main argument for the start of what Russia continues to describe as a special military operation . These six months of Russian intervention have shown the stark differences between this phase of the war and the previous eight years, those that, for years, Ukraine continued to call an anti-terrorist operation. Millions of refugees and internally displaced persons -who have taken refuge in the European Union from the Ukraine and in Russia from the People's Republics-, an immense but impossible to determine number of casualties, especially in the four armies involved, and enormous material damage that will make the reconstruction of both sides of the front line a task that will take years: this is the result of a war that has little to do with those waged by the United States in recent decades.

As President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted, Ukraine has lost control of 20% of the territory with which it was born on August 24, 1991, a date that kyiv has celebrated every year of war with greater enthusiasm and that this time will also be special, although without great acts, prohibited by the authorities this week. Kiev is already preparing a display of destroyed and burned Russian and republican equipment that it places along its main streets as a parade. The meaning is obvious: Opposite to the military parade Ukraine assumes Russia was expecting, the only Russian military parade in kyiv will presumably be a long line of burned-out tanks, armor and trucks. However, it was not Russia that promised to hold a military parade in kyiv, but Ukraine that has repeatedly promised to hold a military parade in Sevastopol and Donetsk. After eight years of war and six months of intense battles, Donetsk and Lugansk, too, would have no great difficulty in holding a parade of burned Ukrainian equipment to present as a success to their citizens.

Despite some progress in the attempt to move the front away from Donetsk and the preparation of what appears to be an advance from the south towards Marinka, the military situation remains stable. There are still no forecasts of rapid changes in a context of a war of attrition between two powerful armies and a confrontation between a world-class military power and an army already tested by the first eight years of trench warfare and heavily armed by a practically constant supply of arms from its partners, especially from its North American allies. But, despite all the triumphalism shown by the Ukrainian authorities, reproduced without the need for any verification by the related national and international press, Ukraine continues without achieving territorial advances to present as success.

The long-awaited month of August is advancing and the promised offensive on Kherson, where weeks ago The Times predicted a "humiliating defeat" for Russia, has yet to take place. Yesterday, the Ukrainian military authorities admitted that Russian troops had temporarily advanced on Blagodatnoe, in the Nikolaev region. The Ukrainian breakthrough has turned into a new trench warfare in which casualties are piling up and gains are meager. Faced with the evident lack of success, the most vocal of the President's Office advisers, Mijailo Podoliak, recently argued that the idea of ​​the Kherson offensive was nothing more than a psychological warfare operation,a way to keep the Russian troops in tension and to force the military authorities to divert part of their troops from Donbass to the southern front. For a few days, the Ukrainian media hinted that the offensive would take place in the Kharkov region, nonsense since, in territorial terms, the area occupied by Russian troops is limited and their chances of advancing on the capital are slim. current conditions.

Ukraine's actions in recent weeks, which began with the intensive use of long-range artillery to try to destroy arms and ammunition depots of Russian troops, point to a strategy of stressing the entire front and, with the notable increase from the use of drones, to a certain combat reconnaissance with a triple objective: to obtain information and test defenses, especially air defenses; inflict damage on the Russian forces and obtain media successes with which to justify the current tactic.

There are two points on the front that Ukraine has used politically in recent days. The first is the Energodar-Nikopol front, specifically the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant, under Russian control, but which, operated by the Ukrainian state company, Energodar, continues to supply electricity to Ukraine. During this time, there have been constant rumors about the possible Russian intention to disconnect the plant from the Ukrainian electrical system, which would cause significant damage to the Ukrainian energy sector, which it would be difficult to counteract in the short term. The date of September 1 has been repeatedly presented as the moment when Russia would intend to deprive Ukraine of those resources.

This concern has led to the need to return the issue of the nuclear power plant to political news, something that Ukraine has achieved by accusing Russia of bombing the nuclear plant that it controls since March 4. Without the need for more evidence than the Ukrainian allegations, both the press and Ukraine's foreign partners have accepted the accusations of Russian self-bombing, demand that Russia leave the area and increase tension by warning of the possibility of a nuclear accident. . Of modern construction, the reactor, the most dangerous part of any nuclear power plant, is prepared to even withstand the impact of an airplane. And although there are more vulnerable elements, so a catastrophe cannot be ruled out in the event of a war escalation,

The second point that Ukraine has wanted to exploit for its propaganda at this time of few real successes to present before Independence Day is Crimea. Following the sabotage of the Saki military base, where Russia suffered significant but by no means decisive damage - losses which, in any case, are not comparable to the loss of the Moskva, sunk by a Ukrainian missile in the first weeks of the Russian intervention, Ukraine has increased its activity on the peninsula. In recent hours, the air defenses of various areas of the peninsula -Kerch, Evpatoria, Sevastopol- have shot down Ukrainian unmanned vehicles, while a device did explode, without causing great damage, in Sevastopol. With an image of an explosion in the Kherson region several weeks ago, Ukrainian social networks also claimed that Ukraine had managed to attack an airfield that does not even exist in the town of Bakhchisrai. The objective of the attacks is twofold: Ukraine is not only seeking media victories with which to claim its strength and Russia's weakness -relative considering the damage- but also to undermine the end of the tourism season on the peninsula. Ukraine's goal is to create chaos, Mikhailo Podoliak said in an interview last week, verbalizing an obvious tactic on the battlefield. Ukraine, which for the last eight years has cut off the electricity supply causing a blackout that lasted several days and which for years has blocked the water supply, ruining the peninsula's agriculture, not only aspires to frighten the population, but also to destroy the tourism, one of the most important sources of income for Crimea.

Although the special dates have not been, since the beginning of the Russian intervention, a decisive factor -Russia did not try to accelerate the pace in Donbass in order to present a success on May 9 as the Ukrainian and Western press affirmed-, Zelensky warned yesterday that Moscow could prepare "something especially cruel" for Ukraine's Independence Day. Zelensky thus prepares the media field to use any major attack that occurs this week as a sign of Russian contempt for the Ukrainian people, one more argument to demand more funding, more weapons, more sanctions against Russia from its allies. It is likely that one more will be added to the usual demands: to prohibit the issuance of tourist visas for the Schengen zone to all Russian citizens,

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/08/22/25334/#more-25334

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

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Сolonelcassad

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the situation in the east of Ukraine by the end of August 21, 2022

▪️There are no changes in the front line in the north of the Kharkiv region . The RF Armed Forces carry out rocket artillery strikes on targets in Kharkov and along the line of contact.

▪️On the Soledar direction , fighting continues on the outskirts of the city.
➖Units of the 6th Cossack Regiment of the NM LPR are moving deep into Bakhmutsky. In recent days, high losses of personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been confirmed by name, a significant part of which are mobilized from the Kirovograd and Chernivtsi regions.

▪️In the Donetsk direction, the allied forces continue to develop an offensive against strongholds of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the suburbs of the capital of the DPR:
➖Fighters of the 11th regiment of the NM of the DPR and the Somali battalion are trying to move from the previously taken Pesok in the direction of Pervomaisky and Nevelskoye.
➖In the morning, unconfirmed reports appeared about the entry of reconnaissance units of the RF Armed Forces into the village of Pavlovka near Ugledar.
➖Ukrainian artillery hit neighborhoods in Donetsk, as well as Makiivka, Gorlovka , and Lysichansk .

▪️In the Krivoy Rog direction, the RF Armed Forces hit targets in Apostolovo and Zelenodolsk.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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The murder of Daria Dugina solved
August 22, 2:21 p.m

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The FSB announced the establishment of customers and perpetrators of the murder of Darya Dugina.

The murder was planned by the Ukrainian special services.
The direct perpetrator of the murder was a citizen of Ukraine Natalya Vovk born in 1979, who left Russia for Estonia on August 21. Arrived in Russia on July 23.

It is also reported that:

1. Vovk and her daughter Sofya Shaban rented an apartment in the building where Daria Dugina lived in Moscow.
2. A Mini Cooper was used to spy on Daria Dugina. Numbers were changed on it three times - license plates of the DPR, Kazakhstan and Ukraine were used

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7816150.html

Well, no surprises there. Cassad is making a big deal of this, but I'm not. She was a journalist, and while I am totally unfamiliar with her a good guess is that she leaned well to the right, given her daddy. Daddy Dugin, best I can tell is a nationalist-chauvinist reactionary but I suspect his influence on the Russian State is not great and mostly opportunistic on the part of the oligarchy. Boris seems to have had the hots for her or something, too many tribute posts. And to be honest Boris has been getting more nationalistic of late, disappointing in a communist.

That said, this act was an escalation, as have been the attacks on Crimea. I think The Comedian and the Rada better watch their asses...

About the course of the NWO. 08/21/2022
August 22, 10:06

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Answers to questions about the course of the SVO for the channel of the military commander Yuri Kotenok.

About the course of the NWO. 08/21/2022

- Attempts to penetrate the UAV in the Crimea - is it "probing" the air defense before future strikes, or rather, the transition to the tactics of the Yemeni Houthis - constant "bites", some of which will cause tangible damage?

- In my opinion, the air defense capabilities of the Crimea are being probed. Objective information about its work is collected by NATO technical means for further analysis and search for potential vulnerabilities.
Along the way, tasks of a propaganda nature are being solved, related to the very fact of an attack on the Crimea with a penny or completely absent damage. Such attacks, with the full support of NATO, will certainly continue.
Medvedev's empty threats about a "judgment day" in the event of attacks on Crimea are defiantly ignored by NATO, considering them insignificant. We should prepare to repel new attacks, as well as strengthen the counter-terrorist regime in Crimea.

— What is your assessment of Erdogan's visit to Lviv? How do the Turks themselves see their role at this stage?

- Erdogan could not achieve much due to the fact that the main levers of governance in Ukraine are in the hands of the United States. Erdogan continues to try to sell himself as the main mediator in Ukraine, but Russia doesn’t really need it and the US doesn’t need it at all, which is why the Turk’s mediation efforts give near-zero output. However, he continues to play his part, maintaining the role of an independent player in the Ukrainian conflict.
So far, Turkey's main benefit is the role of a transport and trade hub between Russia and the West, which allows mitigating the level of the current crisis in the Turkish economy.

- On August 20, in Mariupol, they tried to blow up the mayor of the city of Ivashchenko. How to reduce the activity of the Bandera underground in the liberated territories?

- Terrorist attacks in the liberated territories, of course, will continue exactly to the extent that the counter-terrorism authorities will allow and allow this.
The situation requires the strengthening of the CTO regime in the liberated territories and in the border areas, the recognition of the SBU and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense as terrorist organizations with an intensified blow to the infrastructure and personalities of terror.
It is also desirable to create some analogue of SMERSH with extended powers (subordinate to either the RF Security Council or the FSB) for actions identical to those of the legendary organization during the Second World War.

- How adequate is the point of view that the United States, unlike the UK, is aimed not at further escalation in Ukraine, but at freezing the conflict from its perspective transition to the "Indo-Pakistani" format?

I consider this point of view to be erroneous. The United States and Britain are acting within the framework of the course to intensify the conflict, so the stakes are regularly raised, and the United States remains the largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine, and their range is expanding.
A possible bifurcation point for US policy could be the midterm congressional elections with the expected defeat of the Democrats, which will turn the Biden administration into a "lame duck". But while there is still time before the elections, the United States will continue to increase the degree of escalation of relations with the Russian Federation and China, balancing on the brink of direct war.

- What is behind the negative publications about Zelensky in the Western press? What figure in the Ukrainian elites could be more convenient for the external players who control the Kyiv regime?

- This is a consequence of the internal struggle in the United States, where some groups of influence hit Zelensky as a puppet of the Democrats, hence his frequent criticism on republican resources. In addition, the United States is constantly reminded in this way that he is nothing more than a puppet. This criticism shows that Zelensky is not indispensable.
Figures like Poroshenko, Avakov, one of the generals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the SBU can stand on the siding. But with any figure, the puppet essence of such a regime will not change. From the point of view of the United States, such a replacement is only a replacement of a gear in the mechanism of the colonial administration.

- The Deputy Minister of Defense of Poland threatened with a NATO response to the deployment of hypersonic missiles "Dagger" in the Kaliningrad region. Is this a private statement or the position of the Alliance? Why exactly "Daggers" cause such a painful reaction?

“NATO cannot prevent the deployment of hypersonic missiles in Kaliningrad in any other way than by war. Russia has every right to deploy such weapons in Kaliningrad, which are not limited by any treaties.

The worries about the "Daggers" are due to the fact that the existing air defense systems in service with NATO countries are untenable in confrontation with such missiles (progress in this area, according to American experts, is expected no earlier than the second half of the 20s).
It is important to remember that the Kinzhals appeared in Kaliningrad precisely in response to NATO actions, and not vice versa. The unrest about them shows that this was a rather unpleasant step for NATO.

- The Baltic limitrophes are promoting the toughest position towards Russia.

- In the medium term, I would not rule out any local provocations on the border of the Russian Federation with the Baltic limitrophes, as well as a renewed threat of a blockade of Kaliningrad.
In addition, the most Russophobic policy will be carried out with the destruction of monuments and the persecution of the Russian population, the Russian language and Russian culture. I believe that these regimes should be officially recognized as Nazi. There is no other meaning for the existence of these pseudo-states, except to act as a military foothold against Russia.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin - zinc

PS. The photo shows a bundle of documents of the killed UAF soldiers in the Artyomovsky direction.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7815332.html

You will leave Soledar only with 200 or 300
August 22, 9:00

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From here you will leave only 200 or 300.

Next whiners. This time from the 4th, 5th and 6th companies of one of the rifle battalions of the 93rd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It was in Soledar, they complain that:

1. There are no heavy weapons, only small arms.
2. They are constantly attacked by Russian artillery, aviation and tanks.
3. No artillery support. Moreover, their positions were covered by their own Ukrainian Grads.
4. A large number of killed "brothers" remain in positions, whom no one takes away.
5. The wounded are not evacuated either, only those who could walk 2 kilometers to the evacuation point are taken away.
6. The superior commander threatens with executions and declares that this cannon fodder will leave Soledar only after being killed or wounded.
7. Previously, these units already had heavy losses in another unnamed area.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7815131.html

Google Translator

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RIP - Darya Dugina
Some voices on the death of Darya Dugina:

Darya Dugina
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Car blast kills daughter of Russian philosopher Dugin - RT.com
Investigators suspect an improvised explosive device was used

A powerful explosion ripped apart an SUV near Moscow on Saturday night, instantly killing its driver, identified as Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian political commentator Aleksandr Dugin.
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Earlier on Saturday evening, Dugin was giving a lecture on ‘Tradition and History’ at a family festival in Moscow Region. His daughter attended the event as a guest. Unconfirmed reports say Dugin initially planned to leave the festival with his daughter, but later decided to take a separate car, while Darya took his Toyota Land Cruiser Prado.
Dugina was a political commentator and daughter of the veteran Russian philosopher, known for his staunch anti-Western and ‘neo-Eurasian’ views.
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Western media has painted Dugin as a driving force behind President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy over the past decade. In recent months, CBS dubbed him “the far-right theorist behind Putin’s plan,” while the Washington Post called him a “far-right mystical writer who helped shape Putin’s view of Russia.”

In Russia, the supposed shadowy puppet master is largely considered to be a marginal figure. While he has served as an adviser to several politicians, Dugin never enjoyed official endorsement from the Kremlin. In 2014, he was fired from his position at Moscow State University, after critics interpreted his call to “kill, kill, kill” those behind massacres in Ukraine, such as the Odessa tragedy, as a call for a genocide against Ukrainian people.

The US think tank RAND Corporation wrote in 2017 that despite Western media reports of Dugin’s alleged “ties and connections” to the Russian leadership, he is “perhaps best thought of as an extremist provocateur with some limited and peripheral impact than as an influential analyst with a direct impact on policy.”

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The Assassination Of Alexander Dugin’s Daughter Darya Was A Dastardly Terrorist Attack - Andrew Korbyko

This targeted assassination that was indisputably influenced by half a decade’s worth of fake news about that philosopher shows the deadly consequences of America’s information warfare campaign. It also confirms that the declining unipolar hegemon’s proxies in Kiev are truly state sponsors of terrorism who must accordingly be treated as such by the international community. This dastardly terrorist attack threatens the legitimate rules-based order enshrined in the UN Charter and thus confirms that the US is deliberately sowing the seeds of chaos in a desperate last-ditch attempt to erode Russian morale after the slow but steady advance of its forces over the past half-year of its special military operation.

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Gerhard Mangott @gerhard_mangott - 11:31 UTC · Aug 21, 2022
Nach dem Mordanschlag auf die Tochter des rechtsnationalistischen russischen Ideologen Aleksander Dugin, wird nun immer darauf hingewiesen, dass er der ideologische Einflüsterer Putins ist. Das ist schlichtweg nicht wahr.

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Mark Sleboda @MarkSleboda1 - 9:11 UTC · Aug 21, 2022
The attempted assassination of Dugin which instead resulted in the killing of his daughter, was part of the increasingly demented propaganda and infowar of a desperate and crumbling U.S. proxy Putsch regime in Kiev in lieu of success on the battlefield of which it is incapable.

The killing of "Putin's brain" who "inspired" the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict would be celebrated by Kiev regime propagandists as a "victory". It does not matter in the slightest that none of it is true.

It doesn't matter that in reality Dugin has never met or spoken to Putin. It doesn't matter that his unique ideas had zero influence in the Kremlin and little to none in the rest of Russian society. In doesn't matter that to the contrary the Kremlin got Dugin fired from Moscow State University and banned him from government media because of his strident views on the Putsch in Ukraine at a time when the Kremlin was pushing the Minsk accords to resolve the civil conflict there.

The truth doesn't matter because Dugin has been blown up as a caricature bogeyman in the minds of the West and Putsch-controlled Ukraine. And his assassination would thus still serve as a propaganda victory, in spite of it's complete divorce from reality.

In this, the Western media which caricatured and inflated Dugin and the Western governments which nonsensically sanctioned him are fully complicit in the murder of Darya Dugina, his daughter.


Some folks in Kiev and London will have to pay a high price for this ugly deed.

Posted by b on August 21, 2022 at 12:54 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/08/r ... .html#more

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ESCALATING POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND SABOTAGE
ASSASSINATION OF DARIA DUGINA: UKRAINIAN STATE TERRORISM?
21 Aug 2022 , 2:25 p.m.

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Russian security officials inspect the site of the attack against Alexander and Darya Dugin, the latter who died in the event (Photo: AP)

The explosion of a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow has shocked much of public opinion in Russia and elsewhere. On board the vehicle was Daria Dugina, daughter of the philosopher and ideologue Alexander Dugin, who died on the spot. She herself had been included in "sanctions" lists by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union since 2014.

In the context of the Special Military Operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, there has been a notable uptick in terrorism and sabotage actions in the Russian border regions and, of course, in the liberated territories. Two days ago, two technicians from the Zaporoshie Nuclear Power Plant were arrested for offering coordinates and correcting targets inside the plant, as well as several attempts (failed and successful) to assassinate political leaders in the territories, particularly in Kherson (in the oblast namesake), Melitopol, but also in Crimea (the explosion at the Gvardeskoye airbase).

Also, the security agencies of the same city arrested a former Ukrainian officer suspected of committing sabotage. Tass reports : "The former Ukrainian officer was conducting surveillance of Russian military flights at the airfield. Weapons, components for the manufacture of explosives, manuals on the use of the military arsenal, as well as symbols of the Ukrainian terrorist regime were found in his house."

The facts dictate that sabotage suspects and spies of the Ukrainian armed forces are regularly identified in the Zaporozhe region.

It is noticeably more difficult to wage counterintelligence warfare to stop "diversionary," sabotage, and targeted assassination operations than it is to wage an army on the battlefield. An army that by all standards is suffering a colossal defeat along the entire line of contact in the current Donbás campaign.

On January 13, the journalist from Yahoo! Zach Dorfman, who covers the "national security" source (he was the one who revealed the CIA assassination attempts against Julian Assange), reported that the CIA had been training the intelligence services (SBU, GUR) and the Ukrainian special forces in infiltration, sabotage and terrorism operations if a Russian invasion occurs.

Similarly, in various Western media, particularly the New York Times , they admitted that the Ukrainian national intelligence directorate coordinated absolutely all its objectives with the American and British services, to the point that the latter were the ones who placed targets for attack. Since there are hundreds of examples of other attempts of infiltration of the Ukrainian services in other Russian military areas.

Against this background, including the mediocrity and cognitive decline that is the analytic hallmark of Western platitude production, Dugin's tropes as a symbolic coup "against Putin" gain strength. Every time he kicks off a campaign that will seek to attack targets of this nature, symbolic and political, at the heart of Russian power.

Alexander Dugin and his daughter Daria Dugina recently received many threats from Ukrainian nationalists through social networks, according to Russian media, before the attack.

Proportional to the disaster on the battlefield, NATO (United States) and Ukraine seem to be moving into a phase of terrorism and political assassinations by different means, it is now confirmed that the car bomb that took the life of Darya Dugina is one of them .

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/as ... -ucraniano

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

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